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I remember pestering my parents endlessly for a pony until they finally caved and let me get my first pony Paddy at the age of 10. The deal was I had to look after him myself and from Paddy to my last horse Cotton, I’ve always put in the hours. Horses were my hobby, sport and life. I evented and competed in dressage at affiliated level and competitive riding was something I had always enjoyed. Having an aim and goal to work towards made the long hours with the horses worthwhile.
I survived the “party” years when family friends kept saying I’d be more interested in going out than I would riding, but I never wavered, nights out crawling back in at 4am were accompanied by 7am alarms to feed the horses. Then as my career started to gain more momentum and I became a home owner setting the alarm for 5.30am every morning to ride before work and whizzing home as soon as I could to do evening stables became the norm. Time was precious, and something had to give, my beloved horse Cotton wasn’t getting the attention he deserved and being a typical TB he needed riding every day, so I made the tough decision to sell him. A year out of horses had me itching to get involved again…
I made the decision to work towards securing a job in the Equestrian world to get my horsey fix. I’m not good enough (or brave enough) to ride professionally, I didn’t want to pursue being a groom and had become slightly fond of the routine office life allows. I investigated equestrian companies where I thought I could add some weight and found that Harry Hall were relatively local to me and with experience in online retail and branding it would be a good fit. My first pair of jodhpurs were Harry Hall and as a believer in fate I decided I didn’t have anything to lose by contacting them!
One year after initially checking out Harry Hall, I’ve been working here for 3 months. To say it’s a varied job would be an understatement, I might be plaiting a horse on a photoshoot, checking out the stands at Burghley Horse Trials, managing the products our sponsored riders receive or writing blogs for the Harry Hall website. The team at Harry Hall are equestrians through and through and as Social Media and Brand manager I love looking at the pictures our Harry Hall One Club members send through. It’s a really forward-thinking scheme and one that attracted me to the company in the first place. We’re all having to tighten our purse strings at the moment and any company willing to put its customers at the heart of everything they do ranks highly on my list – thumbs up for the Harry Hall One Club! At Harry Hall we also invest a lot in product development and it’s great to work alongside the product team who spend a lot of time testing products in the Masta, Caldene and Tottie range. Even though I don’t ride anymore I’ve found myself buying the Milldale Gilet and the Caldene Westfield Wellies as I just couldn’t resist!
My advice to anyone who’s unsure of what they should “do” as a career is don’t panic. Find something you enjoy doing and try it for a while. If at first you don’t succeed, refocus and go again. As Olivia mentioned in our previous Harry Hall blog, block out negative people, your gut feeling is the only one you should follow when it comes to deciding your own destiny. Don’t do what other people “expect” you to do and make sure you follow your passion. We spend over 8 hours a day in work so finding a life balance is crucial. I didn’t start out in the equestrian world but with 6 years of hard work in another "world" and skill acquisition I have now landed my perfect job in a sector I am genuinely passionate about.
Drop us a line on Instagram @harry_hall_riding with any career related questions and we'll happily answer them!