Podcasts about saddlebred

There is a turf war between veterinarians and non-veterinarians, both wanting to provide horses with preventive dental care. It started in the late 1990s and has gained protection behind laws meant to protect horse owners. But is there proof that any approach to floating is better than another? Or is it just positioning based on territorialism? I used the following script to make this podcast, but I also added to it freely to emphasize several points. This podcast is more formal than usual because I am reading a script I wrote in response to a graduate of my dentistry school challenged by the Veterinary Medical Association of her area. She is a non-veterinarian working in equine dentistry. Most of the United States allows individual states to determine what a profession is, and most states broadly state that veterinarians are the ones to perform medicine, surgery, and dentistry on any animal. This statement includes fish, reptiles, birds, and any other animal other than humans. It is the prerogative of the veterinary board to investigate anyone who does any work on any animal in their state. However, routine care of animals, including preventive medicine, is usually avoided. You can purchase and administer vaccines and dewormers, adjust angles on hooves, apply therapeutic shoes, prepare any mixture of medicinal supplements, breed horses, deliver foals, apply linaments, clip the hair of horses not shedding, splint crooked legs of foals, adjust bones, massage muscles, use red light, PEMF, and a dozen more things to a horse without being a veterinarian. But you cannot remove the unworn parts of the cheek teeth in horses, digging their sharp edges into the tongue and cheeks and causing pain with every movement of their jaw and tongue. I have been training veterinarians and non-veterinarians in the technique of Horsemanship Dentistry. My definition of this form of working on the teeth of horses is as follows: 1) Removing sharp points from horses' cheek teeth by filing them to a smooth edge is commonly called "floating teeth" but is also known as odontoplasty. The root cause of most dental problems is pain in the tongue and cheeks caused by sharp enamel points. Therefore, routine maintenance of the horse's teeth removes pain from these sharp points. Secondary to the removal of sharp points is finding pathology and addressing this. 2) Administering sedatives to horses for routine floating is unnecessary; instead, horsemanship skills are used for 97% of horses (from annual data consistent over the past decade). The remaining 3% are horses that are reactive to pain, fear the process, or have a painful procedure done, such as extracting a fractured cheek tooth. With those, I administer pain and anxiolytic medications. My name is Geoff Tucker, and I am a veterinarian who graduated from The New York State College of Veterinary Medicine (Cornell) in 1984. I have worked professionally with horses since 1973, starting on a Saddlebred farm in Ohio and moving to a Thoroughbred breeding and training farm in New York that same year. I completed my undergraduate degree at Cornell University in 1979 and graduated from veterinary school in 1984. In my autobiography, I tell my story: "Since The Days Of The Romans; My Journey Of Discovering A Life With Horses." It's available on Amazon, and I have also read it here on "The Horse's Advocate Podcast." While in veterinary school, my mentor told me the importance of maintaining horses' teeth. With him, I floated my first horse in 1983 and made this a part of my practice in 1984. Since then, I have logged the number of horses I have worked on or who I have taught. In February 2024, I recorded my 80,000th horse. But I always continued learning about horses' teeth and oral cavities. I have attended many continuing education courses offered by veterinary professional organizations in person or online.  The New York State Equine Practice Committee invited me to join them in 1996. The reason for this invitation to the board, they told me, was because I performed more dental care on horses in NY than any other vet at that time, and veterinarians were becoming interested in claiming this aspect of horse care for themselves. Non-veterinarians did much more, including all the racehorses at Belmont, Aqueduct, and Saratoga. As one board member stated, this discrepancy between veterinarians and non-veterinarians floating horses was because no good horse vet has time to add floating teeth to their busy schedule. There was one practitioner on the board who, at that time, was stating that only veterinarians should be floating horse teeth. I and the others were somewhere in the middle of these two thoughts. We could not reach a consensus, and we dropped the discussion, knowing it would require much more work than anyone wanted to do for an issue being done well by non-veterinarians.  The interest of the practice committee and the NY veterinary board came from the introduction of sedation and power floating equipment, and veterinarians started claiming their position from the non-veterinarians to broaden their base. There was no discussion that a non-veterinarian was less able to float teeth, nor were non-veterinary dentists cheating owners with poor quality of service. Cases of lapses in integrity came from both sides, mainly because floating horse teeth is hard work and requires horsemanship skills, and visualization of the finished float by the horse owner is within the depths of the mouth. In 1999, I attended the Ocala Equine Conference, where a non-veterinarian spoke about filling cavities in horses' cheek teeth. I was shocked when he stated, without any evidence, that horses would live, on average, five years longer if we all started performing this procedure. This same man was later banned from working on horses in several states, became the president of the IAED (International Association of Equine Dentistry), and became the director of equine dentistry at the University of California - Davis veterinary school. While this non-veterinarian was working at this vet school teaching veterinary students, he caused injury to a client's horse. According to her (she emailed and called me all of this information), the man was sued, and then he and the director of the veterinary hospital who had hired him were fired from the school. On another front, a non-veterinary equine dentist taught non-veterinarians how to float teeth in South Dakota in the late 1980s and 1990s. He was vocal that veterinarians should not be allowed in the horse's mouth because they had no training. His voraciousness upset the veterinary board, forcing him to leave the state and reestablish his school in Idaho.  Throughout the turf battle of who should be allowed to float teeth, I continued to apply and improve my skills throughout New York. In 1984, no textbooks on equine dentistry were available except one written by a non-veterinarian: "Sound Mouth, Sound Horse," by Ed Gager (published in 1983). Toward the end of the century, more veterinarians started to stand for horse owners' protection by demanding that only veterinarians work on horses' teeth. More textbooks by veterinarians came in 1998 through 2011, but few have come since. In the United Kingdom, veterinarians and non-veterinarians made up an exam so that non-veterinarians passing the exam would be listed officially and allowed to float horse teeth.  In 2002, I flew to Glasgow, Scotland, to attend the annual BEVA (British Equine Veterinary Association) conference, which focused on horse dentistry. I attended because of this subject, but I was one of only two veterinarians interested in equine dentistry traveling from the United States to attend. When the conference coordinator heard about my presence, she arranged for me to have a one-on-one lunch with Professor Paddy Dixon of the Veterinary College at Edinborough, Scotland. He has authored or co-authored more published papers and textbooks on Equine Dentistry and the teeth of horses than anyone. He presented the Frank J Milne State Of The Art lecture to the AAEP (American Association of Equine Practitioners), the highly prestigious, invitation-only lecture, where he discussed the evolution of the horse and equine dentistry. The interest could have been better, as seen by the mostly empty seats in the 1000+ seat lecture hall. The following day, he joined a panel discussing equine dentistry, which maybe had 80 people attending. Only the best get invited to give this talk at the AAEP conference, yet very few attended. This is because (then and now) only a few equine veterinarians are interested in equine dentistry. Let me address this. There is a crisis in equine veterinary medicine, where only 1.4% of all veterinary graduates in the United States (58 out of 4000 in 2023) go into a practice limited to horses. Of these, 50% quit within five years (these statistics are found on the AAEP and the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) websites. The number of new veterinarians entering horse practices is less than those leaving, and the AAEP and the AVMA are moving fast to entice new graduates to join our ranks and, more importantly, stay. They do this by increasing the starting salaries, among other incentives. The cost of employing veterinarians or maintaining the horse practice places more pressure on owners to generate an income. Some look to dentistry to help with their profits, which is a good plan, but there are drawbacks. One of the first hurdles to becoming good at equine dentistry is becoming good at doing this. It is a skill that takes time to improve and becomes more challenging when the patient moves or objects. The solution for many is to sedate the horse automatically, doing nothing for the pain they are experiencing. Is this the best option for the horse? How does any medication affect horses that are healthy or who have underlying conditions, such as metabolic syndrome or gut ulcers? All medicines, such as antibiotics, antiinflammatories, and sedatives, cause a change in the gut microbiome (dysbiosis), leading to malabsorption and even ulceration. Would a technique that floats the horse while minimizing their pain without medication be better? Another hurdle is the lack of scientific evidence proving the causation between any dental disease espoused by the American Veterinary Dental College—Equine and their solution. For example, recently, a board-certified veterinary equine dentist suggested that removing all incisor teeth is an acceptable treatment for a disease (EOTRH) they don't have a cause for, nor any proof that tooth removal is more than palliative. Worse, alternative options with a history of helping these horses are not only not mentioned but laughed at publically, as I heard several times at the AAEP meeting with Dr Dixon—laughed at! An even more complex problem exists in areas where only veterinarians are allowed to float teeth. This limitation prevents horse owners from choosing what is best for their horses without evidence of a superior technique (hand floating without medication versus power equipment on restrained and sedated horses). Many owners do not want their horses automatically drugged, often to the point that they fall to the ground. They don't want their horses immobilized through medications, speculums, braces, stocks, and helpers holding their heads. However, with the restrictions imposed by government regulations, the horse owners have only three choices: They don't have their horses' teeth maintained. Suffer through a technique they don't like. Ship their horses to a place where floating is legal. This last choice places a financial and time burden on the horse owner and increases the horse's risk. The first choice neglects the pain the horse suffers from sharp teeth but addresses the suffering the owner goes through as their horse becomes an object. Further, what if the horse owner feels that the veterinarian isn't good at this job? They can't mention this observation because there are too few veterinarians willing to come to their farm as it is without offending the floating veterinarian with their concern about their competency. Worse, many veterinarians include dentistry in their annual wellness visit, forcing the techniques veterinarians use on the horse and owner because of the discount given for the wellness visit package.  In other words, forcing horse owners to use a veterinarian for routine dental maintenance performed for over 100 years by non-veterinarians is unfair to owners wanting to use a time-tested approach to dentistry for their horses. But let's look at time-tested, observational, anecdotal evidence and ask if it is better or worse than peer-reviewed, randomized, controlled trials (RCT). The first thing to do is find quality RCT papers in equine dentistry; none are available. Quality comes from various factors including, but not limited to, confounding variables, the power of the study (how many horses), the statistical analysis (significance), and bias of the subjects and the study in general. The papers and texts I read on dentistry in horses published in veterinary journals or presented at veterinary conferences are mostly case reports or collections of case reports to establish a pattern. These collections often have dozens to hundreds of horses nicely grouped by age, breed, or pathology. Occasionally, an RCT appears with 10 to 20 horses selected due to age or breed, and an attempt to show causality made using poorly formed statistics for all horses on the planet. It is ridiculous to think that a dental disease studied in Thoroughbreds stabled at a race track eating pounds (kilos) of grain will have any association with the outcome of horses living in another country fed differently with a different use. No RCTs determine the long-term outcomes of floating teeth using any technique. This statement means no person can accurately say what is best for horses regarding their dental care. All there is is anecdotal evidence and observational studies. Yet, in the past 25 years, no governing body has asked me to contribute my accumulated knowledge from 41 years of looking at 80,000+ horses. Instead, they say I do not "fit the standard of practice," according to a handful of people unwilling to find the answers needed to help the horse. These same few people determine the laws based on no scientific evidence of what they say. There are good and bad equine dentists, regardless of having a degree in veterinary medicine. What counts is experience, but more importantly, sharing this experience. I have done so since 2007 on all social media platforms, several websites, and my podcast. Horse owners know there are other approaches to dentistry, but because of laws, they cannot use them. Veterinarians are worried about their practice, either in the solvency or their credibility, if non-veterinarians float teeth. However, we became horse vets to help horses, and we can do this by using non-veterinarians to be our eyes on the dental issues of the horses we care for. Legislation in the US states where non-veterinarians are allowed to work on horses' teeth states that they only use hand floats and do not give any medications. Allowing them to work frees up the veterinarian's time. They can even be part of the practice, bringing in a portion of that income without the time needed to perform the routine float. With training, non-veterinarians are sentinels for further problems, and the veterinarian can apply the training and skills required to address the pathology. This approach of working together becomes a win-win for the horse, the horse owner, the non-veterinary floater, and the veterinarian. Further, in an age where the supply of equine veterinarians is shrinking, and their location of care is focused on urban areas, the following can occur: Horse owners will be more willing to provide their horses with the necessary routine care, which is a win for horses. More people can make a living income in the horse industry by providing horse maintenance, which farriers have done. The vet can employ a non-veterinarian to increase their income by offering floating through their practice. The owner can choose between the non-veterinarian's hand floating or the veterinarian's "advanced" approach. The horse owner can feel confident that if pathology is discovered by the routine floating, the veterinarian can follow up. After 51 years of working with horses and 41 years of floating their teeth, it is becoming evident that the turf battle between the veterinarian and the non-veterinarian over who should be floating horses is doing nothing but making it difficult for horse owners to get the routine care they need. We can create a better solution for our horses if we all start working together. More horse vets are needed, especially in rural areas, to provide basic care, but the number of them is growing smaller. Owners cannot afford the time or money to ship their horses to a clinic for this routine care, and they don't have the skills, and possibly the physical ability, to float horses. Horsemanship dentistry is teachable and can be done effectively without medication. I know this because of my experience with the number of horses I have floated and the success of students learning this technique.  A simple fact about horses' teeth remains: If a horse is chewing, the teeth need doing (floating). With the decline in available horse vets in rural areas, their work is spread thin among the horse population. Non-veterinarians are performing a needed service, and veterinarians can learn to work with them as they have with other non-veterinary horse professionals. They are not there to diagnose, but as primary service providers with eyes and ears, they can help promote the local veterinarian for things they are well trained for.

In this interview,  we explore Allie Layos' lifelong dedication to Saddlebred horses and saddle seat riding. As the Managing Editor of Saddle & Bridle Magazine, she plays a vital role in curating content for the equestrian community. We also discuss her impressive achievement of publishing three fiction books about Saddlebred horses at a remarkably young age.Allie shares her deep appreciation for Saddlebred horses, emphasizing their unique qualities and the importance of their preservation. We conclude the interview by learning about her future plans within the equestrian world and her advice for aspiring equestrians. This conversation celebrates Allie's passion and contributions to the world of Saddlebred horses, shedding light on a captivating equestrian discipline.Subscribe to Saddle and Bridle: here Follow Allie Layos on Facebook: here

On this episode, co-hosts Dr. Tania Cubitt and Katy Starr discuss the topline of horses including:The most common reasons for a poor topline in horsesTips to improve a horse's topline with nutritionSpecific nutrients that impact a horse's toplinePoor topline in horses is a common concern among horse owners, so this topic will be sure to provoke considerable interest! Send this to someone you think would benefit from this episode.Have a topic idea or feedback to share? We want to connect with you! Email podcast@standlee.com____________________________________ Additional Resources or References during this episode – 3:30 – Body Condition Scoring System3:56 – Cresty Neck Scoring System“Cresty Neck – A Precursor to Metabolic Disease in Horses” blog post - https://www.standleeforage.com/standlee-barn-bulletin/cresty-neck-a-precursor-to-metabolic-disease-in-horses/“Ep. 057: How to Prevent and Manage Laminitis” podcast episode - https://www.standleeforage.com/podcast/episodes/ep-057-how-to-prevent-and-manage-laminitis/“Ep. 052: Why Your Horse is Overweight, and You Probably Don't Know It” podcast episode - https://www.standleeforage.com/podcast/episodes/ep-052-why-your-horse-is-overweight-and-you-probably-dont-know-it/4:24 – Development of an equine muscle condition score (initial research on muscle conditioning in 25 thoroughbred horses) - https://beva.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eve.1377712:58 – Refeeding Syndrome and how to safely feed a neglected, starving rescue horse – chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://ceh.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk4536/files/local_resources/pdfs/pubs-July2012-bkm-sec.pdf“How Can I Safely Feed a Neglected/Starved Horse Back to Health?” webinar - https://www.standleeforage.com/nutrition/nutritional-webinars/safely-feed-a-neglected-horse-back-to-health/32:15 – “Myth or Fact? Horses Can't Digest Oils” podcast episode - https://www.standleeforage.com/podcast/episodes/ep-0012-myth-or-fact-horses-cant-digest-oils/____________________________________Love the podcast? Leave a rating and review on Apple – https://podcasts.apple.com/.../beyond-the-barn/id1541221306Leave a rating on Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/3dmftQmwLKDQNueUcCJBZaHave a topic idea or feedback to share? We want to connect with you! Email podcast@standlee.comShare our podcast and learn more about our co-hosts at our Beyond the Barn podcast pageSUBSCRIBE to the Beyond the Barn podcast email to be an exclusive insider!Find us on Apple, Spotify or Google Podcasts and SUBSCRIBE, so you never miss an episode.____________________________________Check out the Standlee Barn Bulletin BlogFind more nutritional resources from Dr. Stephen Duren and Dr. Tania Cubitt at https://www.standleeforage.com/nutrition/nutritional-resources/Connect with Standlee on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok____________________________________*Views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of Standlee Premium Products, LLC.*

Listener Alex Zachman joins us for a Breed Highlight on the American Saddlebred and his amazing endurance Saddlebred. Plus, Studies Show for march and some mighty Weird News. Listen in....HORSES IN THE MORNING Episode 3138 – Show Notes and Links:The HORSES IN THE MORNING Crew: Glenn the Geek: co-host, executive in charge of comic relief, Jamie Jennings: co-host, director of wacky equestrian adventures, Coach Jenn: producer, Chaos Control Officer.Title Sponsor: State Line TackFeatured Image: Alex ZachmanGuest: Alex Zachman of the American Saddlebred Horse AssociationLink: Register to win a Wintec SaddleLink: Horselovers Cruise 2024There's an App for that! Download the new FREE Horse Radio Network App for iPhone and AndroidFollow Horse Radio Network on TwitterAdditional support for this podcast provided by Purina and Listeners Like You!Time Stamps:06:00 - Daily Whinnies15:19 - Alex Zachman35:35 - Studies Show45:26 - Weird News58:21 - Auditor Post Show

Listener Alex Zachman joins us for a Breed Highlight on the American Saddlebred and his amazing endurance Saddlebred. Plus, Studies Show for march and some mighty Weird News. Listen in....HORSES IN THE MORNING Episode 3138 – Show Notes and Links:The HORSES IN THE MORNING Crew: Glenn the Geek: co-host, executive in charge of comic relief, Jamie Jennings: co-host, director of wacky equestrian adventures, Coach Jenn: producer, Chaos Control Officer.Title Sponsor: State Line TackFeatured Image: Alex ZachmanGuest: Alex Zachman of the American Saddlebred Horse AssociationLink: Register to win a Wintec SaddleLink: Horselovers Cruise 2024There's an App for that! Download the new FREE Horse Radio Network App for iPhone and AndroidFollow Horse Radio Network on TwitterAdditional support for this podcast provided by Purina and Listeners Like You!Time Stamps:06:00 - Daily Whinnies15:19 - Alex Zachman35:35 - Studies Show45:26 - Weird News58:21 - Auditor Post Show

Jim Stachowski is one of the most dynamic trainers in the Arabian and Saddlebred industries. He is not only an excellent showman but he is continuously trying to improve the Arabian horse breed. He is a recognized expert in equine breeding and has bred multiple national champions.

Carson Kressley is a well known television host/actor, writer, and producer, who made is original debut in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy as well as Dancing with the Stars and RuPaul's Drag Race. However, you may not know that Carson is also an avid equestrian in the world of showing American Saddlebreds. Since buying his first saddle for $700 as a boy, Carson's love for the horse only grew, and he eventually became a farm owner himself, as well as an active board member of the American Saddlebred Horse Association. Carson has always had a traditional eye and respect for the captivating art of Saddle Seat riding, but especially for the charisma of the Saddlebred. Listen to the story here!

