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Pegasus Podcast
@thepegasusapp https://www.thepegasus.app/🐴 Conversations with the movers and shakers of the global equestrian industry. Hosted by Pegasus founders Sam Baynes and Jen Tankel.
Pegasus Podcast
Why Equestrian Is Almost Nothing Without Grooms
Courtney Carson, former Olympic groom and founding board member of the International Grooms Association (IGA).
The IGA is responsible for making the equestrian space much better for grooms, whether it be regarding improved venue design, helping to prevent burnout, or resources to work with their employers.
Be sure to listen to this episode and if you want to keep up with Courtney, check out her work at internationalgrooms.org.
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Just because your horses can get fed, watered, ridden every day with three staff members doesn't necessarily mean that you are adequately staffed for the number of horses in your program. Like I would like to say that maximum it's eight horses per employee because you figure it's probably about an hour's worth of work per horse a day.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, my name is Noah Levy and I'm the producer of the Pegasus podcast, hosted by our founders, sam Baines and Jen Tankle. On today's show, we are hosting Courtney Carson, a former Olympic Room and a founding board member of the International Rooms Association. You are going to learn about the biggest issues rooms are facing today and what's being done to confront them by both the IGA and our industry. Keep your ears out and your heels down. Alright, let's get into it.
Speaker 3:Alright Courtney. Thank you very much for joining us today. Just for the listeners, to give them a bit of background, just want to tell them who you are and what your mission is with the International Rooms Association.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. So my name is Courtney Carson. For anyone who doesn't know me, i worked for six and a half years as a professional groom for Doug Payne at Payne-Questrian. We had international event horses and show jumpers. I was incredibly lucky. I went to the Pan American Games with him and the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Speaker 1:And then, through some facets in that, in my international travels, i really pushed for an organization that was represented and worked with the FEI for grooms, because we tend to kind of be the overlooked group at all of these horse shows Very little communication between the organizing party and the grooms themselves, which leads to a lot of confusion a lot of the times. And so when the FEI kind of stepped up and said, okay, we can do this, the International Rooms Association was founded and I jumped at the chance to be a part of the board. I've sat on the founding board with them since the beginning of 2022. And then, since my life changed and I've stepped down from grooming full time, i have taken on a role as US coordinator, and so I do a lot of work here with events and horse shows in the US and Canada and trickling down now into South America and Mexico, so really trying to expand our base, our membership, all of those types of things.
Speaker 3:Right, and how would you differentiate what the International grooms association is versus, say, like a union for grooms? How is it different?
Speaker 1:So it's a little bit hard. We initially looked into forming a bit of a union. The IGA is based off of an organization called the British grooms association, which essentially is that in the UK. The easy thing with that is the UK is just one territory, one country, and so all of those employment laws, you know, regulations that are put into place are very easy to enforce because it's a singular unit. For us with the IGA, you know, we can't create a worldwide law. It was the same problem we ran into here in the US. The state laws are so different. You know your minimum wage that you're required to get paid in New York is going to be drastically different from what you're required to get paid in South Carolina. And so then if your employer splits their time, you might make a lot more money the six months of the year that you're based out of New York, but they're not required to pay you that when you're working in South Carolina, especially if they split their residency for tax reasons.
Speaker 1:So it became quite difficult to try to enforce something like that just even here in the US, And then you add that to a worldwide standpoint, you know it's a bit difficult. So our mission is to provide education to the grooms as to how to communicate these things with your boss. you know, before you get hired, after you've been hired, how to ask for a raise. you know, and to know kind of what the industry standard is and to stand up for yourself, because the industry itself kind of still wants everyone to make cash under the table, And that's not where we're at in 2023.
Speaker 3:Right. So, if I may sum it up, essentially the International Groom Association is trying to become the international leader in setting standards for how grooms should be treated as well and use that collective power to work with the FEI to try and write into some of the requirements of and being an FEI licensed event or a, let's say, in America, a USCF licensed event, that certain standards should be met when working with grooms in order to give grooms a voice and, for lack of a better term, some leverage that they otherwise wouldn't if they just operate as individuals working for individual writers and trainers.
Speaker 1:Absolutely And, like I said, to give them you know, the education of how the business world runs, because a lot of these grooms have come in straight out of high school or just wanting to work with courses and not really understanding you know what might be normal in a corporate setting and so being able to advocate for themselves.
Speaker 1:And we want this career to be sustainable. We want people to want to enjoy working in the horse industry for, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, not work for a couple of years, hit a wall and burn out and then disappear, because then we just have this continuous wheel of inexperienced grooms coming in, still getting taken advantage of, still working for pennies, not really knowing a whole lot, and then getting burned out and leaving. And when you know, as an owner, as a rider, as a representative, you know, for your national federation, for a team, you want to know that you have good people in these roles and you want to know that the people who are in these roles are training the next generation, not just, you know, basically being like I'm done, i'm out, throwing my hands up and walking out the door.
Speaker 4:Right, yeah, it's a good way to transition, because what is it like to be a groom? So if someone hears about it or has obviously seen it seen them at horse shows and they're curious about what it's like in a day to day life and their responsibilities and you know what your, you know your life is like, could you talk a little bit about that and especially how you kind of started as a groom, to where you were with you know, working with the pains?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean it's some of the most amazing work that you'll ever do in your life. Like you, you know if you're lucky enough to get in with a good group of horses and make them your own. You know every horse is different. They have little personality, quirks, they have, you know, fun little things about them, like they're not machines, and so once you really kind of embed yourself in their day to day life and activity, they become yours and they're, you know, they're your children, they're your pets. Like you spend every waking hour trying to make their lives better. And so then when they do well, there's nothing more rewarding than that. And you know it might just be the horses in your care, it might be working students in your program, it might be clients. Like you start to get really excited for everyone's success, not just your riders. And you know there's to me there was nothing more rewarding than watching a horse that we'd had in our program for a long time like really kind of, you know, hit a peak or achieve a milestone that we'd been working towards. You know whether it was a young horse finally getting to its first FDI competition, getting the van diver horse kind of back and going and getting him all the way to the Olympics after we thought he was going to have to be retired. You know there's a million different things, but it was also one of our students qualifying for young riders and seeing all the hard work that she'd done come to fruition And that was just, you know, really big, important things for me.
Speaker 1:I kind of fell into grooming a little bit. I had had my horses at home from the time I was 10, all the way through high school, and so the management side of it. I was quite used to my mom rides as well, so she had horses, and part of the deal when I was in high school is my horses got to stay on the property for free if I kept her horses in shape. So I had to figure out about it. Yeah, not a bad deal at all. No, i can't definitely came out on the top end of that one. But I had to get really good at budgeting and time management because I also played sports and I was in school and I had friends and so trying to find a way to keep all 10 horses in work. Have, you know, a horse I was hoping to take preliminary at the time and, you know, get the rest of my stuff done in life, like I've always been kind of a good juggler in that sense. And so when I went to college I ended up working for a lovely woman, sam Burton, who had groomed for David O'Connor back in the day, and then she stepped down to manage this more of like a, you know, lesson barn, and I worked for her for about a year And that really kind of sparked my interest in the grooming side of things.
