The True Cost of Mobile Hoof Care and Mentorship Services
- Aug 19
- 7 min read
When you pay £180 for a mobile hoof-care or mentorship service, it can be easy to think that £180 is what the practitioner earns.
The reality is very different.
A mobile professional business has costs that exist before the practitioner earns anything personally. There is the cost of travelling to the horse, accommodation on longer trips, equipment and consumables, insurance, professional software, accounting, communications, administration and the many hours of work that happen outside the time actually spent with the client.
We believe transparency is important, so rather than using hypothetical figures, we have used a real recent 2.5-day Holistic Equine trip to show what providing a specialist mobile service actually costs.nd to concerns, and work with the owner’s wider professional team.
Why provide a mobile service at all?
Mobile hoof care and mentorship offers benefits that simply cannot be replicated through an online consultation alone.
It allows us to work with the horse, owner and environment together.
During an appointment we can observe the horse, assess hoof morphology and welfare parameters, trim where appropriate, discuss management, document findings and help the owner understand what they are seeing.
Our mentorship appointments go beyond simply completing a trim. They are designed to help owners and professionals learn, observe, document and make better-informed decisions for the horse.
On this particular trip, for example, I was also able to collect valuable trimming footage and documentation that can be developed into educational resources for the wider community.
This is part of the broader purpose of the CIC: using practical experience, education and collaboration to improve equine welfare.
But for the service to continue, it also has to be financially sustainable.
A real 2.5-day mobile trip
This trip began from our base in Cumbria and involved travelling to clients in the South East, followed by another client visit on the journey home.
Across the trip:
Client fees invoiced: £1,260
Business mileage: 917 miles
Time spent directly with clients: 11 hours
Travel time: approximately 22 hours 15 minutes
Additional administration: approximately 3 hours
Total working time: 36 hours 15 minutes
So although clients saw me for a combined 11 hours, the work required to provide those services actually occupied more than 36 hours.
That is one of the biggest hidden costs of mobile professional work.
Where did the £1,260 go?
1. Vehicle and mileage
The vehicle I use is privately owned.
Rather than the CIC owning, insuring, maintaining and eventually replacing a business vehicle, the CIC reimburses qualifying business mileage.
For this example we are using:
917 miles × 55p = £504.35
Mileage cost: £504.35
During the trip I actually purchased approximately £203 of fuel.
However, the fuel is not added again to the CIC costs because it is already represented within the mileage reimbursement.
Mileage is not simply a petrol allowance. It also contributes towards the wider cost of providing a private vehicle for business use — including servicing, tyres, repairs, depreciation, insurance and ultimately replacement.
2. Accommodation
Because of the distance travelled, two hotel nights were necessary.
Hotel night 1:
£120
Hotel night 2:
£69
Total accommodation: £189
3. Food and drinks
I generally prepare and bring most of my food with me, which helps keep costs down.
Additional food and drinks purchased during the trip came to approximately:
£25
4. Road charges
Dart Charge:
£3.50
Direct trip costs
We can now add together the costs directly associated with making the journey.
Direct trip cost | Amount |
Mileage | £504.35 |
Hotel 1 | £120.00 |
Hotel 2 | £69.00 |
Food and drinks | £25.00 |
Dart Charge | £3.50 |
Total direct trip costs | £721.85 |
So from the original:
£1,260 turnover
after the direct costs of delivering the trip:
£1,260 - £721.85 = £538.15
Only £538.15 remains.
But we haven't yet accounted for the everyday cost of running the service.
The business costs behind every appointment
Whether I am trimming a horse, driving to a client or sitting at my desk completing invoices, the organisation continues to have regular operating costs.
Our current costs include:
Regular cost | Monthly |
HoofmApp | £6.99 |
Insurance | £102.00 |
Accountant | £143.00 |
Phone | £102.00 |
Internet | £35.00 |
Zoom | £124.00 |
Other subscriptions | £45.00 |
Facebook Verified | £39.00 |
Fixed monthly overheads | £596.99 |
Average tools and consumables | £90.00 |
Total average monthly overhead | £686.99 |
These are not optional extras.
They are part of providing an insured, documented, professional and educational service.
Allocating some of those overheads to this trip
For simplicity and transparency, we can spread the £686.99 monthly overhead across a conventional 40-hour working week.