Often times it can be hard to know what we should delegate to others. Where do I start? We need to be careful that we aren’t delegating tasks. We need to delegate authority. As you delegate authority you are creating leaders. Listen as Craig shares where to start when deciding what you can delegate to others. Action Items: Access our FREE Resources Subscribe to The Biz Sherpa Newsletter Follow The Biz Sherpa on LinkedIn Follow The Biz Sherpa on Instagram Follow the Biz Sherpa Facebook Page Subscribe to The Biz Sherpa Youtube Channel Subscribe to The Biz Sherpa Podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast or Stitcher. Connect with Craig on LinkedIn TRANSCRIPTION: Speaker 1: From his first job flipping burgers at McDonald’s and delivering The Washington Post, Craig Willett counts only one and a half years of his adult life working for someone else. Welcome to The Biz Sherpa podcast with your host, Craig Willett. Founder of several multimillion-dollar businesses and trusted advisor to other business owners, he’s giving back to help business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs achieve fulfillment, enhance their lives, and create enduring wealth. The Biz Sherpa. Craig Willett: This is Craig Willett, The Biz Sherpa. Thanks for joining me today in the Sherpa’s Cave. I love staying warm by the fire and I hope what I say to you will warm your soul because I hope that some of the things we talk today inspire you to delegate. Stephen Covey once said, “We accomplish all that we do through delegation, whether it be to time or to people.” So think about that. We often work long and longer hours. My wife was telling me this morning, Carol said to me, talking about the career of somebody else that we know, that they can work from six in the morning until 10 o’clock, and in four hours can accomplish what they need to do. And she said, “Craig, you worked from four in the morning until 10 o’clock at night sometimes.” And maybe I did take on too much. In fact, this is probably something that I share with you because I’m still learning to delegate. I’ve had a year here where I’ve had to learn better how to delegate. And I think sometimes we keep it to ourselves and try to keep that control. But I think it’s important that we learn to delegate. So I hope that you can learn from some of my mistakes and that it motivates you because I think it’s really important. So I always start with, what do I delegate first? Right? So I look at what might be most annoying and what I might have a weakness at. When we take time to delegate those, we need to be careful that we’re not delegating tasks. Someone once said, “If you delegate tasks, you get followers. If you delegate authority, you get leaders. You build leaders.” And I think that’s important. Think about that. You have an opportunity, as you start or grow your business, to develop future leaders for your business. It doesn’t always have to be you. You may play a prominent role, but you have to surround yourself with others who can make decisions based on authority that you’ve delegated to them within certain parameters. And I think that frees up your time. Of course, it takes resources, so you need to grow your business to a certain size and I get it. In those early days, you can’t hire all the talent you need. You don’t have the budget for it, but you need to be aware when you get there. And I think that might have been one of my mistakes in my career is that it grew so fast and was so successful that I was hiring and I was delegating, but I could have hired even more and delegated even more. I might have been able to be more available, even though I did manage my time well, and I like to accomplish a lot in a short period of time, but it’s no excuse for building other leaders. I think it’s important. It is one of the regrets I have is not building more leaders. You have a chance to impact society. Think about the families and the lives that you bless as you delegate that authority to others and let them realize their potential and become better and have their dreams come true as well. You might also look at not only what’s most annoying, but what’s most repetitive. And I know that sounds like tasks again, but some people are really good at doing the same thing over and over again and I think it may bring to them a great level of satisfaction. And this, again, isn’t a task, but it may be something that takes up a lot of your time that has to be done on a regular basis and you have a higher purpose or a higher need. I would look to delegate that. And then one of the great things—and we’ve talked about this with budgeting, we’ve talked about it with cash flow and we’ve talked about it in other aspects of The Biz Sherpa podcast—but one of the great things to delegate is into your area of weakness. That doesn’t mean that you can’t learn, and being the owner, you need to know and understand all aspects of your business. But hiring somebody and delegating to somebody—whether inside or outside your organization—areas where you’re weak, such as budgeting or being accountable, is really nice. We do this when we have a lawsuit. We have to hire a lawyer. We’re not lawyers. And so that is delegating certain authority and certain opportunities where we don’t have that expertise. We can still be involved and be consulted for major decisions surrounding it, but we don’t need to pursue a dramatic situation, that dramatic situation being that we have to stay in charge and really run into our weaknesses. When we spend all of our time working on our weaknesses and being confronted by them, it becomes discouraging. When we overcome our weaknesses, that’s great. And we may do that with the help of someone else. And when you think about it, if we delegate just tasks, guess what happens? People are going to be knocking at your door all the time. I think of a great example in the Bible. Solomon was one who had great wisdom and people were lined up to see him all the time, and I think he had to learn to delegate. We need to learn to delegate. And as we learn to delegate, we free up bottlenecks. Think about it. If we give them tasks, but not authority to make decisions, they’re going to put people on hold who are calling in to have a problem with a product or service, just to find you and ask you if it’s okay. That’s not great customer service, is it? Think of when you’ve been on the other side of that phone call and you can’t get the answers that you think you want and someone on the other end can’t and doesn’t have the authority to solve it for you and you have to keep going up the chain of command. Think about that—how that feels to your customers. Within limits, you need to give that authority for them to make decisions. Think how freeing that is when someone has the authority to make a decision, to accept a product return, or to help someone out by doing something extraordinary and above and beyond. When we allow that kind of flexibility, then we build in the opportunity for success. Sure, there’ll be some mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn’t be huge and won’t cost you everything. We learn from them. They’re going to happen in the short run, but you’ll learn and have greater success in the long run. Carol always tells me that I expect people to do it my way and you know what? She’s right. I do expect people to do it my way, because I think my way might be the best and I think that’s not a good attitude. I think the better attitude is give people—within their personality and within their talents and abilities—the opportunity to be successful and have the authority to make decisions so that they can experience personal success. You’re not trying to create a robot that mimics you. You’re trying to create someone who takes it upon themselves. I know early on in my CPA career, I was associated with a furniture store and there was one person in that furniture store who owned the carpeting department. Not literally, he was just an employee, but he owned it in the sense that he spoke in the first person to them. Not, “We do this—I can do this.” And he was able to do so many jobs. He developed rapport with a lot of people. He didn’t need someone looking over his back. He knew how to price his product. He knew how to schedule it. And he really owned it. No one dared step in. No one could really replace him. He became the expert. And the business owner totally trusted him and they had over a 35-year relationship and I admired that. It’s a great example to me of being able to delegate and not bottleneck. Sandra Day O’Connor said something that I really like. She said, “The really expert horse riders immediately let the horse know who’s in control, but they give them loose reins and seldom use the spurs because they guide them. They don’t take control of them, but they let them know if something happens, who’s in control.” I’ve found that. You’ve probably seen, and if you haven’t, I’ll put it on my website, www.BizSherpa.co, a video of me winning a World’s Championship with a Saddlebred horse where I’m not riding him, but I’m in a buggy behind him. And how you control them: you can’t control them with your feet. You control them with the reins. The times that I did really well with that horse weren’t the times where I was afraid or where he was pulling on me and I was pulling on him. I let him know I was in charge and then I gave it to him because he knew what he was doing. I had a great horse and he had a great rhythm and he knew how to step and what to do. I had to give him some small commands and keep him straight in corners and set him up and frame him right and let him know I was there, but he knew what he was doing. And we had developed that trust and confidence over the years. Think about that. Let people know who’s in charge, but then govern with a loose rein and seldom correct using spurs, which would probably hurt them. I had a whip, which probably substituted for the spur, and you know what? I rarely—if ever—used it on him. And if I did, it was just to let him know I was there by setting down the end of the whip, just on his back flank, to let him know I was there. It was not something that I did in a mean way. I think that from that experience, I learned what Carol was telling me. I wanted people to do it my way. You know what? The horse did it his way. He was great at it. I knew what he needed to do and I knew how to control him and guide him and reassure him and motivate him, and I think that’s the key. Delegation is really about giving authority and motivating others to be able to realize their full potential. And if you think about that, then you have a better experience. I think about training as part of the delegation process. You give training before you give them the reins and that’s not not trusting them. It’s developing that trust. When I was younger, my dad would always throw me in the pool. And in fact, to learn how to swim, he just tossed me in the pool and there were two things that would’ve happened, right? I would sink to the bottom, in which case he’d have to jump in and bail me out, or I’d have to flop around and learn how to keep my head above water, which I did. I became a very accomplished swimmer in my teenage years and actually won some county records and had some pretty good experiences in swimming. You’ve heard me tell some of those stories on The Biz Sherpa podcast. But it’s not always sink or swim. We don’t want to throw people in because we may not be around if we’re just throwing them in saying, “Okay, it’s yours. I don’t want to have to deal with it. Let me know how it goes. Call me if you need some help.” They may be drowning and they may not be able to call you. They may be suffocating under the pressure of what you’ve given them. And so it takes follow up. It takes reporting. It takes sitting down and encouraging, having them share with you what their challenges are and their experiences are and then helping them overcome those challenges and experiences by making some suggestions to them, but it’s not expecting them to do it the way you would do it. One of my first jobs was at McDonald’s as a 16-year-old. I was learning to cook and I cooked, and that was my job, it was in the kitchen. But one Saturday, somebody called in sick that did all the cleaning and I didn’t know what to do. I had to be trained. While I was a great employee at cooking—I could cook the Egg McMuffins and I could cook the burgers and the cheeseburgers and do all of that—I didn’t understand how to mix the chemicals and to mop the floors and when to do it and where to do it and how to go around the parking lot and pick the place up. And as you know, I mean, Disneyland is a good example of it, too, they keep it clean. And one of the things about McDonald’s, in my era, was it was a clean place to go eat. And I had to take on different responsibilities, and think about that. Don’t just throw somebody to something who’s capable, but doesn’t have the adequate training. We all have potential and we can all rise to the potential. And we don’t need our hand held all the time. Think of yourself. You don’t want it. You don’t want someone watching over you all the time. You have to empower that success, but you have to measure it and you have to review it and you have to train and you have to motivate. I remember a time that I was going on vacation for three weeks for my business and you heard me talk about this. In the summer times, I’d like to get away with my family so I could focus on them because as Carol said, probably a lot of the time, I was working weekdays, four in the morning till 10 o’clock at night. And I’d squeeze in the family here and there and certainly on weekends I did. But that time with family was valuable to me. We had just announced a new project and we were taking pre-orders or pre-sales on that project, as we were getting it finalized to be able to break ground. While I was gone in the middle of our presale, they announced a hospital a mile away. Most of our target market were healthcare providers. You can imagine what happened. All of a sudden, it sold out. They never called me. They didn’t need to. I had given them the authority to do that. But it’s probably one of the reasons I was a little scared to not have people do it my way. One of the things I didn’t delegate to them, because I didn’t think it would happen during the three week period, is I was in charge of pricing and because I was in control of the financing, it was my personal guarantee on it. I determined the pricing of our buildings. And one of the things I always did is when we hit certain benchmarks, I raised it. Price is a certain percentage because we are now coming down to having fewer and fewer buildings left in the project. Well, I didn’t delegate that to someone and it would’ve been simple to say after X percentage of sales, raise the price to this. Well, I didn’t do that and my failure to do that meant we sold out, which was great, but we probably could have gotten 25% more at the end of the day, had we been raising prices during that three week period, as we were taking more and more orders for our buildings. It was a great experience and there’s more to that story someday. But my point is be sure when you delegate that you delegate enough authority and go beyond to where they can exercise some judgment. Now, they could have called me. They didn’t know what I did, because I didn’t share it with them. And so I held back on some of that authority and I paid the price, because it was my profits, not their profits. They got paid and they got paid their commissions. It didn’t really affect their living the way it affected the profitability I could have had. We made profit, made a great profit, but it could have been better. I like to think about how we govern in our lives. I look at our country and it seems like we’re coming up with more and more laws for every little situation. I think that happens when we don’t trust, when we don’t trust people to use their own intuition. And we’re seeing it during the great pandemic. People are not allowed to use their own judgment. We need to allow that. Otherwise, we start making very, very restrictive rules and we create a bottleneck. “You can’t do this.” “Only in this situation.” “Don’t do that.” And when it’s a lot of don’ts, then you know it’s being restrictive. Think about it. Think about when your parents raised you and they loved you. They gave you some things not to do. “Don’t touch the stove when it’s on.” But think of all the things they gave you to do. “Go out and play with your friends. Join a baseball team. Go to the dance class.” They provided opportunities for you to do and I think it’s in the doing that we experience the greatest freedom. Give freedom to do, and not a list of rules of what not to do. And I think that will be the greatest thing that we can do to help delegate. And I think it is reflective in the lives of our employees and you can apply this in your personal life with your family and your friends. Don’t give restrictions, give opportunities. And when you do that, you’ll find at the base what delegation really means, it’s about building leadership. It’s one of the key elements of leadership. We don’t want restrictions at every turn. You need to retain key areas, like I said. You don’t want to hand over the reins of all the spending and all of the controls and the signatures at the bank, unless there’s certain parameters put around that, but we want to elevate people. We want to evaluate, reward, encourage, teach, train, focus on things that make a huge difference so that it allows you to spend the time where you need to spend it and then encourage. I would spend more time building the person. I learned that from Hal Wing too, that when you build the person, you really get great production and you get great satisfaction. Richard Branson said, “If you’re going to grow as an entrepreneur, you’ve got to learn to delegate.” I think that’s important. Delegation is not a set of rules and it’s not a task. I’ve learned the hard way. I hope you don’t make the mistakes I made, but that you delegate authority, you empower, you train. Think of the horse. Again, let them know who’s in control, but then give them the loose rein and allow them the freedom to experience that success and then train, evaluate, reward, and encourage. And as we do that, we will find that we’ll have fewer bottlenecks in our business. We’ll experience greater success and think of your customers. I always say this. What’s their experience like? If you have to go up the chain of command so far and people can’t get answers quickly to their questions and problems or resolutions solved quickly, it’s the source of most of the negative reviews. So let’s find a way to best meet those needs of our customers and that will be to delegate that authority that needs to. Not a task, but that authority. I hope that you’re able to take something from this and have a wonderful experience in your business career. I think as you learn from the mistakes of others, like me, that you can be better, do better and your customers will be happier. Thanks for joining me today in the Sherpa’s Cave. This is Craig Willett, The Biz Sherpa. Speaker 1: Be sure to go to our website to access the resources related to this episode at www.BizSherpa.co. If you enjoyed this show, tell your friends about us and be sure to rate our podcast. Craig would like to hear from you, so share your thoughts in the Facebook community @BizSherpa.co. Follow us on Twitter @BizSherpa_co and on Instagram @BizSherpa.co.

Welcome to Episode 47  of Endurance Horse Podcast  Natalie Law & Mo Motion Jack Created by: Christina Hyke More from Tevis 2021 August 2021    Today on Endurance Horse Podcast we are talking with Natalie Law  of Utah who completed the 2021 Tevis Cup with her 16.3 hh Saddlebred gelding, affectionately known as Brave, registered name, Mo Motion Jack.   Natalie also rode along side her 12 year old daughter, Kyla Law who was riding one of the most recognizable equines at the 2021 Tevis Cup aboard her 11.2 hh Hackney Pony known world wide now as Flash, his registered name is Piece of Perfection.     This mother / daughter team finished a very respectable 36th and 37th in the 2021 Tevis Cup aboard what is arguably non traditional endurance horse and pony.  Natalie will tell you that Flash was Brave's emotional support pony and also share some excitement about a rattler that Flash encountered out on the trail pre ride!   Join me with welcoming Natalie Law to episode 47 Endurance Horse Podcast!      Natalie Law Utah, USA https://enduranceasb.blogspot.com   Endurance Horse Podcast Join the Group on Facebook   About the creator of the Endurance Horse Podcast: Christina Hyke is 2021 Wisconsin Horse Person of the Year, creator of award winning Endurance Horse Podcast and the WARHORSE Endurance Challenges.  Christina lives in Southern Wisconsin with her husband, Jim and their two children.  She is an equine photographer who loves the trails riding or hiking.  Ride far.  Ride well.  Ride often.  Every Mile a Memory ~Christina Hyke www.christinahyke.com www.warhorseendurance.com      

American Saddlebred by Think Humanities

Imagine riding 60 miles side-saddle in a dress. The early US was so crowded with trees that it was difficult to travel by carriage. If you can’t travel in a carriage, what do you do? Whether you’re a Civil War general like Robert E. Lee or Ulysses S. Grant, or a pioneer house wife, in early America you needed a smooth, fast horse with amazing endurance. While today the Saddlebred is a somewhat passé breed, the breed was indispensable in the 1700’s and 1800’s. Learn what happens when hunter/jumper riders and saddle seat riders swap places, about rock climbing in Red River Gorge, fish with no eyes in Mammoth Cave, Louisville Slugger bats, fiddle championships, Chess Pie, and Mega Cavern (a mine turned underground zipline, MTB dirt jump course, ropes course, and Christmas Light show).