Speaker 1:Tried to ride professionally, did it, had some hunt horses in my program and did that kind of thing, produced a couple of really cool horses to the intermediate level and three day eventing. But then it really became a life choice of do I want to, you know, work 60 hours a week in my barn and still 40 hours a week somewhere else to pay for all of this, Or if I really want to get to the top of the sport? I knew I was a good manager, i knew I was a good groom, and so then it just kind of all right time, right place. Doug and Jess happened to be looking for somebody.
Speaker 1:I had finished my degree and was at a great spot. I had a really cool horse that I was able to lease out to a kid, to not necessarily have to sell him at the time, and I just kind of fell into their program. And at the time their program they had one five star event horse, one two star show jumper and then kind of a bunch of babies coming up. So the entire program we all kind of grew together, we produced a lot of the horses and really got Doug's career on the map and tripled the show jumping portion of the program And so it was a really, really exciting time And, like I said very much, right time, right place to have jumped into that.
Speaker 4:No, it sounds amazing. And so what was your day to day life like as a groom, like when you're there? Because I mean, like I said, you see them at shows and you see the product, which is these horses coming out looking absolutely spectacular. But there's so much more that goes into it, from the logistics and planning and even just making sure everyone is fed and happy and healthy and fit. So can you talk a little bit about when you were there working for them, like what was your day to day operations and how did that kind of trickle into what your responsibilities were at the equestrian events that you would go to?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean day to day is kind of your run of the mill, barn chores, like you have a start time and we operated on we would take what time Doug and Jess wanted to be on their first horses and then work backwards from there. So you know, typically like right now, you know it's July in North Carolina, we're mid 90s all week. So if we were at home this week we would have said, okay, we probably need to have Doug on his first horse at like 630. And also, because it's hot, we need to have the first horses for day turnout out early while the weather is still decent. And so it was figuring out what time to start the barn, you know, get everyone fed, stalls, switched, cleaned water buckets, all of that kind of stuff. And then our goal was always to have all of that stuff done before anyone was on the first horse. Because if you can have that stuff done and taken care of, then your entire focus can be on making sure that the horses are tacked up, appropriately cooled down in any therapies after whether it's icing after a big jump school, you know, someone getting on the event horses to go for a walk. That way Doug can ride more horses and we can do the fitness level of it.
Speaker 1:Coordinating all of that and knowing what kind of staff I had throughout the day And then really also having to make sure that when it's really hot, you know, we would turn horses out later at night and then have to go pick back through the barn, so coordinating who kind of started really early into the morning shift And then we had overlap through the middle of the day and then who stayed longer, you know, to finish up at the end because, like I said, burnout's a real thing And 16 hour days are very, very hard to find people who can sustain those for long. So we tried really hard to split our staff to make sure that everyone you know wasn't working those really long days and that all the horses still got taken care of.
Speaker 3:How do you say staff? How many are splitting? How many of them were? how many of you were there?
Speaker 1:We kind of, on average, we'd have four to five people for a barn of about 25 to 30 horses, yep.
Speaker 3:Right, and I mean my background is in the military right and as much as we all loved in the military to bitch and complain about doing hard work over long hours, it really is the glue that forges the relationships.
Speaker 3:And although you know at the time it's pain, for when it's, you know, when you're having some downtime, like you're drinking beers around a campfire at the end of the day or whatever it is like, it's those times that you actually laugh about and are like you know it's up during it, but it was actually the best part. You know in retrospect we loved it. A lot of funny times, a lot of funny moments, et cetera. I assume with the grooms like you probably have a very similar culture, right, because you do work long hours, you do work hard, it's dirty work, but you know when you finally get together and have beers at the end of the day, or beers, wines, seltzers, whatever I'm liquor, you know those are. Those are those moments that you know you look back on And after a career as a group, especially the moment you look back on probably where your strongest relationships come from. Is that a fair assessment?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I could not even tell you the number of group text that I have between former working students. You know that kind of bounced in and out of our program and really suffered through it with me when we were short staffed To other groups that I know on the circuit and even what's that? groups of friends that I've met all over the world, one of the when we were at Burley in 2019. It was just a catastrophic year, like horses unfortunately, thankfully, no one was Properly hurt but like horses falling down left and right, riders falling off, like it was just.
Speaker 1:It was a bloodbath of a cross country day and There was a group of about eight of us that were staying in these caravans, basically in the yard, outside the stables, and the. We convinced the bartender to keep the bar open for like an extra two hours and we drank him completely out of beer. And there was one girl who's still a little horse to trot up the next morning and we're like no, no, no, jade, stay, stay. Like we've all had a shit day, stay with us, you know. And she was like only if you guys get up with me the next morning. We all rolled in in our PJs like bringing her coffee because we were like, we're sorry, we're not functional. I love that.
Speaker 4:We still laugh about that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, i was a working student once. I wish I did it more often, but there was this one summer I was a working student. There was another working student there it was, i think she was a. She's no longer In America, she's in. She was a British rider.
Speaker 4:She's since retired, but it was this brutal summer in Florida. Right, so you're talking about 90 degree temps and we, every day, you know you're up at like four am, you know you've got to get the horses fed, intact and ready, and your days are just so long and brutal. But I just look back on those days so fondly because it was just this one other girl, ray and myself, and we were just these two pony clubbers, just happy to be there. And we went up to, we went up to Lexington, kentucky, with her to do champagne run and she has this, like you know, amazing little what do you call it? like studio and part of her trailer, so air condition And, yeah, the living quarters. It was really nice, especially back then and and so she's just, you know, living like a queen. And then there's Ray and I in this little like caught in the back of the trailer.
Speaker 1:You know where the horses had Shandong can be the hottest horse you've ever been doing your life.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but we just but I look back on those days so fondly. It's amazing to your point about you know, kind of similar to the military where just, yeah, the tough long days just make you, make you appreciative Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean when I was in the military, like it these days, right, like you can sit down for an afternoon and watch a movie and as a part of you, there's always like. There's always like 5% of you. That's like I should be doing something more productive but you feel guilty about it. I've never, ever, enjoyed a day off more than when I was in the military because, like you know, you've earned it. Like there's, there's no question, it is a pure luxury. Luxury to be able to sit down and do nothing and like and I'm the horse world is eerily similar to the military in the sense of like, if it's raining out, like you're just getting wet and there's no point getting dry because you just gonna get wet against you just stay wet all day, and the military is the same. So the idea of staying inside on a rainy day is like luxury, because you know you're not outside and so, yeah, it's, it's, i imagine being, you know, being a groom.
Speaker 4:Like It is hard work, but you really truly appreciate your downtime when you're not working because you earn it but I think I think this is a good point to kind of transition to what can the industry do Better to make it so that people aren't burnt out, because for you with the military, it was A certain amount of time and you're going to get in and you're going to go do other things. Me, as a working student, it was a working student summer. I knew there was a start and end time. But for grooms, where we wanted to be a sustainable career and have opportunities to move up, like what are some of the things that maybe you know the industry should think about to encourage more people to come into it and make it a more sustainable career, where people aren't doing this for a summer or a couple of years And are like, okay, get me out, i want to go to the corporate world because at least I can be in air conditioning and not have to sleep in a cot in the back of a trailer every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, oh my gosh, yeah, it's just, it's so funny. I'm just like thinking of all the different like little stories that I have about things like that. I really think a big shift that we could have in horse sport is having a groom and an assistant groom, like properly to head people, or having a proper like showroom that goes on the road and then somebody that stays at home. Because that was the biggest thing that I ran into and a lot of my friends have run into is, you know, when you're on that daily grind of horse show, horse show, horse show, horse show, horse show for six weeks, like, you come home and whether you have 24 hours at home or two days at home, if it's only one head groom, then you don't get a day off between those days. And even if, like your boss is like, oh, you can take it, you can take it.
