Barn Owners- What do you charge/discount your trainers?

[mymarekitty]

Trying to get a feel of what I should be charging my incoming trainers…

Do you give a discount on stalls for trainer’s personal horses? Or do you charge a flat rate a month? My thought was potentially charging a flat rate per month for x amount of stalls, regardless of whether they fill those stalls or not. But that leads in to additional questions…

Do you include a charge in that rate for arena usage? Said trainer would be having a good amount of lessons in which I would like to have go through the barn itself, not directly to her. I figured maybe just take a percentage per lesson, instead of charging an arena fee. Thoughts?

Trainer also has a few already established clients that would be bringing their horses for boarding. I feel like I would just charge them normal board rate and she can charge extra for her training, etc. However, do I reward her somehow for bringing in new boarders?

So many questions, so many different ways to go with them. I am mainly just looking to see what you have experienced or would do in a situation with having another trainer at your barn. I obviously do not want to be taken advantage of but really get along with this person and want to be able to build my barn up with more boarders, etc.

Thank you in advance!

[Scribbler]

Well, you can rent the trainer a block of dry stalls and they do all feeding and cleaning. They board their clients and take home any profits.

Or you can do and charge full board for all their clients and give them a discount on their personal horses.

I am not sure where the profit center is when you have a separate trainer that isn’t part of the business. Ring fees wont add up to much.

I expect the discount on board would more than swallow any reasonable ring fee income. And do existing boarders need to pay a ring fed to if they take lessons with this trainer?

[fordtraktor]

I only discount for work done in exchange. I charge the full board rate for everything. The profit is minimal on boarding as it is.

[mymarekitty]

I probably should have noted that a few of their personal horses are also their lesson horses- not sure if this makes a difference.

I like the idea of charging full board and then discounting work in exchange, however I feel like sometimes that can get a bit muddy because of what people say they do/effort put in. She does drag the ring with her own tractor at the moment. That would be a discount, however I could also drag.

I should probably ETA that I myself am a trainer, however I have note yet developed clientele in this area. However, my main focus at the start will be training horses, not quite as many lessons. We would have a do not compete clause.

[Wonders12]

One big question (for both of you) to explore is will she be a client or a partner?

By that, I mean is she going to be looking to you to fix everything and make improvements like a client would? If a nail is sticking out of a board, is she going to text you a photo asking you to fix it, or is she going to pull it out herself? If she is looking to you to fix it, (and that is completely reasonable if that’s the relationship you have) I would charge her normal board and a ring/lesson fee.

If she’s going to be a partner who will call you to a say a horse looks likes it’s colicing, but she has already pulled hay and is hand walking him, then that’s different. Or if you leave town for a weekend and she’s home, if she will look after the place, then I think some element of a discount on her personal horses is nice. A common setup is, “for every X number of boarders they have, they receive a discount on 1 stall.”

Both situations work, but you both need to know where you stand ahead of time. And at the end of the day, everything has to work out on the spreadsheet. So run your numbers. A discount is pointless if you’re going to be losing money and will have to increase your rates/close down because of it.

[mymarekitty]

@Wonders12

One big question (for both of you) to explore is will she be a client or a partner?

By that, I mean is she going to be looking to you to fix everything and make improvements like a client would? If a nail is sticking out of a board, is she going to text you a photo asking you to fix it, or is she going to pull it out herself? If she is looking to you to fix it, (and that is completely reasonable if that’s the relationship you have) I would charge her normal board and a ring/lesson fee.

If she’s going to be a partner who will call you to a say a horse looks likes it’s colicing, but she has already pulled hay and is hand walking him, then that’s different. Or if you leave town for a weekend and she’s home, if she will look after the place, then I think some element of a discount on her personal horses is nice. A common setup is, “for every X number of boarders they have, they receive a discount on 1 stall.”

Both situations work, but you both need to know where you stand ahead of time. And at the end of the day, everything has to work out on the spreadsheet. So run your numbers. A discount is pointless if you’re going to be losing money and will have to increase your rates/close down because of it.

This. I love this. She seems to be open to both, as we have briefly touched on both of these ideas (briefly, so exact numbers, obligations, etc would have to be worked out still) but I have ran numbers on my own to be able to get it to work. Ideally, I would love if she would be a partner because it seems as that is how she is already feeling. Going with this, I would then need to decide what seems reasonable to discount her, as well as how many clients she would need to bring in to receive that discount.

[Lucassb]

What is your goal in this arrangement?

Do you need/want your stalls filled? If so, I might work on a sliding scale so that each client she brings in gets her X discount on her stalls, incentivizing her to fill them up. (In this case you also need to discuss how to handle the eventual situation of the problematic boarder that you want out - the horse is tearing up the property, the boarder/client is problematic, etc. Handle this in advance.) You could also offer a one time bonus for bringing in new boarding clients - she gets X in return for each client she brings in, perhaps after the client has been there for a certain amount of time.

If you want to run the lesson payments through your business, remember the tax implications of that revenue when you think about how to handle the fees.