Howie Schatzberg joins the Sherpas cave this week as we discuss his journey to becoming an award winning and nationally recognized photographer. Howie’s father took him out of high school early to start his photography career within the family business. We also discuss the importance of marketing, innovating and keeping customer relationships. Action Items: Access our FREE Resources Subscribe to The Biz Sherpa Newsletter Follow The Biz Sherpa on LinkedIn Follow The Biz Sherpa on Instagram Follow the Biz Sherpa Facebook Page Subscribe to The Biz Sherpa Youtube Channel Subscribe to The Biz Sherpa Podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast or Stitcher. Connect with Craig on LinkedIn Key Takeaways: 1. Diversify and innovate your business: Focus on what is providing your customers the most value. Find areas that you can expand to and try new things! You never know where they will lead you. 2. Customer relationships are invaluable. Oftentimes it’s easy to overlook personal connections with your customers. The smallest of things can mean so much to customers and keep them coming back time and time again. 3. Marketing: Sometimes we think of marketing as a chore and major business expense and oftentimes it is. Find inexpensive and creative ways to market your products or skills. In this Episode with Howie Schatzberg, he talks about the #HowieShotMe hashtag customers use on social media when sharing a photograph he captured. This was a simple idea that turned into a great marketing tool. 4. Preparation: It is important to be prepared in business. Of course, we can’t plan for everything or anticipate every potential situation., But we should ask ourselves if we are taking the necessary steps to ensure we are prepared for mistakes we could encounter. In this Episode, Howie shares an experience where he had an accident as he was photographing the Olympic closing ceremonies when his camera lens cracked and he lost out on the perfect shot. TRANSCRIPTION: Speaker 1: From his first job flipping burgers at McDonald’s and delivering The Washington Post, Craig Willett counts only one and a half years of his adult life working for someone else. Welcome to The Biz Sherpa podcast with your host, Craig Willett. Founder of several multimillion-dollar businesses and trusted advisor to other business owners, he’s giving back to help business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs achieve fulfillment, enhance their lives, and create enduring wealth. The Biz Sherpa. Craig Willett: This is Craig Willett, The Biz Sherpa. Glad you could join me today at the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show. I have with me a special guest, one of the greatest photographers in the United States for equestrian shows, Howie Schatzberg. He’s very accomplished. You’ll get to know him very well. He does about 25 shows a year, among which are the World’s Championship for the Saddlebreds, the National Championships for the Arabian horses, and the World Championship for the Morgan horses. He’ll tell you more about how he accomplished that. I’m grateful to welcome Howie Schatzberg. Welcome, Howie. Howie Schatzberg: Thank you. Thank you. Nice to be here. Craig Willett: I’m glad you took the time. I know you’re really busy. I think you’ve already shot 50 horses, and the horse show doesn’t even start for three more days. Howie Schatzberg: Yeah, it’s crazy. All these people coming in, and sale horses, and you got to take care of your clients. So yeah, it’s been busy already. And this is a huge horse show. Actually the biggest Arabian show in the world, they say now. Over 2,000 horses, so it’s quite a deal. Craig Willett: Well, that’s great. This is how, partly, we became part of showing horses too, in our family, because of the Scottsdale Arabian show. My wife always—she had an Arabian growing up, but then she, when we moved here, wanted to come to the show and really got back into it after we started a family. Howie Schatzberg: It’s quite a deal. It’s funny, this show goes back to when I was young, living here in Scottsdale, this was the big deal. My father did the show at Paradise Park back in the day. And it’s always been quite a deal here. In fact, they say that this show probably brings in more money than the Phoenix Open Golf Tournament because of how many people come here. So what it brings to the city of Scottsdale, economically, is incredible. Craig Willett: Yeah. When you consider the hotels, the restaurants and all the other— Howie Schatzberg: Right. Craig Willett: Plus all the people that come to the show. This year might be a little different. Howie Schatzberg: Little different, although they say, I think, each horse could bring four to six people. So you talk 2,000 horses. That’s a bunch of people, not even counting the public. So I think we’ll be okay this year. Craig Willett: That’s good. Well, you’ll probably be okay too because you’re here for the horses. Howie Schatzberg: Yes, I hate to say that. Craig Willett: And their owners. Howie Schatzberg: Yeah. It’s all about that. All about that. Craig Willett: Well, I’m curious, where did you develop a passion for photography? I mean, clearly you have it, to be recognized as—I think in the horse world, you’re recognized as People’s Choice photographer. So you’re fairly accomplished. How did you start this path of journey? Howie Schatzberg: I don’t know. There’s a saying, “Do you pick the sport, or does the sport pick you?” So I think the sport picked me. Obviously, I—well, not obviously, but I started with my father at a young age, about 12 or 13 years old, in the film days. He took photos, I’d go in the trailer. He was the first one in the United States to have a portable dark room. Craig Willett: Really? Howie Schatzberg: Yeah. So we’d go to the horse shows and I’d be in the trailer in the dark room doing black and white, doing color film. Craig Willett: So you developed the film. And then would you then print it too? Howie Schatzberg: Correct. We develop the film, we make tiny, little proof sheets. People would come to our booth with magnifying glasses and so on. My mother was selling the pictures. It was a family operation. So that’s where I started at a young age. I worked for them in the summer and doing shows predominantly in the West coast. So that’s where I started. Craig Willett: I’m just curious then. You start this out, but not every photograph is great, I would imagine. So for each photograph, how many make the really final cut? Howie Schatzberg: Well, I never miss a shot. It’s funny you say that. My father was a typical, tough, old school, greatest-generation guy, and no BS. You’re the first one to work and the last one to leave. And I learned at a young age, you succeed by a great work ethic. So people say, “Well, how did your dad influence you? How did he teach you?” I don’t know if he really taught me, but literally, when you say the percentage of photos we need to be good, he would hold that strip of film up and I’d be next to him. He’d point. He’d go, “Good, good, good.” But he would use an expletive. And then, “Bad, bad. Good.” He’d say, “This is not acceptable. You have to hit every shot or you’re not going to succeed in this business.” Craig Willett: Oh, wow. Howie Schatzberg: And I think, again, because of the man he was, I think I was a little bit scared. I think he knew what he was doing. It’s just how I was raised. Craig Willett: So he’s telling you, “Don’t let the proof sheet rule it out.” He’s telling you, “Go ahead, and every one has to be the best you can.” Howie Schatzberg: Exactly right. And whatever angle you need to do, you make it work. You work hard and you give these people what they want. Craig Willett: Wow. So what was the upbringing like? I mean, did he allow you time to try other things or school, or anything else? Howie Schatzberg: Not at all. Actually, I took a photography course in high school. I’m sorry. Yeah. My freshman year. I think I probably developed more film than the teacher had. So I said, “This is not going to work.” So yeah, again, the old school way, if you just go work, you work hard and you’ll learn the business through that. He was a very innovative guy, so I learned a lot about diversifying and trying different things. He was great at that. Craig Willett: Did you continue to work up till where he retired or did you branch off on your own at some point? Howie Schatzberg: At that time, there were so many horse shows and I would work with him. I’d be the second photographer. Say at a two-ring horse show, I’d shoot the second ring. And as I got older, he would maybe have me shoot the main ring. That’s how it got started. And then it got to be more horse shows, so he said, “Hey, Howie, why don’t you to go do this show and I’ll do this show?” I started branching out with that. Funny story, it was the toughest phone call I’d ever gotten. I worked for him, and it was Schatzberg Photo. And we had done the World Championship Morgan Horse Show, which was obviously a huge feather in my cap or my father’s. My dad was, again, a tough customer. I love my father, but I’m blessed I’m more like my mother. Very easy going. But a few years after him doing the show, I got a phone call. They said, “Hey, we’d like you to do the horse show.” I said, “Great. I’ll do the show with my dad.” Craig Willett: Bring my dad. Howie Schatzberg: That’s what I thought. No. I think my dad, in any business, probably said the wrong thing to the wrong person. And they wanted me to do the horse show. I said, “So you’re going to contact my father?” “No, we’d like you to.” Craig Willett: Whoa. Howie Schatzberg: I think they were scared to talk to my father. Craig Willett: Not only did they want to hire you, but you had to fire your dad. Howie Schatzberg: It was brutal. Anyways, I said, “Dad, I have something to tell you.” I told him the situation. He said, “Well, I knew this day was coming. I knew this would happen. I’m proud of you. I’m happy for you.” So a little emotional, I lost my dad a couple of years ago. He just passed, but he was 98. Great life. Craig Willett: Wow. Howie Schatzberg: But yeah, it was—that was a big deal. Craig Willett: So that started your independence. Howie Schatzberg: That started my deal. Yeah. And he was giving me a kick in the ass and said, “You’ll do great.” Craig Willett: That’s so nice. Howie Schatzberg: I still helped him here and there. My father and I were very close. He would call me at 9:45 at night, almost knowing I was leaving the arena. He just knew because he’d been doing it for so long. He knew the times and what was happening, and so forth. So we have a great relationship and I’m in this because of him, but I do love what I do. Craig Willett: Well, clearly. Somebody recognized your talents and so did your dad. I think one of the great things, and we’ll probably talk about this before the end, but it’s to see the next generation do and accomplish something. So there was probably a lot of pride too, in your dad, that you were the one that they asked. I mean, think about if the call went to someone else and missed the Schatzberg family altogether. Howie Schatzberg: I think so. I think he was very proud of me. Again, he was an old school guy. He didn’t say it a lot, but I knew he was very proud. My sister showed horses. I’m the youngest of five, and my sister showed horses. That’s how he got involved. He took photos of them. People saw the photographs and they said, “Hey, can you take one of my daughter?” And he said, “Sure. Hey, this is a heck of a deal.” Craig Willett: Sounds like Becky DeRegnaucourt. She did the same thing. She would get her clients’ outfits, and then her customers wanted— Howie Schatzberg: There you go. Craig Willett: Other people would see them, “Hey, can you get me that?” Howie Schatzberg: I think that’s how this type of thing starts. Craig Willett: Wow. Howie Schatzberg: It is a family operation. My nephew, Casey McBride, is a photographer, great photographer. Does the Mini Horse Nationals. Craig Willett: Oh, wow. Howie Schatzberg: So I’m hoping my daughter—I have two daughters and a son. The older kids don’t like it at all, but I have a feeling my younger daughter’s sort of into it. Craig Willett: Yeah. Well, she’s into showing and we’re going to talk about that too. She’s accomplished, very accomplished at a young age. Howie Schatzberg: Yeah. Sure, she is, at a very young age. It’s scary. Craig Willett: Yeah. Well, that’s going to lead to the passion continuing. I’m sure you’re excited for her. Now your dad probably had a lot of influence on your education and getting you into the business. Isn’t there some story where he took you out of school before you could graduate? Howie Schatzberg: Yeah. Basically, again, I worked with him quite a bit in the summers and I did miss some school helping him during school year. So again, being who he was, he beat to his own drummer. And he literally—I’ll never forget it, I got called to the principal’s office. I was a nice, Jewish boy. I mean, what would I do wrong? Craig Willett: Right. Howie Schatzberg: So my father’s in the principal’s office, and “Howie, come have a seat.” My dad’s there. I had no idea what was going on. My dad proceeds to talk to the principal and says, “This is what I do. I don’t know if my son’s ever told you.” And I’d never talked to the principal. He didn’t know. He said, “Well, I really feel that my son will have a chance at an incredible life in the business that we do. He’s a talented young man. He’s smart. He’s a real people person, and I’m going to take him out of school.” Craig Willett: So this was as much a shock to you as it was the principal? Howie Schatzberg: I was speechless. I was second semester as a junior. Craig Willett: Well, most kids dream to have their parents excuse them for school, for the rest of their high school career. Howie Schatzberg: I was dumbfounded. I didn’t know whether to be happy or—I didn’t know. He gave the spiel to the principal and principal said, “Mr. Schatzberg.” Again, my dad was a fairly intimidating guy. He said, “You’re his father and good luck.” And that was it. I left school at the end of that semester and took my GED. That’s as far as I went, as far as schooling, Craig Willett: Did you worry about your future? Howie Schatzberg: I don’t think at that age. I’m 62 now. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t think of it in those terms. I really didn’t know. I had confidence in my father because he was a very confident guy. So he gave me that feeling that everything was going to be fine. Craig Willett: Right. Howie Schatzberg: And it was. Craig Willett: That’s pretty cool though, that your dad would do that. So then you just continued to learn the trade of the business. How many years did it take till you got to Morgan Nationals? When was that in your career that you had to go tell your dad? Howie Schatzberg: My first year of the Morgan Grand National was 1985, on my own. It went from Schatzberg Photo on a photograph, to Howard Schatzberg. But I had done other shows in the Midwest before that, Saddlebred shows and things like that, and Morgan shows. But my big break was obviously at the Morgan World Championship, which is the highest level of that breed. Craig Willett: Right. Howie Schatzberg: So that was 1985. Craig Willett: A lot of people would say, you need to have a niche market. Some could say equestrian is a niche market and some people could say a certain breed because horses do different things, sometimes act a little differently and show differently in the different breeds. So you’ve done Morgans, Saddlebreds and Arabians, and you do them all at the same time. So you’re a photographer to all those breeds. How do you do it? And why do you stay with more than one breed? Howie Schatzberg: Well, I think, again, my father really told me to diversify, especially in business. And when I started, there were open horse shows, which meant a horse show would encompass five or six different breeds. So I had to learn how to shoot every different breed. And like people or landscape, you have to get to know that breed. Arabians are shorter-backed, so the angles are different. Saddlebreds are longer-necked, their angles are different. A Western horse, a driving horse, everything’s different. So it really made me open my eyes and just look at the whole picture, no pun intended. Craig Willett: Right. Howie Schatzberg: It helped me a lot just doing different breeds. And I don’t know, I, again, use the word passion. I love what I do, and it’s a crazy life. Craig Willett: Right. Howie Schatzberg: I’m sometimes gone for eight or nine weeks at a time. I love the horses, but I think I’m a people person. Craig Willett: Yeah. I was going to say, at some point, how do you balance that and how do you market yourself? Howie Schatzberg: Well, it’s funny. When I started, marketing, I don’t think, was necessary. Again, it’s a niche market. It’s a small group. As you know, being in the horse industry, they need to know you and be comfortable with you. And I think because I had done so many horse shows, they felt comfortable with me because this is their passion. Not only mine, but this is theirs. They love their animals as much as their children. So they need to know that it’s someone they can trust. Craig Willett: Yeah, I’ve seen that. Howie Schatzberg: Oh, yeah. So they need to trust that person and know that person’s in this with them. I feel like I am. I definitely am. I’ve been there and seen these kids from walk-trot kids to, now these people have grandchildren. It’s a family deal. You get to know them really well. Craig Willett: I was going to ask you that because I’ve seen you at some of the shows, and you’re walking down the lineup while they’re waiting to announce the winners. You seem to be able to have a conversation with most every rider. So how do you remember all these people and develop these relationships? Howie Schatzberg: Again, I think because you’ve seen them from the beginning to the end, as far as the trainers. I go to farms, I’ll see a trainer working, bring a yearling out and just handling them. And then that yearling is now a two-year-old. And all of a sudden, he’s a three-year-old and he’s showing in the ring. And I just go up to the trainer and say, “Hey, is this the mare that I saw three years ago, that you were working? I remember her.” “Yes, this is her.” And I go, “Boy, she looks incredible.” And then with people, I see a mother that I took pictures of as a ten-year-old walk-trot rider and now she has a child in the ring. I’ll go up to the kid and say, “Hey, I took pictures of your mother.” And she said, “Oh, yeah, she told me.” Craig Willett: Oh, wow. Howie Schatzberg: So I don’t know if I always remember their name, but I know the story behind it, which is really great to me. Craig Willett: Well, I think it means a lot to the people that you’d even recognize them and their horse, their children. And when you say you’re a people person, and I think that brings out the passion, right? A lot of people say, “Oh, I’m a people person,” but there’s a human aspect to all business. That interaction really has to bring some satisfaction to you. Howie Schatzberg: I agree. It really does. Craig Willett: Otherwise, why be on the road for nine weeks at a time? Howie Schatzberg: It’s a crazy life. People say, “What’s your greatest picture?” I don’t know if I have one. Again, I like the photos that tell a story. Craig Willett: Well, I have the greatest picture. It’s with me, with my horse. Howie Schatzberg: At the World Championship? Craig Willett: Yeah. Howie Schatzberg: I thought so. I know that you’d say that. To me, it’s more the experience. I take a photo that means something. Again, a story that’s been told. Not necessarily a great picture that I caught this incredible motion, it’s the story behind it. In this arena, actually, a great friend of mine’s daughter had cystic fibrosis and she helped her father in the ring. She was dying, and her father—they raised the horse, they trained the horse together. He showed the horse in this ring and they won the class. She hopped in the buggy and rode out of the ring. She waved her arms like this because everyone was screaming and yelling. Craig Willett: Oh, wow. Howie Schatzberg: That’s one of my favorite pictures of all time, just this person. The young girl passed away two months later. Craig Willett: Oh, no. Howie Schatzberg: Again, she was a gift from God. An amazing young girl. But those are the types of things I love and I like to catch. Obviously, when you catch a picture like this, you want to get the best picture of the horse. Obviously, that can sell a horse. And it means a lot to the rider and exhibitor, but—it sounds morbid, but my favorite—when people call me and they say, “Hey, my horse passed and your picture is my favorite,” that means a lot to me. Not the picture that’s going to sell this horse for $200,000, but to know I made someone—the photo they got is the vision they had of their animal that they loved. So that’s what hits me the hardest. Craig Willett: I love that. That’s one of the principles that I try to teach over and over again on this podcast and in business is, there’s an emotional currency to business. It doesn’t matter what someone paid for a photograph or how many you sold, but when someone calls you up and thanks you for capturing a moment or something they love, the reward—you probably go to bed at night going, “Hey, I’ve served my purpose. I’ve done well.” Howie Schatzberg: I completely agree with you. And in this day and age too, with young people, with business, it’s the digital age, even with photography. But getting a simple note in the mail means more than anything, or a phone call, or when you go to someone in the lineup and you say, “Hey, you did great. Look how far you’ve come.” Just like being a president of a company, and going up, putting your hand on someone’s shoulder and saying, “Great job. Really proud of you. Thank you.” It goes a long way. It’s giant. Craig Willett: I think that’s important because you do it, because you care about the people. You’re not sitting there saying, “I hope I sell them a photograph.” Howie Schatzberg: It doesn’t hurt, but no, no, it has nothing to do with it. Craig Willett: Right, because people sense the sincerity of that emotional connection. Howie Schatzberg: I hope so. Again, I love what I do and I— Craig Willett: No, I can tell you, because I’ve watched you for years and years. I’m more of an observer than a participant in this industry. It’s my wife’s passion, and I compete because she asked me to give it a shot. I’ve enjoyed it and it’s been great, but I’ve watched her and supported her for probably 12 years before I got in the ring behind the lines of a horse. Howie Schatzberg: You’re a competitor. I could see that in your eyes. Craig Willett: Well, I do like to compete. I understand that, and I do appreciate her passion. But I’ve watched you in the show ring, and I think it’s that connection. That’s part of why I invited you today, because I also think you know how to market. I love this “Howie Shot Me!” I see it everywhere. So it’s really a nice tagline, a nice promo. How did you come up with it? Howie Schatzberg: Again, I just wanted to get into something different. Again, I think that when social media came around—you hear the word branding—and, again, this is a small market, but I just wanted to branch out and do a little more. So I just came up with it, and just with the camera lens, and so on and so forth. Yeah, I just wanted to reach out and have a catchy phrase. So pretty much that was it. Craig Willett: That’s great. You’ve also had more innovation too. For instance, this kind of photograph, for those who aren’t in the horse industry, you don’t get that standing inside an arena. Howie Schatzberg: Correct. Correct. Craig Willett: There’s no way to get that kind of angle and that kind of shot. So I think you’re the innovator of having someone stand outside the ring and take photographs during competition. Howie Schatzberg: I think I was. This is the angle I would take, obviously ground level, which old-school people say, “That’s the shot.” Making a horse look bigger and stronger and all that. What happened was I had seen some amateurs or friends take some photos years ago, and they were just taking pictures of their kids and things like that. I saw that and I go, “Wow, I think this could work.” So actually— Craig Willett: Because you spent your whole time in the show ring, shooting out toward the audience, not necessarily from the audience toward the show ring. Howie Schatzberg: Correct. And again, these type of shots. A friend of mine, Shane Shiflet, an accomplished photographer. And I said, “Hey Shane, could you work for me this week?” He said, “Yeah, why do you need me? I’m two people in the ring.” I said, “No, I want to try something different.” So I got him in the stands and we said, “Let’s try this.” And it was fantastic. A whole different look. It’s a clean look. It’s a more intimate look. It’s almost like what the spectator sees. So the view was from the spectator, so that gave people multiple views. Again, diversifying your business, giving people several looks. At a show like this, I may have two or three photographers shooting. I’ll have a guy shooting a head on picture, another guy shooting this one coming in, and then I’ll be in the ring. So you cover every angle. And thanks to the digital age, you can shoot hundreds in a class. As you know, looking at our kiosk, I may have 400 photos in a class. So you’re going to sell a picture. Craig Willett: Yeah. Or two or three, especially getting the other angles. I like the one from the ground because it makes my horse look big and strong. Howie Schatzberg: Correct. Craig Willett: But I also like the intimate look where it’s maybe over my shoulder, what I see behind the ring, standing along the rail, outside. Howie Schatzberg: Right. Right. Craig Willett: Looking in, it gives a different—when I sold my World’s Champion horse and I really love him, but one of my favorite shots is—I’ll pull it up once in a while—just over my shoulder, I can see his head and I can see me. Howie Schatzberg: Wow. Craig Willett: And I can see the interaction that we have because I know it. It’s what I see. Howie Schatzberg: Right. It’s why wedding photographers use several different photographers at a wedding. You just want different looks and different feels. It’s worked out well for me, I’m pretty proud of it. Craig Willett: Well, that’s pretty cool because you do have a passion for it, even to invite potentially your competitor to do it. And not that you can trademark that angle, but it’s really neat to add to the perspective. Howie Schatzberg: Right. No, it’s great. My dad was big on sharing information with other people. I loved it. Anyone who comes up to me, I’m an open book. Whatever I need to do to help them out. It’s all good. Craig Willett: I remember the first time I got near a horse. My wife introduced me to her horse in her backyard when we were dating. And she said, “Get on him.” I think I had a pair of tennis shoes on. I jumped on him and he headed straight for the fence. Howie Schatzberg: And you married her. Craig Willett: I did. I did, and I probably should’ve thought twice about that. But actually, the interesting thing about that experience is it scared me a little bit. I think about you in the show ring, how do you handle the rush of 20 to 30 horses in the show ring moving around you, trying to watch, they’re reversing, they’re coming different directions sometimes. How do you keep your composure to still get the winning—like your dad said, the best photo every time? Howie Schatzberg: You’re in a zone like any work mode. You’re focusing on what you need to do. Again, no pun intended. So you’re just trying to do your job to the best ability. There’s a lot going on in the ring when you have 15 or 20 horses. So you really have to have your head on a swivel. You have to know what’s going on. You don’t want to be in the way of a judge or a ringmaster. And you’re wanting to be conscious of the angles you want to get and the horse you want to shoot. A lot of times the three or fours are coming at you, and you want to focus in on one of them. And then all of a sudden, you’ll look to your right, and there’s one coming out from this angle. So you’ll need to do that one, or a client may want you to get more pictures of that horse. So they request more. So you really have to— Craig Willett: Oh, really? Howie Schatzberg: Oh, yeah. Craig Willett: So you don’t pick your favorites in there? Howie Schatzberg: I don’t. It’s funny you say that. Again, my father just speaks to me all the time. If a great horse is coming at me and then another horse is coming at me that probably won’t win, I always focus on that horse because the great ones, you’re always going to get a picture of that horse. But try to get the other horse or the other person that may not necessarily have the World Champion or spent $100,000 on their horse. They may have more love for their horse. The other horse may be more of a marketing tool. I don’t know if that’s proper terminology to use, but—so get those other horses and the great ones will come to you. Anyone can get a great picture of a great horse. Craig Willett: Right. If they win, then you’re going to get the championship photo anyway. Howie Schatzberg: Correct. Correct. Craig Willett: But I like that. I like that you’re for the underdog. I think that that’s really cool. So your dad taught you to focus on that? Howie Schatzberg: He did. Again, he said, “Anyone can get a great picture of a great horse or anyone could take a great photo of a beautiful—whether it’s a model or a car, or a beautiful landscape. But concentrate on the horses that may not have that opportunity ever again, and they’re going to be a better market for you.” Craig Willett: I remember that. I was starting out in this competing, and it was my second year of competing. I had a good horse, but I borrowed it from my son who was gone on a mission for our church at the time. And he did really well. He ended up winning the National Open Championship for the Arabians. But I remember I showed him at Scottsdale and I didn’t win. It was in the Open class and I didn’t win. But during the week, your partner, who was shooting with you that week, posted on his personal Facebook page, a picture of me with that horse several times. Howie Schatzberg: That’s great. Craig Willett: And I said to my wife—she kept showing it to me, I didn’t follow it. She said, “I think he likes the look of your horse, and I think he’s trying to tell people, ‘Hey, you missed the really good one.’” Of course, I thought I’d done really well, but— Howie Schatzberg: Well, funny you say that. I agree with what you’re saying and I do. I mean, I love a good horse. I like—again, you show a lot of passion when you drive. You’re so focused and I love that about it. So I do try to do that. I don’t know about the underdog, but just show people and their horse connected, and show a lot of passion for that. And I like to get that out on social media. Craig Willett: I love that. I love your story of passion because I mean, who else lets their dad take them out of high school? Of course, everyone’s not going to fight their dad. Howie Schatzberg: “Please?” Yeah. Craig Willett: But then not even worry about it and just go into it. What a heart-stopping moment, an honor, on the one hand to be asked to do the Morgan Grand Nationals, and at the same time, you had to break the news to your dad that they asked you and not him. Howie Schatzberg: Yeah, it was tough. It was tough. But again, I think he knew. Craig Willett: Business can be hard, but I’m so glad your dad supported you in that. Howie Schatzberg: Oh, very much so. Just to the end. Craig Willett: I think you’ve shared with me what your greatest satisfaction is in business, but I really can’t let people on the podcast without asking what their greatest failure is. Howie Schatzberg: Wow. Well— Craig Willett: And what did they learn from it? Howie Schatzberg: I can tell you my greatest failure, but I’ll start by saying, I am so tough on myself. I’ll come outside the ring and talk to my wife. And I say, “Man, I just didn’t feel good today. I’m just not catching it.” I’ll look at this photo and say, “I could’ve taken this a hair later, it would’ve been better. If my angle would’ve been more from the front.” So I’m really hard on myself. Easily, my greatest failure. I was blessed enough, a young woman named Elizabeth Goth and Michelle McFarland, they did the closing ceremonies in 1996, in Nagano at the Olympics. And they asked me to go shoot it for them. In fact, it was during this horse show. Craig Willett: Oh, really? Howie Schatzberg: Yes. So I talked to the show committee, they were fantastic. And they said, “Yeah, it’s a once in a lifetime.” So went to Japan. It was incredible. I’m sorry, they were the closing ceremonies and they brought a six-horse hitch there, which is basically—the closing ceremony shows the transformation from the Olympics, from Japan to the West. So they used a coach of spotted Saddlebreds. It was a gorgeous picture. So I go there, I’m solid, take pictures of horses, no problem. I have my camera, and closing ceremonies, hundreds of people in a huge stadium. I have my camera and it’s dark, fireworks, lights. If you’ve ever seen, they use carts to push the cameramen around when they’re doing work. Well, basically I take lots of photos about a third of the way in, and this guy with NBC basically clips me. I fall down, my camera goes sprawling down and I’m looking at my camera on the ground, broken lens. Craig Willett: Oh, no. Howie Schatzberg: And that was it. So my failure was not being prepared. You see these guys at these events with four or five cameras on them. Craig Willett: Right. Howie Schatzberg: I’ve never done that. Craig Willett: I wonder why they do that. Howie Schatzberg: That’s why. When it’s an elephant, you’re going to get stomped on. I don’t know, but I wasn’t prepared. Luckily, I ran over to another guy I had met there, and about 20 minutes later, he gave me another lens. I put it on, but I missed “The Shot.” I had this shot planned. It was going to be “The Shot.” I got some shots and they were okay, but I wasn’t prepared. And I’m telling you what, from that day on, whether it’s getting ready to shoot a horse, getting ready for a set-up, drives my wife crazy. I won’t miss a thing. So preparation, whether it’s getting ready to start your business or running your business, or actually doing the job, just be prepared. Never enough time. You can’t prepare enough. Craig Willett: I think that’s a great lesson because you never know what you’re going to encounter. Howie Schatzberg: True. Craig Willett: So you have to start thinking about all the different possibilities. Howie Schatzberg: Right. Craig Willett: That’s pretty cool. Now I also wonder, if you’re gone for nine weeks on the road, how do you continue to market and sell your photographs? I mean, I know you show them at the show, but I think a lot of people are so busy at shows. They get home and then they start looking back, and decide what they want. How do you continue to stay in front of your customers? Howie Schatzberg: Well, I think it’s the old saying, “There’s no I in team.” You know what I mean? I have a great team. My wife’s incredible. I have— Craig Willett: Megan does do a good job. Howie Schatzberg: She’s amazing. Craig Willett: When I’ve asked her about which photograph, she’ll say, “Wait till Howie comes back, he’ll tell you which one’s the better.” So you have the eye, but she knows what to do. Howie Schatzberg: This is true. I just have a lot of good help. But again, I’ve been doing this so long. I like to have everything—I’m a predictable person, so I just know when you go from this town, we have to have these pictures out, contact this publication, know where you’re going to be set up. So I guess to answer that question, just have a plan that way. Craig Willett: Yeah, that’s great. Now the other thing that you have a passion—I’ve noticed that you have a daughter, Jacqueline, that has a passion. She’s getting recognized as 10 and under, she’s quite accomplished in several different breeds. What is the future for the Schatzberg family? Howie Schatzberg: That’s a great question. I want to get her to start taking photos and she actually does. Craig Willett: Really? Howie Schatzberg: She has a good eye already. I don’t know if it— Craig Willett: So this is innate? You can’t teach this, can you? Howie Schatzberg: Is it? Is it a God-given thing? Is it an innate thing? I don’t know what it is, but she has a ton of passion. She already knows breeding of horses, she knows so many, and she has a great eye for photography. But I think maybe because being raised in the industry, again, it’s almost like Take Your Kid to Work Day every day, for her. Craig Willett: Isn’t she lucky? Howie Schatzberg: I don’t know if it’s luck or not, but she’ll help me set up. She critiques my photos. Craig Willett: Wow. Howie Schatzberg: Oh, yeah. Big time. She got that from her mother, I think. She has a lot of passion for it, I think because when you live it and you see the passion these people have for showing their horses, and hopefully she sees it from me, that you have to love what you do and work hard at it. So I think she gets that from us, but my wife is an accomplished horsewoman. She managed a big farm in New England. She was a great rider in her own right. But yeah, our daughter’s done some amazing things this year. We never planned it. Again, because the horse community is such a giving community, she was able to ride. We leased a couple horses. I found out she’s the only walk-trot rider in history to ever win World Championships in three weeks. Craig Willett: That’s an accomplishment Howie Schatzberg: Very much. And that’s again work ethic for her. She works hard. She goes to the barn every day. She does it at home. She’ll wake up in the morning— Craig Willett: Right, but nobody wants to work that much unless they have a passion for it. We all know that. Howie Schatzberg: I think you’re right. She does love it. She’ll go out and clean the horses’ stalls, and she checks on them. Craig Willett: I think you asked the question at the beginning of our episode, “Do you pick the sport or does the sport pick you?” And we could change that to business, “Do you pick the business or does the business pick you?” Howie Schatzberg: Right. Craig Willett: I believe that we have God-given talents and I think it’s behooven to us as part of the human family to figure out what those are. Howie Schatzberg: I agree. Craig Willett: And then share those talents with others to make their lives better. It’s got to be fulfilling, I’m sure, to you, like your dad—maybe this changes your perspective a little bit. Your dad saw the passion in you and gave you the opportunity. You see the passion in your daughter and now you’re giving her the opportunity, so it’s going generation to generation. I think that’s pretty amazing. Howie Schatzberg: Thank you. Yeah. I’m really proud of it. And again, people say, “When are you going to retire?” I say, “I’m not.” When I can’t bend over in the ring anymore, but I love what I do. Craig Willett: But then you can sit on the side. Howie Schatzberg: I’ll sit in the stands. Yeah. I mean, I love seeing the stories of these people and how hard these people work. That’s why I think I want to get the best picture for them, and they can show their kids or show their relatives, whoever that may be. So it’s definitely a full circle deal with my family and these people. Again, it’s a family deal. Craig Willett: Right. And I think it’s interesting because your work lives on forever, right? I mean, a picture speaks a thousand words and if it captures a moment in someone’s life, that means something to them, that passion is going to portray to everyone they show that photograph to. Howie Schatzberg: You hope so. I mean, I— Craig Willett: No, I know so. I’ve experienced it because people ask, “What do you do?” When I tell them I compete with horses. You try to explain it, but if they’re not familiar with it, I just show them a photo or a video clip. But the photos I show, they’re looking at it, blowing it up to make sure I’m the one that’s driving. Howie Schatzberg: Yeah. That’s you? Craig Willett: That’s you? That’s really you. Howie Schatzberg: There’s no doubt. Craig Willett: But it really captures a moment in time, a moment of bonding with the horse, with the human, and the passion that’s there. Howie Schatzberg: Right. It’s history. It’s funny, I was reading a magazine the other day, and I feel like I’m young still, but I was looking at these photos in the archival photos of “back in the day.” And there’s my name on them, and it’s 40 years ago. I’m going, “Wow, how did this happen?” But you’re right. When you start using photos to document history, I’m super proud of that, that I was able to be a part of that. So I guess that’s the passion and you got to have some longevity to do anything. Craig Willett: Right. Right. Howie Schatzberg: And stick with it. Craig Willett: I think that’s where the passion comes in, because that produces the longevity. Howie Schatzberg: Right. Craig Willett: Otherwise, it’s just a job and everybody gets—we all get tired of a job. Howie Schatzberg: Oh, boy. Yeah. We do. We do. Craig Willett: Get up and do the same thing over and over again. Well, great. Howie, I appreciate you taking the time. Howie Schatzberg: Thank you. Craig Willett: This has been a great insight into somebody I have a lot of admiration for, who has a lot of talent, a lot of ability and I think relates well with a lot of different people. I think that shows and it brings you great success. Howie Schatzberg: Thank you. I appreciate you having me. Craig Willett: Great. Thanks for being here today. This is Craig Willett, The Biz Sherpa. Thanks for joining us today. I’m grateful that Howie Schatzberg would agree to spend some time out of his busy week—or two weeks—here at the Scottsdale Show, to share his insights. And I hope that you find him as inspirational as I do. Thanks for joining us. Speaker 1: Be sure to go to our website to access the resources related to this episode at www.BizSherpa.co. If you enjoyed this show, tell your friends about us and be sure to rate our podcast. Craig would like to hear from you, so share your thoughts in the Facebook community @BizSherpa.co. Follow us on Twitter @BizSherpa_co and on Instagram @BizSherpa.co.