Speaker 1:Well, no, i can't, because I have a bunch of teenagers working for me as working students, which you can have great working students but their job is to Feed the horses, clean the stalls, basically keep them alive. On the days that myself or my boss isn't there, i need someone who I know can take a look at the board and go OK, these five horses went to this horse show. These five horses are going next weekend. This tack overlaps with the two, but you're going to need this to come out of the trailer and this to go in so that I could take a day to mentally check out, because even if you're given a day off, most rooms won't take it Because they would rather go back in and put their hands physically on things themselves and also not put that responsibility on a working student to make sure the correct stuff gets packed in the trailer for the next horse show.
Speaker 3:Where is So are you saying that right now, like that aren't assistant grooms or it's, it's something that you only see at very top end barns, but you're saying it should become something that's widespread?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it would be. You know, like McClain's program is set up quite well, he's got kind of three Grooms that will travel with him because I mean he's in Europe and then he's at Spruce and then he's in New York and you know he has to have Kind of like three or four people that he can trust or that. You know, i would say Virginia's his head girl at this point, like his top top girl right below Lee McKeever, who's been with McClain for 20 years. You know, they know that those other two or three people kind of right below them can pack whatever and take for that horse that they need. Well, for a day's got a really good situation.
Speaker 1:Christina goes on the road with him and then not, who used to be a traveling show groom, now just stays at home. She said I don't want to be on the road, i want to have a bit more stability, and she runs the farm at home, especially when they're gone. So his horses are body clipped, their mains are pulled or trimmed up. You know everything that that horse needs is sitting there ready to go. For when they pull in they can pull out the equipment from the horses that have been on the road, put the equipment in for the next horses, and Christina knows that if not has packed it, it is set.
Speaker 1:I did not have that right. I had a good girl that kind of kept things in line at home but she was riding and facilities managing and still having to, you know, coordinate all the moving parts at home, so she didn't really have the time to become that person. For me, and with the amount that we were on the road, we actually needed two people that could go on the roads, that we could trade off and even have just a chance to do our own laundry, because the number of days I was doing my own personal laundry in the barn washing machine because I wasn't going to be home for enough hours to do it at home is kind of sad to think about.
Speaker 3:What's the limitation? is the limitation money like there isn't enough money to go around to be able to afford someone to put in that professional role or is the limitation finding people who can make that commitment?
Speaker 1:I think it's a bit of both and I think it's to. you know, the programs that you see that are really successful with this are riders that have either worked in the corporate world themselves at some point or they come from families that Have business in the corporate world, which is then where their money is from, most likely Because they've had someone advising them of how to run this business, how to structure health care and time off and holidays and Pay raises and things like that. you know so many people in the horse world. you see. it's like oh well, how'd you get into riding? oh, i wrote as a kid and then I went to be a working student and then I met some clients. so I started renting for stalls from somebody else that had four stalls available and I kind of started just running this business and You're never taught how to actually do the business side of it.
Speaker 1:And yeah especially here in the US, like most people don't even go to college, then that end up In these positions. And so You know I'm not gonna sit here and tell anyone that they should go to college or have to go to college. But I would say, like, if you think that you want to run an equestrian business, go take a couple of business classes And learn how. To you know, structure that as a small business and You know, and also to it's looking at The number of horses in your program compared to the number of staff members you have, just because your horses can get fed, watered, ridden every day with three staff members doesn't necessarily mean that you are adequately staffed for the number of horses in your program.
Speaker 1:Like, i would like to say that maximum it's eight horses per employee, because you figure it's probably about an hour's worth of work per horse a day, and so if you have, you know, eight horses to one person, you have two extra hours in there for, if something goes wrong, to pack a trailer, to set a jump course, to cover if one of your employees has the day off or is sick, or to body clip, like you know, obviously, if you could have an extra employee to help fill those gaps a little bit as well. But You know you see programs running with 4050 horses, with five people, and that's just. You can't even take care of the horses in that sense, let alone do anything else.
Speaker 4:Yeah, because when you are talking about all those different roles and responsibilities when you're traveling, versus things that have to happen at home, versus packing and riding Like, what I was thinking about is these are essentially a bunch of different positions.
Speaker 4:So if this was a corporate environment, you would have someone who's employed for you know that, for travel, someone who's employed For at home, for packing. There are different jobs and so I think to your point, a lot of people who kind of just get into the business of a question and You know they look to grooms as just being their assistance, so they just need them to help with everything, and so they end up to your point just having to do all these different things. But it's not sustainable and There isn't really any redundancy. So, from what you're saying, have you found that the programs that seem to do it best are those that Do you come from this other corporate world and they apply it, or are you and are you also seeing others kind of adopt that because they see what's successful even if they don't have that corporate experience themselves?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and just very quickly to add on to that, because it's a really good question and point, and you know this might be me just being very naive, but when you made the comment that You know those who run these operations without business experience run it incorrectly, are you talking about, like the head groom, the trainer, are you talking about the rider they're supporting, who's funding the entire operation? And it's the rider who hasn't got often, doesn't have the business acumen to set up their staff environment to run it correctly.
Speaker 1:So the interesting thing with the worst world is that those people can kind of all be one in the same, depending on the environment. So for my experience, you know, doug and Jess, like Doug would essentially be the rider but him and Jess were both the trainers, so we didn't then have, you know, like someone else on the ground that was teaching Doug per se and Oversaw all the care in the program and that would maybe be unique to eventing compared to some of the other disciplines, but it also, especially in eventing, you know it's a lot of like oh well, i pulled myself up by my bootstraps and I've made it work and I've done it on a shoestring budget and You know this is what we can afford to do and You know there is like a little bit of room in that. But where you run into the problems is that 90 any really good groom is going to say, well, i'm going to take less money if it means we can feed the horses, and that ends up kind of being. The problem is it's like the rider or the trainer goes. Well, you know we have to compete to keep our owners happy, which means I can't be at home to teach lessons, so I'm teaching fewer lessons. So now we're on a tighter budget, you know, and it's. You can just get kind of sucked into this never ending loop of okay.
Speaker 1:Well then, at what point do you Figure out how to budget and paying your staff more, you know? is it that you need to raise training and board? is it that you need to find a way to, you know, take on more clients? is it that you need to take on a working student that maybe doesn't have a horse but it's going to get riding opportunities here, so that you have an extra stall opening your barn to take on another client horse? And I just think a lot of riders lack the Long game thought. You know, they get so caught up in the we have to pay our bills for this month That they don't see what the effects of this are gonna be long term. And I do think a lot of that is because you know They maybe haven't worked in anywhere in the corporate world to see.