In a partnership situation, also discuss issues like how maintenance, improvements, etc will be handled. It is your property, so any improvements to the facility improve your investment. They would likely also improve her business to an extent - new arena footing helps to attract clients, for example -but the impact may be unequal. So discuss how the costs and work will be divided and think about how to resolve differences about those issues ahead of time.

Otherwise, you may find down the road that she comes to you and says, “hey, the footing is really becoming a problem. We need to buy FancyFooting or all my customers are going to leave!” You may or may not be able to write a check for FancyFooting and she may or may not want to participate in that expense, because at the end of the day it is improving YOUR property - or she may be thinking, “well, but I am actually only planning to stay here 6 more months before moving to FL to buy my own property, so I don’t want to invest here…”

[Sansena]

Regardless of your agreement, be sure trainer is insured

[Scribbler]

How does a partnership work?

Is she going to buy into your business and have an equity stake? If so vet her thoroughly. And what happens if she decides to leave or sell? How will you make business decisions?

If she is not a true financial and legal partner, what incentive is there for her to help make capital improvements and repairs to the place?

[Goforward]

As a trainer, I’ve had my business in a few barns. In all situations, my clients paid full board and I charged training separately, directly to the client. There weren’t any extra fees for those horses. If I had a trailer in lesson, the client paid an arena fee directly to the farm.

[mymarekitty]

@Goforward

As a trainer, I’ve had my business in a few barns. In all situations, my clients paid full board and I charged training separately, directly to the client. There weren’t any extra fees for those horses. If I had a trailer in lesson, the client paid an arena fee directly to the farm.

Did you have horses of your own that you boarded there as well?

[Goforward]

I paid full board for my own horses.

[costco_muffins]

@mymarekitty

Did you have horses of your own that you boarded there as well?

I did the same when I boarded my lesson horses as well. I paid full board on mine, clients paid full board on theirs, and if I happened to use a farm-owned or boarder-owned horse I paid the horse provider a % of the lesson fee in addition (this was typically around 30%). Haul in lessons paid a haul in fee.

[mymarekitty]

@costco_muffins

I did the same when I boarded my lesson horses as well. I paid full board on mine, clients paid full board on theirs, and if I happened to use a farm-owned or boarder-owned horse I paid the horse provider a % of the lesson fee in addition (this was typically around 30%). Haul in lessons paid a haul in fee.

Okay, so no discount then? How normal is it for the trainer to receive a discount for new boarding clients that they bring in…I was figuring if I tell her for every 2 boarders she brings in, she would receive $100 off her own board (she has multiple horses)…

The thing is that apparently she used to get a good amount off of board with the old owner so I don’t want to upset her, however I am trying to run a business and I’m not about to just give away board.

[costco_muffins]

@mymarekitty

Okay, so no discount then? How normal is it for the trainer to receive a discount for new boarding clients that they bring in…I was figuring if I tell her for every 2 boarders she brings in, she would receive $100 off her own board (she has multiple horses)…

The thing is that apparently she used to get a good amount off of board with the old owner so I don’t want to upset her, however I am trying to run a business and I’m not about to just give away board.

I would run your numbers. For instance, I know that I have right around $1800 in expenses per month for my farm accounting for insurance, taxes, and general farm upkeep. Then each horse is a hard cost of $175-$250 depending on how much grain they eat with an average horse costing me $200 per month to keep alive.

So with 1 horse on my farm, his cost is $2000 to keep alive per month.
With 2 horses, each horse costs me 1100 per month.
With 3 horses, each horse costs me $800 per month
With 4 horses, each horse costs me $650 per month.

Or I can think of it as each horse for the first 6 costs me $500 per month and each horse after that only costs me around $200. So after horse six, I make a $300 profit on my $500 board… Not factoring in that I don’t pay board on my own horses.

Right now our farm has 10 horses, 7 are boarded or full leased and 3 are on my payroll with a monthly board cost of $500. So my hard farm cost is $3800 (calculated at $1800 + 10x$200). My board income is $3500. If I sold or leased another one of mine I would be in the black not the red. (This, of course, does not account for the lessons, training, showing, etc, other forms of income I have that offset these expenses… and I don’t discount the fact that I CHOSE to add the third horse).

If I were you I would do this kind of math and see if offering her a discount actually helps you out or not. The break even point for boarding is way higher than you would expect. Each horse not paying its own board is a financial drain. I was always frustrated with boarding barns and how expensive they seemed (especially how it seemed like the boarders were subsidizing numerous farm owner horses) until I was on the other side

[goodmorning]

I would do the math first. You are professional #1 and have a massive overhead. Both boarders + trainers are clients. There is so little profit margin in board, are you laying yourself a living wage? Renting blocks of stalls may actually be more profitable & less of a headache. The wood chewed, the poop in arenas, in paddocks - make sure this all gets tended to daily, etc. Insurance costs to you? Do you have equipment they will be using?

I think it’s easy to want to help another trainer out but as a farm owner all the stuff is quite expensive.

[Miss_Motivation]

Don’t forget all the other parts of your potential deal:

-free or reduced cost tack room?
-storage space for her trucks and trailers?
-storage space for her show trunks/show stuff?
-costs for new equipment like use of/new jumps or updated footing?
-special feeds/feeding?
-share of advertising/web/social media marketing?
-Etc.