David Freedman a 6th generation business owner stays true to the roots of the family business and innovates into the 21st Century. Listen to hear his secrets to success. https://freedmanharness.com/ TRANSCRIPTION: Speaker 1: From his first job flipping burgers at McDonald’s and delivering The Washington Post, Craig Willett counts only one and a half years of his adult life working for someone else. Welcome to The Biz Sherpa podcast with your host, Craig Willett. Founder of several multimillion-dollar businesses and trusted advisor to other business owners, he’s giving back to help business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs achieve fulfillment, enhance their lives, and create enduring wealth. The Biz Sherpa. Craig Willett: This is Craig Willett, the Biz Sherpa, joining you today from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’m pleased to have with me David Freedman, who’s a premier harness maker, saddle maker, and leather goods maker. He started out six generations ago. He’s the sixth generation in the family of harness makers. I hope you get a good flavor for what a good business family the Freedman family is, and particularly what David’s been able to do and innovate today. Welcome, David. David Freedman: Thank you, Craig. Craig Willett: Glad to have you as a guest today, and David hails from Toronto, Ontario, Canada and has also figured out how to have a business in the United States, not just on the road, but permanently. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about what it’s like to be a sixth-generation business owner. David Freedman: Well, that’s obviously a long-winded answer that I would come up with to answer this question. But it’s interesting to be part of a very old family business. And I think it goes through a lot of different stages. I’ve been on my own since ’91, since my dad’s passing, so quite a few years already. As a young man, apprenticing under my father for nine years, hearing about the family business, hearing about its movement from Europe to Canada and how my grandfather came over, and restarted in Toronto. Craig Willett: And so, where did they start in Europe? David Freedman: My grandfather came from Poland in 1910 to Toronto, and set up shop in downtown and his work primarily was for drays and street delivery wagons in the early 1900s. That was the— Craig Willett: Before the car. David Freedman: Before the car. And that was the mode of transportation and delivery and commerce, Things were moved around. And back then, people didn’t buy a complete set of harness for their milk wagon, or bread wagon, or delivery dray. They bought parts and pieces, and there was a lot of repairs. My father used to tell me as a young boy, he remembers downtown in Toronto on Center Avenue there’d be a lineup of these delivery drivers all around the corner waiting for my grandfather to open up the shop so they could come in. And it’d be to splice a rein, put a new piece in it, or repair a trace, which is the piece of leather that connects the horse to the wagon, or put a stitch in, or something to that effect or— Craig Willett: So, they could do their work for the day. David Freedman: So, they could get their work done for the day or pick up and go on. And I have these old logs, really interesting old log books. And it’d say “Borden’s Dairy. Splice a trace. Five cents.” “Repair up tug,” which is a part on the set of harness, “20 cents,” and totals it up for the month. It would be, total for the month is $23 or something to this effect. And I’m not even sure how— Craig Willett: In 1910. David Freedman: And beyond, I’m not even so sure how these guys carved out a living back then. But somehow they managed to carve it out and make it happen. Craig Willett: So, it’s definitely a trade that has to be learned. It’s not something you can just pick up and say, “Hey, I want to be a harness maker someday” and buy a business and be able to do it without skill. David Freedman: Exactly. My grandfather had an interesting thing happen to him. A gentleman by the name of Eddie Godfrey, who was English who worked in the Chicago stock yards, had an aunt that lived outside of Toronto in a small town called Bobcaygeon. And it was his only family in North America. So Eddie moved to Toronto, somehow found my grandfather, and they worked together for years and years. Because Eddie had worked in Chicago stock yards because he was from England, he knew the finer side of making Hackney harness, fine harness, carriage harness. And Eddie would be the man that would teach my father at the ripe old age of 10 how to make this fine quality workmanship and finer types of harness different than what my grandfather made from the street. Back in those days, if you had a sewing machine or a harness stitching machine, it was a sign of laziness and poor quality. So, everything was done by hand and anything that was done by a machine in the daytime, the machine was covered up with a tarp so the old teamsters and drivers couldn’t see. Craig Willett: Oh, really? You were doing it by hand. David Freedman: Exactly, you weren’t doing it the old-fashioned way. So, Eddie taught my father all the finer points. My father tells me at 10 years old, he remembers Eddie picking him up, sitting him up on the bench, and my dad watching this all day long, watching Eddie work. I think that relationship with my grandfather lasted—oh, well into the—right through World War II, actually. Craig Willett: Really? David Freedman: Until Eddie passed away. Craig Willett: So, how did the family—what was the evolution like because then the cars came in. So the heavy duty work harnesses probably became less and less in demand to be made and to be repaired. David Freedman: That’s right. They became obsolete, just like the horse and the wagon as we knew it. And this was the only trade my father really knew. He was trying to make ends meet. He was trying to figure out what to do with his life. And he went to the first Royal Winter Fair in Toronto, famous indoor horse show after World War II, and was actually driving a cab. And he looked around and he saw American Saddlebreds. He saw Hackney ponies. He saw people with private carriages and coaches, and hunters and jumpers. As a visionary guy, my father was really bright this way, said, “These things are not going to go away. There’s going to be people that horses create value for and they’re going to want to do things with these horses that were different than my grandfather did.” And he had the skills and knowledge from Eddie how to make this harness— Craig Willett: And a love and a passion for leather, I’m sure. David Freedman: Exactly. With a grade six education self-taught to read and write— Craig Willett: Really, grade six? David Freedman: Grade six. So, a gentleman that woke up every morning and read the newspaper sort of start to finish, was interested in sports, but had a real passion for quality and emulating the past. Craig Willett: So, he was driving cab to make ends meet and he saw this horse show, and it inspired him to take—what step came next for him? David Freedman: He was working, doing some work and trying to make ends meet. And he managed to—he had a couple of friends that were in the Hackney pony business in the Toronto area. And slowly, through a couple of different barns he got bigger and bigger and bigger. He was introduced to the Armstrong family, famous family from the Toronto area that had ABC farms. They had a lot of Hackney ponies and horses. And— Craig Willett: And so, they had a lot of demand for harnesses like these to show. David Freedman: That’s right. But even then, they weren’t ordering complete sets. “Here son, make three bridles.” My dad would go back and make the three bridles. Three bridles, it’d be like an order for 50 sets today, especially for a one man shop. So, he got a lot of nice little orders like that. And then grew and grew and grew until he met some people from England named Frank and Cynthia Hayden—and this would be in the late ’60s and sort of mid ’60s—and they took his work to England, which— Craig Willett: Really? David Freedman: —brought him international fame right away because nobody overseas was doing this type of work. Craig Willett: Really? So his craftsmanship that he learned as a 10 year old sitting on the bench became world famous. David Freedman: Very quickly. And sometimes it’s a question of how many people are doing the same thing you’re doing and it’s also a question of who you know, not what you know. So, I think the combination of those two things took him international right away. Craig Willett: What was the purpose of the Haydens taking the harnesses to England? David Freedman: They were showing a lot of horses and ponies as well. They were deeply involved with the royal family, with a lot of coaching and carriage driving in England, and they also worked for an astute gentlemen in Amenia, New York named Chauncey Stillman, who had a lot of coaches and carriages as well. And they also worked for a family in Toronto, and they traveled the world working with Hackney ponies and horses for different people. Craig Willett: So, people saw his workmanship in Europe and all of a sudden they were sending orders back to your dad to make them. David Freedman: It didn’t take long, but it wasn’t enough business still. Craig Willett: Really? David Freedman: Just about sometime in the ’50s, nighttime Standardbred racing took off in Canada. There was no Toronto Blue Jays. There was no NBA. There was the Toronto Maple Leafs, and we had our Canadian Football League and that was it. So if you wanted to do anything other than going to your Sunday night bowling league, you had to go to Parimutuel betting, you had to go to the Standardbred or Thoroughbred races, and nighttime Standardbred racing became a big thing and he— Craig Willett: And they need harnesses for that. David Freedman: And they need a lot of harness. So, through the— Craig Willett: And heavy duty because that’s— David Freedman: That’s right. ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s he was building 1000 sets a year of this harness and supplementing the Standardbred business with the high-end quality of the Hackney and Saddlebred and some Morgan, Arabian business as well. Craig Willett: Wow. And now today you continue. We’re here at the US National Championship for the Arabian horses. So, you continue to go to the shows for Saddlebreds, which I’ve showed in before, and I use your harness and love it. And it’s been a key to my success. You taught me a long time ago that the harness, if it’s set right, should help do all the work because that’s where your leverage points are. So you’re not, as the driver, having to do all the work. But anyway, you go to the Morgan nationals, so you travel quite a bit to get to these shows. How did your dad—is this something you started to do? Or is this something your dad started to do? How did you get out of the shop in Canada and into the showroom at the horse shows? David Freedman: I remember this really distinctly, Craig. My father was a—he was a “just do it” kind of person. I remember we’d go to a few shows. We’d go to a carriage driving show and my dad went to Devon every year. Sometimes I went with him, and sometimes I didn’t, but on foot, never with a booth or a display. And I’d asked him in the early ’80s when I first came into the business, “What have you not done with this business that you always wanted to do?” Because I really didn’t want to rest on his laurels. And I’ll circle back to how he enabled us all to move ahead. And he said, “I always wanted to make handbags and belts and high-end leather goods. And that’s something that I have always wanted to do, I just didn’t have the opportunity to do it.” So, I took the bull by the horns and started going down this road, and I’d met some people from New York City that have worked with Ralph Lauren. And they wanted to meet me. So, I said to my dad, “Hey, dad, these guys want to meet me in New York City.” Craig Willett: Boy, people that worked for Ralph Lauren, that’s quite an opportunity. David Freedman: It was an interesting opportunity. Now, cross-telephone conversation between our buckle supplier and their buckle supplier in England. And at that time, this buckle supplier had a little bit of a liquid lunch every day. So he got me confused with the guys in New York— Craig Willett: Oh, really? David Freedman: And he started calling me by this gentleman’s name, and it was a little bit confusing. So, I ended up calling this guy up saying, “Hey, we’ve got the same buckle supplier,” and we hit it off on the phone. He said, “What do you do?” I said, “I make harnesses, saddles, and et cetera in Toronto.” “Oh, maybe you can make belts for us.” Come on down in New York City and meet us. I thought, “Okay, that’s great.” So I went and told my dad, I said, “Dad, I met these guys on the phone.” And everything was phone those days. And my dad said to me something I’ll never never forget, which has been an interesting piece of my life. He said, “Just jump on the airplane and go meet them.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Just go buy a ticket and jump on a plane and go.” Craig Willett: And you’re like, “We’ve never done that before.” David Freedman: Yeah, we didn’t do that kind of thing. Craig Willett: We sit here and take orders and fulfill orders and ship them all over the world. David Freedman: So, I jumped on the airplane and bought a ticket and went down there. And those days, maybe I flew once a year, once every other year on family vacation or something like that, but it wasn’t like now where—pre-pandemic—when you’re on the airplane every other week. And he was so encouraging to reach out, go for what you want, and explore it that it changed my life and made me global quickly. Craig Willett: So, your vision became taking what your dad’s inspiration was. He was visionary to going into show harnesses and saddles and seeing this opportunity going from the old industry of commercial harnesses for work purposes to now something fancier. He had a vision also of handbags and leather goods. But he really planted that seed in your mind. So how did that meeting go with Ralph Lauren in New York? David Freedman: It actually went really well. We did some work for them for a number of years, private label. And we had a great relationship with those people. We did a bunch of different things in the private label corps. After my dad’s passing in ’91 when you’re looking at what you’re doing and where you’re going, I started to really struggle with doing anything wholesale. I didn’t think the margins were there and available to bank on all this handwork and hand labor that we were doing. And we were in a recession—’91, ’92—and I sort of stepped away from the entire wholesale business. I’d get phone calls from these guys. “Hey, Freedman, when are you coming to New York? What’s happening? What are you showing us? What do you have for us?” And I was more about, “Well, I’m going to retool here and figure out what I’m going to do in Toronto and try and make some harness.” Craig Willett: So, how’d you take it to the next level? I mean, you can sit back and continue to fill orders for your retail customers in your—with the reputation you had worldwide, but now I see, and our viewers will see what you have here a little bit later, but you have quite a display and quite a range of product. How did you decide to take that on the route? David Freedman: I think it’s a question of change over time and being cognizant of that possible change. At that particular time in my life, I had a business mentor. I’ve had many over the years that sat me down. My parents had passed away close together, 10 months apart, and I was pretty much down in the dumps in ’92. I didn’t know what I was doing. I really didn’t have a lot of direction or purpose. I’d just been married, and was trying to find a way to support my family. Craig Willett: So, you’re hitting the reset button in ’92. You’re going, “Hey, wait, I’ve got this business. My dad passed away. There’s a legacy here, a family legacy I want to preserve. Now I got to figure out what to do with it. David Freedman: And they’re big shoes to fill because my dad had this international reputation. So, it’s a question of, are you hitting the hard reset, or are you hitting the full reset? It was a question of what’s going on? And I had this business mentor—he was a real fashion Maven, he had a lot of retail stores. And he sat me down and he said, “What do you do for a living?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “What do you do for a living?” I said, “Well, I make harness, belts, handbags, small leather goods, men’s and ladies.” He said, “No, no, no, what do you do?” I said, “Well, I make harness and—” Wound off the same thing. And he said to me— and I was struggling at all of it. None of it was going really well. And international reputation for doing the best work around and being the best you can be, and here I am— Craig Willett: That’s a lot of pressure. So, that’s one of the things going from fourth, fifth to sixth generation. It’s hard because there’s a big shoes to fill, and it can be overwhelming. David Freedman: Very hard and very overwhelming. And after I said this over and over again to this gentleman, he said to me, “Don’t you guys have an international reputation for building the best harness?” I said, “Yes, we do.” Then he said to me, “What are you doing building belts and handbags? Nobody knows you in that business. That’s going to be a difficult business at retail to meet people, to get it out to the mainstream, nobody knows what you do, nobody understands the story.” And that sort of— Craig Willett: Let alone the cost to promote it. If you have a reputation, then the cost to market this is considerably less than trying to get into a retail market. David Freedman: Exactly, and I was struggling. You’re in the middle of a recession, I couldn’t get paid by these retail stores. So not only did you have a hard time making the goods, then you couldn’t collect the money, and all these different things. So, that set me back and I let it all go, and then all these belts and handbags sort of went to the wayside, and— Craig Willett: And went back to the core of the family business. David Freedman: Right back to the core competency of the business. Luckily, in ’93, there was a world championship horse show in Gladstone, New Jersey for carriage driving, for driving two horses at one time, and it gave us a chance to again relaunch the company, reposition the company as what we did. And we filled our order book. So, we didn’t look back. Once we filled that order book, things started to really move on the carriage driving side, fine carriage driving for antique carriages, reproduction harness, really bespoke type work. And— Craig Willett: And there are some major competitions around the world in that. David Freedman: There are, there are, and we had some really good clients that helped us get all the best work that we could possibly get into the shop. And we had a small crew, I think we had maybe seven people working at that time in the shop, old artisans, most of them were inherited through my father, through inheriting the business. So, whether— Craig Willett: So, these were true craftsmen that knew the trade. David Freedman: And whether I wanted to do things my way or not, they were getting done their way. So, because they’re inherited. So, that’s just the way it’s going to be. So that’s sort of how it went. Craig Willett: So, it’s not like you can just go out on the street and say, “I need a harness maker and you put an ad in the paper. I can hire one.” David Freedman: Very difficult trade to hire skilled people for, and getting obviously more difficult as time goes by. We can hire different allied trades from the shoe side, from the handbag, or even jackets side. Craig Willett: And translate some of their skills. David Freedman: Some of them. Craig Willett: Right. But I think what’s really interesting, though, is that you went back to the core business, and I think easily, and it happens to all of us in business we think, “Okay, I’m going to try to be all things to all people and people like our stuff and there’s demand and when that demand goes away, really you have to look at what is your core. So, you were able to capitalize on that in the harness making business. David Freedman: And I wanted to learn all about it. Everything about this part of the business. Craig Willett: So, how did you go about learning it? David Freedman: Like everything else I do, I threw myself into it. I went to as many shows as possible, talked to as many people as possible, learnt a lot about antique carriages, and about all their equipment, equipage, and how these things should be harnessed and with what types of horses and all the appointments, and everything surrounding it. Read a lot of books, and it became very, very interesting. And that market was growing, so that was great at the time. We always had our finger on the pulse of the American Saddlebred and Hackney pony business, but they weren’t as key or in the forefront as they have been the last 10 or 12 years, or even more now, but— Craig Willett: Well, you said something really interesting too, that I’d like to follow up a little bit about and that is, you not only went to the show, and you got orders, but you said you had some good clients who made sure you got good orders. So how did that go about? Because it seems to me there’s a relationship here. It’s not just “Okay, we’re great harness makers, but we care about people.” Because you went out and taught yourself by talking to people. And that’s—sometimes we get stuck sitting back in our shops or back in our offices thinking we’re going to brainstorm and come up with the best idea in a vacuum, so to speak, and you strike me as an individual who has been successful, because you’ve lost yourself out there, exposed yourself to your weaknesses and your strengths, but put yourself in front of people. How did that go? You said some good clients, how did that come about in New Jersey? David Freedman: You’ve got to put yourself out there, like you said, and these people were spending quite a bit of money. And they’re taking a piece of your heart in respect to your workmanship, because you’re putting your heart and soul into this workmanship. So at that level, I felt that I need to have relationships where I got to know these people and their families and what they do and exactly what they were doing with this harness that we were building. You’re talking 20, 30, 40, 50, even $60,000 set of harness. That’s a big piece of time, and a big piece of your heart and soul and life. And I’ve gotten some great business advice over the years. Martha Stewart told me years ago—I was doing some work for her—she said, “Don’t take on a client that won’t take you to your next clients because that’s just a waste of time.” Craig Willett: Wow. David Freedman: And I thought, “Okay. So, if Craig Willett knows somebody, he can introduce me to somebody else that may need my wares.” And that’s how I’ve sort of built this whole reputation along. Craig Willett: And I know you’re not just saying that too because I’ve experienced it. I can walk in at any show, and you could be with a client or a customer, and you’ll always remember my name. And that makes me want to come back and makes me want to tell other people about your product. David Freedman: Yeah, I think on the retail side of meeting people and selling people, it’s still about relationships. I think the buyer experience is a little bit more than just pushing buy online. Sure, if they know what they’re purchasing, and they’ve purchased it before, that’s fine. But I think there’s more value in building relationship, especially if you’re building a reputation. Craig Willett: So, I can go online and buy these harnesses, and headstalls, and everything, right? David Freedman: And people do, all the time. And we are not ever surprised by the people that buy them because they’re people that we have already met at shows. They’ve already done their research. Craig Willett: Right, so some of your repeat is they know what they’re going to get. David Freedman: They know what they’re buying. They know what they’re going to get. They understand the consistencies and how they work here. And they are okay with the purchase, the product that they’ve purchased with that user experience. Craig Willett: So, David, one thing that our audience really is curious about, and I think they should be, is how do you deal with the customers? There’s so many options out there, you have competition, how do you stay ahead and stay foremost in the mind of your target audience? David Freedman: Well, that’s a pretty deep question. I think you—I think it all comes down to product. You still have to have the product. You still have to uphold your reputation and the values that are true to you and your family and your business because these businesses, these old family businesses, they morph and they change, but you have to steward this somewhere, whether it’s for yourself or for the next generation. We try to let the product do the talking in respects to building great products. We try and build products that people want, and we try and build products that are in demand. And I don’t ever profess to be a product genius in respects to coming up with products on the market that nobody has. I just make sure I keep my ear to the ground, and listen to our horse trainers, and listen to our industry experts that dictate what products the industry needs. And then I develop those products for the need. Craig Willett: So, you kind of go to the experts even in the industry. So, if I’m new in the show business, which I was at one point, and I’m sitting there trying to decide I need a harness for a horse because I’ve decided this is something I want to do, I may find you at a show, or I may talk to someone I trust who’s training my horse, and they may know you and your workmanship and say, “You really need to go visit with David Freedman. He’s got the right equipment for your horse.” Is that kind of how it is? I mean, how do you get people to influence people and drive traffic to you? David Freedman: It’s exactly how that is, Craig. And really, what happens is these trainers subconsciously know that my product is evolving. So, it’s easy for you to speak to your trainer and say, “Hey, what was Freedman Harness like 25 years ago?” And they could say, “Oh, it was good. It was great. But it’s different or better now.” And it may not be any better, but it may have morphed into a different type of product where it may be more user friendly, maybe we’ve evolved with the shapes and styles for the type of driving or breed are showing now, because these breeds evolve as we breed more horses. So, I think that that’s a key point in the first contact, and through one of your trainers, I wouldn’t have never met you and your family, if it wasn’t for one of these trainers. So, Jim Stachowski, in particular, and he puts a lot of faith and confidence in us that we will deliver excellence to you, which in turn delivers excellence to him, reliability. Craig Willett: I was driving and showing in it. I don’t know, I was using one of their older harnesses. May have been yours, may not have been yours, I don’t know. But as I started to do better and better, and I was competing at the national level for national championships, I started thinking, “You know, my dad always said you got to practice with what you play with.” And I’d go to the farm, and they’d always put this old work harness on. I’d say, “I’m only going to be in the show ring for four minutes to win a world or a national championship. I need to practice once in a while in what I’m going to really show in.” And you show in probably something other than you work your horse in every day, but it has a different feel. So, I thought to myself, “I need that.” And that’s where I got introduced to you. David Freedman: That’s right. Craig Willett: So, how do you—I mean, these are made well, and they’ll last a long time unless you have a really strong horse that can break one of these. So how do you continue to keep clients and continue to grow your business when you make kind of a lasting product? David Freedman: That’s a difficult thing. As you know, it could be a declining curve in respect to production. We don’t produce in the thousands, we produce more in the hundreds. So, it’s easy to maintain that level. But we still need a certain flow of newcomers coming into the business. We need new horses coming into the business. We have to hope and pray that you have one driving horse and then you’ll need another one, which means you’ll need another set of harness. Craig Willett: Exactly. David Freedman: Some of the reasons behind our big development recently into so many different products the last—I guess since 2010, 2006 really—has been to facilitate that need that maybe you need a saddle, you need a bridle, you need a brow band, your wife needs a handbag, you need a belt for yourself. Part of that circle of care— Craig Willett: On the handbag, you got that right. Last Christmas, I’m trying to think, “What’s unique?” And you have some unique—and our viewers will see this—you have some unique things that you’ve crafted out of some very good saddle leather and interesting colors. So, that was a Christmas gift last year. David Freedman: Exactly. Made your Christmas list, right? Craig Willett: Right. David Freedman: This has been it because it really is possible to sell you one product and then you’re gone. And whether you choose to stay in the horse business or not that’s where we have to make an impression to say, “If Craig leaves the business, how will we retain him as a customer? What else do we have to sell him?” And that’s sort of the short and long of it in respects to maintaining you and retaining you as a client. We’re hoping you stay in the horse business, obviously, and come back and buy