Speaker 1:You know how it's structured with Supervisors and ship leads, and then down to your basic, you know, employees, whether it's a cashier or bartender, you know, or something like that. And so Then it fell quite often to me as the head groom, like I had to advocate for my working students to get days off. I had to advocate, you know, and make sure that they were getting lessons, because they were often even more of an oversight. You know, it's like, oh yeah, we haven't taught her in a few days And I'm like, yeah, but that's what that's. Part of their compensation is getting lessons. So you have to build that time into your schedule to make that happen.
Speaker 3:What is that power dynamic? like I mean you as the head groom, considering that you know the trainers and riders, they are technically your boss. Even again, it's like I hate to bring it back to the military again, but the military has a dynamic in which you have a junior officer, who's usually a lieutenant, is partnered with a platoon sergeant, and a platoon sergeant is usually At least 26 27, has been doing the job for 10 years and has done every single One of the dirty jobs, as they've climbed through the ranks and they have wisdom, they have respect and they are considered the voice for the soldiers to basically Speak up to and educate the lieutenant on how things should be run, because the lieutenant doesn't have as much experience. It reminds me a lot of that, which is like the head groom. Right, you're obviously the platoon sergeant.
Speaker 3:Like, you've done all the dirty jobs, you've got all the experience. You've seen it all before. You've seen what works, you see what doesn't work, you know what causes staff to leave, you know what causes staff to stay, but ultimately you answer to and you are employed by the trainer and the rider and therefore what they say ultimately goes. So is that? how does that power dynamic work And do you find, or have you seen over your career, that, like, what makes them breaks a barn most often in terms of its efficiency, in terms of its staff retention, is How well does the head groom Maintain that relationship and how confident are they to have those tough conversations with the trainers and the riders who, basically, you know, set up the, the workplace to run?
Speaker 1:No, 100%, and that's a really good way to describe it. That relationship, like it's all based on communication and You have to have a head groom who Kind of knows When to stand up for all of these things but also knows when to, you know, go. Okay, this is your job, it's your show, you are the boss. I'm going to step back, you know, and I'm just going to let you know that my opinion or my thoughts have been known. I was incredibly lucky.
Speaker 1:Doug, jessica and I all got along fantastically. It was kind of a really nice blend. Jessica is incredibly type a. Her dad calls her a Jack Russell terrier. Doug would be very, you know, laid-back type B, and then I kind of fit very well in the middle, you know. So I never once felt like I couldn't pick up the phone or approach either of them. You know and go.
Speaker 1:Hey, i want to hear your thoughts or opinions. I think this horse is losing weight and I think we need to change its grain or do this or do that. I don't think this horse is fit enough. Hey, i think our girls are overworked. Like, how can we Make tomorrow shorter? like, are there horses that can have the day off or they could have an easier day, like we need to be able to cut and get out because everyone's been working really, really hard and they're all starting to slip, because They need to go get some rest. Like they need to go do something fun, they need to go sleep, whatever it is, they need to recharge, and You know we had a really good Relationship in that sense.
Speaker 1:But there are a lot of people who are Incredible at grooming and are incredible at the horse management side of it that don't feel like they can speak to their boss candidly in that sense, and Those positions would be the ones that lead to burnout more often. And so this is a big thing that we're trying to advocate for with the IGA is, you know, giving case studies of how to go speak to your boss about the uncomfortable things. You know Has inflation caused, you know, everything in your life to be more expensive, but you're not getting paid anymore. You know how do you go to your boss and make it sound like it's not their fault, but that you do need more money in order to be able to stay. You know, because those are uncomfortable conversations and if you've never had to have them before, then you don't know how to begin them. Even You know how do you show your boss that you might want to hire somebody else so that you have enough staff to cover What needs to get done every day.
Speaker 3:Sure, and how and how are you actually setting that up? I mean, as the IGA, are you setting up like a education portal, like a website, or is it just an Instagram channel, like, how are you actually delivering that Educational piece in a structured format?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so on our website, which is internationalgroomsorg, a lot of that is all posted on there. We are still developing the website as we go. Our next big piece is actually we have it's something like 200 pages of FBI knowledge and that Goes through. You know, anything you could think of competing in an FBI competition, communicating with stewards, tack and equipment, information, different rules, how to look up rule changes, those kinds of things. Our piece that is live right now in our members zone is the mental health component of it all and it's How to recognize that you're, you know, getting burned out.
Speaker 1:How to take some time for yourself Things that you can do, you know, to relieve a little bit of stress. How to talk to your boss about maybe needing a meeting, an extra day off, you know and building it into your schedule if you are in a busy time of year, that kind of thing. We have questions to ask, like I said, before you get hired how to ask for a raise, how to ask, you know, your boss to hire more staff members, how to ask for some extra time off, those kinds of things. And then a big thing that I've been doing to try to really promote, that is when I come across.
Speaker 1:You know real life instances, friends that have left a job or been let go, or you know walls that they've run into. Then I'm going in and I'm writing Live time blogs about it and then linking back to our website so that you know, you get kind of a little bit of a taste and everybody knows that you're not the only one going through this. Someone else has gone through this. You Thought you had health insurance, but then come to find out about it Was only workman's comp. Okay, well now how do you discuss this with your boss and how do you set up a budget to now pay off this bill that you have, understanding the difference between workman's comp and health insurance, because a lot of grooms don't understand that When their boss says, oh yeah, you have this coverage, it is workman's comp and it's not health insurance just to go to the doctor for things like that. So yeah, that's really more aware.
Speaker 4:Yeah, i mean it is a lot of workman's comp. Yeah, i mean it's, it's so important what you're doing and giving the grooms those resources. I hope that organizers and the riders and the trainers are also Listening to and reading all these as well, because it's it's really great to arm the grooms with this information So that they are empowered and they know what, what the standard you know should be, but it really fundamentally can't change until those that are, you know, because it's a partnership, yeah, so that the organizations are thinking of the grooms, the riders and trainers are thinking of the grooms, so it's not just the grooms saying hey, hey, hey, hey, like you know, we want something that's fair and, you know, inscalable. So are you finding that the organizations, such as like the events and the riders and the trainers themselves, are also Looking into this and trying to do better for the grooms and have a more sustainable infrastructure at their you know, at their barn?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the events have been Incredible in their response to what we've been trying to do. And the big thing, like the biggest message that I pushed when I speak to these horse shows, is that grooms aren't looking for five star catered meals three times a day. They want water next to the ring because you can have a cooler in the barn and that's fine. But when it's a hundred degrees and you're running late and you put your boss on your horse and everyone's, you know, running to the ring, you might forget to grab a bottle of water. So to have, you know, a water cooler near the ring or at the gate to the stabling that you can just kind of Grab and keep running with, you know that's huge If you're at a bigger FBI show and there's an area where you know there's granola bars or apples or something like that that you can grab and Snack on, because we've all gotten to the ring and then had to stand there for 45 minutes waiting on somebody and their trainer, you know. So it's like it's not that you didn't plan, it's that circumstances happened to change your schedule a little bit and if there's something quick and easy that you can grab, the show is provided. Like a little bit goes a long way. Spruce meadows is awesome. I was talking to them the other day and on their really busy day when they are flooded with spectators, they move one of the food trucks down to the barn. So it's not even free food, but it's just accessible food where grooms don't have to stand in a line for 45 minutes to an hour to order a hamburger and fries, and that makes all the difference in the world, you know. So it's things like that.
