Essential Tips On How To Grow A Small Business!

Hey everybody, um, today we have Jess and, uh, her husband Gabe here. They are actually family, Larissa's

cousin.

Cousin, yeah. And we're out here in Temecula, California, and Jess and Gabe run a very high-end horse training business where a lot of these horses come from Europe and they train them, really just help them develop them. These horses Like at the very highest level range from anywhere from like $50,000 and even upwards. Jess was saying to the millions.

Yeah. Like,

yeah, per horse. We're gonna do kind of like a quick podcast today and hopefully share some value with you guys. Her and Gabe are very good stewards of what they've, uh, what God has been given to them. I think you'll see that that resonates a lot with how successful they've been. Jess, thanks for doing this with me.

Oh, awesome. I'm so excited. Thank you so much for having me and Always love sharing our story and getting to help other business owners, and it definitely can be a trial and error, I'm sure, as you know.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so what are the one or two craziest stories from growing the business that we need to talk about? If you look back on your journey, what would you say is the one or two probably craziest?

You mean specific moments or just things we've done?

Either. Could be either.

Yeah. Our business was kind of wild when it first started. Like, we really started with like nothing and like no savings and no money to get it going, which is kind of nuts, especially in the horse industry, 'cause like most people have like a pretty big backing. And there are a lot of things you need, but you can also work your way around with kind of building it up and outsourcing a lot of those things. And that's what we had to do in the beginning. So we very much were like paycheck to paycheck. We lived in an RV for the first 2 years we had our business. And Gabe and I, probably for the, the first year, year and a half, we did everything ourselves. Like, we cleaned the stalls, we did— like, there was no other help. Like, we did 100% of the business.

Wow.

Um, to be able to grow it and establish it. And, you know, we really came from nothing and built it all kind of on our own.

Yeah.

So I would say that's probably like That was kind of the early days, were definitely a wild ride.

So you guys sacrificed a lot, like in the beginning and just in that hustle phase to like—

Oh yeah.

Figure it out, make things work.

Yeah, yeah, we definitely made it happen. We didn't really have a team, it was him and me and we did everything, you know.

So what made you and your husband Gabe decide to start a business?

So the positions that, when we had met, we were both employed by different people and we also kind of worked together, but the position that Yeah. The job that he had was almost like he kind of owned the business. Like, he was kind of given horses, but he was very much responsible for the rest of like their day-to-day, um, and kind of doing everything else already. Um, and I had already, from the jobs that I had, had already done a lot of the management side. So we were very much kind of aware of what it took to be able to own and run a business of your own, specifically within the horse industry, at least from, I would say, the day-to-day operation. The backend stuff was definitely more of a learning curve for us of like, All of the financials, the taxes, like all of those things, I think definitely took a bit of a minute, but it was just kind of a natural progression for us. We actually kind of started our business while we were still working for those other people. And in the beginning, he started first kind of full-time into it, and I was still working for some other people. So it kind of just happened gradually. And then we, once we had enough customers, we then kind of made that decision to both be full-time in it and move fully into that business.

Yeah, so what is it, what is it like? Because Larissa and I built Military Lawn Cuts for the first 5 years working together, like husband and wife. We would wake up together, we would brush our teeth together, we would go to work together, we'd eat together.

Everything together.

Yeah, what is it like working with your husband in the business? And then also, like, like, what is that like?

I mean, I think probably like you guys, like, we actually were really good friends first, and we enjoy spending time together, and we work well together. I mean, I'm not gonna say we're always perfect, I don't think we could agree on everything, but, um, you know, and especially the longer we've done it, we've kind of fallen into our lanes of like who's in charge on what and follow each other's lead on certain things. But I would say like we have a good working relationship on that. We don't get sick of each other spending time together, so it's like we've always really enjoyed it.

Yeah, that's amazing. So how did you like figure out the roles between you guys? Did you— was it like, is Gabe better at certain things than you are? Because I know you said that you were really good at marketing and stuff. Yeah, totally, absolutely.

Yeah. I think it's just figuring that out of like what is each person's strength and weaknesses and kind of playing to that within the business. Like, Gabe is definitely not— he's like the financials and like doing the numbers and like a lot of the backend stuff and the marketing is like definitely not his thing. But he's very gifted with like— he's so great at like dealing with the clients, um, and actually like managing them and like the day-to-day and taking care of the horses and all of the— that part of it. And so that's really where He takes on a lot of that. I do a lot of the back end, and then it just, you know, with the training of the horses, each horse has like its own plan of what we're doing with it, and I would say we kind of switch back and forth depending on who is the better person for that horse at that moment. Like, there's times where a horse might be ridden and I might work with it more than Gabe does, and there's times where he might do more with it than I do, kind of depending on where the horse is at in its kind career, and those are just things that we kind of work together on and decide, you know. He knows the things that I'm good at adding to the horse, and we know what he's good at adding to the horse, and so we just kind of play to those advantages.

