How do people afford to consistently show multiple horses?

[Ponyplusaninch]

Throwing out here that anyone who’s been impacted by a RIF recently: I do free resume reviews (everything else I do is not free ). Please feel free to DM me and I can go through a google doc of your resume and make notes on what’s good, what could be changed, etc.

Resumes are more important than people think, because HMs and recruiters literally make a decision in less than 7 seconds whether or not someone is qualified–it’s a crazy stat a lot of folks don’t think about, and so there is truly an art to having an impactful one page resume that gets you in the door for that first convo.

COTH admins, if you need to remove this I get it because this isn’t LinkedIn where you can advertise services (free or otherwise), but I figured I’d offer up to the horsey community here if it’s helpful.

[Tini_Sea_Soldier1]

I actually took a break from the industry bc sales jobs were such a roller coaster and the stability that I had found 7 years ago seemed to no longer exisit regardless of if I went to work at a start-up or an established household name tech company.

The ageism is a real thing. Everyone I know that’s out of work is 35+ and the more seasoned independent contractor that PonyPlus referred to earlier is now taking a 20% base paycut minimum if they’re job-searching. That’s if they can even make it through to a screener or a hiring manager. TBH, the executives seem to be in safer and less at-risk roles than middle managers and ICs and I truly believe it’s because they’re just throwing their staff under the bus for bad leadership. The absolute redundancy at the higher levels is astounding, but yet they all seem to survive the layoffs.

My big suggestion is healthcare, accounting, or finance. People will continue to need humans to help with their healthcare needs, banking needs, and investment guidance. Those aren’t totally recession-proof, but they seem to be a lot less volatile than marketing, advertising, and tech right now.

[phoenixrises]

The field I work in didn’t exist when I graduated. Keep learning, learn to learn, and keep creating evidence that you do so. Try not to spend everything you make on horses because there will be downturns. Especially for women in tech, it can be helpful to build your reputation by speaking at conferences and attending professional events. Make lots of professional friends and stay in touch.

Same for me. I’m solidly middle age. When I went to university Product managers didn’t exist. Quantitative trading didn’t exist. What I did was this:

1. Learn how to learn. The biggest deficit I see in talent today is that folks of all ages do not know how they learn best, and this can inevitably pigeon hole someone down the line. Figure out what the process is for you to learn new, strange unfamiliar material. Do you do best as a visual learner? An audio learner? How do you mitigate mistakes when mastering new subject matter? Who do you go to when you need help? How effective are you at finding additional info? This will set you up well for any career, particularly any high level career.

I figured out how to learn new things that no one else where I was working had figured out. I figured out how to make stuff happen. If you ask my team member what I do, they say she makes our jobs easier. And that my friends is valuable.

20 year old me had NO IDEA I was good at learning new things, and getting everything organized to make sure everyone else could do their job. And frankly 20 year old me probably wasn’t good at it. But I took jobs, learned about myself and here I am. However, I lost a lot of earning power in the first 15ish years trying to figure it out. So I do recommend being faster at this than me.

[Ponyplusaninch]

BlockquoteTBH, the executives seem to be in safer and less at-risk roles than middle managers and ICs and I truly believe it’s because they’re just throwing their staff under the bus for bad leadership. The absolute redundancy at the higher levels is astounding, but yet they all seem to survive the layoffs.

Can confirm this is 100% true. It’s ugly. I’ve had to learn to be real detached from outcomes and also not take personal offense when someone tries to throw me/my work under the bus. Lots of therapy and lots of self assurance and awareness

This behavior is also why I see A LOT of folks moving to being independent contractors and not staying in salaried positions. They have more power over their career, and if an exec tries to throw them under the bus, they can just say “duck you” and move long to somewhere their work is more appreciated.

[joliemom_again]

@Ponyplusaninch

Start understanding economics now and building a foundation of what is trending in industry. These trends are always going to be changing, so the point of this is to develop the habit of being abreast of these things. Get a subscription to The Economist and start reading it. Subscribe to Freakonomics Podcast. Listen to Planet Money and Marketplace. See if your school offers free newspaper subscriptions you can digitally access like WSJ and NYTimes. Figure out what your sources are that you can digest and build the habit of reading them, whether that’s 1x a morning, while working out, weekend news only, etc.

I can’t hit the like button enough on your entire post, especially this piece of advice. I’m a librarian at a B-school, and my advice to anyone interested in their career, the economy, the workplace, and industry is to listen to good podcasts (I’ll add Marketplace with Kai Ryssdal) and keep up with the news using sources like the NYT and WSJ as well as the Economist, and Bloomberg.com which all have quality news desks around the world. Then make your way to more specialized to your interest sources.