Speaker 1:We are kind of getting ready to make a push towards the riders.
Speaker 1:Next, we are developing a job board for our website, both for freelancers and for full-time positions, and in order for employers to be able to list their jobs on there, they are going to have to provide in the job posting salary, housing situation and pictures of it.
Speaker 1:And, you know, health insurance whatever they do whether they give you extra money to purchase your own health insurance or it's provided through them And what their time off policy is, because we are only going to promote good employment practices and we are going to celebrate it and shout it And essentially too, when we have solid matches that are made, that's all going to get, you know, promoted and posted on our social medias and stuff, because I think kind of once the ball really starts to get rolling, then people are all going to jump onto this because they are going to see that we have, you know, solid employees that are hard workers and things like that, who want to work for good barns, you know.
Speaker 1:But I think a lot of the riders right now, you know you hear, oh, grooms don't want to work anymore and they want so much money and all this and that, and it's like well, no, they just want enough money to be able to eat something other than ramen and pay to drive a car that's not going to break down every other week, and have a cell phone And maybe actually have a day off every week so they can recharge and reset.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there's a lot of yeah, i mean, there's so many things from the corporate world that can be applied to the equestrian industry and I know we talked about this before And I think you really cracked the code in our last conversation, which was, you know, we talked a lot about how event organizers are getting ready to retire. You know they're. I don't know if I'm jumping ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, never.
Speaker 4:You know they're an older generation typically. I mean it's a sweeping statement, but a lot of them are retiring and there's a lot of need for new young blood to get in and to kind of take over the equestrian events. But where is the young blood? And I think the young blood is the grooms. So if we can set up an infrastructure in which they aren't burnt out, they get into, you know, they get into a good program, they get that industry experience, they know the intimate ins and outs of what it's like behind the scenes of running a show, Then they can kind of be that next generation to take over the events. And so when the event organizers end up retiring, it's not looking around as to shoot who's going to take this over? this event's going to need to just kind of phase out, because where is everybody? But instead we can look to the grooms who have had this really fruitful, loving career, nurturing career, and they understand the ins and outs of it and they're ready for the next, that next thing, which is an event organizer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and if I just can add on top of that, yeah, at the moment to run a horse show, the average horse show in America like makes a couple thousand dollars profit, if not loses money. So the majority of horse show organizers they do it out of passion and they do it because they care about the community and they understand that if they stop running it then that horse show is going to cease to exist. Well, if there's one workforce that understands doing hard work for long hours without pay for passion, you know it's the grooms. So to Jen's point what is the current career path of your average groom? I know you told us what your experience was. Is that prototypical or and beyond? what is the current career path With you guys at IGA? what would be an ideal situation of what a career path for a groom could look like And where could it go if we made a few tweaks here and there?
Speaker 1:Yeah. No, this is actually a big thing that I'm really really passionate about With the IGA being, as young as it is, you know, a year in change, like we're still kind of developing all of this. And that's the great thing that I kind of tell everyone, especially young members, is I'm like join now because we can make this organization for you now. And what I would love to see is that the IGA can partner with national federations. Those federations start to funnel in their young riders, because every young rider championship you have the young riders competing, but they all have grooms that are all 16 to 21 years old right there with them. And so if any of those kids essentially want to get into grooming, you know we want you Seth, we want, you know, the British Eventing Association, we want all of these national federations to go hey, look, here's your next step Join the IGA. Look at the job board, you know, become a groom. And then I also want a section where it's like okay, so you're getting towards the end of grooming And this is another conversation that I want to allow grooms to have that's healthy with their riders, because so many times grooms like your body hurts, you can't physically do this into your 60s. So you go to your boss and you're like, hey, i'm, you know, i've been doing this for 10, 15 years like I think I might need to step back.
Speaker 1:If they don't have a position as a home groom because that's what some grooms do is they stop traveling on the road and then they stay at home as a barn manager. They do a lot of training, working students and handling clients that stay at home And, like I said already, you know prepping horses to continue to go on the road for the next weekend. But go, i might want to get my stewarding license, i might want to be a judge, you know I might want to do that. I'm not ready to step away from grooming yet, but maybe we look at hiring in somebody that I overlap with for six months or a year. I train them, but then when we're at these horse shows I'm also going to reach out to my stewarding contacts.
Speaker 1:Or I want to go sit in the office and work with the show organizer for a few hours a day and see kind of the ins and outs of these things so that then when you go to step down from grooming your resume has more on it than just that you've been a barn manager for somebody, because I can tell you, trying to explain to a corporate job that I've worn all these hats but they've just been in a barn is incredibly difficult, you know, and if you choose to step away from horses completely, like that's fine, but then you need to have where you've gone and sat in an office and work through Microsoft Office and some of these other you know, platforms that are available to us now, so that you have a bit of a portfolio to take to somebody else.
Speaker 1:We shouldn't be, you know, handcuffing these grooms into working this job for the rest of their lives. You know, we should want younger grooms to come in because at some point, like you know, they're going to. The grooms that are in it now are going to be physically not be able to do this anymore or they are going to pass on and then, if you haven't trained the next generation, you have nothing.
Speaker 4:Yeah absolutely There should be opportunities to progress. There shouldn't just be come be a groom, sell your soul, work 16 hour days and have terrible sleep and you know terrible working conditions and then all right. well, when, when, when your body is broken, go find a corporate job somewhere, i guess just completely unsustainable. So, being able to have those different trajectories within the equestrian industry, whether that's working as a steward or working, you know, as an event organizer, or or maybe, yeah, if you do want to continue to be a barn manager and then have staff under you, but at least at least have the options and make it sustainable.
Speaker 3:And more and more than that, like the, grooms have all the institutional knowledge right, like truly they. they are the. they have all the insider knowledge on what works, what doesn't work, how operations can be made more efficient, and they truly appreciate all the complexities, logistical complexities, of a horse show. So what better workforce to take over, to graduate into the position of the management of horse shows than grooms, because they've been, they've seen it from the ground up, from every aspect, and it makes total sense that as you get older and your body gets more sore, that you would get out of the more physically demanding roles into less physically demanding roles where you're, where you're rewarded for applying your intellect as opposed to applying your physical physicality.
Speaker 4:Well and forget, even in the 60s. I mean, we're in our 30s and things hurt now.
Speaker 3:I know we're not even groomed. I'm like stretching every morning and I'm 34. Yeah, it's terrible.
Speaker 4:So, but you brought up a really good point the last time we talked, which was the design of horse shows. That makes it easier or at least more accommodating for grooms. So I don't know if you want to like go into detail about the exact show, but down in Florida you had said that there was. It like it was kind of challenging with your rider schedules and the rings and from a spectator's perspective it's all beautiful and grand and it's a lot of fun And it's a lovely experience. But for those that are actually, you know, working there, it was actually quite difficult. So I mean, in tier point two, having all of them institutional knowledge, no one better to be able to design a venue and come up with the right scheduling and kind of like the overall logistics of it all than the grooms. Yeah, because you guys are the ones that are actually kind of behold into the system and can can say what could be improved and you know how it, how could all be better.