more horse things, which you do. But in general, we’re thinking worst-case scenario, “What’s the cost of acquisition of a customer? And how long can you keep that customer? And what else can you sell that client?” Craig Willett: I’d like to talk—I think that’s interesting because we’ve talked a lot about harnesses but not a lot about saddles. I think I met you first not even on the harness, because my wife Carol needed a saddle and one of our trainers says, “You really need to go visit with David. He’ll have the right—he can—this saddle,” and they were showing us one they had, “will be the right one for you.” So, how did you go from harness making to saddle making? David Freedman: That’s an interesting story. Not long after I hit the reset on my lady’s belt and handbag wholesale business, because that was a faster moving business than the harness business, I found myself in ’95 bored. Like really bored. Craig Willett: Hey, these orders are great, but I got this big— David Freedman: I got great orders, they’re huge orders. The guys in the shop are building the orders. I’m doing the research, it’s all going along fine. But it got a little boring. Craig Willett: Because you’re not at the workbench making them and fulfilling them. So you are the pioneer in the business trying to figure out what’s next. David Freedman: I’m a product developer. I really don’t like to get in the production line per se because the phone’s going to ring, it’s going to take me away, and I’m going to hold somebody else up. So I do production, I do product development, I do designing, I do things like that. Now, I’m the first guy to hop in if we’re late on a delivery because I know all the skills and trade, obviously, but— Craig Willett: But this is a great lesson for a lot of people in business. It’s so easy to get into the production or the day-to-day of the business that we forget to stay on the frontier of the business. And I think that’s something you’ve done well, so I’m anxious to hear what happened in ’95 when you were bored. David Freedman: This is an interesting story. So my late brother called me who was in the movie business, and he told me, “William Shatner is in town shooting a series.” And the series was called I think, TekWars. So, being the gregarious type of character that I am, I asked him, I said, “Where’s he shooting?” And he gave me the studio phone number. I called up and I got him on the phone and I said, “Mr. Shatner, it’s David Freedman.” He had no idea who I was. And then I said, “I built a set of harness for you last year for your fine harness mare, Eleanor Rigby.” He said, “Oh, yeah.” Craig Willett: So, there’s a connection on the horse level, right? The equestrian world is tight. David Freedman: I tossed it out right away, so he knew—he maybe didn’t remember me or knew exactly who I was, but he had a connection to me through my product because one of the trainers had bought it for him who was a good friend of ours, Melissa Moore. Craig Willett: Oh, wow. David Freedman: And he said, “Well, what can I do for you?” I said, “No, the question is, you’re in Toronto now, what can I do for you? Is there anything that I can do for you?” And he said to me, “I’d really—” It’s about three weeks before Lexington Junior League Horse Show, so it’s late June, and he said, “I’d really like to ride here. Is there a place you could take me riding on an American Saddlebred?” I said, “Sure. Let me get back to you.” And I hung up the phone. I knew nobody that had American Saddlebreds in the whole Greater Toronto Area, five million people. And I found somebody that I did know. Push comes to shove that it was somebody that we had also gone back far with, I just hadn’t seen this family in a lot of years. But anyways, I called him back, picked him up downtown, took him riding, and then on the way home from our afternoon together he said to me, “Can I see your shop?” I said, “Sure. It would be an honor.” Took him to the shop, walked him through, showed him everything. And he said to me, “Where—do you make a saddle?” I said, “No, I don’t make a saddle. I only make harness.” And at that point, that’s all I was really doing, fine harness. Craig Willett: Gotten back to the full core— David Freedman: Full core competency of the company. That’s all I was doing. And he said, “Oh, interesting.” And we left it. Three weeks later I saw him at Lexington Junior League. Now I have an established relationship with him. He came up to me and said hello, and again said he had a great time visiting in Toronto. And then he said, “You don’t make a saddle, do you?” Craig Willett: Again. David Freedman: Again. Craig Willett: Third time, you don’t want to have to say that. David Freedman: I said, “No, I am not going to answer this guy a third time.” I went home and I started thinking and working and developing. And a year and a half later at the UPHA Convention in San Diego in 1996 I launched my first saddle. Craig Willett: Wow. David Freedman: I said, “This opportunity is not going to knock a third time without me.” Craig Willett: And what was that like? I mean, you had to do some research. You didn’t just make any old saddle copy something, did you? David Freedman: Well, it was really difficult, and there were a lot more people in the saddle business in this market at that time. And I knew I could do the quality, and I knew I could figure out what to do from a manufacturing standpoint. I knew that I could figure out how to set it up for line production. I knew all of that, so I had the confidence in the actual— in the business side of how to manage it, but I really didn’t have any clue what I wanted for rider setup. I didn’t understand that this is a type of sporting good, and that the ultimate measurement would deal with performance of the horse and the rider. When you’re talking about horse sport you’re talking about rider performance as an athlete and horse performance as an athlete. Craig Willett: That’s right. And one can’t impede the other. David Freedman: One cannot. Craig Willett: It has to be in sync. David Freedman: And it took a little while, and if you speak to some clients they will say it took a long time. And it may have. I really don’t think I got it right—this is in ’96. I really don’t think I got it really right until 2009. It took a long time. Craig Willett: It wasn’t that far cry from what you did because it’s still leather goods. It’s still the next step through a harness to a saddle. David Freedman: Some of the—you can call it disease of an entrepreneur, next to a product developer along with a six generation old company is not resting on your laurels, try to improve, try to adjust. Even you can use the word augment to build the products better and better and adjust. Craig Willett: So there’s already a huge market for saddles out there, and how do you come as a newcomer to that and get people thinking, “Okay, harness maker, saddle maker.” How did you get your customers to start to understand that you do something else well, and that it’s something they need to consider from the other myriad of choices in the saddle. David Freedman: Honestly, that’s where having an international reputation really helps. Because people just dismissed not having a great quality saddle knowing that you had great quality harness. They just would never sit back and say, “Well, the quality won’t be good. It’s a Freedman.” Craig Willett: Wow. David Freedman: So, they knew the quality would be amazing. It was just a question of how does the actual product operate? Craig Willett: I guess going back to William Shatner’s question, it was almost intuitive. If you make leather harnesses, you’ll make leather saddles. David Freedman: Almost was. Craig Willett: And so, it was a complementary market right away. David Freedman: And it fit. I’ve spent a lot of time until last February just doing things within my core competency. When you think, “What can you do?” Well, it’s easy to say, “Anything leather.” I don’t profess to be a leather expert per se. But I know a lot about leather, I’ve learned a lot about leather over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time in tanneries— Craig Willett: You bought a lot of leather. David Freedman: I’ve sent a lot of leather back that I didn’t like. Craig Willett: Which is key too, making sure you have the right suppliers because your product needs to hold up. David Freedman: That’s right. So, anything that’s leather I always thought, “Oh, I could find a way to do it. If I can’t do it, I can figure out how to do it.” And again, back to my late father, he was a guy that just, figure it out, keep working, keep building prototypes, keep working at it, you’ll get it figured out. Craig Willett: I have another question along that line in marketing and trying to do it. How do you determine how to price your product? Because there’s a lot of time at a bench, and not everyone’s the same? David Freedman: No, that’s a difficult question to answer. First of all, I think like any product you have to decide what the market can bear. Craig Willett: Right, so what the perceived value is. So, David, one thing that’s always a curious question of our viewers and audience is, how do you go about pricing a product that really it’s hard to know how many hours are going to go into making a harness or making a saddle? David Freedman: Well, pricing products is a very difficult thing for anybody in manufacturing, anybody in business, and I think a lot of people leave out a lot of key components, especially around not so much what is your gross margin, and how much money you’re going to make, and what’s going to end up in your pocket or in your business? But more so— Craig Willett: Which is a key component, but there’s something more important. David Freedman: Yeah, how are you going to service this product? You own a business like this, and you know yourself, you see me out in the ring, in the warm up ring when you’re getting ready to go in and I show up. You’re like, “What is he doing here?” Craig Willett: Yeah, making sure the harness is working the way it’s supposed to. David Freedman: I’m just checking to see that everything’s performing the way it should be, and can we make it better, and what can I learn from this to make it better? Maybe that trip didn’t cost me anything. But if it came back for a repair that was a problem, or your trainer had a problem fitting and I need to make an adjustment, then there is a cost to service. Those costs are really hard to bill. I can’t send you a bill for $30 after you’ve spent several thousand. It’s just not my style. So you have to have the margins built in for your time, and for other materials and other services. Whether it’s a service of just coming out for a visit or actually doing work on the product. Craig Willett: Well, and that’s truly what you do. So, it goes beyond just, here’s my price, and my gross margin. I’m going to provide a service that is superior to potentially my competition. And I need to build in enough value in the perception of the owner who’s buying this that I can provide that without feeling like I’m nickel-and-diming them after the sale. David Freedman: Because we’re small in respect to actual product numbers going out—sure, some items we make hundreds of but we don’t make thousands and thousands of anything—I still have to work with the old theory of, “If you don’t make money on one, you’re not going to make money on 20 or 30 or even 100. And if margins are skinny in the beginning, they’re skinny at the end.” Craig Willett: How did you learn that? David Freedman: You learn that the hard way. You learn that the hard way. I did a job for a gentleman outside of Boston. It was a big eight horse hitch years ago. I never forget this, it was in ’96. And he asked me, “How much was the harness? How much is the harness?” And it was a lot of money. It was serious dollars. Craig Willett: Serious Canadian dollars, not US. David Freedman: No, yeah, this may have been US dollars at the time. I think it was in the ’60s, $66,000 or $68,000. Craig Willett: Not to scare everybody away. These don’t cost that much. David Freedman: No, no. It was a huge set of heavy horse harness, and I ran through the money in the shop— Craig Willett: Wow. David Freedman: —mostly in labor. I didn’t underestimate raw materials, but it was the first time that I’d done this type of job, and I ran through it by a lot. Okay? By 18, 20%. Craig Willett: Wow. David Freedman: And I delivered the harness. The gentlemen was very happy. Craig Willett: Of course, probably couldn’t get anybody in the world to make it. David Freedman: And he said to me, “Is everything okay? Did you do okay?” And I said, “I did perfect. And it’s fine.” And he said to me, “Great, thanks.” And I shook his hand and I walked away. Craig Willett: Wow. That’s amazing. David Freedman: Because it’s his—my pricing problem is not his issue. I gave the gentleman a price, I have to stand by the price, and I delivered the job. And funny enough, that gentleman made a phone call to people in St. Louis, Missouri, at Anheuser-Busch, and I ended up with the entire Budweiser contract from that. Craig Willett: Wow. So, that was really the cost of advertising. David Freedman: It was the cost of acquisition, right? Craig Willett: Yeah. David Freedman: Where my margins continued to remain skinny, but we did nice work for 10 years. Craig Willett: Wow, that’s great. What a great story. What a great lesson though. Fortunately, it wasn’t so big that it put you out of business because you had a stable enough business, otherwise, but you have to be careful. David Freedman: You always have to be cognizant of costs, of time of labor. Your OpEx, your operational expenses are not a moving target because you know what they are, and you can calculate them and spend enough time really defining, and measuring ups and downs in those expenses. But when it comes to labor, that’s another story, especially today. Craig Willett: In the crafts—especially in a craft like you have. What I love about what you did, and I think I’ve heard others that have been guests on our show say the same thing. And that is, “I don’t want to take the problems I’ve had fulfilling the product, and providing the service and make it my customer’s problem. I’m not going to tell them what I went through. I’m just going to deliver a superior product, superior service, and let it stand for itself.” And it comes back around. David Freedman: And that’s what they purchased. They didn’t purchase that you had a problem with the leather, you didn’t like it, you cut up a bunch and threw it away. That wasn’t their thing. That’s for you to take up with your own raw material supplier, even though it’s only the cost of materials, not labor, which is still significant, but nothing compared to the labor. They really don’t want to know about those problems. They want a beautiful finished good, finished product, and they want it to perform. Craig Willett: And I think that’s a great key to success. I appreciate that. You’re doing something also that’s unique now. I mean, we live in a different world since the pandemic and also since certain—the Patriot Act and other things that have been passed over the last 10, 15 years. You operate a business in Canada and sell throughout the world, but one of your big markets is coming to horse shows in the United States. So how have you surmounted this crossing the border and you’re bringing lots of goods, you’ve been pretty innovative there. So, I’d like our audience to hear a little bit about how you overcame an obstacle like that. David Freedman: Being small or large, I think is about—and actually making it through hard times, good times, all times in business is really about being nimble, and about being able to recognize opportunities. And taking those opportunities if you can. We saw in the early 2000s that as the business was really growing in the States, an international border, even though free trade was in place, there’s obstacles. It’s difficult. It’s difficult to ship to the end user. There’s duties, or not duties and taxes, but just brokerage services. There’s different costs that are involved with getting an end product to a customer. One of the things was our saddle and our handbag business. We just couldn’t see tacking on another $35 for customs brokerage to our customs broker to get a $300 handbag. It was over 10% of the cost on top of charging freight. We decided that we would open a retail store and warehouse in Kentucky, which we felt was mecca for the horse business, and we started a US Corporation, and get the business rolling in the States. Along with that came operating a business now in two countries let alone in four currencies. But now you have to deal with laws of other countries, and regulations of other countries. Craig Willett: Right. Employment and otherwise. David Freedman: Exactly, which I had to learn a lot about, which really did not align with anything in Canada including healthcare, which is a struggle. Craig Willett: Right. You’d think of being so close in border, and so friendly, that our ways of doing business would be similar, but not. David Freedman: Not at all. And luckily, my wife now, Nicole, had experience in the horse business, was looking for something to do. We came up with this idea together at a show that she was helping with, an Arabian show, and we opened up this little retail and warehouse in Midway, Kentucky, and started to get the business rolling. We were shipping pallets. One every other week, one every three weeks type of thing from Toronto down to midway, Kentucky. She’d unload the pallet— Craig Willett: So, all of a sudden you didn’t have to deal with customs brokerage. David Freedman: One time— Craig Willett: One time. David Freedman: One time brokerage for an entire pallet, so there’d be repairs. There’d be harness. There’d be handbags. There’d be belts. There’d be halters. There’d be all kinds of products on this pallet. It’d be crossing commercially, so it would be brokered in, and then she’d unload the pallet, ship out all the repairs, put some of these finished goods on the shelf, and we had ourselves a little bit of a retail experience going. People would come in. Of course, there’s a lot of American Saddlebred people in that area. So, we got some support right away. And with the notion of building a pick and pack operation that had a facade of a retail on the front. Craig Willett: Wow. That’s pretty innovative, so that you have people running the shop and also picking and packing in a warehouse. David Freedman: Which takes a different type of person as well because you have to have people that are dressed up that look like they’re there for retail, meanwhile you walk out the front door, and they’re in the back putting product in boxes and shipping it out. And then receiving, now was every week, so a lot more product, and that business really grew the last number of years. And it’s been really interesting along with having to apply for US visa. Funny enough, three years ago, Nicole and I got married, she moved to Toronto, and she had to apply for a Canadian work permit visa while she’s waiting for her permanent residency. She’s going to remain an American citizen. Craig Willett: And you had to get a work visa for the United States. David Freedman: And I had to get a work visa, which has to be renewed every few years for United States. Interesting, when you’re not used to the business climate, and somebody approaches you then you’re really skeptical. I remember I was stopped at customs one time, and the gentleman asked me, the customs officer, “What’s your status?” I said, “Status? I don’t know.” Married, single, I don’t know what to tell the guy. He said, “No, no, what’s your immigrant status?” I said, “I’m a visitor. I have a business in the States, and I’m just coming down to visit.” He said, “Well, who’s paying you?” I said, “Well, my Canadian company is paying me.” He says, “How do we know that?” Craig Willett: Oh, wow. David Freedman: Because I’m telling you that. But that’s not an answer for a customs officer. Craig Willett: That’s not what they want to hear. David Freedman: He said, “Well, we have something called the Patriot Act. Our president, Obama at the time, he says he wants to know who’s coming into the States and who’s doing what and where they’re working.” I said, “Okay, great.” So, apply for a visa, no problem. We got that organized, and have been on that visa, I think since 2008 or nine. Craig Willett: But now I think that’s the thing we have to look at. As much as we don’t like regulation, once you understand and comply to a degree rather than fight it, it makes it easy, and it’s not that costly. I don’t imagine your work visa is that expensive to renew compared to the business you do, obviously? David Freedman: No, I think it ends up costing me 15 or 1,800 a year, but at the end of the day—it’s funny you say that because as a Canadian, I always feel like I’m a little more compliant anyways. So, sure, they tell us to do this, we’ll do it. Even though there’s a lot to do and some hoops to jump through and a lot of paperwork to organize, it’s part of those regulations that have to be respected. And I would want my government—now, my governments because I’m doing business in two countries—you’d want them to know what’s going on. Craig Willett: What I think I see in you, David, is someone who really takes and can out of difficult circumstances go back and reflect and get a vision of how to take this challenge or difficulty or not wanting to say no to William Shatner that you don’t make saddles a third time to be innovative, and be able to hit that reset button and move forward with a vision and with a plan, being determined to see how you can make that successful. I think you like the challenge, don’t you? David Freedman: Yeah, I do. And I’m really driven by those challenges, especially if it’s something that’s interesting to me. Most of the time, if it’s interesting to my clients, it’s interesting to me. So that’s sort of what drives my boat, so to speak. I hear it once, I hear it twice, then obviously there’s a need. And if there’s a need, I feel that if I have the know-how, I will go through that door. And then of course, the entrepreneurial disease sets in and you will take it until you can’t take it anymore. Whether it’s there’s costs involved—giving up is a hard thing to do as an entrepreneur, as you know. Craig Willett: It is. But it also takes that because if you do give up that’s admitting failure right away without even trying. And so, there’s a bit of effort there. The other thing that I like that I think that you demonstrate well, and that is the ability to listen to the customer, and find your niche and really carve that finely. To really understand not just, “Oh, I’d like to have a saddle.” You didn’t just go out do any saddle. You did a lot of research. So, you really try to carve into what your niche is and play to your strengths. David Freedman: That’s my father. Craig Willett: Really. David Freedman: Do what you do, do it better than anybody. Do the best of your ability, just try your best, give it all you got. Craig Willett: And people appreciate that. When people know you’ve done your best, and you’re doing all you can, people will appreciate that because you’re putting heart into it. And you said that earlier, this is a part of you. And I think that’s what any good business owner would say about their business, it becomes part of them, almost their child, almost their baby. And it becomes very personal and very real. And therefore, the customer’s reaction to it is very important to you. How much does that motivate you? David Freedman: For me, it’s the whole thing. It’s that emotional experience and tying myself to a product, tying myself to a need, the drive, and more so because it’s really hard to attach a timeline to any of this development. You don’t know, is it going to take you six months, two years? We developed our first piece of apparel, it took two and a half years to develop. I put more time into it than some of our successful products. But the tenacity of wanting it to work and the time and effort and just be, and just— Craig Willett: And want it to be well received by your customer. David Freedman: Exactly. Craig Willett: And it’s another opportunity to expand your reach into the customers you already have. David Freedman: That’s our success, and I’m willing to—I really don’t think about my competitors much in respects to what they’re doing. I just wanted to do what our customers want us to do and have that available. And I keep going down that road, and I think we mentioned in a previous conversation together, I see that as a lot of roads still to travel at 56 years old. I don’t see that I’m coming to the end of my rope or end of my road. Craig Willett: I think that’s a key to success. It’s almost an oxymoron because they don’t really teach it in business school. They always say go out and measure the competition. And I think there’s something to that— David Freedman: You have to know what they’re doing, of course. Craig Willett: But you have to create your own path. And when you create your own path, you become a little agnostic to what your competition is doing because you know what you’re trying to reach to your customers, and you’re going to do it in a different way. David Freedman: And it may not be what your competitors are trying to do at all. Craig Willett: Exactly. David Freedman: Which is fine, also. Craig Willett: Right. So, it’s not copying somebody else that you’re going to get success, it’s pioneering your path because you understand your customers better than anyone else. David Freedman: Another one of my dad’s theories was, “Mind your own business, you got enough to do.” But minding your own business might mean minding the business, per se. I think you have to know what the competition’s doing. You have to know what the offering is, and sometimes that also drives a clear path to how to improve, how to product develop, where the hole in the market is. And a lot of those revelations of those holes come through competitive markets realizing there’s an opening in the sector for a product that has not been refined, redeveloped, may be the same thing we’ve used for 150 years or 50 years. And just it’s time, it’s just time. So, that’s what we do. Craig Willett: So you’re the chief R&D officer too. David Freedman: I’m the head R&D. Some of the R&D is a little more strenuous than other products. Some of it we go down we go, “It’s just not for us.” Craig Willett: Well, I’m anxious to get a tour here, and I know you have customers who’ve already been sneaking in, beating the path to your door this morning, and I appreciate you taking the time. But there’s a question that we always ask on the Biz Sherpa that no one can escape and that is what is your greatest failure, and what did you learn from it? David Freedman: That’s a—the greatest failure is not being able to trust myself through difficult times. Not being able, as you would say, to hit the reset when you need to, and maybe hanging on too long to some different things that we’ve done over the years where you really needed to either hard or soft reset. Craig Willett: But you had a passion for it, and you want to give it enough perseverance to see if it can work. David Freedman: Exactly. Craig Willett: So, what did you learn from that? How have you changed? How have you evolved to help do that more easily? David Freedman: I think that first of all, I think the pressure of taking over a family business and filling shoes of a reputation that you didn’t build is an unconscious moment in your life anyways. When I took over this business I took it over because I worked for my dad for nine years. I was with my dad for nine years, day in day out. So we really knew each other. I knew what he liked. I knew what he didn’t like and how to operate. But filling those shoes at 27 years old you have to be pretty unconscious, or really not all there because honestly in the ’90s, mid to late ’90s I look back, “Oh, my God, what have I done?” Craig Willett: Wow. David Freedman: Because I’ve taken on all of this, and I can not make it work his way. And that was probably one of my biggest lessons of what not to do. It’s just—I’m not my father, and my father wasn’t me, nor my grandfather, nor any other family member. But adjusting those business practices including all the human resources people involved. Whether they’re accountants, lawyers, or shop workers, or people in the office to get them to work your way, and the way that you need them to work with your style, and your acumen is different and not easy. Craig Willett: Right. So, you can’t be your dad, you can’t replicate that. David Freedman: You can’t do it. And of course, you don’t want the same thing out of life. So, there you make some mistakes, and you hang on too long. And mostly because of the uncertainty, mostly. Not because you just can’t see through it. You’re just not certain what to do. You don’t have the experience. Honestly, I didn’t know the left side from the right side of a balance sheet when my father passed away. I didn’t have to do that, my dad took care of that. I was in the back with the guys making harness, learning the trade, learning the business. So you have to learn all of these things. And you have to spend the time learning it and learning it well. Whether you like it or not, still to this day, I find numbers painful. But I sit myself down and study and look at them every day until I like them, until I embrace them. And some of those pieces I wish I knew more about earlier on because they maybe would have carved an easier path to where we are today or maybe not. Craig Willett: But I think it’s through our difficulties that we learn the most, and we become even better at what we do. David Freedman: I had another business mentor along the way. He’s a very bright gentleman who was in the sporting goods business in Canada, and he said to me, “Freedman, life is research, and research is free.” I never f

