Julie Broadway, president of the American Horse Council.
The AHC is the equestrian industry’s top group for lobbying politicians in Washington, D.C. to grow our sport and remove its threats.
Be sure to listen to this episode and if you want to keep up with Julie and the AHC, check out horsecouncil.org and send her an email at jbroadway@horsecouncil.org.
🐴 This episode is brought to you by Pegasus, the first modern event management system that makes it easy to host and run equestrian events. Sign up for early access at www.thepegasus.app.
Be sure to follow Pegasus on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and subscribe to The Oxer, the #1 weekly newsletter for global equestrian industry happenings. 🗞️
Julie Broadway, president of the American Horse Council.
The AHC is the equestrian industry’s top group for lobbying politicians in Washington, D.C. to grow our sport and remove its threats.
Be sure to listen to this episode and if you want to keep up with Julie and the AHC, check out horsecouncil.org and send her an email at jbroadway@horsecouncil.org.
🐴 This episode is brought to you by Pegasus, the first modern event management system that makes it easy to host and run equestrian events. Sign up for early access at www.thepegasus.app.
Be sure to follow Pegasus on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and subscribe to The Oxer, the #1 weekly newsletter for global equestrian industry happenings. 🗞️
And those numbers were accurate because the number was one in three households in America has an equestrian enthusiast in it, which is a gigantic number.
Julie:We need more people in the equestrian community. This is a way to draw more people into the equestrian community.
Noah:Hi everyone. My name is Noah Levy and I'm the producer of our Pegasus Podcast, hosted by our founders Sam Baines and Jen Tankle. On today's show, we are hosting Julie Broadway, who is the president of the American Horse Council, the country's premier lobby for horse-related issues. You are going to learn about how Julie is fighting for our interests in the nation's capital. We'd like to apologize in advance for unresolved little audio issues. Keep your ears out and your heels down, alright, let's get into it.
Sam:Julie, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for the audience. So that they understand, you know, get some context out of who you are and what you do. Can you please just give us a quick summary of your background and your role with the American Horse Council?
Julie:Sure. So let me start off by saying I'm Julie Broadway. I'm president at the American Horse Council. The American Horse Council is a bipartisan advocacy organization based in Washington DC. We were formed in 1969 to be the voice of the equine and equestrian industry in the US, and I'm going to talk about that in some more detail in a little bit. But about me I grew up riding horses and had a completely different professional career in management and leadership in a for-profit industry which helped fund my horse habit. And then at one point I decided that I really wanted to combine my vocation and my avocation and I came into the horse industry. I found, oh gosh, in 2000,. I don't know something. And I've worked in a breed association. I served on committees at the United States Equestrian Federation. I was the president of PATH International or the Professional.
Julie:Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship. I was their chairman of their board for a couple of years, and so I've been all over the industry and sort of seen and done a lot of things, and I just love what I do in DC.
Sam:Fantastic, and you're currently doing the new economic study for the industry, so can you just give a quick summary of what that is?
Julie:Yep, so let me put a little context around that too. So the role of the American Horse Council is to speak on behalf of the industry. That means that we work on legislative and regulatory issues, and also industry initiatives. In order to justify some of the things that we would like to accomplish or to avoid unintended consequences on pieces of legislation or regulatory matters. You have to have good statistics and facts to back up your case, so a national economic impact study is just crucial for us to collect information, to be able to go into a congressman's office and say this is how many?
Julie:horse owners you have in your state.
Julie:This is how many of them are your constituents and voters, and this is the population of horses that are in your state. This is the economic impact we offer to your state. Here's how many people are employed and all those kinds of statistics and metrics that really help us make our case and get people's attention, so they listen to what we have to say.
Sam:Right Out of interest, when you walk into a congressman's office and you present, I mean, and I usually shocked at the impact, the magnitude of the impact that the equestrian industry actually has on their state, or do you find that, on average, they're usually pretty well informed?
Julie:Well, now that varies from state to state. And also congressional members, some have more history in the ag industry or even in the equine community. So when I go to Kentucky, hey, they're well versed on what the implications are for there and maybe California and maybe Florida.
Julie:Those are.
Julie:Texas. Those are our big states that have large horse populations and large horse communities. But when I go into Iowa not so much.
Sam:Yeah, interesting. You mentioned that there's a distinction between the equine industry and equestrian. I assume that differentiation is activities to do with horses versus the sport of horses.
Julie:A little bit. But also when we look at legislative and regulatory issues, people often say oh, we're working on economic relief and taxes and labor policy, so guesswork or visas all those are things that benefit the industry and horse owners and horse businesses. They don't benefit the horses person.
Sam:All right, got you.
Julie:We think about what we also do for the equine. We think more of health and welfare issues, which sort of is into the regulatory side of things often.
Sam:I think I've mentioned this to last time we chat briefly which is that Iowa, for example, not fully understanding the magnitude of the impact the equestrian industry has on their state.
Sam:One thing I find really interesting about the equestrian industry is that it's a niche, but it's a major niche and it injects a lot of money into the GDP in America each year. But because it's not agriculture and because it's not in a metropolitan city, it kind of doesn't really have a place. You would think it's part of agricultural consideration, but I don't think people consider it part of agricultural consideration because it's its own thing. So when you go up to the hill and you're talking to congressmen like Iowa, for example, which has a lot of rural area, it's quite amazing that and I think that kind of explains a bit of it is that despite the fact that they have a lot of rural area, that they aren't really well versed on the impact of the equestrian industry in their state, because I'm sure they're very well versed on the impact of the agricultural sector on their state. You know what I mean, but it kind of doesn't fit that model that makes them that would like be a catalyst for them to seriously consider it and think about it.
Julie:Well, one of the things that I often tell people is that our industry operates at the intersection or the overlap of a lot of other industries, and what I mean by that is people don't really see it this way, but we are part of professional sports, we are part of outdoor recreation, we are part of racing, we are part of agriculture, and the list just goes on and on.
Julie:So we get very involved with a lot of different coalitions in Washington where we have very specific issues that we want to work on together. And a great example is when we think about outdoor recreation, which is trail riding. We partner with outdoor recreation sports hiking, biking, boating, camping, archery, fishing, all those kinds of things because we're all interested in making sure that we have well-funded parks, systems, trails and all those things. So when you want to go out and trail ride with your horse, you've got a great location to go to and you know that trails are well maintained and you've got good trail heads or you have good camping spaces, because you've hauled two horses along the way and you want to be able to have somewhere. So it's really interesting that people don't see our industry as this big, broad umbrella that intersects with all these other things.
