{"id":10598,"date":"2013-05-02T15:30:33","date_gmt":"2013-05-02T10:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/?p=10598"},"modified":"2014-12-24T17:39:32","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T12:09:32","slug":"find-your-horse-to-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/find-your-horse-to-ride\/","title":{"rendered":"Find your horse to ride"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In life, we all need a horse to ride.\u00a0 Without the horse, we are a small fraction of what we could be.<\/p>\n

When I was 13, my parents took me to a motor museum at a grand country house.\u00a0 Big yawn.\u00a0 Happily, there was a donkey derby alongside it, and they agreed to let me ride a donkey.\u00a0 Being bigger and heavier than the other kids, nobody backed me and the bookmakers pushed my odds out to 66-1 against.\u00a0 Whereupon my dad surprised them by plonking down a fiver on me \u2013 after a moment\u2019s hesitation, the bookie took the bet and rubbed out 66-1 and put 25-1 instead.<\/p>\n

When the race started, I was so terrified of falling off that I stuck my heels into my donkey and held on for dear life.\u00a0 The donkey was terrified too \u2013 he moved up three gears and we won drawing away.\u00a0\u00a0 Dad was \u00a3330 richer \u2013 a fortune then.<\/p>\n

I tried to get the same donkey in the next race but the ring manager directed me to another one, perhaps feeling that two rides from me would be hard on the beast.\u00a0 This time I was less scared but I couldn\u2019t galvanize the nag and we finished a distant third, even though the punters had piled their money on me and we had started odds-on.<\/p>\n

Guess which donkey won?\u00a0\u00a0 The one I\u2019d been on the first race.<\/p>\n

It was a sign!<\/p>\n

We are all less important than the donkey \u2013 or preferably horse \u2013 we get to ride.<\/p>\n

Life is not just you or me \u2013 it is the vehicle (or vehicles) we find to develop our skills and express ourselves that counts.\u00a0 And even then, perhaps our skills matter little compared to the destiny of the horse.<\/p>\n

When I was 30, I was more-or-less fired from one job (with the Boston Consulting Group) but talked my way into another with a smaller rival, Bain & Company.\u00a0 But the thing was \u2013 Bain had a great business formula and was growing much faster, at 40% a year.\u00a0 Yes, each year the firm got 40% bigger.\u00a0 You can imagine the opportunities presented by that growth rate.\u00a0 From being a failure I turned into an overnight success \u2013 doing exactly the same job.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t me, it was the growth rate.\u00a0 I was stretched, learned a lot, and became so much more confident.\u00a0 I even started to enjoy what I did.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nThe horse, not the jockey.<\/p>\n

When I became a writer, I pondered the 80\/20 principle<\/a>.\u00a0 I had long known its value.\u00a0 I was not the only one.\u00a0 The Principle was well known to economists and in business circles and was much discussed on the web.\u00a0 But no-one had written a book about it.\u00a0 Now that book has sold over a million copies.<\/p>\n

The book, not the writer.<\/p>\n

The horse, not the rider.<\/p>\n

Have you found your horse yet?<\/p>\n

The horse could be a college or firm that transforms you.\u00a0 It could be an idea.\u00a0 It could be a new business venture.\u00a0 It could be a church, a club, or a cause you make your own.\u00a0 It could be a group of friends banded together to do something great.<\/p>\n

If you want to transform your life, Find Your Horse.\u00a0 But how?<\/p>\n

How to Find Your Horse<\/strong><\/p>\n

The horse, you will recall, is something with inherent power to propel you.\u00a0 It could be a college or organization, a job, a new business venture, a cause, an idea, or a group of friends fixated on one specific aim.<\/p>\n

These horses are rare.\u00a0\u00a0 There are three secrets to tracking them down.<\/p>\n

The easiest give-away is that the horse is young, yet fast and powerful.\u00a0 It is growing rapidly.\u00a0 Its time has come, but only just.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the horse is a business, it will be growing by more than 10% a year, and probably between 30-50% a year, maybe even more.\u00a0 Such firms are very unusual \u2013 somewhere between one and five in a hundred.\u00a0 Yet if we you keep your eyes open, you will find such a firm.<\/p>\n

The firm must be growing under its own steam.\u00a0 Firms that grow by merger or acquisition do not count.<\/p>\n

What does it mean if the business is expanding fast?\u00a0 It means it has created a product or service that people really want.\u00a0 It means the firm has a formula or business model or knowledge that other firms don\u2019t have.\u00a0 It means the business is a winner.<\/p>\n