As you apply for admission, check out the university library’s offerings. Beyond the Times and WSJ, do they have access to databases such as PitchBook or Capital IQ? What sources do they have for industry/market research? Do they offer workshops for career resources to help you best leverage these tools?

Anyhoo, enough of me yapping. This has really turned into a great conversation.

[mika0116]

More… way more.

I know 3 execs in the oil industry / ready mix concrete and their bonuses are in the single figure millions per year.

[mika0116]

Accounting does not pay high even at Big 4 - Senior Managers (about 10-15 years of work experience) are making less than $250k a year in NYC/LA - you have to make ED or Partner to make much more than that.

I am former CPA (worked for 2 of 4 Big 4), turned Private Equity (buy & sell side for an Investment Bank), now turned tech.

Finance - like my experience in PE / IB made good $$ – but very, very few people make it into PE/IB without being a “pipeline type” aka male, Ivy undergrad or top 5 MBA, typically white or asian, and have connections in the industry. Less than 2% of the finance / PE/ IB industry who make money aka deal side not back office are women.

And the income is exceedingly variable - it depends in the valuation and the closing purchase price as we are paid percentages of that. You can work for years on smaller deals and your bonuses can be like $90k vs a peer’s being $400k+ that year - in early career you have NO control over what deals you work on so you cannot manifest a higher bonus. Even in mid stages there is so much politicking you have to do to get onto the deals that you estimate will be Big $$$ - and as a woman you’re already fighting an extremely uphill battle. I have 100% compromised my morals (lying to MD’s wife about his affair that I knew about – affair partner would hang out with us & stay in his hotel during deals) to get on deals that would get me more money.

In those high paying jobs there was NO time to ride. I took 7+ years off horses because I was working 90 hour weeks and on flights to NYC, London, etc. 2x a month (40ish flights a year).

It made me into an asshole who was addicted to substances and absolutely insufferable to be around because I had adopted disgusting, often misogynistic & elitist behavior that kept getting me promoted, but it did pay for a large 6 figure deposit on a home once I quit.

“Regular finance jobs” like wealth management with Fidelity or large companies like Schwab, etc pay shit. Family Office / Hedge funds pay way more, but typically they require the pipeline above / work experience doing something more “prestigious”.

You’re correct on the job security though for accounting and finance. Especially for things like PE/IB – its an up (promo) or out culture - so there isn’t such thing as layoffs because the turnover is relatively high due to the workload and general expectation of exponential growth as an employee or you’re fired.

In tech I make slightly less than my PE average per year (but I work less than half the hours and don’t travel more than 4x a year for strategic off / onsites). I don’t have the same potential to have a REALLY BIG year, but that is okay with me at this stage in life. As said above - I am very very fortunate compared to the general US population. I’m okay with top 1.9% vs top 1% and not having a soul.

I’m sober and living a really generally good life where I can use my brain to not be… super evil.

Cannot comment on healthcare, but I am friendly with several burned out general surgeons…

[Knubbsy]

@Ponyplusaninch

With that in mind, my job is always on the table. Typically HR/Talent Aq jobs go first when companies want to downsize, as cutting wage expenses is the quickest way to make an impact on EBITA. So that’s something else you have to think about in your future: how much risk are you willing to take on? And what are you prepared to do to mitigate that risk?

This is playing out in the humanitarian & development sectors. We’re facing significant fundraising shortfalls across the board (both state-based funding and individuals) and in my org’s own layoffs it was: senior- and mid-level HR/talent, senior-level tech, and then me (the most expensive person in a research team funded by the impacted budget). A YR that I am “the cool aunt” to was told to switch her degree to HR because it’s a sure thing and I am emphatically telling her not to do that, she doesn’t have the risk tolerance for it, but I have a hard time seeing anything as a sure bet anymore anyway.

(I also wouldn’t recommend anything non-profit related for someone wanting to show multiple horses but that should be pretty obvious - I only can afford a horse because my spouse is a FrontEnd Dev who got in at the right time, most of our marriage I’ve brought in 1/3 of our HHI)

[coffeehag]

Now, you’ve likely earned the ability to do that with a lot of sweat equity and capital built up at the office over the years

Respectfully, this is the key piece. Sure, it’s doable. IF you’re a higher-level exec who isn’t going to get a sideways look for taking a client call in show clothes or with a grungy background.