Sam:Yeah, let's say, for example, that there is a coalition of oh, there's a coalition for everything.
Sam:Yeah, let's go. Let's say there's a coalition of outdoor activities, right, in order to prevent a major developer from developing more land that's going to wipe out a national park or something right, when you turn up to the table as the American Horse Council, do you find that the other outdoor organizations Do they consider you arriving as being a big hitter? Like, do they have any concept of the magnitude, of the size of the equestrian industry? Because it is huge, but people don't really think of it like that.
Julie:So I will give you one perfect example. So we are a member of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, which is that coalition of all those outdoor recreation sports that I mentioned. They worked with the BEA, which is the Bureau of Economic and Analysis, to get an analysis of what was the impact of the outdoor recreation industry. Just like we're doing a national economic impact study for us, they did one for the whole outdoor recreation space and when they did it the first time many years ago, equestrian was not included, and this last time they did it, equestrian was included and it almost doubled the impact of outdoor recreation. So yes to your point. I come to the table and maybe at first glance they might think, eh, not much to this, but then they look at the numbers and they're like wow, okay.
Sam:Now we've got some hitting force.
Julie:Well, julie, since you are doing so many different components and you're in so many different components of the equestrian industry even we talked about last time, which was estate planning. So what happens to the horses after someone might have passed away and the family doesn't necessarily want to take the horses on all the way to the trails, to racing, like? What do you find yourselves most immersed in on a day-to-day basis? Is there one particular sector that really takes up most of your time?
Julie:Oh no, that's a really tough question. We divide the industry into a couple of sectors and there's always really hot topics in each sector. So of course, right now, racing, the big hot topic has to do with the implementation of the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Act, or HISA. And so when the derby was just recently and we're getting ready for the pre-ness, so lots of things the racing sector needs more foreign workers to work on the back stretch. So we work on immigration a lot with them. We've got the Tax Fairness Act which is about how we depreciate race horses. So we work a lot on that kind of thing in that space. But if we go over to the recreation sector, which is the largest sector of our industry in the US, that's our recreational trail riders we're always working on.
Julie:they just passed out of committee today the American Outdoor Recreation Act, so we're always working with other groups in those kinds of areas. We get into things that have to do with show and competition. That's our third sector, so we're looking at, in some of those cases, more health and welfare things.
Julie:How do we streamline import and export regulations so that people who are competing in, say, canada and the US can get in and out and not have as much quarantine period in some of the things that go along with that? But also how do we make sure the rules are tight enough that we don't bring in any unwanted diseases that might affect the herd in?
Julie:the US.
Julie:I call them the herd. And then our last sector is what we call our working horses, and those are horses that are used in equine assisted services or mounted police or on dude ranches and those kinds of places. They have day in, day out jobs. They're very, very important to our industry and they have a whole different set of needs that they're trying to address over there. So I can't really answer your question, because everybody has at least half a dozen or so things that are like top of the list that we're always working on.
Julie:Yeah, I'm truly impressed because you named so many different components and you're an expert in every one of those things. So do you have a big team that works with you to be able to really like ensure that each of those unique special cases are met to the fullest capability? That they're going after, that they're being lobbied for, that you're trying to change legislation for like, or are you? Or do you not get any sleep every night?
Julie:No, so I have what I call a small but mighty team. So I have a wonderful lobbyist on staff. She's my government affairs person. I have a great person who handles all of my health and regulatory issues. I have for our United Horse Coalition, which is our efforts to help horses that are at risk or in transition. They work a lot with rescues and sanctuaries. I have a researcher who does a research project for us on equine welfare and rescues and sanctuaries. I have, you know, a couple of overhead people that do administrative, membership, marketing, a few little things like that. But where we really leverage ourselves is through all of our partnerships. So there are 26 state horse councils. So when we're working on issues that we need a call to action and we need people to contact their congressional members and, you know, kind of motivate them to help us, we activate that group and we really rely on them to do a lot of grassroots stuff for us and we also like.
Julie:I said, we have all these coalitions, we turn to our coalitions partners and we lean in on something. So they will lean in when we need them.
Julie:So it's you know, it's a little bit.
Julie:I hate to say it's a little bit. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, but you know, here I am saying, hey, we'll help you, beagle brigade, to ensure that we have processes in place to support what you're doing as far as dogs that are used for drug detection and other practices for homeland security. But we need you to help us because we're working with other agencies and we need some help with it, explaining to them why we need a pyrethane, which is a chemical that we use in fly spray. If you've gone in the barn and you've got one of those little pump sprayers, you know, and you're spraying your horse to keep the flies off, it has pyrethane in it. And the Environmental Protection Agency at one point said to us we want to ban the use of pyrethane. And we're like whoa, wait a minute. So we turn to those coalitions and say help us make our case, help us lean in on some things we need, and we'll reciprocate in other ways.
Noah:So have you ever been in a situation before where you previously worked with a coalition partner but then went against them on a legislative issue? Oh so?
Julie:that's really part of the fun of politics. So we really try hard to sort of lift each other up. But there does come times when some groups that are interested in very specific elements of a piece of legislation that we are not so much, you know, in favor of, and so we do in some respects have to sort of part company a little bit. We are respectful of each other and try to work where we can together, but sometimes we have to say, eh, not so much.
Noah:Okay, but there's a pretty strong mutual understanding between you and the other parties that this is just politics. This is just the nature of the game. Sometimes we're going to be against each other. It's nothing personal, it's just business.
Julie:Yep, and most of the time when you work with coalitions on these issues, you have that understanding right up front. Okay, where we can all row in the same direction, we're all going to be. But if we get to a point where we can't, here's how we're going to play this out, and try not to be disrespectful of each other Absolutely.
Noah:Are you able to give us a real example without mentioning any names?
Julie:Okay, so I'll try one. We have been having some challenges with our guest worker visa program. We're part of a couple of coalitions working on H2A and H2B visas, but there are differences in opinion. Whether you're in the Apple picking, or whether you're in hospitality or you're in landscaping, you might want different elements of that legislation than what we might want in the equine industry. So we have to find a way to sort of navigate a little bit.
Sam:Sure Interesting thing about the question industry is that, like people with horses are everywhere.