Yeah, yeah.

Depending on what they need, so.

Would you say that a lot of them overlap, or— because like with Larissa and I, she's really good at operations and like working with people and like holding people accountable and stuff.

Yeah.

Whereas I'm like more of the back end. I'm like, I'll crunch all the numbers. I'm the strategic person.

Yeah, totally.

Where like the people side of it, it comes natural to her.

Yeah, totally. I would say Gabe and I are kind of similar of like, I'm definitely more the back end. Gabe's way better at the people part than I am, you know? So that's kind of how we've fallen into like who does what. I feel like a bit of what is natural and what isn't, you know?

Yeah, that's awesome. What is the biggest financial mistake you guys have made?

I would say I think you need to have a very realistic picture of your numbers. And I think not taking the time to get ahead of those things where it's like having a budget in place and actually knowing what you're spending fully every month. So like, I feel like for a long time I would kind of do my— like, I would do the books and keep up on it, but I was probably like 3, 4 months behind on like when I was going through our books. And switching that to where then I'm like doing it every month or every week where I really know and like got on top of like, this is what we spend fully and like going through all of our expenses and kind of looking at what do you spend throughout the whole year. And I think when you get a better realistic picture of what it— 'cause like you think you know and then you actually start looking at it and you realize you're like, oh, there are so many things I'm not accounting for that we do spend money on. Like business insurance, right? Like all those little stuff, like it adds up and it's a lot more than what you think. So having, I think, a good grasp on what your actual numbers are of what's going out every month is super helpful then to be able to budget of like, okay, then if we need to put money into something else, I know what we need to be making every month to break even, you know?

Yeah.

And then I can kind of build from there. I feel like not doing that definitely cost us a lot of money too. Yeah,

I, I think I've made the same in the, in the beginning. So a couple questions, do you have a bookkeeper now or do you do all of that?

I still do all of it myself. It's a little bit, I feel like because our industry is so specialized, it's a bit hard to outsource some of that stuff. I will probably move that off my plate at some point, but the way like our invoicing and stuff is, there's like a lot of add-on services that I have to add. So it's honestly like, it's easier to just do it myself. So I do all of it myself. I just run it through QuickBooks and everything's done through QuickBooks.

Yeah.

But I feel like when you kind of get like your systems in place of like, okay, you know, for now, like now I usually try to like every Monday I go through and I do all of our receipts and go through all of our expenses. You know, I kind of have like a set day I do. All of our clients get invoiced on the 1st of every month, so everyone's on the same schedule. I'm not having to send out invoices mid-month, very rarely. And if a horse comes in and it is mid-month, then I— we do like a half a month so that they're all on the 1st. So just like little things like that where I like try to keep everything together so I can do it all as kind of like batch. Everyone's done at once, it's one bill for the month, so I'm not having to send 20 different bills throughout the month and remember all of it. Like, I can just kind of put everything, so they kind of get backbilled if there was any expenses that occurred from the month before. And then we bill upfront for training, and then the cost of like their, the horse's care upfront for the upcoming month.

Yeah, that's awesome. So it sounds like you have a good system down of like billing all at the same time.

Yeah, I think that helps with also then like not missing stuff.

Yeah.

You know, versus like otherwise when I had different customers on different dates, then you're constantly like, wait, did I send this bill? person's invoice? Do I need to do this? You know, first, like, having everyone at one point is a lot easier.

You said that you had a couple, like, team members that work for you guys. So a lot of the people that watch are maybe— sometimes some of them don't even have team members yet, or maybe they have a couple, but they're still learning, like, how to lead them and, like, delegate and do things like that. So

yeah,

who was your first hire and how did that go?

Um, we've Gone through quite a few guys. Like, so for us, as far as like the training part, we handle all that, but we hire somebody. And where we, where we bring other people in is for like the care and the, like, the daily care of like cleaning the stalls, cleaning the barn, those types of things. That's kind of where we hire help. And like grooming and brushing the horses, that kind of stuff. So we actually went through like a decent amount of guys, I would say, in the beginning of like— it's really difficult To find somebody— for us, it was very important to find somebody who is like genuinely compassionate towards the horses and enjoys the job and like takes a responsibility for it. It's just difficult to find. Like, some of them very much are doing it for the paycheck, but then what you start to notice is like they didn't notice if the horse had a scrape on the leg, you know? Mm-hmm.