I work in advertising and am at a mid-Senior level where I can take calls at shows – but internal ones. I could never take a client call in that environment, and even then, working without two monitors def inhibits the level of work I can do…

[coffeehag]

If you could DM me your email, I’ll send you mine!

[coffeehag]

do they need someone in marketing?

[mika0116]

Possibly! My husband is also in Growth (for Developer Products) DM me - we have a decent network

[Horsehusband]

This is a great post! Agree with 100% of it.

Sure, there are a lot of people in horses that have generational wealth or parents sit in the C-Suite of a Fortune 1000 company, but there are also a lot of folks who do it through hard work, making strategic choices, and some sacrifice.

As an example, my wife has multiple horses and shows fairly regularly (Probably 12-15 times a year). Both of us work in the corporate world, are sub 40 years old, and pay for it without family help/money.

Now the how.

We’ll start with hard work

Both of us worked hard to get an education in fields that we knew paid well (Both have undergrad degrees and MBAs). I highlight this because it’s relevant as we all know that horses take serious money and spending money on an education for fields that don’t pay well even though they might be a passion for you won’t get you to you to a place that that you can financially afford the sport (Unless you have family money).

Strategic Choices

Pivoted both of our careers to mostly remote (Thank you Covid), but we do have to occasionally go in or travel to client sites.

We transitioned our careers to metrics-based work, where performance is all that really matters. I do management consulting and have worked myself to a high enough level that my work is mostly selling new projects and maintaining relationships with large clients and my wife pivoted from M&A work to technical sales. This matters because it’s next to impossible to tell somebody who is crushing all of their metrics (Sales, Chargability, etc.) at work that they can’t take a couple days off or work evenings instead of mornings.

Live in a Midwest rural low-cost of living area about an hour from a major city. This makes our money go a lot further and actually allowed us to buy a horse property and bring the horses home.

Show without trainer/barn (50% or more of your show fees come from you trainer/barn)

Sacrifices

Our lives are more or less work and horses

Live in a rural area (I’m a city kid at heart)

Horses at home which means we do all of their care and makes traveling together/at the same time pretty impossible (Decent farm sitters are impossible to find).

Weekends and Free time are devoted to horses, horse care, and farm maintenance. Really no options for vacations outside of horseshows.

Intangibles

Highlighting these as I know not everyone could handle/do things exactly the way we do

We buy young horses (Usually 3-4 yrs old and barely backed) and bring them up the levels. She’s now brought several up to 1.30+.

We have a great trainer that is willing to come to the farm bi-weekly for lessons and isn’t weird about us showing on our own

Saying all of this because it is doable but will definitely acknowledge not easy without some major dedication.

[mika0116]

One thing to mention

How did you pay for undergrad and MBAs
Did you go to a state school, have scholarship (this is what i did), did your employer pay for your MBA?

Did your parents pay for your education (undergrad + MBA is about $400k-$500k total all said and done given $50k per year of undergrad (which is now low for non-state schools) and $200k for full-time top MBA programs bc you generally cannot work during them (except for UChicago Booth)

[Horsehusband]

Agree - Our jobs paid for MBAs. Wife took loans for undergrad and I was lucky enough to have family take care of my state school ed.

[trakehners]

@mika0116

How did you pay for undergrad and MBAs
Did you go to a state school, have scholarship (this is what i did), did your employer pay for your MBA?

Co-signed. I was lucky in that my dad was faculty at my university so I went to school for (mostly) free (aside from housing and textbooks, and I commuted my last two years so only paid for parking). I had some loans when I graduated but my minimum payment is less than $200 a month and I’m paying them off several years early. This has been a huge part of me being able to have a horse and show. If you graduate with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans, that’s going to eat up your monthly budget a lot more than sub-$20k over 10 years will.

I should also say, OP, that when I say I make good money, I mean I make six figures starting with a 1 and am a single person in a fairly LCOL area where my monthly board is $400 and an hour private lesson with a 5* eventer costs me $60. I’ll never believe that six figures isn’t a lot of money—it’s more than my parents have ever made in their lives—but my salary goes significantly farther here in western PA than it would if I lived in NYC/California/Chicago/wherever else. It’s also a horsey wasteland where we’re driving 3+ hours to get to any significant show facility, so… trade-offs.

People are offering some great advice in this thread—s/o to the COTH community!

[Ponyplusaninch]

I worked my tail off to get significant scholarship for undergrad so I didn’t have to take out loans (it was a liberal arts degree at a smaller, lesser known school at the time).