Sam:They're five minutes outside a large metropolitan city or they're major ranches in a more rural part of the country and it's all over the country and I would go as far to say is it's got to be one of the largest passionately joined communities in America through one combined passion being horse care and horse love and equestrian sports.
Sam:And then when you combine the fact that so many people who participate in equestrian sports and value having access to land to ride or value being able to import horses etc. Are themselves some of the wealthiest and most influential people in America who, I'm sure, also donate to campaigns here and there, I would have thought that, like, the equestrian industry would be one of those industries that all politicians are aware of being an important part. Like you want to get the horse people on board, because not only do they bring a lot of the people who participate in equestrian events like you know, people who also donate to my campaign but these people also are everywhere and they have a huge economic impact on the industry. Based on what you were saying, even the outdoor activities group was surprised to see how much of an impact you guys had until they saw the numbers? Are you saying that that kind of connection between the influence of the equestrian industry is not quite there for a lot of people who their whole job is to understand who has power and what state, when and why?
Julie:Well, I think part of the challenge, sam, is that congressional members have a lot of a variety of constituents that they're being responsive to. It's a matter of them having so many competing interests for their attention. Yeah, that's, I think, part of the challenge. That's there. But I also think we have to be honest with ourselves and say that sometimes our industry is perceived as being somewhat elitist, very wealthy and that kind of thing. So congressional members often have to balance. You know what public perception is of some of the things, right, so there's a little bit of that give and take that goes along with that too.
Sam:Yeah, right. And on the environmental level, do you, because of the amount of people all over the country, have horses in all sorts of places? Do you find many environmentalist groups? So maybe not access to outdoor space for activities, but people who are lobbying on behalf of environmental or climate change endeavors. Do you get approached by them very much, trying to get you as an ally?
Julie:So sometimes there are certainly groups who work on land conservancy and those kinds of issues. At our conference this year coming up we have a whole panel discussion about eco sustainability practices and we're going to hear from some groups that have recently come out that are called carbon hoof prints and green is the new blue and we're going to be talking a lot about those kinds of issues. But often we also see Sam from the other side, where we have environmental groups who are targeting some of our facilities for water quality or waste management or other issues that they think are polluting the surrounding area, and so we spend some time having to do some education and some work to try to explain to them the difference in the way that horses are kept and how we handle all of the surrounding area versus, say, other livestock with chickens or pigs or cattle, and how they're housed and how they're cared for. And that's a little. That's a little challenging sometimes to get environmentalist to sort of see and understand some of the differences between horses and other types of livestock.
Sam:Sure Do you have a question.
Julie:Yeah, we had a couple conversations with Megan at carbon hoof print, so it's really interesting to see. Yeah, it was really interesting to hear the things that she's working on and how she's bringing sustainability to the equestrian industry. And but you touched on the conference, so I'd love to learn more about the conference too, for everyone listening, because it sounds like it's a really exceptional opportunity in Colorado right to be able to get a little bit more information and talk with industry leaders. So could you talk about the conference that's coming up?
Julie:Yeah, so June 4th through 6th in Denver and this is an annual conference that we do which draws together all the thought leaders of the industry, all of our partners, just brings everybody together. We have a series of committee meetings and those kinds of things. It's business matters and policies we need to consider. But the one day that I enjoy the most is called our national issues forum. That's on Monday, the 5th this year, and we try to be very progressive and try to bring larger thinking and perspective to some of the things that are going on. So this year our theme is called the measure of tomorrow and we're talking about what does tomorrow look like for our industry? So I already talked about our first panel is all about economics and valuing the industry. What does that look like? Some great speakers there we're going to be talking about the eco-friendly, eco-sustainability practice. What does that look like for us? Climate change how does that affect us? What's our plan for that?
Julie:Talk about protecting the herd. That's a very important aspect of what we do is making sure we've thought about biosecurity and other practices that need to be considered up so that the herd is healthy, looking ahead at herd health, and then we're also gonna be talking about strengthening the community. That's one of our new programs. We rolled out a campaign last year called here for Horses, and it's all about exposing the general public to all the ways they can get engaged with horses, whether that's spectating or dude ranching or whatever that might be. We want them to know that there's a place for them in our industry, in our community, and we want to invite them to get engaged in some way. So we've been working really hard on that. So we're really excited about this year's lineup of topics because we've got some really great speakers coming.
Noah:What do you think are some of the reasons why the general public is not as involved in America's horse world as it could be?
Julie:So one of the statistics from our last economic impact study which was in 2017, told us that there are 38 million households in the US that have a horse enthusiast. That's a good number, but only 1.6% of those households are horse owners. That, I think, to be honest, has to do with some constraints in land access and some of those other issues that we've already talked about, but I also think that, just in general, people aren't as exposed or familiar with the entire ag industry as they once were. Many, many years ago. I will say this we were nervous with the pandemic hit that we were going to see our industry sort of contract, like we saw in the last recession, and the opposite occurred.
Julie:People moved out of urban areas into rural areas. Horse adoptions went up. Demand for horseback riding less is they were waiting list, because people immediately connected the fact that riding a horse is not only good for you and a good mentally and physically, but it's a socially distanced activity. So they had more time on their hands, they weren't commuting, they could take their kids in the middle of the day and go horseback riding. So we really not what you know we really benefited almost from the pandemic that was.
Julie:The silver lining for our industry was that there was this resurgence of people who wanted to get back to nature, get back involved in those kinds of things, and they just came out in droves. We could not possibly keep up with the demand for people who wanted to get out and ride on the trails. The park systems were just overwhelmed with people who showed up wanting to go trail riding.
Sam:Wow, Right Out of interest.
Sam:I've been wondering about this. We did a podcast about this about 18 months ago where we were talking about the impact of COVID on the question industry, both in terms of the positive impacts being, you know, the increase in the popularity of the sport and having a huge amount of people who had maybe abandoned the sport when they, when they were great with the college, and got into the workforce, who have now returned to it. But then the second and third order effects of that was that, like the prices of horses, if you're buying and selling, went through the roof. Everyone was buying horses, sight unseen and you know, everything just became more expensive and you know, as you know, supply and demand increased. Do you guys have any insight? I mean, coming back to the economic study, have you guys got any insight as to yet whether those numbers have dropping off and it's returning back to normal levels of participation in equestrian activities since the pandemic has ended, or has the industry managed to maintain that wave of support? So I'm going to give you a two part answer.
