Scope out successful sales businesses. I’m in NZ and there are some here that have massive international followings on Facebook (Brookby Heights was mentioned upthread, EventStars is another). Most of those followers will never buy a horse but they drive traffic to social media so the horses get snapped up fast.
It helps to find a niche which will help you come up with an advertising formula. As others have said, what you need to put in the ad depends on the buyer.
I saw and ad one time for a guy doing a handstand on the side of the horse. The horse had a western saddle an the guy used the stirrup to hold onto. I guess if I ever had the need to do a handstand on the horse, he’s up to the task.
Also, I had to finally pin down a buyer and ask if they actually planned to buy the horse like they said they wanted to. They had a PPE already done and she “passed” with flying colors, loved the horse, took two lessons on her, and still they put me off. I had to tell them that unless they give me a hefty deposit, I’m putting her back on the market. They came up with the money post haste.
I like One good confirmation still at the beginning or end.
No slide shows though.
Yes, initially it would be lower price project horses, though I hope to progress into higher quality horses. The business I worked for sold most of their horses in the 10-20k range, and they were typically grade or papered quarter horse/paint types being sold as safe, family-friendly all-arounders. Some had some training in a specific discipline (ie, hunter under saddle, western pleasure, or reining) but usually had no or limited show record and would be best suited at local level shows.
Some of the horses that were sold, I didn’t feel 100% confident that they were as nice or consistent as their videos represented them to be, and I also felt that I could probably produce a better “finished” product if I selected the horses and set the timeline myself.
Based on my assessment of my riding level and experience, I feel confident that I can train an all-around horse with a solid foundation, but I would need to invest in more coaching from an upper level professional in a chosen discipline in order to gain the experience to train a horse to be worth more than the low five figures. I can put a start on a spin, teach sidepass, 1st & 2nd level dressage movements & school higher than that on an educated mount, still struggle a bit teaching flying changes although I can ride them comfortably using dressage cues if the horse knows how to do them, fix behavioral issues, and easily get an average grade horse working over its back in a training/1st level frame with contact 2 handed or on a draped rein 1 handed, start a horse over cavaletti and low jumps, [= train a halter broke horse from scratch…BUT I have limited experience putting the spit and polish on a horse to finish them out in any given discipline and make them show ready for that sport, and I want to continue investing in my education to reach that point. I’m still trying to identify my “niche.”
I made the very emotionally hard call to make my first sale horse of my business my own personal project that I’ve had for a few years, who I started under saddle myself, is currently in her very early teens, amateur-friendly (I’ve used her for lessons with adults) and has great papers (every horse on her papers is an earner and/or producer.) I’d like to be at least a step above trading backyard horses, and I want to put my best foot forward in starting out.
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the issue of misrepresentation and how to best prepare and market my first sale horse so that I avoid exactly the pitfalls you mentioned.
I also want to make sure that the training I put on the horse is really desirable and valuable, that the fundamentals are done correctly, and any “upper level” training or lateral work I teach is correct per the intended discipline or direction the horse is meant to go. Ie, I don’t want to be that person that teaches flashy, incorrect spins to every sale horse, even though none of them have an inkling of a reining future…or the person selling counterfeit dressage prospects that carry themselves incorrectly, have flashy lateral buttons, and wouldn’t score a 60 on a training level test.
Your input is super valuable …It’s helpful in prompting me to get the thoughts in my head starting to become written out
LOVE this. I didn’t even think about the SBA. Or an attorney!
I’ve been doing my own taxes so far, but I’ve always filed as a sole proprietor. Good call on the CPA too.
Hahaha, I hate that so much too.
@conniemary I actually never heard of Brookby Heights or Event Stars; I’ll take a look at those pages!
In this crazy market, I’ve noticed some of the sellers with top reputations literally do nothing to market their horses anymore.
It’s like, they post on social media “6 yo old warmblood, mid 5s” followed by a low quality pic or video. Then by the next day the horse is marked as sold.
Must be nice. Clearly the rest of us have to work a little harder than that.
@scribbler and @Haven_tJumpedInALongTime … This is something I’ve wondered about and gone back/forth on. Would the solution be to produce a video that contained specifically groundwork and handling on the ground, such as catching, haltering, grooming, trailer loading, etc, separate from the riding video? That way, those who care about seeing the horse’s ground manners could watch the groundwork video, and those that didn’t just wouldn’t have to click on it? Would a playlist of several, clearly labeled, separate videos - arena riding, trail riding, free movement, ground manners, etc. (open to theme or topic ideas) - be helpful?
That makes sense to me!