Speaker 3:No one's been more pissed off at a bad layout than a groom.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that was the big. thing.
Speaker 1:I just couldn't even walk at the end of that week. No, i mean, and it's one of those, like I've spoken very candidly with the venue, you know, and like you said, i mean it's not, you know, we're not hiding anything. Wek is incredible, it's beautiful, they've done a phenomenal job with building it, but because of all the barns being enclosed and the climate control and everything, it just makes it very difficult to get around. And you know, we were there kind of in their first winter of showing And so I think word has spread since then. But we found like we can go to try on with just me, with 10 horses, and get to all the rings on time, because we knew what barn to ask to be in, we knew how far it was to get to the rings that we were going to be showing in that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:We got down there to Wek and had 11 horses with three of us and I still did nothing but run. I was back and forth to the rings. The small jumper ring was as far away as it could possibly be. There was only one hacking path even to get to the main ring And it's one of those. That's. It's trial and error.
Speaker 1:But to your point if you have a former groom on the organization staff there that can look at these logistics and just go. Hey, by the way, it looks like you're bringing a lot of horses. You know, we just want to let you know. It's a 15 minute walk from the barn you're going to be stabled into this far ring. You know, little things like that are going to make the you know, exhibitors lives easier. It's going to give better feedback back to the venue And you know it's one of those like I still don't think Doug and Jess have been back to Wek since then because it just logistically was so difficult for us And if they had known that on the front side, you know they probably would have been there more.
Speaker 1:And I know even for, like my friends that live in Ocala, that ship into the day parking. The day parking is quite far away. So that turns into instead of being able to like ship in and out quickly with one horse and come back later, they just kind of go and hang out for the whole day. So then you miss that one person at home all day, you know, because they don't have time to walk back from the ring.
Speaker 1:Load the trailer up, drive it home, drive it back, you know, but, if you don't know that you could, you could miss your second ride potentially because it takes you so long to get back to the trailer and then back home. you know, and it's one of those, like you know, it's gatekeeping, like nobody wants to gatekeep anything. we want this to be a lovely industry that everyone has the ability to compete and and to participate in, and so having people, like you said, with that insider knowledge that can give that feedback on the front or, you know, it's not even feedback them but can provide that information on the front side, is huge.
Speaker 4:Yeah it's like every, or it's like every event should have a board and on the board should be, you know, obviously, the rider. You know someone from the corporate world maybe, just to be like, hey, i saw this and you know, at the bank I used to work for and you know we could apply that here. But, more importantly, like the grooms, because exactly to you know, to that point it's they're the ones who can really speak to. How is this going to run and are the riders going to want to come back, or is this going to be pretty challenging for them and they're going to be more encouraged to go to the other?
Speaker 3:So the other nice thing you down the street is the thing is, the thing I'm constantly amazed by when it comes to horse shows is that it's very easy to think of a horse show as a horse show, but it's really an exercise in logistics. Like, again, you know, the military specializes in logistics and it prides itself on being logistics, like they say. You know, wars afford with logistics. Right, that's basically whoever's the best logistics line is usually the winner of a war. It's just the fact that you're the best logistics line in the world with people like, the fact that you've got this highly complex logistical situation and then you add in huge live animals that don't speak your language, that you've also got to navigate around this logistical complex environment, logistically complex environment, it's just, it's one of the things. I just, i just don't think society gives it enough credit. I mean, it blows my mind.
Speaker 4:And even you had said you had you told us about how there were some horse that I don't know if this was that burly, but some of the horses had parted ways with their rider on cross country and the grooms had no idea as to, like, where, how to communicate with the staff at the show to be able to collect those horses. Where were the riders? there's just no internal communications, which you know our technology will solve. You know then, but it didn't. It didn't fix those problems before. So even things like that of like internal messaging at the show and being able to coordinate the grooms with the riders, with the horses that are running around without the rider on cross country, and how to have a good plan in place for if and when those situations occur, like what is, what is the protocol?
Speaker 1:Absolutely and to, like, half the time the riders don't give you the information, even if they do get it. You know it's having a rider's a little bit, i guess, like prepping me for having a husband one day. Right, you know, do a lot of this out in the office. Well, no, they didn't say that. I mean you talked to somebody else is like they did say that you just run your phone and not listen to me. You know, and the number of rooms that come up and on the barn aisle.
Speaker 1:Do you know what time we can lunch? what time does the barn open tomorrow morning? do you know what time the classes tonight, like The rider they are, they're like precursors to husbands. I think you know. But If you have, if you have a groom on the organization staff that understands that everything is going to run more smoothly. If we can get those types of and you know that type of information and those little you know barn hours and things like that back to the grooms, everything is going to run a lot more smoothly because the grooms are going to be like, hey, you got to get on the source or hey, we've got to be here at this time type of thing. They just kind of facilitate that. You know Fluidity of the day, i guess.
Speaker 3:Sure, another thing that you said last time we spoke, which I found really, really interesting. I'd love for you to just give a bit of detail about it, and this is comes down to riders and show organizers treating grooms with the level of respect that they deserve. and And listening to what you have to say with some gravitas is You made the point that and this might be something specific to eventing, but you made the point that, as grooms, considering that you are the ones responsible for managing all the logistics you will sit down and assess shows in advance about whether they are financially viable as events, in terms of whether it's worth spending the time, money and resources to go to an event because they are logistically complex. So do you just want to give a bit of a insight into how you guys look at events and why you look at events that way, and how that could have a drastic impact on whether an event actually gets registrations, and not because the grooms might just decide. You know what. this event isn't worth it, as great as it sounds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, for sure. I mean there is, you know, same thing. It's logistics and it's strategy. And so you know, i think, especially with prize money being a factor, you know, for instance, like the American eventing championships are back in Lexington, kentucky, this year And that would probably have the greatest amount of prize money here in the US, short of Kentucky and the Maryland five star as far as eventing is concerned. With a big in Kentucky it's going to draw a ton of entries. But Because the infrastructure at the Kentucky horse park is so much easier to navigate I know because I've spoken with Doug and just they're going to take courses there as opposed to going up to great Meadow, which one runs the weekend before. It still has prize money. It is an FBI competition to gather points, but the rings are so far away from the stabling there that they have to have extra staff to go there for fewer horses.
Speaker 1:And even though your odds of winning prize money at great Meadow would be better, i know that they're going to go to the ACs instead, even though the competition is going to be more difficult, and so you know it doesn't completely dictate your schedule but it will have at least for us it did have, you know, a say on it, and that was a big reason why They also chose to build their barn here in the Raleigh Durham area, because there's still three hours from try on. So if we sit there early in the week and it's an off week but our jumpers haven't jumped in a while And you pull up the entries and there's not a lot of horses in a twenty five thousand dollar Grand Prix, it's nothing for us to load up two or three horses and take them on Friday night and check them in for the Grand Prix and stay to jump on Saturday And then come right back home.
Speaker 4:Just a cool twenty five K for the weekend. Come on home. Yeah, have it, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i mean you're not guaranteed to win. But if there's only 12 in it and you show up with three, you know one in five odds. Pretty good to try to win some money back. At least pay for your weekend.