Julie:Last year at my conference I had a woman who came to talk about riding the wave. That's what we we just we titled her presentation because what we wanted to do was, yes, we saw those increases in the pandemic and we were like, okay, how did we ride that wave? How do we keep that momentum going and not see things fall off? Quite frankly, I have not heard a lot about things getting softer or things falling off, but I'm sure there's going to be a little bit of that.
Julie:That's going to occur over time. I can say that one of the things coming out sort of the pandemic that I think has become a bigger factor is hay shortages, you know, and the price of hay has really skyrocketed. So that's affecting, you know, horse owners really personally in their purse and we saw gas prices go up so people weren't traveling to as many horse shows, those kinds of things. So I do think there was a little softening in a few places. But for the most part people felt so fine during the pandemic that when they finally could get back out they went out in droves. I mean, almost every breeder discipline association that I've spoken to has had record number of entries at their competitions Besides the American.
Sam:Horse Council. Are there any organizations or efforts that you're aware of at a scale large enough to be able to have an impact, that is trying to capitalize? Like you said right in the way of how to talk about it, that was the discussion you had at the general meeting last year. Have you actually seen that turn into practice and people are actually doing things and implementing things to try and maintain that momentum?
Julie:Yep, I have seen that and I've seen it and heard about it, for examples, more and less in Barnes, where they had a process that they typically used to book lessons or to ensure that people had the opportunity to come and ride, and they had to adapt during the pandemic and find new ways to do that and try new technology in order to have, you know, do online booking and other things like that, and people really figured out quickly that those types of solutions were much more effective and efficient in running their businesses, and so they have really tried to continue on that, sam, as a way to do, you know, just improve upon what their practices were and to get more people into the barn more effectively and efficiently, kind of thing.
Sam:Yeah right.
Julie:Julie, have you seen something similar to the AHC, but internationally, or at least AHC specifically in another country? And then on that, if those do exist, do you work together on an international scale?
Julie:So the way other countries manage the equestrian industry is a little different than the US. Most of them have government run agencies that do that, whether that's in Britain or Australia or those kinds of things. So there are agencies that do some of what we do, but most of them are completely configured differently. We do from time to time work with them and have conversations with them, especially when it comes to import, export issues or disease mitigation and some of those kinds of things. It also comes into trade, you know buying and selling horses coming from the US and or coming from other countries into the US sometimes gets us involved in a few of those kinds of conversations.
Julie:So it just depends on the circumstances.
Julie:Yeah, gotcha, it was interesting. We had a conversation with a Stavon who is a Bosnian equestrian and he lives very close to the border of Croatia. But he said and Croatia is apparently a much more robust equestrian events industry, like they have more shows, they have more professional riders, it's a lot more mature there than it is in Bosnia, and so he was saying it's a really big barrier for him and his students and other Bosnians to compete, because as soon as you get to the Croatian border you're essentially stopped for an unknown duration of time, and so what should be maybe like a weekend show or a day show ends up being like a pretty lengthy excursion and then therefore the cost and the horse's health is all something that is called into question. So it would just be interesting to see something like this take off in other countries to help support the equestrian industry worldwide.
Noah:But yeah right. Does the AHC have any sort of stance between either welcoming more or welcoming less riders from other countries in the US? Because I could see both ways that if you would want to make it harder for riders from different countries to come to the US for competitions or whatnot, maybe that could be viewed as like propelling American ridership, but on the flip side, it could be viewed as damaging American ridership, because you're basically saying, okay, like we're no longer trying to be like the equestrian center of the world. I was wondering if you had a perspective on this, julie.
Julie:No, I don't really have a perspective on that. To my knowledge, we work pretty closely with the United States Equestrian Federation and FEI and I don't know of any concerns or any impediments or or anything obstacles about bringing people from other countries in to compete. You know, we won't help the competition, we won't, we won't want people to get involved with the sport. So no, I don't know of any downsides.
Noah:Are there any other? Are there times, though, where, let's say, the USEF does something that AHC would be against?
Julie:No, can't think about an example of that. We have a pretty good relationship with them and generally kind of work lockstep on most of the things that they're working on. I'm thinking like safe sport. You guys remember when they rolled out safe sport and we spent a lot of time talking about how essential it is for people who want to get into this industry to feel confident that they're getting into an industry that has good practices, and so safe sport seemed like a natural thing that we should support. So we we very much got on board with that, but I can't I can't come up with anything off the top of my head that that we've been in conflict with them about.
Sam:On that point of safe sport, we've noticed that safe sport is quite mature among English writing disciplines and almost not existent amongst Western writing disciplines. From your position sitting at the top, looking down over the industry, what interesting quirks or differences that do you see between the English world and the Western world. And how do those differences and quirks either make your job better or complicate your job or split your time? Or because while the English disciplines might want one thing, the Western disciplines want the opposite. How does that complicate things?
Julie:Well, it does make life very interesting and challenging at times. You know your first example safe sport. We've seen some aspects of the industry embrace safe sport, sort of accept it, and become, you know, more normalized. At other aspects where it's not been as much, our role is to try to reiterate to the entire industry how valuable we see safe sport being and what we think the benefits are. But we don't push anything down on anybody in it. We don't. We don't force them, we just try to make our case.
Julie:I've been working on DEI Diversity, equity and Inclusion, now also with B belonging. We've been working on that. We think that's important for our industry. We have a whole task force that's been working on that. But the whole purpose of the task force is not for us to dictate that the industry needs to be embracing DEI, but that we have certain sectors in the industry where DEI is really really a journey.
Julie:And how can we collaborate? How can we help one another, how can we share things? That we've all tried. So it's interesting to get everybody around the table and talk about that, and talk about what's working and what's not working and how do we, how do we leverage all of that? You know diverse experience that we've all got. So those are the kinds of things. Sometimes it's a little more work on our end because we're trying to get people to to be receptive and open-minded about some new things that might be coming towards them. So it takes a little more education, a little more work on our part, but we are always very mindful that everybody's starting on the journey in a different place. So it means that sometimes some groups are at a point where they can go faster and others are at a point where they need to go slower.
Sam:As ACH, right, you guys are responsible for representing your Western horse sports. You've got English horse sports, and then you've got the racing industry, and then, the few times that we have participated in some of your online events, it seems to be like the majority of the people who tune into your online events do come from the racing world. So do you find it difficult to balance your effort and your limited resources between these three competing aspirations and desires, and regulatory requirements?