Like,

they didn't notice that the horse was acting weird, and those things are really important as the caregiver of the horse. Like, as much as we're handling them a lot, our guy that's feeding is the one that's seeing them more than we do as far as like if they're They're acting normal and knowing what their habits are. But like, for somebody, if you don't care about the animal, you're not going to pay attention to those things. So the little details to us are very important, and it's very important that somebody is paying attention. So the guy that we have that works for us now, Lazaro, he's worked for us for the last, uh, 2 years, and he's fantastic. Mhm. And he genuinely really enjoys the horses, and he enjoys his job, and I feel like that really shows in the way he cares for them. You know, if a horse, something happens to it in the turnout, he notices, he knows, you know, he knows if somebody didn't eat all their food, and normally they do. Like, all those little details are really important in catching if a horse is sick or something is happening to them, you know. Yeah, it's big. So it's really big, and the horses are very expensive, so like the earlier you can catch things, the more proactive you can be, you know, if we need to call a vet or something needs to happen. So it's very important to have somebody that's on top of those little details, and also for us, because we do travel for horse shows a lot, somebody that we can trust to leave with the horses that are at home, and that he's gonna notice if something were to go wrong, and still do his job if nobody's watching him, you know? Yeah. That's always the other thing, like if you know your boss isn't gonna be there for a week, are you still doing what you should be doing?

Yeah.

You know, because unfortunately for us, if he doesn't, It's not just, oh, the place doesn't look good. It's, there's live animals that are depending on it. If they don't get fed, they're not eating, you know?

Yeah.

So like, that's, it is a pretty big responsibility to have and to be able to hand over to somebody.

Yeah, that's huge. What really resonated with me, Jess, is like when you spoke about like their care level, right? Yeah. Like, 'cause there's a lot of times, even when we first started, Like, there's a difference between someone who comes, like you said, for just a paycheck versus someone that, like, is passionate about what we're doing. Or, you know, for us, like, we have core values in our business.

Yeah.

And so we would much rather hire based on those core values than experience.

Oh yeah, absolutely. And we've done the same. You know, I think there's— to me, I think the core values and somebody who is passionate about it or not, like, you can't teach that. That's kind of something they either have or they don't. Like, you're either passionate about it or you're not. Like, I don't think a lot of people are going to come into it and necessarily gain passion, but I can take somebody who maybe doesn't have the most horse experience, but they're really passionate about the job, and add to them in that way, you know? Yeah. Like, if they're trustworthy, I will take that any day over somebody who's been doing it for 20 years. And the problem is a lot of the guys that have been doing it for a really long time, they have their way of doing it. And they don't really want to do it our way, you know. So a lot of times we actually do hire people with less experience and looking for somebody who's more willing to learn than trying to hire somebody who has a lot of experience already.

Yeah, yeah, that's so good, that's so good, I love it. If you could give your younger self one business lesson, what would it be?

That's a big question. I feel like there's kind of two on that, but you can, you can do two. Okay, I feel like one would be to not underprice your services. And you have to believe in what you're doing and what you're charging for before anybody else will. So if you already come at it like it's too expensive, you're kind of inviting people to be cheap with you, you know? So if you're like, oh, I'm not sure if I'm charging too much, they're gonna be like, of course you are. But if you already come with it, it's like, yes, this is our price, this is what we charge, you know, and that's it. People respond way better to that. So I think kind of having that confidence in your price and knowing your worth in the business is super important.

Um, that's so good.

Yeah,

that's so—

it's a hard one to learn.

Yeah.

Um, and I think especially in the industry that we're in, because you're dealing with very wealthy people, you know, the income bracket of our clientele is in your high 6 figures, up 7 figures, I would say, annually. Like, it's a very wealthy clientele. So if you come to them with that approach of like, oh, we're going to be super cheap and we can save you money and you don't have to spend, you know, not we want to be careless with it, but being confident going, hey, this is the investment you need to make, this is what you're going to get out of it, this is what it costs. And not necessarily trying like, it costs what it costs. And like, I feel like in the beginning we would try to always like save the client's money, but then we would shoot ourselves in the foot with being able to do a good job. Because at the end of the day, like, it does cost what it costs, and you need to just be confident in that and charge what it's worth and the amount of time you're also putting into it.

Yeah, yeah. I feel like that happens a lot in the lawn care industry, like people underprice, especially in the beginning.

Totally, yeah.

That's good. All right, so what was, what was your second one?

