Facebook is more than a social network.
For many equestrians, Facebook is the host of their businesses.
If they were to get their account taken down, that means losing all their followers in minutes.
Pegasus cofounders Sam Baynes and Jen Tankel and CMO Noah Levy sat down to discuss the dominance of Facebook in the equestrian space.
Our conversation was inspired by a previous one we had with the main admin of the Facebook group for Southern New Hampshire’s equestrian community, which is north of seven thousand members.
In this episode, we discuss:
🐴 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. 🗞️
Facebook is more than a social network.
For many equestrians, Facebook is the host of their businesses.
If they were to get their account taken down, that means losing all their followers in minutes.
Pegasus cofounders Sam Baynes and Jen Tankel and CMO Noah Levy sat down to discuss the dominance of Facebook in the equestrian space.
Our conversation was inspired by a previous one we had with the main admin of the Facebook group for Southern New Hampshire’s equestrian community, which is north of seven thousand members.
In this episode, we discuss:
🐴 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. 🗞️
So what did you think about the podcast that we had with Sean on this?
Speaker 2:It was what I was expecting, but I underestimated how much work these Facebook group moderators have to do.
Speaker 1:What were you expecting, Sam?
Speaker 2:I thought it would be a case of, while sitting on the couch watching Netflix at night, a Facebook moderator might go into their group and see what's going on and if they saw something really bad maybe like direct messaging that person privately and being like hey, I saw you did this. Please try and be more polite to everybody else in the group. Blah, blah, blah blah. But the fact that she says is essentially a full-time job and she and her other two moderators have to spend hours a week, if not hours a day, keeping the civility in the group. I underestimated how much work it was.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree, and I think we should provide some backdrop context. Okay, fine, so okay. So we're members of hundreds of Facebook groups, right, I mean tons, and I've already been a member, organically, of a bunch of Facebook groups. But what picked my interest was that in looking up you know, just doing some market research, if you will I realized that there were far more Facebook groups that could have ever envisioned there being, and these are so hyper focused in everything you can imagine saddle pad brands to regions, disciplines, pardon, Memes, memes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, online horse shows.
Speaker 3:There are so many.
Speaker 3:If you are bored, just go on Facebook, type in equestrian or horse or just any horse term and you will see a list of dozens, if not 20, 30 plus groups.
Speaker 3:Some of them are kind of the same right, there's a lot of the sameness happening, but these groups will have between a couple thousand up to a couple hundred thousand. I mean it's truly remarkable. So, anyway, that got me thinking of, especially with what we're doing right now, which is we have really interesting conversations with equestrians and business leaders and people that are changing the industry all over the world. But seeing on Facebook how you have so many different Facebook groups in different regions that really takes up all these different pockets from certain cities in New Hampshire to certain areas in Oregon, florida, is kind of the obvious one. There's lots that's happening in Florida, but there were just so many different Facebook groups that capitalize on different regions of the United States. So that was the catalyst for us to go through and join these and see, okay, what is the local climate like there, like what is the local equestrian industry like in these different towns and cities in our own country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's really interesting because, if you think about it, to equestrian and we mentioned this on a previous hacking session, I believe, but equestrian is uniquely situated in a really good position for having all these Facebook groups, just because of the remoteness of equestrian, because think about how far away each partner ranches from each other. It's true that some of them are only 20 minutes outside of a major city center, but at the same time, still you have to drive to get there and it takes a little bit of a while. It's quite an effort, and not only that, but for this group in particular. This is Southern New Hampshire and there are many townships in Southern New Hampshire, it's not just one big city.
Speaker 2:We'll just put the cherry on top of that.
Speaker 2:So the context here is that we ended up interviewing Shawna, who is the administrator for Southern New Hampshire equestrian's Facebook group, and the reason that we basically reached out to her was because of what Jen said, which was that there are all these Facebook groups that serve as a local community, but if you are the administrator of these groups, it puts you in this unique position whereby you are actually seeing, day in day out, what are the trends in the local equestrian market, and because you can see what are the things that the people in my group are complaining about, what are the things that people in my group are celebrating.
Speaker 2:One of the really interesting things that Shawna said was that because so many horses are sold through these Facebook groups, although they're not meant to and that's another discussion because she's the administrator and she has to manage people posting, people being upset with it, that other people are posting and moderating it, that she is in every day for hours and she can see that the price of horses during COVID went through the roof and the amount of people trying to buy horses went through the roof and the time from a horse being posted in her Facebook group to being sold was like hours, if not minutes, to now post COVID.
Speaker 2:That has gone back down and now like horses are being posted and people can't get rid of their stock and people having to post it multiple times and that's just in her local community. But it's just a really interesting insight as to that these Facebook moderators are in this unique position to be able to notice those local trends in the market. And it's no wonder that these Facebook groups are so popular and get so many numbers, because in a business that is, you said, is so localized, having access to that local community is so important.