Julie:So I just want to dispel a misconception. So you know, racing and recreational trail riding are the two largest sectors we have, but they are actually very much on the same level as far as the number of people and the number of horses that are involved and their economic impact. So we don't distinguish and we don't deal more with one sector than another. It just happens to be whatever you know sort of the issues are or the things that are there. We did, like I said, we did, a webinar earlier this year and it was on hay shortages and how to combat hay shortages and that was very much a grassroots sort of recreational trail rider mom and pop folks that are out there dealing with that.
Julie:The last one we did people might have perceived as a webinar that was really geared towards racing, but it wasn't. It was a subject was on sports betting and fantasy gaming, and the reason that we had that one was because fantasy gaming is making its way into other disciplines in our space. So we're seeing fantasy gaming for jumping and for polo and for barrel racing and the question we were asking ourselves in that particular webinar was okay, what have we learned in all these years about how sports betting has affected racing and how do we apply those lessons learned to fantasy gaming and what could be the possible positives and negatives fantasy gaming might have on these other disciplines? So sometimes people's perception is that we're talking about racing, when in fact what I'm trying to do is say, hey, racing's been around a long time. There's some lessons we can learn from some of the experiences they've had. How do we apply them in other sectors?
Julie:Going back to the whole discussion of safe sport in the English world being a little bit more inclined to adopt it than the Western world, at least at this stage. Have you found or seen any successful tactics when you are introducing something new that's maybe a little bit scary to the industry, and how do you advance that in a way forward for everyone? Right, because English kind of accepted it. Western were still maybe working on, and of course this is a sweeping statement but have there been any successful tactics that you found to be able to champion those types of new initiatives?
Julie:So two things come to my mind. Number one I'm back to statistics, business cases. So when I'm trying to convince people that they should be considering DEI initiatives, I'm talking about a business case. Here is all of the data that tells us how DEI helps improve your business, helps expand our industry. We need more people in the equestrian community. This is a way to draw more people into the equestrian community.
Julie:So, making that business case and talking about those statistics and metrics, but also, again, these task forces that we form are intended to bring together very diverse organizations with very different perspectives and let them sort of start that dialogue with one another and hopefully learn from one another.
Julie:And those are where I would see my successes are, is where I get those groups together and one can say, well, here's where we are and here's what we've done and here's what we learn from that experience and what the benefits were of rolling out a program like this. And others can say, oh, okay, that's an interesting thing. It's kind of like a conversation we had a couple of years ago about changing the rules about whether amateurs should be allowed to accept some type of compensation and still keep their amateur status. That's a conversation that started at USEF. But then it rippled across. And then next thing I know I've got the Arabs, I've got the reigning horses, I've got quarter horses. They're all talking about whether they should adjust their amateur rules so that if you work in a barn and you muck stalls and you get paid a little small amount of money or you teach up-down lessons, as we like to call them, you know that's okay. You can do that to a certain extent and still keep your amateur status, instead of people having to choose whether or not they want to be compensated and then that pushes them into the professional status.
Sam:I might be missing this, but why is that your problem? Why is that coming to your level? Is it through visas or like visas, or compensation or labor markets?
Julie:No. So the reason it comes to my level is, again, we do legislative, regulatory and industry initiatives.
Julie:So that last category is where we get involved, where there's something that's going on in the industry and we want to have a conversation to say, hey, if there's different rules in different breeds or disciplines and these people relax the rules and for amateurs, for example, in I'm going to pick a breed in the Arabs, but I'm an owner and I have an Arab and a quarter horse. Now I've got two different sets of rules that I got to figure out how that works. So we say let's all get together, let's talk about this, let's see how we want to roll this out and how you know how we can make this something that is easy for horse owners to understand, how this works.
Sam:So how much time is the American Horse Council do you spend doing, you know, legislative efforts right versus being for lack of a better term a mediator for the different governing bodies? That don't have anyone who sits above them, so they kind of need an independent third party to get the kids in one room and tell them to all work together.
Julie:Yeah, great question. So I wish I could give you a statistic about how that works out, but it varies from day to day.
Julie:I jokily tell people when I speak at conferences Monday starts off, you know, like any professional does with a plan of things I'm going to do but when I get to the office, the phone is going to ring and the first person is going to say, hey, I have a child with special needs and I need to find an equine assisted services facility or equine assisted therapy facility. Can you give me some suggestions on where I start that search? Sure, here's some ideas.
Julie:The next person calls and says hey, I'm doing my tax returns and I sold a horse last year and what are the tax implications of that? And can you put me in touch with somebody to figure out how I handle my tax returns? Okay, yeah, I got somebody for that. And the next person calls me and says I've been challenged by the IRS because of hobby loss rule and they're trying to convince me that I'm not really running a business.
Julie:I'm really doing this horse thing as a hobby and that's going to change my tax status, and so I need to find an equine attorney. Yep, I know somebody to help you with that. And the next person will call and they'll say hey, I need an expert witness because we have a case of animal abuse and we need to find an expert witness who can talk to us about what are the standard the minimum standards of care for horses and how does this fit into this scenario? And so, to answer your question, sam, my day is always filled with very unusual and odd things while I'm trying to balance all the other stuff. This for just a minute, julie.
Sam:Why are these people calling you? I mean, I get, I'm not like I'm not diminishing the importance of their problem, but in what? What is the history of the industry that it's become the general consensus that when you have a problem like that, you call the American Horse Council? Well, what?
Julie:is happening, sam is. People are. You know. They're in a tight situation and they're struggling and they don't know where to turn, so they go Google, you know yeah, yeah, so they call me.
Julie:But you have a robust. You have a robust website with a lot of information on it, so are you often just kind of putting them in the right direction on your website?
Julie:yeah, gotcha, exactly when somebody calls me and says your earlier point, you know, hey, my parents just passed away and I've inherited these two horses. I'm not an equestrian, I'm not a horse person. What do I do? I say, aha. First, let me tell you where to go to find resources to help you in your situation. A hay bank, feed coupons, vet assistance that'll get you through. But, more importantly, you need to make a plan and figure this out. You can't just donate your horse to a horse facility and just walk away. That's not how this works, you know. So I'm often in the position of having to sort of coach people on where to go find the other resources that they need we don't we may not have it all, but we can at least get them to the right place.
Noah:At least you're very grassroots, though, like you're extremely. You're so well connected with the equestrian community that people literally call you for these kinds of problems. I wonder how often that is at other industrial lobbies.
