Probably applies to every profession.
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Thanks for sharing that. It is an interesting article. I am left wondering, though, how the author envisions doing less, and specifically taking on fewer clients but doing more for each. To do that, but still enjoy a better quality of life, sure sounds like it involves raising prices. That’s certainly better for the trainers but it’s worse for the clients. I don’t blame Matt Brown for wanting a better situation for himself and it’s great that he has clients who can support his new business model, but advocating for it as an industry-wide approach is a little tone-deaf to clients who are often struggling with the rising costs.
It’s a difficult reality that, as much as we are friends and supporters of our trainers and coaches, we are also their clients – and at least financially, that can often mean that we have competing interests. For some clients, a more boutique and more expensive model may actually be best. But not for others. It’s important for the industry to have a variety of options, and for all of those options to be fair to the horses and humans involved.
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Everyone is commenting that costs should be raised to counter rising prices and overwork. But the article is accompanied by one citing lower attendance at horse camps due to people reducing their spending (partially to counter those same rising prices). I don’t think this industry can afford to raise costs.
These two things were also wedged on my feed between a fun discussion on horse prices that frankly mostly made it clear that not many starter clients who want to buy a horse (most already don’t) will be able to do so. Shouldn’t be too hard to “do less” then.
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Good points, however there are also sweet spots where costs can be kept manageable and taking in more horses results in more costs that then need to be passed on to clients.
For example I know a BO who will only board the number of horses they can comfortably manage with their partner (and some occasional coverage from family and long term boarders). They have the space to take in more horses, but that increases the workload to where they need to hire help which comes with a whole other set of headaches and expenses.
Basically economies of scale are not linear, so you have to be smart about when it makes sense to expand or not.
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I have a friend who has been a successful pro for 30 years and has never boarded a horse for anyone, all her clients are at boarding facilities. Only 15-20 horses in full training max which allows her to have one staff person and maybe a junior or ammie part time working off training. Works 5 days a week and lives off property. She does one buying trip to Europe a year and one away show a month. She’s always made a good living at it and has had the same clients for decades. She also has a life, a husband, children, hobbies of her own etc.
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I know someone who makes a decent living with five school ponies on a small farm. The schoolies are all the barefoot easy keeper type that live out, and they do two lessons per day Monday thru Friday. No horse shows, just low level recreational riding. Friend has two horses of her own and weekend help from a couple teenage girls in the program. No boarders, no big rig or anything fancy, but the farm is workmanlike and functional and she has a full book of students for those four days. And time to ride her own, or do other things on the weekends with her partner and kids. She told me she grosses the same amount of money that she did when she taught school, with a whole lot more free time and less headaches.
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As a freelancer with a desk job as a writer and editor, I’ve been working harder for less money in an increasingly crowded market, which has been killing me since the pandemic. The goal is always as you get older to be able to work less for more money, but that’s only possible if the market supports that. If trainers can do that…they certainly should, the sooner the better. This is why so many people complain about trainers focusing on higher-end clients, but it is truthfully usually a smarter business decision.
The only alternative is to keep your operating costs very, very low, which can be challenging in the horse world (although there are some examples in this thread about how some people do that). This means being very unsentimental and realistic about what you can afford to do, and not keeping too many personal horses on the payroll who can’t work and also not keeping clients who are flaky or just not high value.
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First off there is a reality in the United States that horse ownership and equestrian sport participation has been dropping significantly over the last few decades. I can’t remember the organization here in VA but they do a equestrian industry survey every few years. In their latest survey they found that horse ownership had dropped over 30% in the last two decades. The number of people keeping horses on farms has also dropped significantly.
Cost is definitely an issue but the other big issue was loss of land to development.
I would add a third and this is just my opinion. Parents have gotten, IMHO, overprotective. So any sports deemed more likely to incur more injuries are going by the wayside.