Every very large and profitable firm started life like this \u2013 initially it was tiny, and then it went through several years of incredibly quick growth.\u00a0 If you go to work in such a business, you will benefit enormously because there is more opportunity in the firm than experienced workers.\u00a0 You will spread your wings and learn to fly like an angel.\u00a0 You work will be fascinating and you will get promoted rapidly.\u00a0 If you can get stock options, you may end up with a fortune.\u00a0 Ask the first 100 people into Microsoft, Google, Amazon, e-Bay, Twitter, Facebook, or any other mega-success.\u00a0 They are all millionaires, centi-millionaries, or billionaires; not because they are smarter than you or me, but because they were there at the start or shortly after.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same for a cause, a social movement, or even a qualification.\u00a0 If it\u2019s not growing very fast, it won\u2019t push you forward.\u00a0 In the 1960s and 1970s it made sense to get an MBA, because there weren\u2019t many around and business schools were mushrooming.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s futile to do an MBA \u2013 there are far too many already and the currency is devalued.\u00a0 Instead, look for the next big thing.\u00a0 Get in early, while the growth is exponential.<\/p>\n

The second clue to finding your horse is that it excites you.\u00a0 <\/strong>The idea, the cause, the organization, whatever it is, must turn you on and have meaning for you.\u00a0 You must think, \u201cI love the idea of this\u201d, or \u201cI am going to grow to love this.\u201d\u00a0 Animation, enthusiasm, and genuine fervour are peculiarly human attributes.\u00a0 They too are rare.\u00a0 Most people are not excited by life and what they do.\u00a0 The few who are, have a tremendous edge.\u00a0 They are tens, hundreds, or thousands of times more likely to succeed \u2013 and they will have a ball doing so, not least because every day they will collaborate with people who are as excited and motivated as they are.<\/p>\n

The third pointer is that the horse has integrity.\u00a0 <\/strong>Everything about the horse hangs together.\u00a0 The horse is beautiful. The horse is admirable and excellent.\u00a0 The horse is generous. The horse doesn\u2019t have bad breath, a gamy leg, or a hidden disease.\u00a0 If the horse is an idea, the idea is true and constructive.\u00a0 If the horse is a firm, it has a mission to improve the world in some well-defined and narrow way, and everything about the firm is designed to fulfil that mission.\u00a0 And if the horse is a cause, the cause has to benefit society at large, not just its proponents.\u00a0 With any beautiful horse, there is always some deeply satisfying insight behind the idea, the firm, or the cause \u2013 an insight that is unusual or unique, and thoroughly worthwhile.<\/p>\n

In large parts of Europe in the 1920s and early 1930s, there were two horses growing faster than any other.\u00a0 One horse was the Communist Party and the other horse was the Nazis.\u00a0 Both horses excited their devotees.\u00a0 Both horses were immensely strong.\u00a0 But neither of them had integrity.\u00a0 The ideas they espoused were simply not true.\u00a0 The horses were speckled with evil.\u00a0 It is the same with every get-rich-quick scam, every witch-hunt, every mean and nasty movement.\u00a0 One of the most amazing and hopeful things about the universe is that evil does not last, because it cannot embody the spiritual longing of humans, the thirst for truth and beauty.\u00a0 Only ideas, firms, causes and people with integrity can build something wonderful and enduring.<\/p>\n

So there it is.\u00a0 To find your horse, recall three words \u2013 growth, excitement, and integrity.\u00a0 Finding your horse will not be easy.\u00a0 But if you think hard and look hard, if you really are consumed with desire for such a horse, it will come to you.\u00a0 You will attract it.\u00a0 You will recognize it immediately, with overflowing joy.\u00a0 The horse will change your life, and that of many other people.<\/p>\n

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\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Richard Koch is a former management consultant, entrepreneur, and writer of several books on how to apply the Pareto principle (80\/20 rule) in all walks of life. Richard has also used his concepts to make a fortune from several private equity investments made personally. Richard\u2019s investments have included Filofax, Plymouth Gin, the Great Little Trading Company and Betfair. Previously he had been a manager at Boston Consulting Group and later a partner at Bain and Company, before leaving to start management consulting firm L.E.K. Consulting with Jim Lawrence and Iain Evans.<\/p>\n

www.richardkoch.net<\/a>
\nE-mail Richard Koch at\u00a0richardkoch@btinternet.com<\/a>
\nLike Richard Koch at facebook.com\/RichardKoch8020<\/a>
\nFollow Richard Koch at twitter.com\/RichardKoch8020<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In life, we all need a horse to ride.\u00a0 Without the horse, we are a small fraction of what we could be. When I was 13, my parents took me to a motor museum at a grand country house.\u00a0 Big yawn.\u00a0 Happily, there was a donkey derby alongside it, and they agreed to let me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":10739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[718],"tags":[796,794,795],"class_list":["post-10598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-how-to-guides","tag-find-your-horse-to-ride","tag-richard-koch","tag-the-8020-principle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}