For my masters, I came out with about $90k worth of debt and paid it off in 3 years working a commission based position. I cried like every day and didn’t do much of anything because I never had the money to do it. But when I was done paying, I celebrated by picking up riding lessons again and eventually getting my horse (who was cheaper than my used car, my roof repairs, my new HVAC, and a plethora of other expensive adult costs).

Caveat on MBAs–y’all don’t go chasing those unless you have full scholarship (lol) or your company is willing to pay for it. I’ve seen too many people go get MBAs thinking it’s going to be life changing for their salaries, and the reality is it’s not. It’s great for networking, it’s great for being able to understand more how businesses function, and definitely helpful if you want to be an entrepreneur. But it is not an automatic 10% raise. So be careful what you’re investing in when it comes to your continuing education.

[mika0116]

Im 34 and never got an MBA because I already had a CPA license in 3 states and did my masters in accounting while in undergrad which is required for CPA licensure (I could have graduated undergrad in 2.5 years but instead used my undergrad academic scholarship to cover my Masters).

I was already working in IB/PE when I was 26/27 ish thinking about an MBA because my GMAT score was going to expire. The Principal of the IB I was working for laughed at me when I floated the idea of getting my MBA… he went on saying:

“you already have the job most MBAs want & its only worth going if you get into Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, or Booth (possibly Haas) – why would you give up a mid 6 figure salary (so say low end of $300k+ per year job + full time Top MBA $250k+ with living expenses etc.) for a 2 year MBA = $300k+ $300k+ $250k = just under $1M of “opportunity cost” to basically land the EXACT same job with the exact same pay”.

He continued saying “if you make that decision I won’t hire you back because then you’d prove to me you’re an absolute dipshit”

I never went, because honestly … teaching myself to code & leveraging my valuation modeling skills to transition into tech via being a DS /ML and then subsequently AI technical SME was a far better option. Caveat - I like math - I basically had a math minor because I took it for fun as electives)

IMHO MBAs are generally useless for those with undergrad technical business (non-marketing), accounting/ econ/ econometrics degrees - more of a check the box exercise for an employer looking to crown a Manager/ an Exec OR a networking opportunity

My Principal was correct - had a peer leave the Big 4 Txn Advisory group same time I did. I went into IB/PE and he went to Dartmouth for MBA full time and did not work - 2 years later peer invites me to HH to (I think gloat) he got a Consulting gig paying him maybe $250k/year. When I disclosed my most recent year’s income (significantly more than his $250k), he got up and left and left me the bill.

[Horsehusband]

Agree with this 100% - I got it because my company paid for it. If I had to go into debt for it 99% of the time I would say it’s not worth it.

[trakehners]

@Ponyplusaninch

Caveat on MBAs–y’all don’t go chasing those unless you have full scholarship (lol) or your company is willing to pay for it. I’ve seen too many people go get MBAs thinking it’s going to be life changing for their salaries, and the reality is it’s not.

Bolding for emphasis, because this is a huge point.

A friend of my brother’s took out a $200k promissory note to get an MBA from Cornell. He’s still working as a consultant, same level as he was before he got the MBA, no real salary premium, while my brother was just promoted to Director in strategic finance at a very well-known consulting firm (not McKinsey) with nothing but his business/econ undergrad degrees from a mid-tier business school (which I also graduated from) because he’s just really freaking good at what he does and has spent the last decade working very hard (he works harder than I do, but he also doesn’t ride a horse five days a week, lol).

I have a CPA license and I’ve definitely been able to leverage that, but most of my career success has honestly come from building relationships with certain external recruiters (and definitely not all of the ones that contact me). Every job I’ve had since college except my initial one in public accounting has come to me via a recruiter on LinkedIn. Cultivate relationships with them where you can, even if they don’t have the right job for you right now. I was laid off earlier this year and was able to leverage my existing relationship with a recruiter into a new position (making more money) in less than a month.

Also, just because, I have an anthropology degree on top of the accounting degree. It’s what I actually love and I only did it because I had the free tuition benefit, but it sets me apart in both applications and interviews. Sometimes that’s in a bad way, sometimes good, but I don’t want to work anywhere that doesn’t view it as a good thing that I have training to think in a different way than your typical business school student regardless. Extra degrees and credentials can definitely help but you really have to weigh the cost/benefit of them and have an actual idea of what you’re going to do with it, and not take out $200k in debt for something with no guarantees.