My point is that keeping prices and therefore margins low is self defeating. You are trying to keep low end clients in a shrinking market. A low margin business model is fine if you can drive volume (e.g. WALMart). I work with two different trainers. They are aged 30-40. Both are significantly underpriced for lessons. I’ve told them that but they are afraid of losing clients but what good is a client when you are losing money on them? What is the benefit of working yourself to death for little or no money?
Raising prices, with all due respect to CBoylen, is a good way to improve your margins and weed out low value clients.
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Not every customer is the right customer for a trainer, and that’s ok.
I’d love to find a trainer that I could pay to travel to my farm and give a couple training rides a week and a lesson or two.
I’ve seen the writing on the wall for a while and purchased my own farm so I can enjoy horse ownership longer. I won’t pay over X amount for board/training, not because I can’t, but there is only so much money I’m willing to set on fire.
Folks are getting priced out.
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And those “low value clients?” Should they just not ride at all? Should the horse world be even less accessible than it is now?
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For what it’s worth, my farrier has deliberately structured his business such that he can “do less” - which means he’s able to take as long at a visit as he feels the horse needs because he’s seeing a handful of clients a day, and he doesn’t have to cancel because his back can’t handle the work. His pricing supports this model. We had a conversation about it when he was reconfiguring his business model- he spoke with some longtime clients to get a sense of what the market would bear and whether the restructure would be successful. I stick with him because he’s outstanding, he understands what my horse needs, he makes my horse happy, and I figure I can pay him or pay the vet.
Frankly, I kinda wish my current barn (trainers and staff) would do less. They are wonderful horse people who do good work, they work very long hours, and I worry about them burning out and leaving either the farm or the industry. I’m lucky to be able to afford higher prices and would pay them if it meant that they could make a stable living, have better work-life balance, and feel like they had satisfying and sustainable careers. (I’m currently a low-value client if value = financially subsidizing the operation. I board a retired horse. I don’t take lessons or go to horse shows. I will eventually become a lesson client and possibly lease, but I am likely priced out of horse ownership for the next 5-10 years. My value to the program is in knowing when to pick up a broom and when not to be a pain in the ass.)
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I knew a farrier many years ago who would joke that his grand plan was to gradually increase his price from whatever the going rate was at that time, which I think was maybe $200 or $250 per horse, up to $1000 a horse.
And he figured enough people would be turned off by the price change that he would lose customers, but he would end up shoeing just one horse a day for the same amount of money.
I don’t know how that plan worked out for him. Lol.
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Really since the 1950s this has been the trend, that is why Ralston Purina sold its animal feed business in 1986 as they then believed the trend was going to to continue.
Around here there are enough millionaires to support a trifling equine industry
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Another issue is the loss of straight boarding barns and the rise of trainer owned facilities where everyone is a revenue source and a low-value client if they just want to own a horse and ride it for fun. Large boarding barns that used economy of scale kept horse ownership affordable for a lot of people for a very long time, especially kids, trail and pleasure riders who where their bread and butter.
Of course so did upper middle class single income couples where one spouse ran a horse “business” that never made any money and was more of a hobby and that socioeconomic class is long gone nowadays.
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It’s an interesting discussion for sure. I think it was in George Morris’s memoir (not 100% sure on that) there was a mention of some advice he had given a young professional who was renting stalls from him and had too many clients. The advice he gave was to the effect of “double your prices - the good clients will stay, the other half will leave, and you’ll be making the same money for half the work.”
It sounds great in theory, but I do wonder if we’re reaching a tipping point in an industry that is already so mind blowingly expensive. I once loved showing and increasingly find myself just… not signing up anymore. It feels so frivolous to blow $1,000 in entries on a weekend at a rated show. Same with clinics - I’m happy to spend $100 for a GOOD lesson with my FEI Dressage instructor. But I’m seeing $500-$600 clinics for 45 minute sessions and it’s just too much imo. I understand everyone needs to make money, but I’m increasingly saying “not worth it” when presented with these opportunities.