@Arlomine how long should the compilation video be? I’ve seen everything from 2 minutes to beyond 10 minutes… (Obviously shorter is better.)
I was thinking this too while reading everyone’s replies, it’s definitely nice to have a well put together sale video that tells you all you need to know, but i don’t feel like sellers NEED to have it to get their horse sold. I’m not currently horse shopping but I’ve heard enough horror stories about how hard it is rn for buyers, they don’t rly have the opportunity to be picky or ask a lot of questions 
Sounds like there’s a real need for a seller that is willing to prioritize the buyer’s need and put together excellent ads/field all questions/provide great customer service regardless of whether the market is hot or not.
I think a three minute compilation video with accompanying links to specific skill sets in separate videos is great.
As far as trailering, leading etc. I would assume that a broke horse has these skills and that any horse can have bad and good days. So merely seeing them on video wouldn’t sell me. I’d need to handle the horse myself.
What you are now describing more fully is not a horse marketing business where you sell other people’s horses on commission, but rather a training and resale operation.
The outlay and income will look different for both. If you want to be the trainer and reseller, you need to crunch some numbers. What are you buying the horses at? Where are you keeping them and how long? What are you selling them for? What will you do with the ones that don’t sell? How many can you have going at once?
If you have to pay full board of say $700 a month on a horse, that will eat up profits fast. If you buy at $5000, keep horse 6 months and spend $5000 plus on board farrier vet, and sell for $10,000 then you are losing money. If you bought the horse for $1000, you’ve made $4000 for 6 months work.
Run some numbers and think about volume, board costs, and what kind of salary you need to pay yourself. Also what are your skills with hot or green or problem horses? Could you work with OTTB? With buckers or bolters?
It’s like that with everything right now: houses, cars, etc. Total sellers market.
Not the same thing at all, but this month I adopted a horse through a prominent racehorse rehoming organization. They had an insane number of qualified applicants for an aged, green horse; I felt like I won the Hunger Games when I learned they had selected me. It was less rigorous getting into grad school, and that is not an exaggeration.
Totally hear you on this.
Initially this project is starting out as a part-time venture. I have a degree and freelance in an entertainment-related field, and a single day’s work for me in that industry pays for a month of horse board. I also set my own schedule as a freelancer, so I’ve designed space for training time. I don’t work a 40 hour week in that field, by choice, to allow free time for riding and training. Originally that time was taken up by riding at the sales barn and now can be spent on my own business. I also live quite frugally, by nature. I think the transition to full-time would happen gradually.
I already own two horses that I’ve been bringing along myself that I originally intended to keep as personal horses, but I’ve decided to prepare them for sale as “test subjects.” I already am accustomed to budgeting for their board, farrier, vet, miscellaneous costs, since I own them, and I have been documenting my training sessions since starting this venture so that I can see how long it really took me to bring them from prospects to the market and better allow and account for unexpected setbacks and delays. I have a ledger and am keeping meticulous record of costs, both online and by hand.
That said, someone mentioned looking at the SBA for resources and getting with a good CPA - that is on my to-do list.
I did consider doing consignments to avoid the overhead and losses that come with owning sales prospects, but I didn’t want to deal with some of the issues that the owner of the sales barn experienced - eg, pressure from clients to move horses quickly before they were really properly tuned up, dishonesty from the owner about medical or behavioral issues, a cap on potential returns due to receiving only a commission instead of the full sales price of the horse, limited control over decisions regarding shoeing and medical treatments to get the horse as sound as possible before sale, etc. Because I really get the most satisfaction from doing an excellent job to the best of my ability, and I am passionate about the training process (I’ve wanted to be a horse trainer since I was a little girl,) I felt that going the route of buying, training, and selling my own would be the most fulfilling experience in the long run.
I’m accustomed to riding several horses in a day. I’m in a lucky situation where I have a really good relationship with my vet, farrier, and barn owner. I get price breaks for having multiple horses and having brought the barn new boarding clients by me being sent horses for training, and I’m very low drama and keep to myself. My farrier has known me since I was a little girl, has helped me evaluate horses I’ve purchased for myself, and gives me a great deal. Same with my vet - he sometimes has chosen to bill a PPE he’s done for me as a “wellness exam,” for example, because we get along, and he has a lot of respect for me. In that regard, I’m fortunate that my board per horse runs me less than 700/month, and I’m at a nice facility with a great covered arena and covered round pen. It’s definitely a unicorn opportunity.
