Thank you!!!
Totally agree here. Because I earned a raise and bonuses because of being able to train quickly at a previous sales barn, my investor and I definitely feel good about my ability to increase a low budget project horse’s value in a short amount of time. In the fall of 2021, I tuned up 13 horses consigned at the sales barn I rode for, and I took notes on each horse so I knew its age, gender, height, breed, original price, and exit sales price.
I definitely agree on the need to have a clear focus on a specific discipline. The sales barn I rode for focused on producing trail-safe family horses, but the parameters weren’t always clearly defined. Because I had a dressage-y background and was good at getting even stiff-necked ranch horses to accept contact and frame up, and most of the sale barn horses were AQHA, APHA, or grade varieties of those breed types, my boss went the route of marketing the horses as western dressage prospects. So it was definitely jarring to think, “Okay, we’re marketing western dressage horses,” and then, mid-way through preparing a horse to be listed, be surprised to find out that my boss had changed her mind and wanted to focus on putting a reining handle on the sales horses instead. Because of the lack of clear objectives and guidelines (until I finally took the initiative to draft them myself and present them to her) it was incredibly frustrating to train one way, then abruptly dovetail in a different direction…It is hard enough to produce a horse with a quality foundation/strong basics in ONE discipline in six months, much less produce an English/Western/trail riding/show ready/light and feely/kid and family safe/rides on a frame with contact/one-handed broke/bridleless/trick trained Unicorn in three to four months.
A weakness of mine is definitely in narrowing my focus.
I worked for a sales barn that followed the “Family Horse” model of preparing the horse to look like a safe, all-around mount that could do any discipline and tolerate anything. This often meant putting flashy tricks on the horses - ie, teaching non-reiners to spin, or doing attention-getting desensitization stunts like exposing the horses to sirens and smoke bombs - that gave the illusion that the horse was finished and very, very broke…but the majority of these horses were not ready to enter a reining class, nor were truly bombproof.
I did learn that I’m somewhat adept at “shaping” and am good at teaching maneuvers or skills fairly quickly via conditioning. However, now that I’ve practiced teaching a hodge-podge of tricks and movements to a variety of horses, I’m not really sure what discipline I best fit into.
What I do know is that I want to produce a higher quality and valuable horse than what I felt I was helping my old job put out.
We definitely need to make what we do have on paper clearer and more complete.
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HORSE SALES BUSINESS UPDATE: @clanter and @Scribbler, my investor and I applied for a business mentor through SCORE, subscribed to their e-newsletter, and have been going through the free webinars available on the SBA as well. We identified a few to watch that seemed most pertinent to us, one such title being “Business Bookkeeping Basics,” and have decided to do a lot more research and wait to draw up a fresh, complete plan with our mentor (still waiting to be assigned) per the mentor’s guidelines and advice, before buying or selling anything for or related to the business venture.
Cannot thank you both enough for the valuable input.
In the meantime, I’m also going to put some more thought into what my focus/discipline/skillset as a trainer really ought to be, on an individual and personal level, and reflect on how that relates to the proposed venture.
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I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned this, but definitely make sure you also have liability insurance. It just takes one person falling off while trying a horse and coming after you to make life miserable.
I haven’t read all the responses, but I wanted to share something I did.
Knowing that Facebook is…challenging re: horse sales, I made my horse a simple website using Wix. So easy. It’s literally drag and drop. And free! Then I linked to the site from all my Facebook posts. That way, I could include photos, videos, price, lots of FAQs, etc. This is how I avoided a zillion people wasting my time, because all the info was there.
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Making an actual profit on a sale horse is hard. Start tracking what the types of horses in your area that are similar to what you might produce are listed for (and what they sell for when you are able to find that out). Then work backwards to solve for the purchase price and profit…
Horse listed for $10,000.
Subtract your one-time fees: advertising fees, dentist, shots, Coggins, your pre-purchase exam, sourcing expenses (gas, time), etc. Let’s say hypothetically $800.
Then subtract your monthly expenses: board (or feed/labor/share of fixed costs if at home), farrier. Let’s say hypothetically $1200 for 90 days.
Then subtract your training expenses: Let’s say hypothetically $20/ride, 4 rides a week, for 13 weeks = $1040.
That’s $3040 in hypothetical expenses. That means that if you sell the horse for $10,000, $6,960 is purchase price/profit. If you bought that horse for $2,500, you’d make $4460. If you bought that horse for $7,000, you’d lose $40.