President & CEO of DeRegnaucourt Ltd. Becky DeRegnaucourt Veltema shares her story of starting as a single mom and becoming a successful entrepreneur. DeRegnaucourt Ltd. provides custom equestrian apparel for the Saddlebred, Morgan, and Arabian Horse breeds.   CLICK HERE to access our free resources, social pages, and website!

President & CEO of DeRegnaucourt Ltd. Becky DeRegnaucourt Veltema shares her story of starting as a single mom and becoming a successful entrepreneur. DeRegnaucourt Ltd. provides custom equestrian apparel for the Saddlebred Morgan, and Arabian Horse breeds. Home Speaker 1: From his first job flipping burgers at McDonald’s and delivering The Washington Post, Craig Willett counts only one and a half years of his adult life working for someone else. Welcome to The Biz Sherpa podcast with your host, Craig Willett. Founder of several multimillion-dollar businesses and trusted advisor to other business owners, he’s giving back to help business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs achieve fulfillment, enhance their lives, and create enduring wealth. The Biz Sherpa Craig Willett: This is Craig Willett, The Biz Sherpa. I’m grateful you’d join me today. I’m here with Becky DeRegnaucourt-Veltema who is the owner of DeRegnaucourt Limited. Becky started the business in 1994. What she does is provide custom riding apparel for the Arabian, Saddlebred, and Morgan equestrian industries. You see, to compete in those industries, you have to wear a certain attire for certain disciplines. And Becky’s become an expert at that. She has 40 years experience in the equine business and she brings great talent to her business. She’s committed to providing custom riding apparel for trainers, amateurs, and youth in the show rings as I described. You’re seeing some of the pictures of what she does. She has a desire to service her clients above and beyond their expectations. She’s truly one of a kind for her industry. I think you’ll enjoy her today as we talk about how she started the business, saw a need, and was able to ramp up to be able to meet that need and, secondly, how to finance it. Then, thirdly, how you market your business. How you really go about exceeding customers’ expectations. I think you’ll enjoy hearing her. Her husband, Bill, joined her in 2004 as her partner and an officer in the company and he brings some expertise as well. I think you’ll enjoy hearing Becky. This is Craig Willett, The Biz Sherpa. I’m grateful you joined me today for our episode. We’re in Tulsa, Oklahoma today at the US National Championship for the Arabian horses. and I have a special guest. I’d like to introduce you to Becky DeRegnaucourt-Veltema who’s the founder and owner of DeRegnaucourt Limited. She’s the clothier to the stars here at the show and many other equestrian events. Welcome, Becky. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Thank you. I appreciate you having me. Craig Willett: I’m glad that you’d be here with us. I just can’t help but sit here and look at the covers of these magazines and think of knowing some of them having been a competitor to them, that they’re your clients. What is it like to see the national magazines with your clothes on? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Well, it’s interesting. It’s fun. We’ve actually gotten to a point where as all the magazines flow in, we just keep the ones that we have a cover or back cover of. The pile is huge. It’s fun. We keep an archive of them. It’s really, really interesting. Craig Willett: That’s got to be rewarding to you. You started this business. Did you ever think you’d be at the level you are today? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: No. It all sort of happened by accident. A lot of this— Craig Willett: Really? Most people have a business plan. They put it together and work really hard. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: There was actually no business plan. It was a supplemental income, really. Yeah, I actually had a background in—I went to school for sales and marketing and went to work for a logistics company. I was in third party logistics with warehousing distribution, transportation. I worked for three different companies for over 18 years. But during that time, I had a daughter, was a single mom, and was trying to supplement someone else who liked horses. I grew up with horses. Craig Willett: You love them, but your daughter loved them. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yes. I grew up—as a small child, my dad loved horses as a kid. He had a backyard horse. When us kids came along, he decided to get us involved in horses. It evolved into horse showing and so on. It’s just been a passion from the get-go. When Stacy was born, I toted her around and taught riding lessons and trained horses. That was my side money to—well, I went to finish school and all kinds of things. Craig Willett: How did the clothing business come out of that? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Well, after a few years of doing the horse training lessons, I had a fairly big group that we were taking to major state and regional horse shows. The riding apparel that we do is not something that is easy to buy off the rack. It’s just not available. There were some things originally years ago that—they were the polyester, so many gray ones, so many brown ones. It was about it. There were a few custom companies, but in the search of trying to find something, I started actually buying fabrics and locally having some things made. It started from just a hand-sewn garment on a local level to researching better suppliers. Craig Willett: If I want to show a horse in a suit, I just can’t go to the store and buy any suit off the shelf. Why wouldn’t that work in the equestrian world? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It’s a specific cut that we do for the riders. The pant is tailored very specific to allow for you to straddle the horse. It is the fit and the flow of the jacket. It’s a longer jacket. It’s just not something that is in the styling of what you’d see in the marketplace. Craig Willett: Okay. How did you develop from the initial concept of buying some fabric and doing it to now you’re at almost every major horse show in the United States and you provide the attire or you sell attire to many of the premier riders? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Well, like I said, it started as something to supplement my business. At the time I was doing a training business—the horse training, riding lessons, and so on—and my students needed to be appareled. There just wasn’t access to a lot out there. I actually started the apparel to take care of their needs. When we went to a horse show— Craig Willett: So it wasn’t really a big profit center or an idea that I’m going to do this. You did it out of need. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It was more of a need. Yeah. It was out of need. We actually would outfit them, then there was a bigger number. I had outfitted my daughter showing for some time, but when it started to be the students and we went to the Youth National Horse Show and I had nine kids showing with 11 horses and we took home quite a few top tens, national championships, and people were saying, “My gosh. Your kids are the best outfitted at the horse show. Where do you get your stuff done?” Craig Willett: Is that why they win? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It certainly helps. It’s not the end-all, but it makes the whole process a little more fun. It’s the whole picture. It’s what you get to hang on your wall. Craig Willett: When do you decide to break with the 18-year career in logistics? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Well, it took a long time actually. While I was still working, I was able to do a lot of the other stuff on the side—nights, weekends. When I think about it, I probably worked around the clock without realizing. At one point, I had an opportunity to go part-time. I was in a sales capacity. I said, “Hey, if I produce the same numbers as what the full-time people do, does it really matter how many days a week I work?” They said, “No. As long as you can produce—” Craig Willett: I love it. Pay me what I’m worth now— Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Pay me what I’m worth. Craig Willett: Not by the number of hours I punched the clock. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Correct. I negotiated to be able to take some time off personally. Those personal weeks off were at a horse show. I still always answered my phone. I was still double-dutying even from a horse show, and did very well at it. I went down from three days to then two days. Ultimately, once I got to the two days a week and clearly my passion and my focus was in doing that, that’s when I just said to them, “I don’t feel it’s fair at that point to continue to do that.” I felt I’d weaned myself away from the salary and went to more of a commission base and then supplying my own vehicle because I used to have a company car and benefits and buying my own benefits. Craig Willett: Wow. That’s a big transition to be a business owner and have to cover all these things. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: I was able to slowly do that as I peeled away from full-time to part-time. Those are big things. When you look at not just your base pay, but when you look at a company vehicle, you look at your health benefits— Craig Willett: Well, you’ve got a big company vehicle now. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yes. Exactly. Having my own laptop, having my own cell phone—all those little bills that somebody else was paying for before, I was able to feel like a little more independent to be able to say, “I can handle all of this on my own.” Now, it’s just that paycheck. Craig Willett: Did that affect how you viewed and how you priced your product then? Instead of just supplying it as a supplemental benefit to your clients. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: To some degree, it was initially. When it initially started out, it was. We probably placed ourselves in an entry-level market. However, I’ll never forget the day, actually. I came home, and I opened up one of the trade magazines. I saw an advertisement for a competitor. They were advertising a price. I remember I said to my husband, Bill—who works with me—I said, “You have to see this.” I said, “We cannot even produce it for that.” Craig Willett: Wow. That’s pretty scary. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: I said, “What are we going to do?” You’re at that point where you’re like, “Where do we go forward from here,” because we were almost double that price with the production we had, because we reached out to do the best. I said, “If we’re just a starter in the market, it’s going to take something for people to know the quality of what they’re getting.” I said, “If they don’t have the opportunity to know that, what are we going to do?” We were at a kind of crossroads of Can we compete in this business? I just took the approach from my previous business life. I had an excellent seminar years ago. They said, “You have to be two things. You can’t be everything to everybody.” The speaker that day said, “If you’re going to be a low-cost provider, then, you need to do a lot of volume and you need to truly keep your suppliers suppressed because there’s no room of margin for you to eat additional costs that you can’t handle.” Craig Willett: Right. You have to have a real tight rein on your supplier. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yeah. For example, the Walmart, Sam’s Club—there is a very small margin in that, but they have to make it up in volume. We knew that we could never be that type of business, and I’ve always had a passion for things that are quality and that do provide service and all those things. That was a little bit my background in logistics as well, was they said, “If you supply something in a service or a quality of a product that isn’t comparable to something else, then, you set your price.” Craig Willett: Right. Then, you have an advantage because there’s no competitor— Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Nobody that can do that or supply exactly that. I said, “We’re going to be the top service provider that is going to be at a dollar—” that it’s not out there just to—you have to know your costs. I was very fortunate that I worked for some very good people that taught me financial reports and taught me how to do cost of business and to know what your cost of goods are and what those supplemental costs are that go on top of that. For example, our mobile store. It’s not free, but it isn’t part of the cost of good. Craig Willett: The cost of each. Yeah. It’s not the cost of each outfit that you produce. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Exactly. When you produce that garment, there’s cloth involved. There’s transportation involved. There’s production involved. That’s your cost of goods there, but ultimately, when we go to a show, we have fees that we pay as a vendor. We have the cost of getting to and from the show. There’s all kinds of—cell phones, employees, computers—all of that stuff. So many people, I think, that can be what causes people to fail, is that you think, “Well, I have this product. It costs me X to make it. So, I’ll sell it and make a little money.” They don’t realize— Craig Willett: Right. They think, “Hey, I’m making $100 on this,” but it cost them 200 dollars to make the 100 dollars. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yes. All of a sudden, they don’t know where another $100 ended up in there. They lose track of those numbers. Craig Willett: Right. Real easy to do. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yes, it is. Craig Willett: Your record keeping—who’s the record keeper? You or Bill? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: I’ve always been very tight. Like I said, starting this business came out of a necessity of need, a need of desire of wanting something. I wanted to do the horses. I had a daughter who wanted to do the horses, and I wanted to supply that for her. I’ve always been very tight with money. I wouldn’t say that. I tend to get what I want. I wouldn’t say I’m frugal. I’m not frugal, but I had a boss that I worked for one time and I had said something about purchasing a home. He said, “You’re very good with your money.” I said, “Oh, I don’t really think so,” because I might say, “Well, we’re going to eat pancakes this week because we want new clothes or something.” It’s a matter of your priorities, but you always have to know that two and two has to make four, and if you’re going to spend five and only take in four, you’re going to be in trouble. That’s just something that has always been there for me. You don’t overspend your means. That’s very important. Craig Willett: How did you make that transition though? You were doing it providing it close to cost. It is not a profit center, but now, I’m looking at, I’m weaning myself away from my stable employment and stable paycheck. Now, I’m going out on my own for good. Now that I’m on my own, what was the big distinguishing factor that you chose to—I know you said you’d be the upper end, and I bet the best service, but how did you communicate that to others? How do people understand and resonate because it’s easy to pick up an ad and say, “Hey, they’re doing that for $1000. I come over here and it’s $1900.” How can that be? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: That’s an interesting question. One of the things that we did is we put a lot of work into the display of our product. Initially, before we had the mobile store concept, we would set it up at an expo and a lot of the established companies had went back and rested on what they did in their reputation. They might have had one coat sitting out, if anything. We put out probably six clothed mannequins. It was the colors, and the combination of fabrics, and the eye for design and whatnot. Craig Willett: I’m assuming you brought that eye for design with— Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yes. I would say that was my contribution, but my husband, Bill, went into business with me, left a business that he had so that we could travel together. He’s my builder background. When it came to setting up a major expo booth, he was a very integral part of that. Our display—we said we have to have something that when people walk by, they look and say, “We need to walk in there.” Like any store that you go through in the mall, does it smell good in there? Does it look nice? Does it look expensive?” You have to have all those attributes that appeal to someone’s senses. Craig Willett: Yeah. I’m a sucker for that. I walk through a store, and if I see it on the mannequin, I go, “That looks really nice.” I’m not necessarily digging through rows and rows of jackets to find one. I saw the one in the window and that’s why I’m there. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It’s got to be something that brings you in. Craig Willett: That brought them in, but then, you have to have a service that’s consistent with your pricing and the image, right? How do you accomplish that? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Well, I had a customer that came in early on. Again, we were trying to jump over this hurdle of being a top service highest quality provider at a high price. In order to do that, you can’t get scared. A few times, there were times where I thought, “Oh, they’re going to walk away. They’re not going to buy.” Craig Willett: It’s too high. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It’s too high. Craig Willett: You can’t apologize either. Not only get scared, but you can’t apologize for your price because you know what your costs are. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Correct because if I couldn’t sell at that price, then, I couldn’t be in the business because you cannot take a loss or you’re going to end up in trouble. I had someone and literally we were in an expo hall. They were comparing literally across the aisle. I’ll never forget, he came back. He said, “Well so-and-so gave me this price or whatever.” I said, “Listen.” I said, “I respect that.” And I said, “I don’t know what it costs for them to run their business. I don’t know their production costs, and quite frankly, that can’t concern me.” Craig Willett: Or even the quality of the material they propose. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Correct. I said, “What I can tell you—” And I said, “And I’m not going to play that game,” because when I go into a store, to some degree, I take my business philosophy from major companies that I patronize. If I go into a clothing store or jewelry store or whatnot, when I go in, if there’s something that I want and it works for me, it fits it, whatever the criteria might be, I’m going to decide based on that price, “Okay. Number one, can I or can I not afford it?” Number two, “If I can afford it, do I think it’s worth that,” because it’s relative value. Craig Willett: Right. It’s your perception of the value. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Correct. If the customer perceives that that’s something that they can afford, it’s a matter of do they want to afford that. Do they want to spend that? I said, “I will not get in a discount bidding war with the guy next door just to get your business.” I have to sell my product because I don’t want to then not give you the service and the quality in order to try to compete. This is what we have. Actually, he came back, and he bought from us. Craig Willett: Really? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It was a very turning time. It brought us around the corner of, yes, we can do this. Ultimately, we delivered, and they were happy and were a customer for a very long time. Craig Willett: Yeah. I think that’s the next thing I want to talk to you about. Really, I think it’s one thing to have a display and it’s to have a nice product, but pricing sometimes leads people to shop and compare. But at some point, you segregate yourself from that. You had this long-term relationship with this client who bought even though he could have maybe bought it cheaper, maybe not the same quality, but maybe bought a similar product. How do you go about getting people to come back time and time again? At some point, you have to go beyond the mannequin sitting there. That’s not the only way to get people in because you don’t do the mannequin in there anymore. What’s the secret to getting people to come back? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Well, I would say three-fold. Back in my background of logistics, anybody can take a skid, a freight and move it from A to B. The pricing might be, let’s just say, it costs you an extra 10 bucks here versus whatnot. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: If you’re comparing dollar to dollar, so let’s say you decide to purchase, the point is if I call, do you know where my freight is? If you send your invoice, do you send it timely? Is the invoice accurate? Are you having to deal with a lot of issues? There’s a lot of process— Craig Willett: Frustration, or questions. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yeah. That’s not the core product. You take your core product. That’s just one element of things. Ultimately, when we started in our clothing business, I applied the same thing in what my experience was in purchasing items for myself, again whether it be clothing or jewelry or hair products or whatever: Does the store make it pleasant for me to be there? When I place my order, do I wait and wait and wait, or I can’t get a hold of somebody. One of the things that was important to me was that the customer be serviced. And I think that came from my sales background, that I was always the one taking care of my clients and servicing my clients so that they had a great experience in the logistics. To me, it’s just a matter of applying that into the clothing business. Craig Willett: Right. As a customer, you don’t want to sit there and call someone and then wait a week? Maybe, they’re busy, but then, it doesn’t matter if they’re busy. You start to think that they don’t care about you. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Correct. Exactly. Craig Willett: You’re prompt in getting back to them, it means you care about them. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It’s a couple of things. When they actually place their order, number one, I think it’s very important—our product is a big investment for someone. I don’t take lightly regardless of what that person’s income ability is, is irrelevant to me. If they come in, those purchasing decisions have to be their choice. One of the things we do not do is I won’t allow a hard pressure sale like, “Oh, you have to buy it today, or you got to make that choice now.” Sometimes, fabrics come and go, and I will caution someone, “Hey, if you make a selection, don’t—” Craig Willett: Limited supply. You may not be able to get it, right. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: But for the most part, I want them to make a good choice and be comfortable with their decision. From that point forward, our staff, for example, when it comes to correspondence like with email, I make it a standard that our staff—when there’s an inquiry about an order or an inquiry about placing a new order that we have to respond within the day. Even if it’s super busy, I expect that there’s an email that goes back to that customer that says, “Hey, I’ll get into this for you tomorrow, but I just wanted to let you know I got your information.” I think that that’s a really important thing, that the customer has to know that you truly care. And I’m blessed to have a phenomenal staff that they’re that kind of people. Craig Willett: I think it took some training there too, right? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It did. I was able to train the processes, but it’s instilled in them. That’s the kind of people that they are. Craig Willett: How do you find them? That’s one of the questions a lot of business owners have. Well, how do I hire my first one and how do I get them to perform at a level as if they were me? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Right. That’s a good question because a lot of times with the customer, it’s me one-on-one with them. That is something that is a big thing for us. Our business is very one-on-one in sales. We don’t change up people. They’re not getting someone different every time they turn around. Craig Willett: Right. But you could almost relate yourself to being a clothing designer. I’ve bought from you, and I’ve had children and my wife buy from you, and I’ve watched you turn reverse fabrics and say, “Look at it this way.” You really have an eye to get people to see things. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yeah. Craig Willett: Because they’re in a class for four to seven minutes being judged for national or worlds championships. It has to look right. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yes, it does. I always say that we have to first sell somebody something that they want and that they need and that our product be the best product, but we have competitors out there that also make a great product. To me, it’s the management of the information. It’s the processes that we have in place that make our business what it is. It’s that service and the fact that that phone call get followed up and that that email be followed up, that our invoicing is accurate. Craig Willett: That’s what brings people back time and time again. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: I would say good basic business practices. Craig Willett: Yes. Competition is always good. How do you feel when you may lose to a competitor, a client or a deal? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Ultimately, it doesn’t bother me. To some degree, I always say if it’s something where we’ve lost it and we know we’ve lost it to price, you could never hold that against somebody. Ultimately, if they went somewhere because they could get it cheaper, then, that’s up to them. Ultimately, I always say that they have to also need and want the service that we provide because if they don’t, if that’s not a value to them, then they’re overpaying. Craig Willett: Right. Then, they won’t be back. Do you ever sit there and say, “Hey, they will be back,” because you know where they’re going. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: We’ve had several do that as well. Yes. Craig Willett: How does that make you feel when they do come back? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It’s good, but ultimately, I never want somebody to go and have a bad experience ever. I wouldn’t want them to go somewhere else thinking that it would be better or cheaper or whatnot and not have a good experience. That’s just not my nature. I want people to find value in what we have. If it isn’t of a value to them, then that’s okay because it’s a great value to the people who do want that. Craig Willett: How do you price that in though? I think that’s one of the questions a lot of businesses either don’t spend a lot of time on that I think they should spend a lot of time on. It’s not always a function of just costs. You talked about it. You have to understand your cost, but you also have to look at the value that it’s providing because it allows you to go above and beyond to meet the expectations. How do you factor that value in when you price? I’m not asking you to give up your formula because I’m hoping a lot of your customers watch this, but still— Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Ultimately, basically, you start with your cost of goods. It’s a pretty basic formula, and I would hope that most places have their own formula because we want good competition. We’ve said that before. If everyone in our industry decided to close up, we couldn’t handle it all. We aren’t for everybody. Like you said, we suit the stars to some degree on that board. Ultimately, our goal is to be accessible to that clientele, not that we don’t want all of them because we treat everybody the same regardless that comes in here. You can schedule an appointment, buy from us. You don’t have to buy the most expensive thing. It just all depends how unique of an item you’re looking for, but when it comes to those extra services, that’s just something that we just won’t sacrifice. It’s important to me because I will never feel badly that someone has left, but I don’t want them to say they weren’t treated fairly or they weren’t given a value that was something that they felt was important. Craig Willett: I can remember one time needing a hat, and you had one I could borrow or buy. I also remember a time just having something cleaned or the trainer dropped it in the back of the trunk of a car and it sat there for a month. I showed up at a show and the pants were all wrinkled, and you bailed me out, right? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yeah. Craig Willett: Just small simple things like that— Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It is. Craig Willett: —I think to me that endeared me to want to come back. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: That’s that number that I think a lot of people have a hard time with, but I watch it very closely. For example, when you start looking at your cost of goods, then you start looking at your fixed cost as far as your administration costs and that type of thing. But then, there’s also that what you put in for margin. Our margin has to be bigger than most because I can take my staff salaries and so on, but it is those little things that you can’t—if somebody is unhappy with something or we’ve made a mistake, needs to be taken care of. You cannot have yourself so tight that you can’t make the decision to say, “Don’t worry about it. We’re going to remake it and take care of this, and we’re going to do it fast. We’re going to make it right.” That costs money. Craig Willett: Think of Nordstrom with shoes. You walk in, you buy a pair of shoes. After a week, they just aren’t right. They’ll take them back. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Right. Exactly. That’s why you go back again because there is a piece of that that’s in that pricing for you, but if that’s in across the board, you can take care of that customer when those things arise. We had a situation last year. The pair of pants were gone. They’re custom pants. They were showing that weekend. I said, “I’ll do what I can.” I contacted the production shop and I said, “Hey, can this be done?” I expected all means to be told no. They said, “I think we can make it happen.” I said, “Well, it’s a good customer. This would be really important.” We did. And between producing it in a day, shipping it Next Day Air. Craig Willett: Yeah. Next Day Air, and that’s not cheap. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: This person was in the ring on Saturday with it, with a pair of pants that was missing on Thursday. What’s probably as important is that when it comes to selecting our suppliers—whether it’s our production, our fabric—that to me is our support group. To know that they have the same business philosophies that we do because if my production shop is telling me, “Go fly a kite,” that’s not a partner that I want to work with. Craig Willett: No. That’s like hiring the right employees, same thing. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Correct. Craig Willett: They’ve got to be a team player. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: They’re an extension of us. The whole thing is from start to finish. Whether— Craig Willett: There has to be integrity all the way down the line. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Correct. Exactly. Craig Willett: Based on your business philosophy. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Right. For example, if we get a new fabric that’s released and we sell it to a customer and the fabric for some reason doesn’t perform. I’m seeing a pulling in a seam or whatnot. And I’m going to look at that and think “I’m not going to keep trying to patch that over.” I need to be able to contact my—number one, if I need to absorb it, then I have to absorb it because I’m not going to expect a customer to be satisfied with that. But for my purposes, I want to be able to go back to my supplier and say, “Hey, this fabric is the problem.” Whether it’s a mill problem or whatnot, or whether there was something in production. Either way, you have to be able to identify the piece in the supply chain where something happened. But the ultimate thing is the customer doesn’t need to worry about that. Craig Willett: Right. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: They just need to be told it will be taken care of. Craig Willett: That’s great. I can think of a hundred experiences where I’ve had where I’ve heard all the reasons why what I thought I was getting isn’t what I got. I’m sitting there going, “I don’t really care. Can’t you just take care of this for me?” I hear all the work that they’re going to have to do, but that’s not what I’m here for. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: That’s not my problem. Craig Willett: Yeah. That’s your problem. I had a business partner one time. He told me something. He said, “I don’t like situations where people make their problem my problem.” As much as I’ve complicated my own life many times, I’ve always come back to subscribe to his philosophy. I need to align myself with people who don’t try to make their problems mine because it complicates my life. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: That’s what I— Craig Willett: That’s a great business philosophy there. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Well, and it’s what I instill in my staff. I said, “The customer doesn’t need to know that you had a bad day or didn’t feel well yesterday, or that you were off grabbing lunch when they called.” No. There’s no excuse, or for me to say, “Hey, UPS dropped the ball.” It happens, but ultimately, it’s our responsibility as a company to deliver to that customer. They may ask, “Well, what happened?” Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: I might say, “Well, this, this and this.” But— Craig Willett: But here’s what I’ve done about it too. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: —they don’t need the excuses. They don’t want to hear it. Craig Willett: No. We hear too many of those. Talk about excuses. We’ve had some difficult times in our economy in the last 15 years. First, the financial crisis back in 2007, 2008. I imagine it impacts the equestrian business as much as it impacts any other business, and that is when people’s incomes or their liquidity freezes up because of stock market crashes, or the pandemic when businesses shut down. Sometimes, you’re faced as a business owner having a business plan for the year—at least some goals and objectives. All of a sudden, there’s no horse shows or the people that are coming don’t feel like they can spend the money they used to. How do you react to that, and what have been some of your secrets to make it through those times? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It’s interesting that you pointed out the 2007, 2008 because that was a big one. I’ll never forget we were in Oklahoma City at a Morgan Grand National when that all happened in October. We were headed from there to here. It’s literally just over how many years ago almost to the date. When we were on our way from Oklahoma City over here, we said, “This is just not going to be a good show.” The stock market was below 10. We were looking at the Dow below 10,000. It was crazy. People were in utter panic. The good thing is we were not a huge business. At the same time, you don’t have quite the overhead that you have. At that time, we had always been inside an expo hall. Sometimes, out of adversity comes good things. We made the decision in 2008—at this horse show we’re sitting here talking at—that I said, “Let’s utilize what really was a fifth-wheel trailer that hauled our stuff that we stayed in,” and we had never used it for that purpose at a big national show because it’s just size wise—I said listen— Craig Willett: But it was storage for you. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yes. Craig Willett: It allows you to transport your displays, your product. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: I said, “We just need to figure that this isn’t going to be great.” Where they had put us in the expo hall was terrible, and so, location, location, location. I said, “Even if we go through all this work, unload this, we’re in a terrible spot, there may be nobody who even shops. Let’s make the least amount of work out of it.” We ended up utilizing the mobile store at the time which was significantly smaller than this one, but I said, “Let’s make the least amount of work for us as far as loading, unloading, and so on.” So we did. At the time, it’s where Bill and I are a very good team because I was laying in bed that night, and I’m thinking, “How are we going to have some kind of exposure if everything’s inside of this trailer?” Craig Willett: That’s a big transition from being in front of everybody or what you thought was in front of everybody. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: With this big expo display. Yeah. I said to Bill because I start to think and things are always on my mind in the night. I woke up that morning and I drew a picture and I said, “I want you to do this on the back of the trailer to create this platform and whatnot. We’re going to have tables back there and the mannequins are going to go out there, whatever.” He looked at me like I was crazy. Craig Willett: And I’m going to do that tomorrow? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yeah. Bill, in his very quiet way, he said, “I’m going to Lowe’s.” He left. He wasn’t very happy with me, but ultimately, he came back. He created this back deck entrance with the mannequin. It was fantastic. We never looked back. We never went back into an expo booth again. It created the concept of our mobile store at every show. We literally go into an expo on two occasions throughout the year only. We do almost 24 horse shows. The two that we do are because of the venue, they are able to push traffic in a very good way for us, but it’s also such a large venue that if we were off by ourselves in the mobile store, it just wouldn’t work. Craig Willett: No one would find you. That’s the Scottsdale Arabian horse show, one of them. I know because I see you there. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Of course, then, this year with the pandemic, it was difficult because for everyone, in every industry shut down. But, yes, we were in a somewhat of a panic though actually my biggest panic was not so much financially, but that we had stuff that people had placed orders on in January, February, that would have been delivering in March, April, and literally production had to be shut down. All of the cut pieces to garments had to be bagged and covered and stored while these shops shut down. The biggest thing was it was eating me up with the idea of I can’t deliver. Craig Willett: Right. You’re not going to be able to deliver. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yes. I thought, “Not that they’ve got anywhere to go, but you have a deposit on something.” I said, “What happens if people say—” Craig Willett: Or they might start thinking, “Hey, she’s not going to be able to—” Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: “—I need my money back. I could possibly never get my product.” We never had that happen, thank goodness. Our clientele was so good and so supportive of us. The thing that we were able to do, again, you try to make lemonade out of lemons. In the meantime, our staff was coming to work each day. We were not an essential business. We had to make ourselves an essential business. We started making all the face masks. Craig Willett: Oh wow. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Our production facilities were making them. Our staff was working on it. We literally created an online system where people could order and pay and everything, right, without going through a person. Craig Willett: And they were hard to find for a while. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Correct. Yes. We were shipping facemasks left and right. Now, clearly, we cannot support our business with— Craig Willett: Facemasks. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: No. Correct. But it was a little bit of supplement. It was a way for us to stay in contact with our customers. It was a way to keep our social media going and an awareness of our company that we’re out there, and we’re doing well and whatnot. Craig Willett: Right. Then, you care what’s going on in the world too. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Correct. Exactly. At some point, if things didn’t change and things didn’t open up—we were looking at a situation of maybe there will be never be another horse show again. Craig Willett: Wow. That’s a scary thought. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: And there was talk that, “Do we go back to just small outdoor county-level shows where we tie the horses to the trailer and show them outside?” I thought if we do that, there’s no need for high-end clothing. Craig Willett: Correct, because it would get ruined in theoutdoor environment. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: No. It’s going to be much more practical. It’s just not something that we can do. And you do, at some point, we thought, “What are we going to do?” Craig Willett: Well, obviously, you’re here so that didn’t happen. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: No. Thank goodness. Yeah. Thank goodness things started to open up. We did. That was the blessing of our mobile store too. We just started going. As soon as people started having shows—Tennessee, the state of Tennessee started to open up, the state of Alabama started to open up. Craig Willett: You could go where— Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: We had some very forward-thinking people in the equestrian industry that started saying, “We need to have horse shows,” and said, “If you don’t feel comfortable coming, if you don’t feel it’s safe, then please don’t. Do what you need to do.” But it was very crucial for the people who needed to that if they did feel safe and did go out that— and you knew the risks involved that we did. It was wonderful. Craig Willett: Right. You didn’t have to be in an indoor place where they couldn’t figure out what to do because they hadn’t figured out the distancing, what would work. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: What was fabulous too again that I was thankful we had our mobile store, we weren’t in an expo hall like it normally was because that was a very difficult setting. For us, we had structured our company all along to do private appointments with people because they’re shopping at a very high-end product. To have that one-on-one time for them, they don’t need everybody strolling in and out in their business and what they’re buying. We had established that type of a way to do business. It really didn’t change a lot for us. It really helps solidify the schedule and appointment. It’s your one-on-one time, max of so many people. We could clean, sanitize. We have a restroom in the back, so hand washing and so on. Really, it was something that just kind of—our business was able to just continue to go on. We were very fortunate that we had the opportunity that we were structured that way. Craig Willett: That’s cool. I’d like to go back to 2007 time again. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Sure. Craig Willett: I just think it’s interesting that you went from one way of doing business that most people did. I think I’ve seen some mobile stores of other types, but was that done at a convenience for you or did you do it for your customer? What’s the most surprising thing that happened from going to the mobile store that you maybe weren’t anticipating, either positive or negative, from that decision? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Right. It was. It was a decision probably made more for us in the sense that I said, “Let’s keep our costs down. We need to figure out how to push traffic.” But if there is no traffic, we do the least amount of work. We were very fortunate. I will say we’re blessed. A lot of people say, “Oh, everything you touch just turns to gold.” I said— Craig Willett: No, but you live a good life and you work hard. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It’s a blessing. Really, it is. When we did that, it really was probably more for us, but we also started to realize that people liked that environment. They liked the privacy of things. We really felt that we could cater to them in that way. At the point that what basically happened is we outgrew that mobile store. We ended up in this. Craig Willett: But there’s a bit of mystique to it too, right? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yes. Craig Willett: You have fierce competitors walking around the same exhibition hall. If they see one of their competitors with you, they’re like, “I wonder what he or she’s looking at,” peek over the shoulder, but if they’re in a private setting, they don’t have to worry about letting the secret out before they wear their next outfit. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Right. I think too for me, I might want to buy something at a Saks Fifth avenue, but it doesn’t mean that I’m never going to shop at Neiman Marcus. I love the loyalty of my customers. I think that that’s wonderful and I value that with them. But certainly, I wouldn’t not want to service or be upset with a customer because they found something that they needed, wanted, whatnot at another supplier. I don’t like the pressure that it puts on the customer where you’re in an area where it causes them to probably not shop with anyone. For us, we want to give them that privacy mostly for the customer. Craig Willett: They have time to make up their mind. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: They should never feel uncomfortable. Exactly. Yeah. Craig Willett: That’s interesting. That’s an interesting philosophy. That’s a surprise through it all that you didn’t realize the customers would feel that. How did you drive the traffic to the mobile because I’m sure people were walking through the expo, “Where is she?” Did your phone start ringing? How did people find you? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It’s interesting because it’s important that— Craig Willett: Because you said location, location, location. Once you move, I know what it is being in real estate. Once you move locations, you’ve got to plan way ahead and tell people where you’re going to be. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: One of the things we do, we do a lot of footwork early with our business. I always say, “I’m not too proud as a business owner that we don’t do the very hard work ourselves,” but we would print flyers. Bill and I were walking around dropping them at every stall and every restaurant handing them out. The wonderful part about that is that sometimes just that time in the morning to say hello to somebody, they just see your face. That’s a really nice thing, which the pandemic thing is making that a little tough. But as far as putting out or running specials, something to get them in the door and something that shows them where you are. We really tried to do some actual on-the-ground marketing. Craig Willett: I like that on-the-ground marketing. My father-in-law shared with me something when I started my CPA firm. He used to work for the IRS and used to do some tax work on the side before he became president of a bank. He told me, he said, “Craig, if you’re going to start your own firm, take Wednesday afternoons and just leave the office, leave the work behind, and just go out and say hi to your clients.” Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yeah. It’s important. Craig Willett: You know what? From that, I can’t think of how many times I picked up business opportunities, investment opportunities, and more business for me, but that wasn’t the intention. It was just to keep that relationship alive. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: I do. I think that that’s probably one of the things, that you have to be honest. Honesty is the most important. Don’t try to slide something past a customer. To me, the lack of respect for their intelligence thinking that you’re going to slide a fabric past them that wasn’t what they ordered, or to think that you didn’t care enough to say hello and give them a smile. If you’re having a bad day, that’s not their problem, you need to be that friendly face that they enjoy seeing. To be honest, it’s something that I feel blessed that it’s easy for me. I truly enjoy being with my customers. Many of them, like you, have become friends. I really value those relationships. We have people who were customers that, they aren’t even in the horse business anymore and I still see them and get to visit with them. They’ve become lifelong friends. Craig Willett: That’s great. I think that’s an underlying thing because everybody wants to do business with people who care. Everybody wants to create a relationship. I think that’s one of the struggles for the pandemic. I’m going to take a wild guess here, maybe, correct me if I’m wrong, but I fed you a few questions ahead of time to think about. One of them’s financing your business, but from what you’ve told me today, I think you—and if I’m wrong, tell me. A lot of people start to grow their business and realize, “I don’t have enough financial resources. I need to take on a partner, or I need to go get a bank loan.” How did you grow? Maybe, I won’t take a wild guess. How did you grow to the level you are today? Did you do it just from plowing in your profits, or did you have to go out and find some other means to get you leaving the corporate world to getting to being solely dependent on this? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: The decision to drop from the full-time down to part-time, we actually sold our house and moved to a very small little, almost starter house. We gutted out the kitchen and did some work ourselves and made this little—actually, what we did is, it was kind of a creative thing. We needed to sell an expensive house. The people who bought it were a couple that, he had a condo, she had a house she had been in for 35 years. We said, “Why don’t we buy your house,” because they needed to sell one to buy ours. I said, “Why don’t we buy yours? You buy ours,” because the net turnaround was a couple hundred thousand dollars. Craig Willett: For you, right? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yes. We needed that out of that overhead. We needed to not have a big house payment. We needed not to have car payments. We had to really, really skinny down our lives. It was a sacrifice, but it was very worth it. I remember back when I first started out just on my own, when you’re 18, you’re out of the house and you’re on your own, I was blessed with parents who were always there for me, but they didn’t financially provide for me. Craig Willett: They didn’t bail you out, right? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Never ever. I don’t think I’ve ever borrowed 10 bucks from my dad. He’d always say, “I’m here whenever you need me, but don’t come asking for money.” I remember early on when I got my first apartment and I figured all my expenses, and I had $25 left over at the end of a month. That’s it, outside of food, rent, your bills. Craig Willett: What’d you do with the 25 bucks? Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: I don’t know. I probably maybe held on to 15 of it and spent the 10. That was my luxury, but that’s always carried over. Making that move to going to the business full-time, I couldn’t have done it trying to still live the same lifestyle I had. You have to know that—because you’re running a risk, and I’m not going to expect the bank or anyone else to eat my risk if I don’t make it— Craig Willett: Right. To pay your personal expenses for you while you’re growing your business. I love that because I’ve just finished a series on starting a business. That’s one of the things, you can go to friends and family or you can figure out what your resources are and try to figure out how you can make it. I did the same thing when I started mine. You just have to just— Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yeah, you do. I was able to take that part-time income and adjust our lifestyle to me having a part-time income versus a full-time income. At the point that I built the business up enough that I was able to be without that. It just took that. As we went forward, I moved a few times. In the time when real estate was good, my design tactics actually were very helpful. I built a few houses and so built houses, had them offered— Craig Willett: To live in? Or just— Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Well, they were to live in, but a horse comes along, and this comes along and that you have to have happen. Actually, one of the houses I built, I got moved in and I was there probably three weeks. The yard wasn’t in. We had no landscaping. There was a front entryway light that was waiting. The fireplace doors hadn’t come yet, and my daughter wanted a horse. I literally propped a “for sale” sign up in front of the house. I asked the price of the horse more than what I paid for the house that was sold in a week. We got a horse. Craig Willett: Wow. That’s amazing. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: We lived in an apartment. It’s funny. Actually, my mother actually asked me. She said, “You did not.” But I asked my, at the time, eight-year-old daughter. I said, “This is the deal. If we’re going to get this horse, then, we have to move from here. We’ll build another house, but we’re going to live in an apartment.” For an eight-year-old in the third grade, maybe that was more important to her, to live in that neighborhood with her friends and whatever lifestyle an eight-year-old has become accustomed to and start over with nothing. I said, “That’s a decision I felt wasn’t a fair one for me to make for her.” She said, “No, mom. I want the horse.” And I said, “Okay.” We were in an apartment for 6 months. Craig Willett: A true equestrian, man. Right. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yeah. Six months in an apartment, built another house. Then, we went. But— Craig Willett: That sacrifice is really important, I think, though because so often we think I’m going to get in, it’s just going to start making money right away. It takes a long time to build up. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: It does. Craig Willett: You have to be able to cinch that belt and be able to live on very little so that you can allow the business to grow. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Well, it was like that with the pandemic too. When everything was closing down and boom, income is stopped. But you’ve got employees to pay, you’ve got payments to make. You have all that. One thing that I felt very fortunate that we had positioned ourselves well, I probably didn’t realize that at the time what a good choice I made. I do in hindsight now. But when the government came out with payroll protection, I’d also been given very good advice at one point. They said, “Do what you do best.” We make clothing. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not an accountant. I’m not a banker. Those are the three things that to me is very important to arm yourself with your own business, make sure that you have a good banker. It was important to me to find a bank that was big enough that they’re not the little mom and pop, but at the same time, I could have a personal relationship with my banker. It was very important a few times. On top of it, I had an excellent CPA. They do it. They take care of our payroll. They do all that. Well, what was great is all I had to do was call them. They had all the reports I needed. And as we’ve been through this as far as the payback of the PPP loans, they keep all the records. They took care of all that for me. The CPA along with the payroll service, they work together in the same building. And basically, I’ve not had to do any of it. I’ve told people it’s a great structure. I had heard terrible stories from people that were waiting in line and didn’t get that PPP stuff, but they were dealing with huge banks that they just were lost in the shuffle. That was so sad. Craig Willett: That’s what I like. There’s a certain regional or community bank level that’s meant for business owners, small business owners. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yeah. If you’re not that big, you’ve got to find—it was kind of like when we were looking for our production supply. I needed a company that our—I think our previous production was not big enough. We were outgrowing them. I needed to move into something bigger, but I didn’t want something that was so big that we would be unimportant. We needed to be a priority. Your supply chain has to mirror the type of business that you have so that you have good resources. Craig Willett: So do your outside consultants have to be the same thing. You don’t need somebody that’s over qualified for you that knows and understands your thing. When did you start this relationship and how did the relationship start with the banker? It certainly wasn’t just all of a sudden that the PPP ran in. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: No. Craig Willett: How did you cultivate that? I’m really curious because I think this is really critical for most businesses to succeed because you never know when you’re going to need them, but, you don’t always want them, but you want to keep the relationship. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: I had started out with a local bank—and a little plug for them—we do business with Fifth Third Bank, but it’s a regional, almost a national company, but they do business. We have a business banker that—actually the branch manager who I dealt with—whether it was buying a home, working with someone in the mortgage department, refinancing, that was something. We refinanced some homes in order to free up funds to be able to— Craig Willett: Make it through the difficult times. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Yeah, or to purchase things that we needed to for the business. When the time came, we had that relationship and an email and again my philosophy with my customers, you answer that day. Well, when you’re sitting there and you’re going, “We’ve got to get this PPP thing.” I needed the accountant, the payroll service, and the banker had to be honest. They were. They were right there for us. At one point, I couldn’t get one of the forms downloaded. She said, “I’m just going to fill it out for you. Just e-sign it when you get it and I’ll take care of it.” Literally, it was done. We were very fortunate. Craig Willett: Cool. You stole the thunder to one of the questions I was going to ask you the answer to. That is, What do you do to set aside money independent of the business so that as you need it for the business, or someday when it comes to retirement, you have an income stream and some assets that aren’t just the business because sometimes businesses like these are fairly unique. You could sell. Maybe, you can’t. It’s hard to replicate. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: Actually, we talked about that. We actually had a business plan. I think it was good and served its purpose, but we’ve turned and went at it a little different direction over the last maybe four or five years. That was the plan. I had a very good financial planner who said, “Listen. At some point, you need to make that business be valuable aside from you personally. It can’t just be you or it’s not worth anything.” We started to, one, establishing our staff and creating a system that could exist and service the customer that our customers could continue to do business with us and feel comfortable without me present. That was important. We did an excellent job of that. We found at some point, it had gone far enough that we got a little overstaffed and a little too much overhead. Then, we had to scale that back. It’s that balance of things. I felt that we were doing some services that they weren’t valuable enough to the customer and were too costly for us. We re-did some things, but I said, “Either I can do that, be bigger, and sell at the end, or we can dial back some expenses and net that.” Basically, over the course of a plan that, hey, if we sell in the end, that’s a bonus, but we will have made what we might have sold it for along the way. It’s a little different way to structure— Craig Willett: Right, and you set that aside so that we have it or we can access it when we need to. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: For example, our mobile store is very unique, the salability, but for what that amount would be, who knows? Our objective is—we’re very close to owning it. It’s really a neat feeling, but when we needed to buy it, our bank was right there. Actually, we switched banks over the purchase of this mobile store. One was just dragging their feet. The business banker was a little aloof about me. No, they didn’t understand it. The guy wasn’t returning my phone calls because they dumped us—we had gotten big enough they dumped us over to business banking, but we weren’t big enough— Craig Willett: Right. Weren’t important enough. Becky Deregnaucourt-Veltema: No. He just dismissed us. I made a call in to our bank that we deal with now. They were on it. Processed our loan in two days for a significant amount of money, but we had very good credit. We’ve always made sure pf that personally because we’ve gotten to a point where we can purchase things through the business with enough credit that we don’t have to personally insure all of them, but that’s a nice feeling to get to that

