Ooof! I totally missed the small fee bit.
Maybe a rate increase is in order!
ETA: I do wholeheartedly agree with you about being a pro. It tends to be a lot of hours and not all riding / teaching.
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For the rides, and to the clients, but not night check, water, staying late, doing things like mucking that BO’s employees aren’t doing and which the OP is not getting compensated and is digging into her personal time, causing burnout.
That’s how I read it anyway.
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Then what is the monthly fee for?
The rides? That’s just how I read it.
If the absolute perfect scenario came around I’d be willing to move for it. But I’ve given up a clientele and moved before, to end up in an assistant trainer situation that was not at all what it was supposed to be/I was being taken advantage of. So I would be extremely hesitant to give up on what I’ve built and move to a new arrangement that may not be any better and would also be further from my family and friends.
I’ve also had a good assistant trainer position, but I think it’s still rolling the dice a bit, could make things worse under the wrong person or could be much better, unless I know someone who’s worked for the head trainer previously it can be hard to tell until you’re there working for them what the dynamic is actually going to be like.
Besides requiring 2 training sessions per week I charge $75 per month per client for what was supposed to just be nightcheck, turn in (so horses can stay out longer than barn would leave them out) and blanket changes since the barn doesn’t do these.
But it has turned into me also fixing fencing, doing outside water year round (used to just be the winter I had to do it), dumping and cleaning indoor water buckets, and turning the horses out much of the winter.
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I missed that somewhere, sorry.
But facility maintenance shouldn’t be under your responsibility.
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Thanks, this is really good advice, definitely a meeting with the barn owner is the number one thing I need to address. I don’t want to have a bad relationship with her but bottom line she needs to change at least one or both of her staff or let me find my own staff for my program and reduce her guys compensation. She complains about her staff a lot too, just hasn’t taken the time to find someone new.
I did find out at least one of the barnstaff is being paid $180 per day and he lives in the apartment for free and gets weekends off so I just think it’s insane he’s getting away with doing so little work. He’s doing about 4 hours or less of work per day and is supposed to be working an 8 hour day.
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And thank you everyone for the thoughtful replies and advice, really helpful
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So the more tasks you take on the less work the barn help thinks he needs to do. The water magically refills! The fences fix themselves! You make the problem worse over time by covering his ass for him. Haven’t you ever had a room mate (or a boyfriend) who has no idea what a mess they make in daily life because everyone is washing their dishes for them?
$75 a month is just over $2 a day. What’s your hourly rate? To do night check, turn in, and blanket change is between 5 and 10 minutes a day per horse depending on set up. Time yourself sometime. That means 6 to 12 horses per hour. So your hourly rate is between $12 and $24 an hour. I guess that could be OK but if it’s tending low because turn in is a pain, you are undercharging.
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Do these clients come for you specifically, or are they picked up after they come into the barn? How many horses are in your program compared to how many in the barn as a whole? It sounds like a pretty full place.
Basically, are you providing more value to the barn, or are they providing more value to you? You want to be pretty careful being the squeaky wheel if you are not that important to them and you don’t have a lot of other options. Allowing you the flexibility to even do the things you are doing that run differently than their usual routine is pretty unusual in itself in situations where you don’t just rent dry stalls.
Sit down and run numbers (and hours of things that need doing!) on a rented facility. I did once. It was ugly, and I decided to teach and train out of barns run by others. Are there a lot of things I’d manage differently at those barns (ALL of them)? Is my clientele determined by what those facilities are able to offer? Yes, of course, but I’m also happy to not be paying all that overhead and hiring help (And no one has any help these days, let alone good help. It’s impossible to find) and everything that goes with actually being in charge of a facility.
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The other thing that stands out to me is that you may have obligated yourself from dawn to dusk between turn-out, turn-in, and night check. What’s your daily schedule look like? Are you making an extra trip to the barn to do turn-out or night check? Is turn-out/turn-in just around the hours you are already there doing training rides and lessons? It seems like you probably don’t have any real blocks where you can take a mental break from the horses like an evening at home where you don’t have to worry about going back for night check.
I would take some of those extra fees and hire someone else - whether it’s one day a week where you don’t do any “extra” chores or someone to do night check multiple times a week. If that’s not possible, and this may be a controversial opinion, I would drop the night check at least a few days a week if not entirely. The horses can be checked at dinner time/turn-in for hay and water and owners can provide hay nets if consumption needs to be slowed down.
It’s important that you have some time to turn off from the job for your own mental health.
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So…to this I say…yeah, it is. It’s a struggle. Even if you own your own place, you’ll find that you put way more into it than you get out of it financially or “gratitude-wise” in the case of your clients. Your barn owner probably isn’t “making a living” doing boarding - at least that hasn’t been possible for any barn owner I’ve spoken to since around the early 90s. It’s a hard hard business, I’m not going to lie.