I think prioritizing marketing is also like a big one. I think sometimes people don't, but I think the way you present your business is also super important, um, and putting effort into that early, even if it's something that like Can be expensive.

Yeah. Yeah. So what specifically for you to give your younger self that, 'cause marketing is very big, right? Yeah. You could go Facebook ads, word of mouth. I mean, there's so many like things that you could do. What would you say is like the best marketing approach that you would wanna share with yourself?

Ours is going to be very, I feel like, different than like for lawn care and stuff. But I think presentation. So like for us, that means like the way the horses are turned out, the quality of like, for us, we have like the saddle pads logos and things like that. Like, having that stuff dialed in, I think, is super important. Having consistent branding, you know, having a good website— I would say that's super applicable for any business. Like, it doesn't need to be like super in-depth, but it needs to have a consistent branding. It needs to look nice. Yeah, I would say that's probably the most important.

Awesome, awesome. All right, last normal question, and then we're gonna get into a rapid-fire thing. It'll be very quick.

Okay,

okay. So this is the last normal question: how has faith How has that helped you and Gabe along your business journey?

Um, I would say a lot. I mean, I think we both very much believe that we, given everything that we have and also like given the responsibility to steward the animals that we've— that are in our care well. And so for us, sometimes that has meant not making the most financially profitable decisions because we're considering the horse's welfare and the fact that we've been given the responsibility steward them well and putting that first, you know. So for us, and trusting that one day that will pay off, right? Mm-hmm. Like trusting that it's okay if we are stewarding what we have well, God's gonna take care of that, even if right now that means maybe taking a hit. And also trusting, you know, if our bank account doesn't have a lot in it, that that's okay, you know. And doing things ethically even when it comes at a price that You know, for, for instance, like, we've had situations where we know a client isn't really the best fit for our program, or they're, let's say, maybe more of a toxic type personality that's just not somebody who we want in our barn and in our barn culture.

Mm-hmm.

And that's something that we've been extremely intentional about protecting, because if you get one kind of bad egg, it can turn it into like, now you have these clients that are really gossipy and like it's a really toxic environment, and they're not positive, and they're not prioritizing the horsemanship and the things that we're wanting prioritized within the business. So we've been very selective on that. But turning a client down, or asking a client to kind of move on, or setting boundaries that may push a client out comes at a financial risk, right? Like, you're losing money if that client decides to move their horses because you set boundaries, right?

Yeah.

Of like, hey, this is the standard of care That we do things at, and this is the way we do things at, and I'm not willing to sacrifice your horse's care because, or well-being, because that's what you want. Like, it's my decision to make those, or it's my responsibility to make those decisions with the horses, because I'm the professional and they're an amateur at the end of the day. Like, that's what they pay me for. Sometimes they like to think they know more than us. Um, I would say we have amazing clients now, and this is definitely not a current issue. Like, Our clients trust us so much, and because we do a lot of problem horses, our clientele a lot of times has come to us because they were having like an issue with a horse or something. So I feel like we've established a lot of trust with them that they— if we say, hey, the horses need this, we're doing this, they're like, okay, I don't even need to ask questions, we totally trust you guys. But there's been times making that decision is really tough because you're taking that financial hit and you kind of gotta trust God that You know, next month a new horse is going to come in training, but you don't always know that, you know.

Yeah, I think it's so cool when I was hearing your guys's story even last night at dinner, how much of a good steward you guys have been to like the horses and like being ethical. And I've seen correlations in business and with people. It's like when they stay the course and do the right thing always, it always pays off.

Totally.

And like, you know, even if there's not a way He'll make a way.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's like really, really cool.

Absolutely.

This next section is a rapid fire. So start a business or buy a business?

Start a business. I like things done my own way, so I feel like with starting a business you have a lot more control over what you can do with it and what the culture is of it. Versus buying a business, you're inheriting good and bad. So that might be great, but it might also come with a lot of baggage that you also then have to deal with.

I completely agree. I would start a business too.

I've also done it too many times now, but I feel like once you like have done it enough that you're just like not really— not that I'm not scared of it, I understand the reality, but it— yeah, I am not. I guess in a way I'm not scared of starting a business, you know. I know how much work goes into it and also the benefits you have from building something from the ground up too.

Yeah, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Sales or operations?

Okay, sales and operations, which way?

What would you prioritize, sales or operations?

It depends on what type of business it is. Is it a product-based business or is it a service-based business?

If you had to generally say, for maybe both, would you focus sales or operations?

Operations, because even if you're selling but you can't deliver, you're not going to get repeat customers.

