Live It Exclusives – Equestrian Discounts Club

Live It Exclusives offers members access to not only exclusive equestrian discounts, but thousands of high street discounts and savings offers too. Gemma from Live It Exclusives tells us more… 

Q. Tell us a bit about yourself and Live It Exclusives

I have been riding since I was 8 and got my first horse when I was 13,
she was a complete lunatic and used to bolt with me and my
friends/family on a regular basis! I studied Equine Science at
Hartpury College and this is when I started to fall in love with
dressage thanks to the lovely horse I had at the time Hugo, who was a
rosette machine at BD competitions! After Hartpury I got a job working
in a specialist part of HR called Reward, which is responsible for
helping companies define what pay and benefits they should give people
to make them want to work there. The first question I always get asked
in any job interview is how I went from Equine Science to HR but the
first job I had was analysing salary data and without the statistics
module we did at Hartpury, I would never have been able to do that!

I’ve had a long career in Reward and Benefits and Employee Benefits
was always my favourite part of the job. There is something very
satisfying about knowing you are doing your best to make people’s life
at work better! Throughout my career I implemented a lot of discounts
and cashback websites to help employees’ make their wages go further
and this is what formed the basis for Live It Exclusives.

Q. When did you start the business and what inspired the idea?

I lost my job in February 2021 and after a couple of months the money
started running out. I found myself wondering how I was going to
afford to maintain my lifestyle, I love eating out and have an
expensive saddlepad and wine addiction! I also love competing and and
training which is also expensive to fund.

I found myself wishing I had access to one of the discounts and
cashback sites I’d had access to in corporate life and 2 things
occurred to me, firstly no one needs to save money more than horse
people and secondly, a lot of equestrians would never have access to
that kind of benefit as we all know employee benefits are pretty much
non existent in the equestrian world!

More or less as soon as I had the idea, I spoke to a contact with an
existing employee benefits site and was honestly quite surprised when
they said they loved my idea and that they wanted to work with me –
and that was it, Live It Exclusives was born!

Q. How does it work? How do we sign up etc.?

My initial idea was to launch Live It Exclusives purely as an employee
benefit but then I realised it was unlikely the employers of the
people I really wanted to benefit from it, would agree to pay for it.
So I came up with the idea to also offer it as a subscription model so
that people can pay for it themselves at a low cost. All people need
to do is sign up for the subscription and then they’ll get a link to
register for the discounts website where they can see all the offers
and discounts.

For anyone who wants to subscribe it costs just £3.50 a month and my
members typically save at least £30 a month, that’s just on the day to
day high street shopping, the weekly shopping and takeaway coffees etc
before any of the equestrian offers.

It takes less than a minute to subscribe and the link is
https://www.liveitexclusives.com

I do have a few customers that are paying for Live It as an employee
benefit and I was lucky enough to meet the amazing Shona at Lilac HR
who has added Live It Exclusives as a bolt on to her HR services. I am
looking for more Equestrian HR Consultants to work with in this way in
2022 so if anyone reading this is interested please do get in touch!.

Q. What sort of shops/business can we get discounts from?

There are thousands of high street discounts but one of the biggest is
the savings on your weekly shop at Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Sainsburys,
Waitrose, M&S etc. Using this discount alone my members can save
hundreds of pounds a year. The discounts cover everything that you
might buy whether it’s food, alcohol, electricals, homeware, clothes
etc, you can still benefit from Clubcard prices in Tesco, get all of
your offers and loyalty points etc. It’s really easy to do, you
basically buy a gift voucher which you use to pay with but you save
money on topping up the voucher. For example if you buy a £100 voucher
for Sainsburys, the discount is 5% so you pay £95 but get £100 to
spend. That £5 might not sound like a lot but if you spend £100 a week
in the supermarket which most families will, that’s a saving of £260 a
year just using that one discount! It’s also a saving of around £25 a
month for the cost of just £3.50 subscription fee.

There are also savings on your Costa coffees (my members love this
one!), eating out at the likes of Chiquito and Pizza Express, even spa
days at Champneys!

Big name retailers include Currys, Argos, FitBit, ASOS, Gousto, Hello
Fresh – the list is endless. You can even save on cinema tickets and
days out, there really is a saving for everyone.

Then we have the equestrian offers, I have around 40 offers on the
site now and it’s growing all the time – it’s really exciting and my
aim is for Live It Exclusives to be the place for people to go when
they are looking for an equestrian discount code.

I have loads of tackshops and clothing retailers including Equus,
Forelock & Load, Jewels & Horses, Divine Equestrian, Enter at A.

I also have a number of independent equestrian clothing manufacturers
including sustainable clothing brand Kaia Equine – their fab clothing
range is all made from recycled products – how cool is that? Red Bear
Equestrian and Georgian Dollar also feature!

There are offers on gifts from the likes of Hooves & Love, Pegasus
Jewellery and Pivo. Jump manufacturer Polyjumps, bedding company Green
Mile and more bedding companies coming soon!

Next I want to start building up horsey activities such as guided
rides, horsey holidays etc.

Q. Is there any way of buying a Live It Exclusives subscription as a
Christmas gift?

Yes I have gift cards available for both 6 or 12 month subscriptions,
purchase from https://liveitequestrian.com

Q. What do you love about running your own equestrian business?

Like any small retailer I love the ping of my emails when someone
subscribes! It comes back to my life in employee benefits of knowing
that I’m doing something to help people, helping my members save money
is so satisfying! I also get a real buzz out of negotiating a new
offer, knowing that it’s going to benefit my members and the
retailers.

At the moment I’m still working in HR but one day I hope that Live It
will become my main source of income so that I can truly manage my own
time and ideally spend more time riding!

Q. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

It’s of no relevance here but my Grandad always used to say “you can
go off people you know”, I love that and it always makes me smile.

Not so much advice that I’ve been given but the saying “do what you
love and you’ll never work a day in your life” really resonates with
me. I’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of jobs that I really love
and I’ve never stuck around in jobs that didn’t tick that box!
Whenever I’m working on Live It, it never feels like work, I really do
love it!

Q. What advice would you give to someone wanting to start their own business?

Follow your gut and go for it. I have had so many ideas over the years
that I never did anything about but with this one I just knew it was
worth pursuing. I think if you speak to anyone who works for
themselves they will all say the same, it is hard work but it is 100%
worth it.

Q. What do you get up to in your spare time?

I don’t really have much spare time after the proper job, riding and
launching a business! I compete at Inter 1 with my superstar dressage
horse Bolli and we are working towards getting out at Inter 2 next
year – eek! I also try to keep fit in the gym but I’m currently
struggling to get back into a routine with that after an injury early
this year – I really need to though!

Q. Tell us a bit about your horses/pets.

As well as Bolli, I have 2 dogs, Winnie and Nia, and 2 cats Millie and
Matilda. Millie is the grand old age of 15 now but still looks like
she’s 4, she’s amazing.

Q. Where can people sign up/find you- website/ social media /email address etc.

My social media handle is @liveitexclusives, I also have a page for my
adventures with Bolli called Dainty’s Dressage Exploits on Facebook.

The website for subscribing to Live It Exclusives is https:liveitexclusives.com
To buy a gift voucher it’s https:liveitequestrian.com

If anyone wants more information about anything then my email address
is [email protected]