But you can get closer. I would definitely first speak with your barn owner first. You may find that they are also frustrated with the standard of care that their employees are providing for what they are being paid and you may be able to come to some creative solutions together. I recently had to “let go” some employees that were underperforming and while it sucked, it was also a weight off my shoulders that I didn’t have to worry about the horse care anymore.
If that conversation isn’t fruitful, then I’d up your rate for your clients.
What I would be very careful not to do is pit your clients and your barn owner against each other. I’ve been in numerous situations where the trainer complains about the barn owner to the clients, and the barn owner complains about the trainer to the clients, and we are left sitting in the middle thinking “y’all are just insane”.
Best of luck.
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I’ve thought about this thread (I did understand btw, that the OP did receive a fee from her clients, just, as she’s confirmed, it’s really not enough for the added stress/time).
- There is already a paid employee who lives on-site.
- Paid employee isn’t doing blanket changes, leaving horses out long enough, or basic maintenance work.
- All of this is what the boarders are paying for and what the BO is not providing by not holding the employee accountable.
It could be that labor is difficult to find, and the guy is just one of those people who isn’t into horses and this is just a job for him. So BO really needs to do her job and get after him. If she isn’t, it might be because she’s afraid he’ll go or she just doesn’t care who does the work, as long as it gets done.
Regardless, until the OP stops doing the paid barn staff’s work for pennies, she won’t get any relief. I agree she’s undercharging, but even if paid more, I’m not sure the added stress and work is worth it to her? (Not sure, based on the replies.)
I don’t think OP should have to hire additional staff and pay them herself, though, for the BO refusing to manage.
Even if the BO was saying, “oh, good help is hard to find,” I think that could be a way of placating the OP. BO needs to have a talk with the sandbagging staff, not make the OP feel better by saying, “oh honey, I agree with you, the guy is trash, but thank you for doing his job and keeping my boarders.”
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I don’t know what she’s earning, but yes the barn owner is making her living off of the board that comes in, this is clear from previous conversations. On the whole my relationship is good with her, but the barn guys it’s another matter.
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Yes, this is why I’m hesitant about leaving or making a fuss. But, I have half of the barn’s full boarders in my program, and I brought them in myself via advertising/my own reputation, as the barn itself has a bad reputation in the area so has struggled to find and keep new full boarders, it has 6 or 7 that have been there forever but otherwise most other people that come in, especially ones not in my program, leave after a time.
That’s literally unbelievable in this day and age unless she inherited the property. And even then, typically boarding is basically a loss leader. Especially with staff that get paid and horses that eat hay and grain. I suppose it could happen with horses on pasture 99% of the time. But there are lots of BOs here and in groups I’m in and none of us are making a living boarding. In fact, most of us are subsidizing the boarders out of our own pockets. So if she has found some magic formula it would be great to learn it from her.
At any rate, the rest of my advice stands.
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Especially if BO is paying the barn employee $180 a day, 5X a week and giving him a free apartment. Something isn’t adding up if she’s just offering board and not teaching students herself. Either she’s not paying him as much as she says, skimping on care somewhere, or something. Even if she was retired and had assets and just using boarding to make a small margin, she’d be better off renting out the property for something else than horse boarding.
Obviously, it’s not the OP’s responsibility to investigate, but it sounds odd if the BO is not in horses otherwise.
OP, in this business, your reputation is all you have and horse people never forget. Anything.
That fact boarders often leave this barn over poor service (perceived or actual) is going to forever be a part of your reputation. Ex boarders will share their experience with their friends who share with their friends and your name will forever be associated with a bad barn experience.
Think about that. Carefully. Everybody has a disgruntled client or two but how many can your reputation take before people start rolling their eyes when your name comes up?
Can’t stress this enough…there very well could be some things going with this BO and barn that were not shared with you and will not be shared. You may be hitched onto a falling star here and will go down with it.
One think that stands out is that guy OP says makes 150+ a day PLUS living quarters who is not putting in much work? Huh? Why does BO put up with that? What else might be going on there? Is there a reason? Is he a relative? Long time friend? Or…?
On that subject, why is OP only charging $75 a month for tasks the guy is being paid 150+ a day to not do???
OP…this is building your reputation but not in a direction that will do you any good. Plus that, does not sound like a business being managed with a long term future in mind.
Some hard thinking and hard decisions to be made.
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I think she’s owned the property a very long time, there are a ton of horses on it, and she finds a lot of ways to cut corners to save $ which is why the board is pretty crappy. You’re right I think most people providing actual full care board aren’t making $, but she is. The full board horses are only fed 4 flakes of hay a day, for example.