Craig continues to reveal a comprehensive overview of the details to consider in starting a business in the last part of our three part series, Starting a Business. Also, included is a sneak preview of an interview with Attorney McKay Johnson where we discuss types of entities. Speaker 1: From his first job flipping burgers at McDonald’s and delivering The Washington Post, Craig Willett counts only one and a half years of his adult life working for someone else. Welcome to The Biz Sherpa podcast with your host, Craig Willett. Founder of several multimillion-dollar businesses and trusted advisor to other business owners, he’s giving back to help business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs achieve fulfillment, enhance their lives, and create enduring wealth. The Biz Sherpa. Craig Willett: This is Craig Willett, The Biz Sherpa. Welcome to Episode 8. I’m grateful you’ve made it this far; I thought maybe after Episode 7, there might’ve been too much meat or too boring of material. But I hope today we’re able to step back and spend a few minutes talking about how you can create an enduring business. One of the things we have to be aware of is that business owners love to own businesses, but they often find that in the process of owning a business, that the business ends up owning them. There’s a way to free yourself from that, and we’ll talk about it today. Just looking forward, one of those is make sure you take a vacation, have a hobby, and effectively delegate. We’ve talked about those before. But we’re going to spend some time today and I’ll share with you some stories and some examples of what I’ve done that helped me. And hopefully in turn, it will help you. In fact, that’s what this podcast is all about. It’s about you, not about me. What I care most about is that each one of you have an opportunity to experience the freedom, the flexibility, and the benefits of being a business owner and that as you do so, anything that I might say will contribute to and enhance the success you experience. And give you the emotional rewards you seek, and also add to your wealth. I’m grateful that you would listen to my podcast. And I hope today that we’re able to review some principles from our last two episodes on starting a business in a broad sense that will help you create an enduring business. So to start out with, we’re going to get into the weeds a little bit, and I apologize, this is the CPA in me, but I’m going to put up a slide here and we’re going to talk through it, a little bit. And this is learning to analyze and project cash flow. And we’ll talk about not only how to do it, but what it means and how to use it to your advantage so that you can plan effectively for your future. So here comes the slide. You’ll notice that this is a two-year projection, roughly a two-year projection. This was actually derived from a proposed investment I was pitched to make, not too long ago. What we’re going to look at is the cost of—first, you’ll see on the red line, the cost of the debt payment per month for the acquisition of this business, in addition to $3 million of cash down, there was a financing component to it that was carried by the seller. Then you’ll look at the revenue on the blue line, and then on the beige line, we’re going to look at what the cash flow is. And then look at what the running cash balance is, and you’ll see that that’s a negative number. As an accountant, when it has parentheses that means it’s negative. So we’re going to talk about that and see how it grows. You’ll notice that in the first month, there’s negative cash flow of $564,000. That eventually winds down to positive cash flow, when you get out to February 2021, when there is $6,000 of positive cash flow. But in the meantime, if you look below that item at the end of January, you’ve accumulated a deficit cash balance of $2,053,000. That slowly winds down to finally, in August of 2021, you have positive cash balance. So how do you deal with this? What does this mean to you as you look at your projection for your own business, if this were yours? What it means is that, to me, is that in addition to the seller financing, and in addition to the cash that you spent to buy the business, that you’re going to need a line of credit for the next year, and you’re going to need it to be approximately $2.3 to $2.4 million. You’ll want to add 10 to 20 percent to your projections. Things don’t always go as you plan. When you add the buffer to your projections, it actually ends up giving you credibility with the bank. You don’t want to have to go back and ask for more, unless there’s a positive reason why you did so—that the business is growing so fast and you’re incurring more costs to produce that revenue. You want to make sure that you nail that pretty close to actual. So one of the things you’ll notice is that the company will eat up a lot of cash in the initial four months to five months of the business. This is typical. And you need to make sure that you have either friends and family, a bank line of credit, an angel investor, and someone that’s aware of the business and knows that this is going to happen upfront. What you don’t want is to find yourself in a position that you weren’t anticipating this and you’re not prepared for it, and you’re going out on an emergency basis trying to raise these funds. Good investors will want time to be able to evaluate the business, ask questions before they fund an emergency. So will banks. So this needs to be well planned for. That’s what effectively projecting and analyzing cash flow can do for you. How skilled you are at it—hopefully you can get someone to help you unless you have the skills yourself, analyze that and become aware of it. This will make business more enjoyable. You’ll be able to know that you anticipated these needs. You’ll find yourself not putting out a fire, because raising cash in an emergency is hard, and it’s very expensive. You usually end up going with hard money, lenders, or someone who’ll be opportunistic that will take a significant portion of your business in order to keep you alive. The next area I’d like to talk about is something we referred to in the last episode, and that is: How do you fund your business? In addition to funding the initial startup, you need to figure out how you fund growth. Of course, we all go into business hoping that we’re successful, and the more successful we are, the more opportunity there is for growth. And growth sure adds to profitability, but that profitability to grow it gets consumed by the business, in that it eats up your cash flow. Businesses that grow too quickly can go out of business. So while you grow quickly, make sure you anticipate those cash needs by using the forecasting method we talked about, just a minute ago. But in addition to that, you need to figure out how to fund your business growth. A lot of people will go out and try to use a bank. And I recommend that. A bank can be the best silent partner you could ever have, in the best of times. In the worst of times, I can tell you the bank can be one of the more difficult partners you can have. I experienced that during the financial crisis. All of a sudden, when the banks were being shut down, and when the FDIC and the government was putting pressure on the banks to shore up their capital, they were looking for ways to get out of the commercial real estate business. They leaned on me pretty heavily on some of my loans and were looking for all kinds of non-monetary ways to default the loans on my business so that I would take them somewhere else and maybe someone else would make the loan, but they didn’t want to end up in trouble someday with the real estate market crashing. So you can imagine they were great, and they had very low interest rates, way better than any partner I could have had. But once the table turned, they became very difficult. I had to spend time working out with them over a period of three years. In one of our previous episodes, I shared with you that one of them sued me, and it took me three years to defend that lawsuit. Fortunately, we prevailed and they ended up having to pay my attorney’s fees. But that doesn’t sound like a good partner to have, does it? So I’m not trashing banks. I’m just telling you to have your eyes open. In the best of times, they’re great. And they can really help understand your business. As you help them understand your business, they can help you meet your needs by giving you shorter term loans or a bank line of credit. So I think that’s a great way to build an enduring business. Unfortunately for me, I had a bank that would make a loan for me on any project I wanted to do. And I was able to do a lot of projects. Sadly, they were the second bank in our country to be shut down by the FDIC. So you can imagine where that left me. It left me without a banking relationship. You want to establish a banking relationship with a banker and make sure you keep them involved in your business. You educate them on your business. You invite them to come and see. And the more they understand the business, the more they can advocate for you in their loan committees. And they will help you. They will see ways that they can help you, that you may not be aware of. Second—the next area I’d like to talk about is building a customer base. We talked about, in our last episode, about getting repeat customers. And if not repeat customers, at least referrals. This is key. This is key to the growth of a business—more than any advertising campaign, you could spend money on, more than any promotions you can give or discounts you can give. It’s finding customers who become your fan, who become your hero. Who understand the value that you give with your product or service, and that they love it so much. And that you’ve gone above and beyond in delivering that product or service that they will recommend their friends and their family to you without question. That’s the best way to build a business. It’s also one of the best ways to build something valuable to sell someday as a business owner. You may decide to sell your business someday, and one thing that a potential buyer will look at is the consistency of the repeat customer. How often do they come and how much do they spend? Now, you don’t want it all concentrated in one or two customers because if one goes away and they’re 50 percent of your business, the buyer’s going to say they’re going to discount the value of your business, so that’s really a potential problem, if they were to lose that customer. So a nice, broad base—customer base—is important. Diverse, people who have given you testimonials, who can speak to the value of your product will go a long way to you promoting your business, and someday being able to harvest your business by selling it. The next area I’d like to talk about is reacting to customer changes or market changing events. Look at what happened during the pandemic. We had restaurants all of a sudden not be able to seat customers in their restaurant. Some health departments in some counties in our country required each restaurant to certify with some health standards before they allowed them to do takeout service. I know of one or two, even four or five months later, who are still doing takeout only. Not because they don’t care about the customers in there, but they’re more profitable and have found a whole new customer base on takeout for their business. So I think we have to be willing to change and react to the different times. That’s the beauty of being a small business owner. As a small business owner, you can pivot and you can react quickly. You’re able to move and turn. Think of a ship and a big business. It takes a long time to turn a cruise ship around to do a 180, versus in a business with 10 to 15 employees, it doesn’t take very long if you’re able to react quickly. So I would look for changing circumstances, changing customer desires. If you’re doing what I recommended in my Biz Sherpa Scorecard—and that is reacting to and setting your goals based on your customer feedback—you will always stay on top, and try to stay ahead of your customers’ needs. Like I said, the best businesses and the best products are those businesses that anticipate people’s needs before they even see them. When they understand what their changing customers’ needs might be and anticipate that and get out ahead of their customer, they have very satisfied customers who will always return and buy their products. The next area is to focus on a niche market. One of the things that I saw and that I fought constantly in my business was people calling employees in my business saying, “You should do a real estate development over in this part of town.” Or, “You should start building homes.” Or, “You should start doing some other type of development.” I did commercial office buildings. I got so specialized in my niche market that not only would I only do properties that we would buy and that we would design and build, I wouldn’t even take somebody else’s initial design on a property if they went and got it zoned. Because we intentionally developed the elements that made it a successful real estate development, that made it a successful real estate investment for our end users, and that made it a successful place for people to operate. When someone did it to maximize the building coverage on the site, they were missing the point. They were willing to try to sacrifice benefits to the customer in exchange for the profit. That’s where a niche market is important. You need to understand who your customers are likely to be, and then focus on them and on their needs. And the more, and the better you’re able to articulate that, the more success you’ll have. And you’ll find that the profits will take care of themselves. I promise you, there is no magic to it. It’s truly a fundamental principle of business if you can do that. But stay focused on the niche market. I avoided getting into land speculation. I avoided getting into other types of businesses. I’ve seen them come and go. While I’ve invested in many different businesses, I didn’t operate those businesses. And I believe in having a diverse stream of income, as I’ve told you before. So investing for diversification makes sense. But expanding beyond your niche and your specialty and your expertise can bring a lot of problems along with it. So I recommend staying within your field of expertise and experience. The other area that I think we should talk about is staying ahead of the competition. When you’re successful, and you’ve developed something that’s unique and that the market is really responding to with an overwhelming demand, you’ll start to find that other people out there will hear about it and they’ll come by—like in my initial projects, people came by and took pictures of them and were trying to copy what I did. And I think I’ve told you this story before, but let me tell you it again. I developed right across the street from another project, sold for 30% more in total dollars per square foot, and sold out twice as fast as they did. That’s not the normal business model from business school. They would tell you that the lower price one would sell out faster, but we understood what our competition was and what it wasn’t. We don’t sell against our competition, nor should you. You need to sell what you are. And that’s how you stay ahead of the competition. You know what’s unique about you, and you know what your specialty is and you articulate that, and that will always separate you from the competition. You also need to be willing to do what others won’t do. I don’t mean stand on your head at the street corner to get people to come buy from you. But I found in business that a lot of business owners, especially professionals, doctors, dentists, CPAs, a lot of the people that bought our buildings like to take Fridays off. And if not Fridays, at least Friday afternoons. And when they took Friday afternoons off, guess what they do? They intend to go golfing or they intend to go take a family trip or something like that. But guess what happens? They have unfinished business. That’s usually when they’re saying, “I need a new office building. I need to relocate my business.” That’s when they start to pick up the phone and call on something that’s important, like a million dollar acquisition. They’re not going to delegate that. And that’s when they’re available to meet. Of course they’ll want to meet with you at nights and on weekends, and I don’t recommend that. I recommend that if you’re in the commercial business, that you be available during business hours. So what it led for me is I didn’t take Friday afternoons off. I was at the office. And so was our sales staff. And we were there, and that’s when the calls came. Let me ask you this, how many times have you called someone when you’ve had time in the week when an appointment canceled, or at the end of the week, when you’re trying to get your whole list of things done, that you didn’t get done because business got in the way, but this was an important thing for you to do. And you called, and the person you wanted to talk to wasn’t available. And then they don’t return your call till Monday or Tuesday the next week when you’re busy. The best time to stay ahead of your competition is to be available when they’re not. And if you’re available when they’re not, and you have a live voice answering when they call, you’ll be able to take care of your customer. And your customer will recognize that, because they will call your competition, I guarantee you. But guess what will happen? They can make a decision with you and your product before your competition can ever get back to them. I would have you think about that. That is one thing that you really need to figure out, do what others are not willing to do. I’m all for taking time. And we’ll talk about that later on, but understand your customer. Understand when they’re working and when they have time to make the major decisions you’re asking them to make and using your product or service. And if you’re available during those times, you will get more than your fair share of the market. Now, we’re going to talk about something a little more laborious. So I’m going to put up another slide here. I often get asked the question, “What kind of entity should I choose to start my business?” There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to answering this question. So I’m going to review what I think are the four major types of entities that you should consider in starting a business. Notice I don’t have on here—well, I do have on here sole proprietorship, and I think that’s an important one. That’s the easiest one to set up because all you do is have to pick a name and start to operate. Now, if you pay employees, you’ll have to get a Federal ID number to pay your payroll and make your payroll tax deposits. But it’s the easiest one to start a business with. I don’t necessarily say that I’m recommending it, I’m just saying it’s the easiest one. Let’s talk about one of the next ones on the list, and that is C corporation. This is a corporate form. What it’s meant to do is take away—it’s actually called a fictitious way, a fictitious form of doing business. It has shareholders. There’s no sole proprietor or individual, even though you might be the only shareholder. It protects you liability-wise from claims by your customers. That doesn’t mean if you have a faulty product that you shouldn’t, and your company shouldn’t, have to pay for it. But it’s for the instances where there are egregious claims that the liabilities might extend beyond what resources the business has and contains those in a box. We’ll have a guest one day, an attorney friend of mine, McKay Johnson, and he’ll go into this in more detail. But there’s one tax disadvantage to a C corporation, and that is that it’s taxed twice. It’s taxed when you make a profit, and then when you distribute the profits to you as the business owner, you’re taxed again on those dividends. So you’re faced with double taxation. There are instances where a C corporation or regular corporation benefit, that is if you have to fund it with a lot of losses early on, and you have to bring on a lot of investors—more than 35—you won’t qualify as our next one, the S corporation. And if you plan to go public someday, it’s nice to have an operating history and the legal protection of just a regular corporation. You don’t have to go through some of the tax adjustments that you might have to do if you were an S corporation. Let’s talk about the S corporation. Of course, the benefits to that are you get all the legal protections of a corporation, but you get the tax advantages of only paying tax once. And in today’s environment, it’s one of the ones that I tend to lean to as I talk to my friends and the people that I advise as a CPA and as a business consultant. The last one is limited liability company. Limited liability companies are great because today you can identify with the IRS how you want to be taxed. You can be taxed as an S corporation, you can be taxed as a corporation as a limited liability company, or you can be taxed as a sole proprietorship. I like it because it can be taxed also as a partnership. And it’s one of the only ones where you can be taxed as a partnership. I like it because it has a lot of flexibility in its capital structure, you bring on some new partners fairly easily, and it’s truly a partnership. There’s a lot of different ways to divide the capital out, and you can have a different and a more complicated capital structure, such as in a corporation, you’d have to have common stock or preferred stock. And preferred stock is something you usually give investors, so that they get their money plus a rate of return ahead of the regular shareholders, which might be you. And then, in an S corporation, you can only have one class of stock. And so you’re not afforded that opportunity to bring investors in. In an LLC, you have the benefit of both. You have taxation only once, not taxed twice like a corporation, and you get the flow through of an S corporation, and you also have the capital structure that can be any way that you design it. And you can have multiple levels of investors and investor types of returns. Now, I don’t want to bore you with that much longer. I wanted to expose you to that. And there’s a lot of asset protection implications with the type of entity that you pick, but I’m going to let the expert in one of our future episodes, McKay Johnson, share with you how to pick the right entity for you and what the benefits are for taxation. Since we’re talking about the type of entities you can choose from to start your business, I’d like to introduce you to an expert on this, McKay Johnson, who is a lawyer with Durham Jones & Pinegar in Salt Lake City, Utah. Craig Willett: So what are some options that you think business owners should consider and under what scenarios should they consider? McKay Johnson: Well, the top favorite are limited liability company, followed by corporations. And corporations have two flavors, the so-called C corporation and the so-called S corporation. These letters come from the Internal Revenue Code subchapters. So titled blah, blah, blah, Subchapter C is where all of the tax code on C corporations resides. And then Subchapter S is where the other kinds of corporation tax code is at. Craig Willett: So really, a corporation is a corporation is a corporation in some respects, except for an S and a C distinguish themselves as to how they’re taxed. McKay Johnson: Exactly. And they’d file different tax returns—how their tax shows up on the different tax returns, corporations, IBM, et cetera. They file form 1120, 1-1-2-0. But when I was a—I had my own law corporation. It was a professional corporation that made the S election as it’s called. And so for many years, I myself was filing form 1120 S. Craig Willett: So let’s talk about—how do they make the S election and what does it involve? Is it complicated? Craig Willett: They forgot to do it, or they didn’t do it properly. McKay Johnson: Exactly. Exactly. And so it’s been good to see how often the service will be generous in its relief, but it’s an expensive thing to get a private letter ruling. I got to tell you, it’s breathtaking. Craig Willett: So an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. McKay Johnson: Yeah. And then some. Craig Willett: So you recommend they go to someone, an attorney or an accountant— certainly an attorney—on the corporation and then not just get a corporation, but also deal with the tax aspects of it. There’s one thing to set up the corporation to get the liability protection. McKay Johnson: And let’s say that that’s true, whether it’s an LLC, a corporation, CRS, sometimes a limited partnership is appropriate and the best choice in that list, but those are the four big ones. But the ones that most people should consider examining first would be the limited liability company, followed by S corporation. Now, what we need is something that is a legally recognized entity apart and separate from the people. So in my case, as a sole-shareholder S corporation case, it was really important to go to the state law that says, “In our state, if you want a corporation, this is what you will do. You will file articles of incorporation. These articles of incorporation will contain a checklist of required minimum data.” And you go on to say, “What else do you need to have a corporation?” Craig Willett: So it’s like getting permission from the state, “If you do these things, we will recognize that. And not you as the—we will recognize you as a shareholder, but not the business owner when it comes to liability.” McKay Johnson: And it’s the same for a limited liability company. They were first introduced in Wyoming I believe in 1995. Oh a long time ago, 1997 for Utah. And I’m pretty sure all 50 states now have some statute that says, “You have a choice. You can have a corporation, you can have a partnership.” And there’s a long list of other obscure business entities that we will pass on. But in our state, “If you want a limited liability company, here’s the checklist.” In Utah, it’s called “Certificate of Organization.” It has to be created just so, it has to be filed with the state. In Utah, there’s a companion document called “statement of authority.” It has to contain specific information about who’s in charge, who has the power to sign and bind on behalf of the company. Craig Willett: Including opening bank accounts, signing loan documents, buying assets, selling assets. McKay Johnson: Yeah exactly. The goal seems to create a public online record that the company exists, is it active? Sometimes states will call it “good standing.” Utah just says active, delinquent, expired, or terminated. Craig Willett: Oh, okay. Terminated, that doesn’t sound very good. McKay Johnson: Yeah. So that they’ll say, “Craig set up a business back in 1992, but he failed to file his renewal paperwork.” Craig Willett: So this is more than just, if you’re a sole proprietor, once you’re set up, you just keep going on. But if you’re a corporation or an LLC, there’s some manual work you have to do besides file a tax return to stay recognized as a separate entity. McKay Johnson: That’s right. Craig Willett: We’re grateful that McKay would agree to be a guest on our show today, and offer his insights. I hope you found them beneficial. Thanks McKay. Now let’s get onto some of the more easy and fun things. As I mentioned, we’re now onto the more easy and fun things. One of the greatest lessons that I learned, before I started my business as a CPA was to take a vacation. Now we can all dream of where we’d like to go. Sometimes we’re limited by where we can afford to go. But when I was working for a CPA firm, before I decided to jump out and start on my own, I had somebody come into the office one day and they said to me, as they were picking up their tax return, they said, “Craig, I’m a retired CPA. I’ve learned to delegate, that’s why your firm’s doing my tax returns. But I learned something important in business. When I started my CPA firm, I took my business plan to the bank. And I had done a cash flow projection,” like we’ve talked about today, “and I gave it to the banker. The banker looked at it, and a few weeks later, called me back. And he said, ‘We’re not approving your loan.’” And he said, “Why? What’s wrong?” And he said, “I don’t see in here that you’re taking a vacation. There’s nothing budgeted for you to go out of town and go on vacation.” So he said, “Give it back to me, let me revise it.” It’s important to take time. And the banker said, “I won’t give you the loan because you need to take time or you’re going to burn out. And I don’t want to be dealing with a burned-out borrower.” You need to take the time. Tax seasons are busy, the accounting world centers around deadlines. And when you have those deadline pressures all the time, people tend to get overburdened. They stop using good judgment, and not be able to effectively grow their business. So I recommend taking a vacation. I started doing that, in fact, I have two quick stories to tell you on that. One was the IRS came to do a surprise audit one day on April 15th. And guess where I was? My practice was in Utah, I was on a golf course in Arizona. I had been there for two days. I left before the end of the tax season because I had effectively done the work that I could and extended with the permission of my clients, their tax returns that year. I told the IRS, “Go ahead and do the surprise audit with my assistant, who is there in the office.” And I didn’t have to deal with the harassment, and I didn’t have to deal with the hassle and the emotional trauma that maybe was a little bit behind some of the surprise audit that day. I’m grateful that the banker taught me to take a vacation. When I started the development business, you can imagine taking a business and growing it to several hundred million-dollar business. The demands on my time were very taxing. While I tried to balance it with time with my family and my other commitments to my religion and to my other volunteer efforts in the community, I found that one way to break free and to effectively learn to delegate was to travel to Europe. What I loved about it is during the summertime, it’s hot in Arizona and I could be nine-hour time zone difference in Europe. Which meant, while I was awake, they were asleep in Arizona. And when they were awake, I was asleep. And so no one could reach me. I was able to conduct the business I needed to effectively, through email and through a few set up conferences during the three-week timeframe that we would schedule as a family to go out of town. But it helped me to recharge my battery and took me out of the flow of every day. And when I came back, I found that I was fresher, I had a clear mind, and I was able to make better decisions. I found that often on the travel—you can imagine nine times zones away—you have time when you’re traveling back on the plane to reflect and to think. And so I had 12-hour flights. I would sit down and after I decompressed for three weeks, I could write down, “What are the major objectives? What are the changes I wanted to make? What are directions I wanted to pick for the business?” It allowed me time to reflect. Remember, I was a sole owner and the sole shareholder of a good-sized business. And what happens is often you have to take time with yourself, and have meetings with yourself. And it allowed me time to decompress and have effective meetings with myself. The next thing I would like to talk about is having a hobby. Hobbies can be fun, and should be fun. And if they’re not, you need to change yours. I remember early as a CPA, out on the golf course, with a client of mine, and he said to me—he was very successful—and he said to me, “Craig, you need to have a hobby.” And I said, “Well, I know I’m just learning to golf. I may not look very good, so maybe I should consider a different hobby.” He goes, “No, that’s not what I’m saying.” He said, “You’re working a lot. And you take on a lot of clients. And I send a lot of my friends to you because you’re good at taking care of them.” But he said, “You need to take care of yourself.” He said, “I found in business, as a business owner, I have to have a hobby where I have scheduled time each week, where I can go do something that I enjoy, that takes me away from the business.” And I said, “Oh really? So what are yours?” And he said, “Well, bowling.” And he belonged to a bowling league and golf. And so I’ve taken up golf, I’ve taken up swimming. And I also took up equestrian activities where I became a world champion at the Amateur Fine Harness in the Saddlebred world—very satisfying, very exhilarating. And it has allowed me to focus and practice and do something and accomplish outside the business world. I highly recommend that you, as you start a business or as you develop an enduring business, that you not burn out by taking regular vacations and developing a hobby that you really enjoy, and that brings you satisfaction and a thrill. Because owning a business can bring a lot of satisfaction in emotional ways, and bring you a thrill, especially as you see it becoming more and more rewarding. I’ll add one thing that’s not on the board today, because I’ve found it to be very effective for me. I’ve told you about my car accident before. And one of the things that I learned from my car accident was that I needed to spend time to take care of my body. Fortunately, I was young and I was healthy. But I found that as I exercise on a daily basis, that I am able to better handle the stress and the rigors of being a business owner. In fact, I think about it so much that I’m adding it to The Biz Sherpa Scorecard. I will be having Zach Gulley, who’s a personal trainer, come and share with us the benefits and how to schedule regular exercise into your routine to make you a more effective business owner. Now lastly, I want to talk about delegating effectively. This is not something that I’ve always done very well. In fact, I would probably rate myself as probably poor at doing that during a good part of my career. So that makes me an expert at sharing it with you today. I really struggled. Sometimes it seems a lot easier to do it yourself than to spend time teaching someone else. Because sometimes it seems like spending five times as long to teach someone to do something that takes you 10 minutes, it doesn’t seem like a wise investment of one hour. But when you are able to find someone competent, and are able to delegate where they have expertise beyond you, you may spend an hour and they will give you hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of more freedom and flexibility to do what you do best. You’ve heard me talk about it before in my Biz Sherpa Scorecard. And in our first episode, I talked about spending 80 percent of your time doing those things that will make the biggest difference in your business and to your customers. That’s where you need to learn to delegate everything as you measure that on The Biz Sherpa Scorecard. Learn to find somebody in your organization, or outside your organization, you can delegate those tasks or functions that has the expertise and have it take it off your shoulders. At a later stage in my life, because I have a master’s degree in taxation, I’ve been doing my tax returns my whole life, except for a brief period during the business as it got so big, that I couldn’t. But as I wound down the business, I took over doing all of them again. In some cases, I was doing 20 to 30 tax returns just to do all the different investment holdings that I had. I have finally this year, made a big stride. I’ve been able to have my son Mike help me out, and I’ve been able to delegate some of my personal responsibilities that I’ve taken on for taxes freeing me up to have more time to do my podcast. Now, I’m thoroughly enjoying my podcast and I love the thought of Mike helping me with this. I think that that’s one of the things that will help you have an enduring business, is learning early on how to delegate. I understand why that might seem impractical. You might be saying, “But Craig, how can I effectively delegate? I don’t have the money to hire somebody else.” And that I do understand. And so do it yourself, but be careful. Don’t go beyond the period of time when you can start to afford to do it. While you may not be hitting all of your income goals, I’ve often said, “You need to take time and look at what is sufficient for your needs.” And while you may not be hitting your top income objective, if you’re hitting and surpassing your income objective, take the time to spread the wealth, hire other people. That’s one of the beauties of the free enterprise system in the United States of America. Small businesses are responsible for creating over 65 percent of the jobs in America each year. You have that opportunity by you delegating to other people. Now, as I started this episode, I thanked you for being willing to come back again and again. I appreciate your response and your feedback. What’s important to me is that I don’t have any sponsors, I don’t advertise. What’s important to me is that you share this with other people. Not because I want to become popular, actually that’s quite the opposite. That’s what kept me for years from doing it. I always thought you had to go out and promote yourself. What I want from this podcast is for it to make a difference in your life, and that you are able to share it with at least one other person. And that something that I say or something that they feel or something that they think about that might be inspired by one of my guests or something that I might happen to say, makes a big difference in their life. It’s a game changer for them. And it makes their business more successful, and more satisfying to them emotionally, and rewarding financially. That’s what I’m after. It’s a climb to the top. It’s difficult. It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do, but one of the most rewarding things you could ever do. I’m here to help you to climb to the top. I’m Craig Willett, The Biz Sherpa. Thanks for joining me today. Speaker 1: Be sure to go to our website to access the resources related to this episode at www.BizSherpa.com. If you enjoyed this show, tell your friends about us and be sure to rate our podcast. Craig would like to hear from you, so share your thoughts in the Facebook community @BizSherpa.co. Follow us on Twitter @BizSherpa_co and on Instagram @BizSherpa.co.