Julie:Oh, I don't know. My guess is the National Pork Council and the National Cattleman Beef Association have the same challenges that I do with their constituents.
Sam:Right, so let's pivot to the economic impact study. So I have read your 2017 economic impact study back to front multiple times as I, and I thought it was very, very good. Are you doing? Are you using the same firm to do it again this time?
Julie:We are. We were very fortunate last time. We used a firm called Innovation Group. They really are experts in economic impact studies and they've done a lot of economic impact studies in the equine industry for certain sectors and they did such a nice job for us last time. But we do go out on RFP every time we do one and we've got a really competitive quote from them and the fact that we had so much confidence in the process they used last time really helped us to say let's use them again.
Julie:But it also makes my life a little bit easier because they know now sort of what my expectations are, what I want the final deliverable to look like. They also know that I keep a running list of questions. People call me and ask that they can't find in that study, sam. So they'll call me and say I didn't find anywhere in the 2017 report that you could tell me how many horses are kept in stalls versus how many are kept in pastures, and I'm like okay, make a note. So when we do the next study, I've got a laundry list of.
Julie:Not only are we saying what did we get out of the last study and what do we want to repeat, and then what do we want to add to it? Because, quite honestly, we're having a veterinary shortage. So this time we're asking more questions about how many students are in equine science programs and what year, so we can see what the pipeline looks like for possible veterinary students and what that might look like. We're asking more questions about horses on Native American lands this time because we didn't do that in the last study. We really wanted to get a handle around that. So just lots of new data points that we're going to try to do this time around so, and how do you actually collect this data?
Sam:I mean, is it literally I know you've got the request out at the moment for people to basically go to your website and fill out the questionnaire, but then you also the innovation group, innovation group correct? Yeah, they're also, I assume, like trying to find open source data and crunching it and then making phone calls and then calling universities to get their student numbers. It's just a bit of everything they can get their hands on, is that right?
Julie:that's exactly right. So we do the survey, we start the survey work, we run those around. They do focus groups, they do phone interviews, they do call for information. They go through nine, nineties, they just they look under every rock that they can. Um, in some places I end up having to do some stuff, like I had to do a FOIA or a federal information request act yeah, I have to think about what that one stands for.
Julie:On them to get some data that I wanted from the national park service. I wanted them to tell me in uh, fiscal year 2022, how many equestrians rode the trails in the national park service, and that's federal information for a quest act, so I had to do a FOIA for that.
Julie:So I'm constantly digging and and trying to glean information from anywhere that I can to try to substantiate this and sometimes it it means that we have to get really creative. I mean, when you ask um tribal groups to provide you with information about how many horses they have on on the reservations, they say, okay, I can tell you how many domesticated horses we have, but I can't tell you how many feral horses we have. Um like okay and sometimes tribes are a little suspicious of what we're going to do with this data.
Julie:So you've got to navigate through some of those kinds of channels to try to figure out and, as you can imagine, amish and Mennonite people don't do technology yeah, so you get them to do a survey. So then, how do you get that kind of information?
Sam:is there a strategy to the data you're collecting? Like, do you sit down and you think what do we need to get out of this report? Okay, these are the questions we're going to ask, or is it literally just like all right, here are the standard things that we need to figure out, and then here are the questions that have come in the most over the last five years from you know, members of the equestrian community. Let's add this one, this one, this one. Like how do you decide what the final set of questions is?
Julie:okay. So there's two parts to that innovation group. Again, they're the experts on economic impact studies. They do the strategy part. They say when we're done, this is what we need to have. We need to have jobs, we need to have, you know, direct contributions to GDP. We need to have indirect contributions to GDP. They come up with all that. We need horse population, we need to know all those things. Then I overlay.
Julie:These are the kinds of questions that may not necessarily be economic impact kind of numbers, but they are questions that our industry needs to know. The answer to how many acres of land do we use? Well, that's got nothing to necessarily do with economic impact, but it's a great statistic and often is used when we're talking about zoning and other issues. This time around we've got some new questions that came from some of our partners that are a little bit more about trends that people are seeing, like if the economy is tight, are you going to shop around more for where you're going to buy certain products or are you going to just buy less? Or you know they're asking a series of questions about people's sort of buying habits. If you will not even remotely economic impact numbers necessarily, but they do tell us a story and kind of paint a picture. That's important for us to know as we look ahead, about what the industry's shape might look like.
Julie:So yeah, so since since the last impact study we know we've had COVID and we've had Yellowstone, so I imagine those two alone have brought in a huge influx of fresh blood into the industry. Are there any other numbers or things that you might kind of be like as someone at the top who's seen all these different things happening in so many different sectors? Are there other things that you are looking forward to seeing the impact on that's going to be shown in this upcoming impact study?
Julie:yeah. So again back to my DEI story. One of my focuses this time for the study is to better understand what our industry's impact is in underrepresented communities. So we're really going after some urban and some other areas that serve underrepresented communities. I'm thinking about Compton Cowboys and Cowgirls of Color and Detroit Horsepower and Work to Ride, which is in Philly, and some of those other programs. We're really trying to get them engaged because I would like to have a better understanding and dispel, if I possibly can, this whole image of our industry being so elitist and only for the wealthy. Well, that's not necessarily true.
Julie:We have a healthy population of people who are in lower income levels or in underrepresented or urban communities that are taking advantage of, you know, equestrian sports too so when people do say, oh, you know, equestrian, it's just for the elite, it's just for the 1%, because we we hear that a lot too and growing up in a household where we were not the 1%, you know my mom was just, uh, very, very passionate, which you know then got brought up to me but, um, potentially a little bit of irresponsible spending there which I think a lot of the, a lot of the average equestrian can relate to. But you know, whatever the horse needs, the horse gets. But how do you respond to that? When people ask you like, ah, you know, like how could there be more than just the one person in this sport? Or or they just tell you that they think it's just the 1%, how do you kind of get back at that?
Julie:I suggested them that they get better acquainted with our industry and understand the individuals that are involved in our industry. We have a really robust sort of people who are in the middle class, you know that are very involved. Now they might not own, you know, a $200,000 horse, but but they've got a nice horse in the backyard and they're out there trail riding or they're going to a forage show and showing on the weekend. So very much we have. We have a whole different stratosphere. You know segmentation of the space, um, so I try to tell them you need to better understand who the audience is that we're dealing with. What they focus on is what they see, they hear about, you know the race horses and what they sell for they, they, they hear about the hunter jumper. There's lots of people out there who can really enjoy some of these things and it doesn't have to be at that level. So I think it's normalized things for us quite a bit.