Because I spent so much time riding horses at the sales barn (and most of the time, I was the only one riding the horses consigned there) I got a really good pulse on how long it takes me to tune up the average all-around type horse and figure out an efficient routine that works for me. I actually have a couple of documents written up, in which I listed out how to evaluate a sales prospect, a general sequence of exercises to go through (recognizing, of course, every horse is its own unique individual with different quirks, personality, and issues to overcome), and a rubric to evaluate if the horse meets all objectives in order to be declared “video ready.”
On average, it takes me fewer than 90 days to get a healthy, green broke horse balanced at the walk, trot, and canter, both directions, on straight lines and circles, accepting contact on the bit and also maintaining tempo on a loose rein, in and out of the arena, and ready for an amateur rider. Horses at the sales barn ranged from 3 to 17 in age, and some of them had bucking, rearing, and bolting issues that I had to work through and would take longer than others. I was also expected at the sales barn (per their pre-existing program) to desensitize the horses to tarps and other stimulus, take them through an obstacle course, teach the horse to lie down, and ride in a neck rope if possible. I found a routine that let me accomplish all of this pretty quickly. Some of them came with a sidepass and pivot; others, I had to teach the maneuvers from scratch.
That said, I want to run my own program a bit differently. Having prior experience learning groundwork and riding skills from former members of the Arabian Nights Dinner Theatre, Ringling Bros, and Cavalia, and having trained an actual liberty/trick horse before from scratch, I felt like the bridleless and lying down tricks I was being asked to teach at the sales barn were just gimmicks and a bit counterfeit, compared to the real deal. It bothered me, honestly.
I’ve bought my last three personal horses unbroke and started them myself. I actually was accepted into a competition run by Colt Starting Challenge USA in 2020, but I didn’t get to compete due to the event being canceled due to quarantine. I don’t mind hot horses, problem horses, OTTBs…though I am a bit cautious in dealing with OTTBs as sale prospects, as some of them come with pretty significant maintenance and shoeing requirements that can raise my overhead significantly. I’m leaning towards looking for sturdy, ranch-y type quarter horses as an alternative, but that would mostly keep me out of the English markets.
I would like to have a sense of what my niche is, and based on my experience, I think I could produce a decent “Western Dressage” horse or a high school rodeo barrel horse, both of which are popular disciplines in my local market. I mentioned my trick training/liberty experience …ILHA as an organization has popularized liberty and bridleless by providing an avenue for competing in those disciplines, but it’s still so small a community that I’m not sure it would be worthwhile to train a horse for specifically competing in ILHA shows. It’d be nice to utilize my knowledge in liberty and trick training, as I enjoy it, but I don’t want to put gimmicks on sale horses either. I really, really dislike how some people try to use demonstrating bridleless riding (especially on straight lines or following the arena rail!!!) to “prove” how safe the horse is or how secure the training/cues are…though I’m proud of myself when I’ve gotten a horse using its back well enough that it stays round when being ridden without a bridle on a 20m circle with correct bend, or I can do a nice, correct pivot or sidepass.
What I don’t want is to represent a horse as being able to ride bridleless just to “show off” and have a dumb pre-teen get hurt trying to replicate what they saw in the sale video.
I got really into learning tricks and liberty, because I was ambitious and wanted to “prove” that I really could train a horse. Being a bit more mature than I was, I’m rethinking the whole thing and trying to consider how best to produce a useful horse. End goal is to train and sell horses to ensure they can land themselves good homes by being good citizens.
I have good relationships with people I’ve bought horses from in the past and have also been doing a little bit of networking with breeders whose programs I like. I’m on the fence about whether it is better to start with very green or unbroke horses, or if fixing more mature horses with behavioral problems is the better route. I don’t mind retraining behavioral issues, but having helped clients with horses with behavior issues, I know that teaching the horse to not act up with me doesn’t guarantee that the behavior won’t resurface with a different person. Because the horses I work with would be intended to be sold, maybe horses who have never learned bad habits to begin with would be better for my reputation than selling something I think I “fixed” and ending up with an unhappy buyer who feels like they got screwed.
I know I want to avoid yearlings, as I know that keeping them until of age to be ridden at all will be too expensive.
So you are not in fact planning to make a profit at this? It’s more of a hobby? Does your investor know this? Are they expecting a return?
A green horse with 90 days training is still a green horse. It could be ready for a skilled amateur who can continue the training but it’s not a beginners horse. And if you put 90 days on a horse, then start selling him, you are likely to have him for at least 5 months.
Barrel racing and Western dressage are two opposite things. I can’t imagine a horse doing both well. But also to be good at either a horse needs specific talent. Can you source either?
IME observing lots of green horses it takes a year or two to get a green English dressage horse moving on correct contact with correct tempo. I don’t know what all is expected of Western dressage horses.