That's true.

So

that is— that's very true.

But at least if your operations are good but you're not good at trying to sell your product, eventually it will grow. It might just take longer.

Yeah,

you

know. Okay, revenue or profit?

Profit, because it's very easy to have a very large revenue and spend everything that you like within the business that you're making. It's very easy to do.

Yeah. Okay, growth or freedom?

That's a tough one. I think it's a balance. I don't know if I'd pick either totally, you know. I think there's a balance between— we were talking about this last or yesterday a little bit, of like the— your life balance in general, right? Of like How much freedom do I have? But then still growing the business and putting stuff into that. And you don't really want to, you know, I think ever get too far one or the other. Like, I don't want to neglect my business and totally choose freedom of having my own freedom, but at the same time, if I get so stuck in the growth that I don't have any time for my family, that's not a very good balance either.

Yeah, I agree. So best business book?

I'm not a big reader, to be honest.

Really?

I can't really say I've read a lot of business books.

Yeah, that's okay, that's okay. How do you learn about— like, how'd you learn about QuickBooks? How'd you learn about marketing?

I think just looking online, you know, so like Google's great, ChatGPT is great to like get a start, and then like watching videos from people that have experience, learning from other business owners I think is great. Like, I would say I'm definitely way more where I would like watch this YouTube video and learn from something like that more than I necessarily read a lot of like books. and whatnot, which is like more how busy my lifestyle is. Or I'm very much like a type of person that will get like really stuck on a specific thing, and then I'll like go very deep into that, whatever that is, you know. So if it's like learning Facebook ads, then I'm like watching every possible video on Facebook ads and like trying to do that. And like I kind of get hyper-focused on certain things, but when you've done it enough times, it kind of works out well.

Yeah. That's great. Speaking of which, you guys should click the subscribe button if you want to grow a more successful business. All right, last question here. So one thing you feel like every new business owner wastes money on?

I would say a lot of them either on buying more equipment than you need, because sometimes you don't need as much as what you think to get started, or you don't need as fancy, or like overdoing your branding in the sense of like, you really don't need 500 shirts to get started. You know, like with the new business I'm launching, like I'm not doing any apparel or anything. Like our marketing is extremely thoughtful within the branding, but my initial order of like materials is like just the marketing material I need to put out there to be able to start making sales. And I think that needs to be prioritized versus like decking yourself out in like branded gear, you know. Like some people are like, I need the hat and the shirt if I'm gonna go sell, and it's like, you really don't. Like, you need a— I would rather have a good quality flyer or whatever your marketing material is than a hat or a shirt type of thing.

I would agree. In our industry as well, a lot of people buy equipment. Like, they're like, I need the best mower, and it's like, but you don't have the customers yet.

Like, yeah, so you really don't yet.

Yeah, yeah. So Yeah, that, that was really good. Okay, so Jess, obviously you guys are going to be— actually, you just got your product in for vitamin company.

Yeah.

Jess is launching a product for horses. Can you maybe 30, 60-second kind of explain what that is? Because we live in horse country in Powder Point, Texas. So anybody that has horses or know of people that have horses, Jess has basically built and tested a vitamin product for the horses. So Very high level, I'll let you take the stage to explain what it is, and yeah.

Okay, so my new company, it's called Cytostride. It is research-backed, so all of our ingredients have independent research that backs it. It's a system of supplements designed to support homeostasis in horses, and then we broke that down into 3 pillars. So vitality, which is more your general health and recovery, gastric resilience, So it's going to be like stomach and hindgut. It's a really big thing for horses that are traveling. And then long-term soundness, so that's going to be like their joint health. So it's really designed to support the entire athlete and the main systems that they need and the main support that they need to be able to do their job well from like a high-performance horse standpoint. So it's like thinking of like your horses as like a professional athlete and what is— what support does a professional athlete need? You know,

yeah, that's so cool. That's so cool. Well, Jess, thanks so much for jumping on the podcast with me.

Thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely. Um, if people want to reach out to you, where can they find you?

Um, we are on Instagram. Our business is Hybrid Horsemanship, and our website is hybridhorsemanshipllc.com.

Awesome. And then if somebody's interested in that vitamin product, do you have a link for that?

Not yet.

Not yet.

Okay. Reach out to me on Hybrid Horsemanship. We do have our Instagram. Our website is getting finished. It's up, but it's getting finished still, but it's cyberstride.com.

Okay. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Anybody that's still watching, make sure that you subscribe to the channel if you want to build a more successful lawn and landscape business. Thank you so much, guys, for watching. We'll see you in the next video.