Noah:So I'm wondering a follow-up question to what Jen just asked Do you have any sort of socioeconomic distribution data on participation in the equestrian industry? That's my first question, and then my second question is because the study is probably going to come out around September 1st this year, I believe you said, which, by the way, it's my birthday, but anyway, I'm wondering too, back in 2017, what was something from the study that genuinely surprised you when the study came out? And I'm wondering too, what is the prediction that you have for this year's study that you might potentially be surprised by, just like in 2017?.
Julie:Okay, so in 2017, we didn't do that socioeconomic analysis that you talked about. We collected some of that data, but we didn't really kind of drill down.
Julie:This time we are, and that makes people a little nervous because, of course, one of the questions that you have to answer when you start the survey, then is okay, tell us what your zip code is, so we sort of get a general geographic location that helps us figure out if you're urban or rural. Then you have to tell us your gender and your race and your ethnicity, and so sometimes people are like, why do you need to know that? Well, that's going to be some of that socioeconomic impact, and you can tell us your age, those kinds of questions, so we can drill down into that a little bit more this time. So I'm excited about seeing that. Now to your question. What was the one thing that we asked?
Julie:last time that we were really surprised about. So I don't have another in front of me. Sam says he's got it memorized so he can help me out here. But general past people, when we have done this survey, the survey has said you must be 18 years or older to complete this survey. And I'm looking at the consultants and saying but now I don't know how many children or young people are involved in our industry. If only the people that are 18 and older are answering.
Julie:What does that tell me? So last time that was one of the new elements that we wrapped in Anybody can answer the survey and we got more data to help us understand what we have at younger age levels and sort of how that kind of plays out. So that was really really helpful information for us to sort of paint that picture. And also the question that we asked about horse enthusiast we just wanted to know in general how many people in the US were a horse enthusiast, and then we broke that out by those that own, those that participate but don't own, and those that spectate but don't participate or own, and those were great new statistics that we didn't have until 2017.
Sam:Yeah, and those numbers were accurate because the number was one in three households in America has an equestrian enthusiast in it, which is a gigantic number.
Noah:Yeah, yeah.
Julie:And to me that was really a great statistic because it tells us how much of a target audience, how sweet the audience is for us to reach out to. So if we need to go our industry we've got people out that are horse enthusiasts. We've got to convert them to get them more engaged. But that tells us what we need to go after. So that was a really great number that we loved.
Julie:To that point, because I mean the Kentucky Derby, for example, especially recently, right, all the fans are coming out and wanting to go to Churchill. I mean it brings out just that. It's like an American pride, I mean even internationally, right. So how are you able to get this study in front of people that aren't necessarily in the equestrian industry, but they are very passionate about horses and they do believe in the social licensing and all those really important things? But I guess just a simpler way to ask this is how do you get this in front of the non-equestrian crowd?
Julie:Yeah. So again that comes back to really leveraging sort of all of our contacts and really trying to get out there and network with people to try to get that information out there Gotcha Generally when the report comes out. What I did last time was we hosted an event up on Capitol Hill. There is a congressional horse caucus and we call the caucus together and we presented the study results and went through all the numbers with the caucus and we opened it to the general public and did that. We did a whole series of sort of town halls with statistics and those kinds of things and got quite a bit of airtime for some of that. So that's sort of you know different avenues that we try to pursue to get that done.
Sam:When you said there's a congressional horse caucus, what do you mean?
Julie:Okay, so on Capitol Hill there is a caucus for a lot of things. Yeah, so congressional members have agreed to serve on a caucus which convenes periodically to consider issues for whatever that subject matter is. So we have a congressional horse caucus and there's about.
Julie:I think I've got about 20 people on the congressional horse caucus. Generally it's somebody like Paul Tonko from New York because he's up around Saratoga, so around the track. His co-leader on the horse caucus is Andy Barr from Kentucky, so he's got some reasons for being there. And then we'll get people from GT Thompson in Pennsylvania because they have a good horse population in Pennsylvania. We'll get Maryland, we'll get quite a few states and then from time to time we will get somebody who's really more from an agricultural state, may not have as large Iowa example you know may not have as large a horse population, but wants to get more familiar with that because there are so many overlaps between the ag space and the horse space. I mean, if you're a state that does a lot of hay production, that is directly influencing our industry. So they're trying to look at the bigger picture of how it might shape up.
Sam:Right. If you, as the American Horse Council, have got a piece of legislation that you want to put forward or a vote that you want to influence, et cetera, you'll basically call a meeting for the horse caucus. We have the opportunity to brief these sitting members and get them to, rather than you going from office to office and trying to convince them one by one, you can call a caucus meeting and then hopefully they walk away, see your side of the equation and then can help with the vote.
Julie:Exactly, and also we use the caucus from time to time to educate them on new things that are coming out that might have unintended consequences that somebody hasn't really thought through. The example I gave earlier about pyrethane we're also dealing with an issue right now on rodenticides. So some of those things are a little. They're more regulatory and the legislators aren't very familiar with them, but their constituents are going to be impacted by them.
Julie:So we'll call the caucus and say, hey, let's get together and let's do a little, a little session with you and tell you about some of the issues that we're facing, so that you're aware of what the circumstances are. And sometimes, if we get lucky, one or two of them will call somebody over at one of the agencies and say hey, environmental protected agency need to talk to you about this.
Sam:Do you often get the actual sitting member or do you usually just get staffers?
Julie:No, no, it's a mixed bag. A lot of the members will show up and be engaged, but some of them have other activities or duties they have to do, and so we'll get a staffer, and sometimes staffers are just as helpful as the congressional member, because staffers are the ones that are doing the policy analysis and making recommendations to the congressional member so sometimes influencing the staffers just as important as meeting with congressional member.
Sam:Absolutely. We used to live in Washington DC and a lot of my friends were staffers and, as an Australian coming to America, I was just always flabbergasted that like how much for lack of a better term power resides in the hands of like 23 to 33 year olds. Like, even if it's just as simple as like you set the calendar for this, one member like that 23 year old who like just manages the calendar, can basically make or break whether a trade organization or a CEO of a company is able to have a meeting to get something done. Like they are the real power brokers on the Hill. It's quite astounding.