Speaker 4:Yeah, would you say that most riders are thinking about it and kind of mapping it out that way, or are they a more like sophisticated operation, if you will?
Speaker 1:I think it depends on what their client situation is like, you know. So if they've got a big client base, then it might be a conversation of at the beginning of the year, sitting down and going Okay, where would you guys like to go? show, if you live in the south, do you want to go up to Traverse City for two weeks? because we need to book those hotels and not stabling a year in advance. But it's gonna be cool, it's gonna be beautiful, but it is going to be expensive.
Speaker 1:You know, do you have clients that are Chasing points to try to qualify for zone finals or Devon or something along those lines? you know, if you're just in operation kind of individually, then you can look at your individual horses needs and try to figure it out that way. You know, there are some courses that you know would be better or worse for a specific course. You know, some horses at a young stage in their career Probably don't need to go to try and and jump under the lights, like even a young FBI horse that maybe doesn't jump great under the lights would have been better to go to upper ville and jump the four-star, which would be more difficult. But it's held on Sunday afternoon, then jumping Saturday night under the lights at the three-star at try on the weekend before. You know like that turns into a whole big discussion and a lot of logistics and planning go into that as well.
Speaker 1:You know, i know a lot of people that have Historically just spent winters in Florida and then come north have now decided to stay in Florida because of the additions To the FBI at WAC and it hits throughout the year. That's made a big change and you know WAC is running all the way down to like the point six fives jump in the indoor. Which what adult amateur that wants to jump essentially cross rails doesn't want to hang out in the air conditioned indoor at Florida and not Have to travel like that sounds like a dream come true.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no so yeah, that's actually really interesting because, um, you know, when you think about everything we've discussed so far, when it comes to grooms, like it's just a fact of life, right, i mean it's it's it's largely a young person's game, because, as you get older, take it I mean not not including the fact that your body gets sore, but even just the quality of life. Like you, when you're young, the idea of traveling for work Is an exciting prospect. As you get older, the idea of traveling for work sounds like hell, because all you want is to have, like It's gonna put some roots down.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it all becomes a lot more coffee in the morning. Yeah, so the idea.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. So the idea that some of these larger facilities are creating Realities in which you can stay in one place long term rather than having to move around to follow the events um, that will what completely upend, like the, the natural flow of the equestrian economy, because that money won't be moving around the country and spreading it out equally, it'll be being centralized in some areas, but on the flip, which could be good and can be bad, but on the flip side it does create more career Opportunities for grooms and stuff to be able to maintain a better work life balance. If they can get themselves like If I was a young groom and I was trying to figure out where I was gonna stay. If that, if what you're saying about work Is true, then like, yeah, i'm gonna go and be a groom down, i'm gonna move to Florida and try to get a groom job down there Because it's gonna afford me a better work life balance. And if I try to become a groom, you know, up in New England or something.
Speaker 4:What about freelance? so it? could this exist, maybe more so in the hundred jumbo rod? I don't know as much with eventing, but like, could it exist in which you are based out of, say, ocala and then When riders come down for the winter, you're essentially like a freelance groom for them, or is it? I mean like just thinking out loud with eventing, i mean, it's, it's so bruling on the horses in cross-country, it's it makes sense to really know those horses. So, and that would take not just being freelance, it takes being full-time and really understanding the event rider etc. But I mean, is there just throwing that question out there? Do you think that that could be possible where there is a freelance model, at least in certain You know disciplines, not necessarily all of them?
Speaker 1:right. No, there actually is a very large community of the grooms that live in Wellington full-time and They pick up a lot of work when the Europeans fly over for the winter, because then those barns don't have to bring their full Staff with them. They can leave some people at home if they leave young horses or rehabbing horses at home type of thing. But then they have staff that you know. I mean, some of these guys are repeat customers. You know, if I know, if I live in Wellington and I know that I can work for, say, kino Connor every winter and make enough money In the 16 weeks that he's in Wellington to essentially pay my bills for the rest of the year, you know, then everything on top of that's just play money, you know. And there are some people that live in Wellington year-round and some people you know they work They're just farm maintenance guys the rest of the year.
Speaker 1:I know there are a lot of, say, younger professionals in, like the Ocala area in eventing who have a couple of horses, you know, but then they'll freelance, like, for instance, will Coleman just went to Aachen and stuff, and so then these younger professionals come in and help his barn staff out when he takes his rooms on the road, you know, but he might only take one or two horses, like when they went to Kentucky They took two horses, they took both of his good grooms but then he needed help at home for those 16 other horses that were at home. So then it affords these younger professionals a space to Ride their own horse and do their barn in the morning, go help out at his property through the middle of the day And then they get to go home to their own horses at night. I know it was one of those. It was actually very eye-opening for me because we lived in Aachen for the first five and a half years that I worked for Doug while they were building the farm here in North Carolina, and Even though we showed more Living in Aachen, i was on the road less because everything was local.
Speaker 1:So even though, like I, actually was more exhausted the first winter that we spent here, because every time we went to a horse show I had to drive to Florida and set up for two weeks and then work two straight weeks at the horse show with no days off, come home, was home for a week and then would do it all over again Versus when we were in Aachen, it would be three or four horses that would go each week. But I slept in my own bed every night and Because I had eyes on all the horses at home, you know, even if it was that morning before I left for a horse show, or that evening when I came back, i could still be like, okay, that horse needs its main cleaned up and this horse needs body clipped and is good to body clip, so somebody can do this during the day. Well, we're in town at the horse show and it wasn't coming in on Sunday night. And then panicking because I had to clean up Seven horses before we left two days later.
Speaker 4:Right, yeah, it's more of. I mean, nothing in the equestrian industry is like a normal job, but at least more of a normal job than being a part of the traveling circus.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely So. Just so I kind of wrap things up, this has been an awesome chat, like really interesting stuff. So, bringing this all back to the IGA, everything we've been talking about Has been a lot of your experience and your experience in the eventing world. How does everything we've been talking about Differentiate when you start going across disciplines? So you know, like, for example, the hunter jumper, the grooms in the hunter jumper world I already have a very different experience and grooms in the eventing world from what I understand and then, as the IGA, how are you guys managing that? Because it does get complex, and I say that is someone is. You know, we are building event management software for the equestrian space and one of the biggest challenges is that, like, the rules are different for every Discipline and the cultures are different for every discipline, and so you need to build out custom functionality For each discipline. And so for you, as the IGA, who's trying to represent all disciplines across grooms, across all disciplines, across all countries, how does, how does that complicate your life?
Speaker 1:Oh, My gosh. So yeah, it's, it's incredibly different. I am lucky that I have the experience in the hunter-jumper world as well. So as far as the eventing in the show jumpers go, we've got a pretty good handle on that. We're getting, you know, some really good feedback and those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:I've been trying to work with a couple of different girls who groomed for dressage riders and just really figure out their culture And you know how they feel like they're valued with their riders at the horse shows, those kinds of things. I've spoken to a couple of people who groom in F E I Driving and that's a really interesting one because a lot of the Single drivers and even the ones that compete in pairs, the rider grooms for themselves. So it might be like a husband and wife couple that have their two horses and one drives and one navigates, but they do everything on their own. They might not have like an official groom type of thing. You know, chester Weber obviously has a team that goes with him because he takes four horses everywhere and is incredible. So trying to feel out, you know what their needs are from a basic standpoint and then all the way up through the championship level and Really right now. It's a lot of focus groups, it's a lot of gathering information, that kind of thing. I just continue to encourage anyone who grooms at all. You know, whether you work for somebody at home or you groom all the way up to the world championship level, you know, reach out to us, send us an email, like I'm wanting to get this information because, like you said, everything's so different from the protocols to the rules to you know the way that people are handled.