That gives approximately:
173.3 working hours per month
Therefore:
£686.99 ÷ 173.3 = approximately £3.96 of business overhead per working hour
This trip required:
36.25 hours of work
Therefore:
36.25 × £3.96 = approximately £143.67
of normal business overhead can reasonably be allocated to the work involved in this trip.
What is actually left?
Start with:
Client fees
£1,260.00
Subtract direct trip costs:
- £721.85
Leaving:
£538.15
Subtract the allocated share of normal business overhead:
- £143.67
Leaving:
£394.48
That £394.48 is what remains before paying me for 36 hours and 15 minutes of work.
So what did the work actually generate per hour?
The entire trip and its associated administration required:
36.25 hours
The amount remaining after the costs above was:
£394.48
Therefore:
£394.48 ÷ 36.25 = £10.88
Just £10.88 remains for every hour worked.
And that is an important distinction.
It does not mean my take-home wage is £10.88 per hour.
The £394.48 still has to contribute towards paying me, any associated employment/payroll costs, and maintaining some financial resilience within the CIC.
The headline figure of £1,260 turnover therefore looks very different when viewed in context.
Another way of looking at it
If we only considered the 11 hours physically spent with clients:
£1,260 ÷ 11 = £114.55 per client-facing hour
That could make the service appear extremely profitable.
But those appointments could not have happened without the remaining hours.
I had to drive the 917 miles.
I had to travel between clients.
I had to stay away from home.
Appointments had to be organised.
Accommodation had to be found and booked.
Invoices had to be created and sent.
Outstanding invoices had to be followed up.
Payments had to be allocated.
All of that is work.
Once the entire 36 hours 15 minutes is considered:
£1,260 ÷ 36.25 = just £34.76 turnover per actual working hour before any costs are deducted.
After the costs we have detailed above:
£10.88 per working hour remains before paying me.
That is why turnover and earnings are very different things.
Why increase the price from £180 to £200?
From 1 September, our standard consult and mentorship rate will increase from £180 to £200.
That is an increase of:
£20 per service
or approximately:
11%
It may seem small, but for a mobile service with significant fixed and travel costs, that additional £20 makes an important difference.
This particular trip generated the equivalent of seven £180 service fees:
7 × £180 = £1,260
At £200:
7 × £200 = £1,400
That is: £140 additional income
without adding another horse, another appointment or another mile to the journey.
If the costs of this particular trip remained the same:
£1,400 - £865.52 total costs = £534.48 remaining
Instead of:
£394.48
That changes the amount remaining per actual working hour from:
At £180:
£394.48 ÷ 36.25 = £10.88 per hour
to:
At £200:
£534.48 ÷ 36.25 = £14.74 per hour
The price has increased by approximately 11%, but because so much of the original fee is absorbed by the unavoidable cost of providing the service, the amount left within the organisation after those costs increases much more meaningfully.
Why sustainability matters
We remain committed to providing a highly individualised service.
Our aim is not simply to arrive, trim a hoof and leave.
We want owners to understand their horses better.
We want to document change.
We want to provide mentorship.
We want to create educational resources.
We want to support owners and professionals to develop their own skills.
And, through the CIC, we want the work we do commercially to help support our wider non-profit aims around equine welfare, education, community and human well-being.
For that to happen, the services generating the income must first be sustainable.
A business or CIC that continually provides skilled services at a level that barely covers the cost of delivering them eventually loses the ability to provide those services at all.
The increase from £180 to £200 is therefore not simply about charging more.
It is about creating enough margin to continue travelling to horses, providing individualised care and mentorship, investing in education, developing resources and supporting the wider work and purpose of the CIC.
We believe our clients should understand where their money goes.
And we believe that transparency around the real cost of providing specialist mobile services helps everyone appreciate the difference between what a service costs, what a business turns over and what the person providing that service actually earns.
Ultimately, sustainability allows us to keep doing what matters most:
supporting horses, supporting people and using education to improve welfare.
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Beccy Smith BSc ADAEP EBW
Diploma in Advanced Applied Equine Podiatry, Independent Integrative Equine Podiatrist, Consultant and Therapist. Certified Lazaris Nerve Release TM Practitioner and Wellness Coach for People and Horses
CEO and Founder of 100% Non-Profit Community Interest Company Holistic Reflections CIC
Holistic Reflections CIC – a 100% non-profit organisation promoting wellbeing and resilience in people, horses and the environment - for the benefit of all.
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