#TrotTalk Special Session: WGC edition! Join host David Tuffy Owens for a candid equestrian conversation with 2020 Five-Gaited World's Grand Champion trainer/rider Matt Shiflet on WGC I'm Lookin' At You! Enjoy this Trot Talk on what this American Saddlebred and his achievements mean to the Sultan and Matt Shiflet Stables families in this unprecedented year!

Join us for a virtual visit to Sunrise Stables to talk with Melissa Moore! From fashion school to finding her passion for raising champions for every division to find out more about this one woman balancing act who brings foals, opportunity, and inspiration into the Saddlebred community!

Malin och Anna gästas av Therese Spjuth som kan det mesta om den spännande rasen American Saddlebred. Denna hästras hade Elvis Presley och Barbie för att nämna några kändisar, det är en allroundhäst med flera spännande gångarter.

Join us for a special visit to High Caliber Stables to learn more about small-town beginnings for this training and teaching dynamic duo. They share their passion to pay it forward and how keeping the power of the horse at the heart of all they do keep their barn family close even during these trying times caused by COVID-19.

Join us for today's visit to Cater Stables to learn more about the Saddlebred story behind ASHA leader Kristen Cater and what she is doing now to help lead her business, barn and the show horse community through these trying times caused by COVID-19. 

Trot Talk takes the "love at first sight" moments from the Saddlebred Story our Season 1 guests. Join us to hear about how these equestrian influencers fell in love with horses and the American Saddlebred. 

From horse world heroes to famous people from history we hear who our Season 1 Trot Talk guest would want around their table! Join us to get a little behind the Saddlebred Scenes perspective from these equestrian influencers. 

Trot Talk brings you the "best advice" from our season 1 guests! Ring anxiety? Searching for a mentor? Saddle fit questions? No worries, we have advice from some of the best for you! 

Trot Talk visits with a lifelong American Saddlebred lover who has found her passion for dressage with her Saddlebred sport horse superstar New York City Slicker. This sensational and pioneering AOT sits down with host David Tuffy Owens to share her journey as a horse lover whose appetite for knowledge and a challenge has brought her to the elite levels of dressage with the American Saddlebred she loves.   

What a great time as Jim and Mike sit down with Peggy Noe Stevens for a bourbon and food pairing. Peggy announces her new book "Which Fork Do I Use with My Bourbon?: Setting the Table for Tastings, Food Pairings, Dinners, and Cocktail Parties". More about Peggy at https://peggynoestevens.com/ Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @thebourbonroad Thanks to LogHeads Home Center for supporting this episode. Find out more about their fine rustic furniture at https://logheadshomecenter.com/

Trot Talk visits with one of the most effervescent equestrians on the circuit, Ali DeGray. Exemplifying sportsmanship, horsemanship, and friendship in and out of the ring, this multi-breed, record-breaking World's Champion shares with us how enjoying and respecting the horse has taken her to the pinnacle of her equestrian dreams. 

Saddlebreds are cool! This week, competitive saddleseat rider Story Sinex comes on to talk with Alyssa and Sissy about this amazing, versatile breed.Hosts: Jess Clawson and Alyssa DavidsonGuest co-host: Sissy WickesTitle Sponsor: World Equestrian CenterGuest: Story SinexLinks: Pin Oak charity Horse ShowSupport by: Springtime Supplements, Fabbri, Subscribe to the Plaid Horse, AIG, Show Strides Book Series, Legends Horse FeedSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=87421)

Saddlebreds are cool! This week, competitive saddleseat rider Story Sinex comes on to talk with Alyssa and Sissy about this amazing, versatile breed.

Today on Trot Talk we visit with ASHA President Marty Schaffel to discuss his equestrian journey as a parent, participant, and leader in our community and his outside the ring roles as a professor and entrepreneur. 

Trot Talk visits with multi-breed and discipline champion, Victoria Walz. Join us as we learn how a lifetime love of horses has taken Victoria around the country pursuing her equestrian dreams on American Saddlebreds, Morgans, National Show Horses and more.  

Trot Talk visits with leading American Saddlebred trainer Smith Lilly and up and coming trainer Katy Sterba.  Join us as we visit with them to discuss why mentorship, attention to detail & dedication to the process are important to success in horsemanship. 

Trot Talk visits with lifelong horse lover and television star Carson Kressley. Join us as we visit with tv personality Carson Kressley to discuss his love of his country roots, life experiences and the American Saddlebred horse. 

Welcome to Trot Talk, a new equestrian focused podcast brought to you by the American Saddlebred Horse Association! For our podcast, we’re exploring the equestrians behind the horses - the influencers in the industry to share their stories and give a leg-up to our community. Join our host Tuffy Owens as he helps us share stories from the saddle!

William Shatner OC (born March 22, 1931) is a Canadian actor, author, producer, director, and singer. In his seven decades of television, Shatner became a cultural icon for his portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise in the Star Trek franchise, T.J. Hooker, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Boston Legal and many more. NRHA Hall Of Fame and an active non pro competitor in NRHA Reining and Saddlebred and Standardbred horses produces the Hollywood Charity Horse Show raising money for children and Veterans.  “Bill” will explain his attraction and importance of raising and owning horses and dogs. Bill is very active and involved in showing Reining horses, Saddlebred and Standardbred horses and his commitment to understanding the way a horse thinks and excepts training. Mr Shatner provides a fresh and meaningful way of explaining his relationship with his horses and dogs. Enjoy Bill’s story of how his animals give back to one of Hollywoods most successful.   

We are on location in this episode at the Lexington Kentucky Junior League Horse show at Rolex Arena inside the Kentucky Horse Park and we are joined by past Chair and current Executive Director of the Kentucky Horse Council Katy Ross. We salute the Champion Women's World Cup Team and Joey Chestnut's ability to eat 71 hotdogs in 10 minutes. Katy breaks down exactly what the Junior League Horse show is (hint it's been around 83 years); what differentiates showing Saddlebred horses from other kinds of horses, why organ music is important to horse shows and what exactly the Junior League does (besides the horse show). New of the Weird highlights wife carrying and Take It or Leave It laments the fall of Mad Magazines, Mac n Cheese in a can, taco bells lack of tortillas and more!

We are on location in this episode at the Lexington Kentucky Junior League Horse show at Rolex Arena inside the Kentucky Horse Park and we are joined by past Chair and current Executive Director of the Kentucky Horse Council Katy Ross. We salute the Champion Women's World Cup Team and Joey Chestnut's ability to eat 71 hotdogs in 10 minutes. Katy breaks down exactly what the Junior League Horse show is (hint it's been around 83 years); what differentiates showing Saddlebred horses from other kinds of horses, why organ music is important to horse shows and what exactly the Junior League does (besides the horse show). New of the Weird highlights wife carrying and Take It or Leave It laments the fall of Mad Magazines, Mac n Cheese in a can, taco bells lack of tortillas and more!

Dustin Knapp is the General Manager of The Wickertree – Home & Patio – a business his family has owned and has grown in Langley over the past 15 years. Dustin has been involved with the family furniture business for of this time in one capacity or another as he completed his undergraduate studies at Simon Fraser University. While he holds degrees in Criminology & Psychology he found the allure of marketing, sales and working with people on a daily basis to be an exciting challenge worth tackling. He took on leadership roles within the company and has worked closely with his parents, Frank & Laura, as the business continued to grow; particularly over the past several years. Dustin met Colin Sprake in 2012 and subsequently completed all of the Make Your Mark courses and continues to be involved with Kap-It Success – a board of director’s style group that is facilitated by Colin himself. Dustin and Colin co-authored a Best-Selling book in 2015 called “Entrepreneur Success Stories.” When not working at the business or engaging with the community, Dustin can be found riding Arabian and Saddlebred horses, traveling or reading! What you’ll learn about in this episode: What Dustin learned about business from his family at a young age – and how that affected his own plans for his future in unique ways Why retirement doesn’t always mean not working and why sometimes, it just means starting a new job and finding new challenges! Dustin’s broad education with a focus on security and how this has helped him make the right business management decisions Why it’s very important to find the right people with the specialties that you don’t have, and get them on your team (or at least establish a service relationship) and why this is often worth paying more for Working with your family and making high-level business decisions together: why this comes with its own challenges, including generational experience gaps and good old-fashioned family dynamics Some of the more curious ins and outs of selling business-focused furniture, including what kind of relationships you need with vendors and the interesting things you end up spending money on Marketing higher-end products, and making choices about how to focus on higher or lower end products at your store, based on the results that you see Why sometimes, convincing your superiors and peers to spend more money can be very challenging and why it’s important to have plenty of facts on your side! Recognizing the times where you have to set feelings aside in business Recognizing that, even in a family business, things can and should change over time and why this is the first step to success. Ways to contact Dustin: Website: www.thewickertreelangley.com