Julie:It is, and I will tell you that I often tell groups. I did that earlier this week. We had a youth flying in. I had 25 young people that came to Washington. We sent them up on the Hill into a variety of offices to talk about a bunch of issues for our industry, which is a lot of fun. But I told them, just because you don't get to see the congressman, don't feel like a staffer is not important. They will let power that you're talking about. But, more importantly, that staffer could be the future congressperson for our district, because they're there to learn how public policy works and to get their feet wet in politics and then they're going to go home and they're going to run for an office.
Sam:Yeah, and in the more immediate term, the congressman obviously can't read everything, so they're going to get a one page memo before they vote and that one page memo is going to be written by the staffer. So if you've influenced the staffer and the staffer writes the memo and the congressman votes based on the memo, then you basically achieve the same effect. Yeah, yeah, right. So zooming out a bit, so I understand these economic impacts, I understand how it's very important to you because it gives you the data, the ammunition you need to take a position on things, to lobby to the horse congress or to the government in general, et cetera. But that's like your relationship as the American Horse Council with the report and the government. Who are the other main stakeholders that you find approach you who are very interested in the economic impact study? Oh gosh, whether it's private equity funds or it's land developers or whatever it is. Who are the people who are like after you for this data? For various, both good and bad, reasons?
Julie:Yeah, so that's a long list. So we're concentrating on national numbers. But we have six states that are doing state studies this time. So Texas, florida, new York, maryland so I've got several states and they're doing the same thing. They're looking for state specific economics to make their case for against something that's going on in their state. But we also have venture capitalists that call us all the time. They're doing analysis on whether they're going to invest in some new product or try to bring something to market. They want to understand the numbers. We always have consulting firms that are calling us, asking for data about this, because they're trying to advise somebody about whether or not there's something there that can happen. So lots and lots of things like that. Right now I have three community studies we're doing this time. We're doing Marion County, florida.
Julie:We're doing Long Island, new York, and believe it or not, a new one, that just happened is Jacksboro, Texas, and Jacksboro called me to we want to build a new arena in our area and we need the data to make our case. So can we get a community study done? Yep, we can do that for you. Yeah that's interesting. It goes from the top to the bottom of all kinds of ways that people want to get at that information.
Julie:Where is that city on a map? Is that near Fort Worth, or is it a little bit farther out in Texas?
Julie:It's a little on the outside of the metropolitan Dallas Fort Worth area but quite a robust equestrian community. Oh, I can imagine.
Julie:Yeah, we spent a couple months up in Fort Worth last year and it was remarkable I mean even just being in the city of Fort Worth how they really they really made the city just feel so authentic cowboy, which was fantastic, you know, just in seeing all the Western associations there too and operating in that area. So I imagine that would have been. It sounds like you're just starting that study, but I imagine it's going to have a lot of supporting data to progress with that development there. So that's really neat.
Julie:Yeah, but, sam, also we get into groups that are looking at zoning issues especially. You know, you've got the family farm and some developer wants to come and buy the property and turn it into a subdivision and they're trying to look at the economic impact of you know what that would be. Or they're trying to make their case for conserving that particular acreage, and so they're looking for those kinds of numbers to make their argument for that. So lots of different ways that the data gets used.
Sam:Do you the report have any enemies? Is there anyone who's like? This report is really inconvenient for us.
Julie:I can't say that. I've really heard that, but I will tell you that I always have to distinguish. The US Department of Agriculture does a livestock census every five years.
Julie:Horses- are defined as livestock.
Julie:So they have very specific definitions of what they contain in the census. So their number is that there are 2.8 million horses in the US and you know, our number says there are 7.2 million. And so we are in this position of saying, well, the difference is, the Department of Agriculture is not counting less than barns or equine assisted services facilities or dude ranches or any of those kinds of equine operations, because they don't meet this definition of production and revenue that they have. So, to your point, I don't get a lot of criticism. What I do get is a lot of people saying wow, we really need your data more than we can rely on this data, because yours is a much more comprehensive, robust picture of the industry than just this one little segment. That's over here.
Sam:Right.
Noah:Wow. So, julie, is there anything final that you want to say before we jump off the zoom here?
Julie:Okay. So I really want to encourage everybody go out to our website and you, as a horse owner, take the horse owner survey. If you're not a horse owner but you have a role in the industry, take the industry supplier survey. We are also going to be rolling out our show organizer or event manager survey here in the next week or so and then we're doing all that other data collection. If you think that there's a particular component of the space that we haven't, you know, sort of hit upon, call me, let me know and we'll see what we can do about it. It's very interesting.
Julie:I'm trying to do a better head count this time of how many horses we have in mounted police units, you know. So I've got a couple of carriage operators are on my list this time. A little more data about that. A lot of times people their first experience of seeing a horse up close is when they go on a carriage ride. They go to New York City, to Central Park, and they take a carriage ride and you know kind of thing. So that's another, you know, kind of entry point for people who aren't accustomed to our industry. So they've been under fire of late.
Julie:You know the carriage operator, so we've been saying okay, let's see what we need to do to try to look at how much hospitality dollars do carriage operations pump into a local community, if you go to San Antonio and you take a ride on the I think it's the red rows of Texas carriage operations. I don't even know what that's the right name, but there's a whole different economic impact to downtown San Antonio because of the carriage operators.
Sam:And so the studies are open at the moment, except Tim at first. When will this actually be round up and when will the report actually be available to purchase?
Julie:Yeah, so the studies open until the end of September and then our goal is to have the results probably about the end of October or first of November, and we, this time around, we're going to offer some digital versions of the report to make it more convenient for people to get them. So we hope we'll have them up sometime before the end of the year. Sam for people to purchase.
Sam:The previous reports, so the 2017 one as well. As you said, the Innovation Group does them for different states as well is the best place for people. People participate in the survey, but they also want to go and see the previous surveys. We have the best place to go to access that.
Julie:Yeah, just go to our website and you'll see it. Go another resource tab and you'll see a listing there for economic impact studies.
Sam:Okay, Fantastic Right. Well, thanks very much for your time, Julie. Really appreciate it.
Julie:Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it and you guys know where to reach me. But for your listeners, jay Broadway at horsecouncilorg is where we're at.
Sam:Fantastic.
Julie:Awesome, julie, thanks so much.
Noah:Thank you Bye.