Speaker 1:Kind of my experience when I was at the FBI World Cup was, you know, the vaulting grooms really feel like family with their owners And that might be because their one horse is used for multiple athletes, or they might have, you know, two or four vaulters for that one horse. So in that sense they're Not working less, but they don't have a string of horses to try to make one person successful. So it does completely then shift, like their focus and what they're looking for. But at the end of the day, whether you're making four hundred dollars a week or four thousand dollars a week, you're still entitled to good living conditions and a good work-life balance and health insurance and, you know, annual raises of a certain percentage and so continuing to educate people along those lines and Being able and being available to answer questions Regarding anything, whether it's packing for your first FBI show, traveling abroad, how to talk to your boss, not feeling like you fit in Where you're working, you know and helping people work through that, because we also know programs are vastly different Depending on the rider.
Speaker 1:You know, i have a lovely, lovely friend. She's one of my best friends in the world. She's an incredible groom. I would have trusted her with my horses in a heartbeat. She thrives in a small program of like six horses That are just hers, where she can give a ton of time to those horses every day.
Speaker 1:Whereas I need a bit of the chaos, like I need the big program, i need enough to do to keep my brain kind of going Because I have to have multiple balls in the air at once. It doesn't make either of us a lesser groom, we're just different. And And so then, taking a groom that feels like they don't belong in the industry and going okay, well, why do you not think that this spits? and being able to mentor them Into maybe just a different situation that more fits their personality type is, you know, another big thing that I want to be able to do as a representative of the IGA, because I don't want people to quit Just because they feel like they're not good enough, because they don't necessarily fit in a, you know, certain situation. It's no different than being an ER doctor versus a general practitioner, like yeah totally good point.
Speaker 4:Yeah, or even just some people really enjoy the chaos of a startup, like we obviously do?
Speaker 3:It sounds like Courtney was putting up Pegasus, just fine.
Speaker 4:And then there's some people that they want to. You know They want to clock in at nine and they want to leave at five and they don't want to work on the weekends, and that's completely fine. So it sounds like not only collecting that information is valuable, but also understanding the context around it of like well, you're saying that this is really tough, like is it? is it tough because it's you know, like it's the work, or is it kind of tough because it's not the right type of environment for you that best serves you? so, um how? so at the moment you have these resources, it sounds like you're building out the website and have a lot of really great Um things that people can come in and kind of arm themselves with to take to their employers. How are people getting in contact with you and how are you kind of um like how can people find you and provide that information and feedback to you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, um, like I said, we've got feedback forums through our website, which is international gorgomsorg, or you can send me an email. It's Courtney at international gorgomsorg. I am happy to talk to anybody you know, especially about some more personal things that you might not want going, you know, to any of our employees, board members, um, because sometimes those emails get kind of directed to myself or to Helen. Um, i think there's another email that's a bit more general, um, that you can find through the website. Or, you know, you can find me on social media. I'm Courtney Carson on facebook. Um, i'm Courtney Carson Something on instagram. I can look that up if you would like, um. But, yeah, i mean, i'm willing to talk to anybody, you know.
Speaker 1:Like I said, help mentor god them. Um, and you know, join the iga and be a part of the voice, because it's one of those. I always describe it as You know, everyone says the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but at the end of the day, if all four wheels squeak, you're going to put the car on the side of the road. So we are that united voice that If we get.
Speaker 1:People coming to us, then we can go to the fei and be an organized, unified voice to actually make a change, whereas if it's just little people chirping kind of all over the world, the fei is going to just put their hands over their ears, or a show is going to put their hands over their ears and be like We don't want to hear it, we don't care, you're just going to be a part of the voice. We don't care, you're just complaining.
Speaker 3:So totally, totally and just to like to that point about different disciplines and stuff. At the end of the day, if you have people And you have multiple horses, then there's going to have to be someone who's responsible for keeping the train on the tracks When you start traveling and doing logistical challenges. So it doesn't matter, like, whether you're how to jump, it doesn't matter if you're venting, doesn't matter if you're raining, doesn't matter if you're, you know, a dress up, dressage. There's going to be resources beneficial to all people in those circumstances, regardless of discipline.
Speaker 1:Exactly and we're really hoping, you know I actually I sent an email to you, seth, this morning about trying to figure out how to get a more national Group here that can then branch out and get into Raining barrel racing. You know stuff like that just to provide more resources, because I think right now a lot of people here international grooms association and they think it's only for FBI level grooms and While we do market ourselves that way because we are partnered with the FBI, we are very much open to helping any grooms at any level. You know Whether it's trying to get you a resource to Speak with your national federation or your organizing body. You know how to navigate. You know different show organization apps and websites and things like that to get the information you need about Stabling openings and show schedules and things like that so that you can go to your boss and make a plan of how much staff you need. You know all of those resources like we're trying to be more broad than What we have to market ourselves as.
Speaker 4:Yeah, i mean I could imagine that the ones that need it the most are the ones that aren't at the fei, because at least at the FEI level people are really paying attention to it. But I couldn't imagine that a lot of the biggest problems persist at, you know, the lower levels are just those that are trying to get into it And they're not necessarily working for an fei level rider. But you know, like just thinking about it, i could, i could imagine that the conditions are better at the top than they are at the local barn, who have grooms, and so being able to provide those resources, no matter what level you are at, or you know, your rider and your trading program is that. So that's awesome.
Speaker 3:That has been amazing. Thank you, courtney, really appreciate you taking the time and I hope everyone learns something from this.
Speaker 4:I definitely did yeah, absolutely, and so I know you. You Provided the ways in which people can contact you and just to kind of close the loop on the membership, so anyone can join. Obviously it's tailored to the grooms, but anyone in any discipline. And is there a cost for that, or is that free to join?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's $16 for the whole year. So basically two large cups of coffee.
Speaker 3:It's really breaking the bank.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, but we wanted that's. The thing is It has to be affordable, because we know we've all worked as rooms. We know that you know we're not making millions of dollars a year Any shows that are interested in supporting us. That's, you know, where we're making our money to be able to afford to. You know, build the website and have these resources available. Um can become show supporters. You know, if there's a company or anyone that wishes to support us like, shoot me an email, get on our website. There's several ways to become a partner with us. Um, you know, but we really want companies that believe in the grooms and in their, you know, welfare and things like that to really, you know, kind of help support this because the united front High waters rise all boats and so that's kind of the you know, main focus that we have right now. All right, fantastic, fantastic.
Speaker 3:All right, thank you very much, courtney and um. We will be in touch soon, no doubt.
Speaker 4:Yeah, thanks, courtney, it was great We could. We could talk for hours about this is wonderful, all right.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys for having me Bye. Thank you guys so much for having me. Bye.