I recently looked up an old trainer of mine in a very rural area. She is a good rider, nice person! Used to winter in Ocala and again, a good rider but definitely not a mainstream name and only ever competed to around 1.10m and some green hunters. She is great with kids and has a nice little program attending unrated shows with her fleet of lesson horses and boarders, but I only provide this background to illustrate this is NOT a high end show barn or somewhere you would go if you had A show aspirations - for years they didn’t even have a ring onsite! A HUNDRED BUCKS FOR A LESSON! Again, this is a low level beginner/intermediate program in a rural area (not Westchester, NY or a CT suburb 
). When does the straw break the camels back?!?! How can parents afford weekly lessons for their horse crazy kids? About 8 years ago it was $50/hour there with the main trainer and they really pushed everyone for 2× week lessons minimum and participation in barn shows. The big names can charge whatever, and there will always be someone willing to pay it. Perhaps I’m just in the wrong tax bracket but I worry these smaller barns are going to price themselves into extinction.
I say all this as someone who used to teach lessons and worked in the horse industry for several years. I don’t envy professionals! Not an easy life.
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Having had this scenario come up in the last several years as a client, yeah, there is a tipping point. I am doing well in upper middle class wages, but a 100% increase is substantial. $1-2k more per month means I’d need to stop putting money into savings and retirement and asking my partner if he’s OK not traveling as much as we like to. Those are some tall orders (and not necessarily smart money decisions) that I personally am not in a position to do.
I think the obvious culprits have been called out as to how this is impacting both clients and barn owners/trainers. Increasing cost of land, increasing cost of living (consumer prices another 2.7% higher than this time last year), increasing cost of horse care in general. Stagnant wage growth on top of that–can tell y’all now with great confidence there have been some significant set backs in wages for certain industries, looking at comp data.
I wish I had answers on how to address it all, but alas I don’t. I’ve got ideas on cost of living and consumer prices, but that would be a deeper economic (and ultimately more political) discussion…
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Interesting article for sure. I agree, there is definitely a tipping point where service providers will lose clients based on cost. My board has gone up 54% in 7 years. My salary has not gone up 54%. I know my trainer isn’t netting 54% more income, she is just trying to stay in the black herself.
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I’m afraid this is where I’m at. We missed out buying a farm early to pre covid and prices and rates being what they are now, I don’t know if it will ever happen. My SO and I (combined) make enough to put us in the top 12% of earners in the country but everything else is expensive AF too which makes it hard to justify the mortgage payment that is board (and not even factoring in lessons, shows, farrier work, vet work, etc).
I’m afraid that without some sort of major reshuffling or very, very unexpected windfall, I’ll not own a horse again. We’ve already decided to hold off until we buy a farm because boarding is too much (too much compromise for too much money mostly) but, again, I don’t know if/ when that will be possible.
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Speaking as a formerly low-value client priced out of lessons, the answer has been “yes.” And I don’t blame trainers one bit. I know how hard the work is, as a self-employed person at a desk job, and I can see the economic reasons why they have to charge more, favor clients who take lessons and show and have their own horses, and also why lesson horses (decent ones, anyway) are no longer really a thing in my area.
I had this argument with an older woman who was complaining she couldn’t find $50 once-a-week lessons like she used to be able to afford back in 2003 in my high COL area. That’s another thing–I’m understanding, but many low-value clients aren’t, which can create additional friction.
Trainers are ethically obligated to provide what they promised, and to be honest with clients. They aren’t ethically obligated to subsidize people’s horse habits.
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I agree. But I also think that there’s room for a variety of business models, as I said in my first post on this thread.
I think it’s interesting to present the “less is more” model as one that might be right for some businesses. I don’t think it’s helpful to suggest that it is where the entire industry should head, though, and I think the original article was tone deaf in not wrestling with the implications of the model for clients and for accessibility in the industry.
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