The more I hear the more I think your first step should be sitting down with an accountant and doing a business plan. Maybe even take a short night school course on being a small business owner. Generally the advice on COTH is that it’s pretty hard to turn a profit flipping low end horses if you have to board them. It might be possible if you have your own land or a super cheap DIY deal. Will the head trainer at your barn be expecting a commission on horses you sell out of this facility?
Remember that if you start with nice young horses direct from the breeder, your purchase price is much higher than if you are “fixing” fallen through the cracks horses or OTTB.
Anyhow I would suggest working on a business plan that sets out all the income and expenditures. Also I would suggest focusing on one discipline. I would choose the discipline that you are best at, understand, maybe competed in. I don’t see barrel racing and Western dressage as a natural fit at all. As far as the liberty work, everyone loves doing that with their own horse. But nobody buys a horse for its liberty work. So it’s kind of a distraction.
When you go to pick a discipline figure out which one is the most remunerative, and also most popular in your area. Also figure out where you realistically fit in that world.
I know a good solid coach and trainer whose niche is breaking green horses and babysitting adult beginners, sometimes the same (misguided) client. She is kept busy and has loyal clients though she has no current competition profile and doesn’t need one. There are lots of niches out there.
If your model is going to be sourcing “born broke” QH, putting 90 days on them, then selling on to ammies who will have pro help finishing them, that works. The question will be your purchase price, your selling price, and the maintenance costs while you own them. Born broke deadhead QH are not however likely to excel at either barrel racing or Western Dressage.
I don’t mean to not make a profit, and my investor and I have spoken at length about developing this on a timeline. We thought it would be informative to see how preparing two horses I already had available went, so as to collect more data as far as what to expect with marketing. I lack the social media following currently of the sale barn I worked for, so while I feel confident in my ability to train, I don’t know how long it would take to place one with a new home.
I didn’t mean to suggest that I would be training one horse to do both disciplines. I was assessing my skill sets with regard to availability of quality local horses and what disciplines are popular here. I said that I had stronger interest in quarter horses than OTTBs, and I was not sure whether it would be better to orient my business towards producing western dressage prospects or local level barrel horses. I can train in either direction and was reflecting on what the best niche for me as a trainer would be, as the trick/liberty community is very, very small and not a strong market, even though I developed skills to train for it. I never meant to suggest that I would purchase a horse with the intent to sell it as both a western dressage and a barrel horse!
You are right that I have to account for selling time as well as training time. Again, that’s why we aren’t jumping to purchasing prospects without having used pre-existing available horses as data points, nor am I quitting my “day job” immediately, as we would like to confirm that it can indeed be profitable. At the sale barn I worked for, some horses sold within minutes of listing, and I know I certainly do not have anywhere close to that social media pull.
Agreed that 90 days doesn’t make a horse finished and that I used the word amateur too loosely, definitely did not mean beginner. I think I’m envisioning a rider who is a hobbyist, who can’t afford the fanciest horse for her discipline, can ride decently, and would like a horse with a basic foundation n the direction of said discipline, with a few buttons. I also am not married to the idea of 90 days and would probably like to take longer with a horse -something I couldn’t do working for said sales barn.
Very good point about “broke broke” QH types…I think I was trying to describe more of what sort of handle said horse should have in the arena, beyond just going left, right, forwards, backwards…Regarding suggesting training barrel prospects…I’m also not really envisioning a 1D horse per se, more like one that will stop when asked to, won’t lose its mind in the alley way, and will get a novice rider around the pattern at a high lope without killing it.
I love your emphasis on a business plan with an accountant involved. I think it is a really great idea to find one with an understanding of ranch/ag/equine businesses to consult with. We’ve drafted a tentative 5 year plan, but the biggest question mark we ended up with was, could we indeed spend as little as we think we can on the timeline we wrote out to produce a horse that would bring the price we want?
This is why we’re still in the researching phase (complete with pre-existing horses to test our ideas out on, for data) and polling COTH for opinions and ideas, and we haven’t jumped in and bought ourselves a hodge-podge of project horses to lose money on.
I wanted to also add that I really like the points you’re bringing up and the questions you’re asking me. The more I have to clarify or explain, the more I see little holes or caveats I hadn’t considered or fully thought out, and it’s extremely helpful. I wanted to make sure that I stated that, as I didn’t want anything I wrote to have come off as if I was irritated. I’m probably worrying too much, but, as tone can get so easily misread in online conversations, I wanted to make sure I explicitly said that I value your input. As a stranger on the internet, you are in no way obligated to spend your time helping me figure out my little dilemma and adventure, and I’m appreciative that you’ve taken enough of an interest to help point me in good directions.
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