Speaker 1:My mom tells me that Instagram is today's yellow pages, and this is so true if you get tattoos, piercings, your hair done, whatever I mean, instagram is really good as a business directory for this kind of stuff and these Facebook groups. It's the same thing for those who are breeding horses, and Shana is seeing right there that during the COVID horse boom, it cost $1,500 sometimes to get a horse, and now these breeders are reducing their price to literally $500 to buy a horse, just because the demand is so low.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree. It's funny that you say that it's the yellow pages, because just last week I scheduled a hair appointment in Austin and I just found them on Google to see what's around. And then I found them on Instagram and I chose my hairstylist because obviously we're new to Austin, so I don't have anyone here yet, so but I chose the person based on their work online.
Speaker 2:It was a little portfolio.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I thought that it was really interesting what she had to say about the different trends. And while you were talking, sam, I don't know if this exists, but is there any kind of tool, like a plug-in, if you will, that you would be able to put on your computer and, as a moderator, for example, or maybe even anyone that's in the group, would be able to essentially scan all these different trends to then be able to provide data, like a marker report. Yeah, a marker report.
Speaker 2:Like a localized marker report. What's?
Speaker 3:interesting about the mods are that they have the firsthand experience so they can really talk about the trends. With COVID, seeing people that were selling horses at one rate. Now those horses are coming back around at a reduced rate because there's so much more supply so they can talk about it.
Speaker 2:but I wonder if there's a way in which you can actually extract that information somehow, provide that to AHC or just Now that I know of, because, because big tech companies like Facebook, they don't want anyone to be able to export that data. So because of GDPR laws in the EU, you can basically export your own data, but I'd be shocked if you were, as a group manager, like a Facebook group administrator. I'd be shocked if you'd be able to actually export the data of your group.
Speaker 3:You'd have to manually go through and just talk about your own friends.
Speaker 2:So that means that Facebook would be the only people and maybe the government with a warrant would be the only people who actually be allowed to export that data. And Facebook doesn't let anyone do that and they're famous for it. They won't let you index their platform, they won't let you crawl their pages, etc. Because that is their value. Their value is access to their community and that qualitative data and they don't want anyone to be able to go and create this. But LinkedIn kind of does right. But LinkedIn built the tools internally to let you do it. So if you make a post, they show you who's looking at it, who's read your profile, where are they, from what companies, what job titles, what geographic locations etc. They give you that suite of tools at a very minimal level to be able to have that insight. But Facebook doesn't have anything like that.
Speaker 3:Or what shine of write up that you also brought up yesterday to your LinkedIn following. Yeah, do you want to talk about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, it's one of the things that we are sure, and I posted on LinkedIn yesterday about the fact that Facebook is the equestrian industry's best friend and their worst enemy. It's the best friend for the simple reason that, like the majority of the questions can run their businesses for free on Facebook and because all the other questions are on Facebook, it's really easy to get people to follow your page or to connect with them as friends and therefore now you're building a local community of people who are interested in what you're doing. They see your photos, they see your videos, they see the events you post, etc. So you can build your entire equestrian business, whether it's a boarding barn, a training barn or buying and selling horses on the platform. The problem is that Facebook has very strict policies regarding what you can do on the platform with pertaining to animals, because they have to basically build policies that are relevant to the masses and in order to do that, they need to create very strict policies that can't carve out individual niches for different sorts of communities. So the perfect example of that is they have very strict policies on buying and selling horses on Facebook, and that is designed to prevent against trafficking of illegal animals and all that sort of stuff, which is fair enough.
Speaker 2:But it really harms your question industry because equestrians try and buy and sell horses through Facebook as a marketplace. But if Facebook as a company pings your account, they will take your account down and then you basically lose your business overnight. And Facebook is famous for not having a help number. There's no customer service number you can ring to be like hey, I realized why I took my account down. But you can see, I'm a legitimate horse agent. I sell horses. This is legitimate business, there's nothing untoward here. But you can't call them and you can basically submit a request to have your account reinstated, but then that will take them 10 months to get back to you and then in the end they might just fob you off and your business is gone overnight. And that's kind of Shawna like talked about this in the interview.
Speaker 3:That's not going to Shawna.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she says it happened twice.
Speaker 3:And she had thousands and thousands of followers on her training page that were just overnight. They were wiped.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And she said that it's never really been able to come back to the numbers that it was before Facebook took it down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that is something that we've heard a lot, so I'm sure people already know this, at least those that are buying and selling horses. But when you do post a horse for sale or are inquiring about a horse that's for sale, people use code so it's all in carrots. So it'll say mid three, mid three carrots, or it'll have two dashes, comma three dashes, and then or all in emojis, right, so they're all in carrots.
Speaker 2:And that's a huge risk. If you're a one off person just trying to sell a horse that's come up lame or it can't do the competition level you need and you're just trying to get rid of it, that's fair enough. It's worth taking that risk. But there are people out there who this is their business. They buy and sell horses. That's what they do, and every time they take that risk and they post that horse they run the risk of their account being disabled and then they've lost it all overnight. And Shawna, she said she's happened to happen to her twice. She said to rebuild her business and she had the benefit of being the administrator of a huge group to get her new page back up and running. So the average person, it's kind of like you're building your business on top of a house of cars that could fall over at any point.
Speaker 3:And I understand why people are doing it, though, because everyone's on Facebook, and this is what Pegasus version one was before we pivoted the company, but it's a place to be able to buy and sell things and search for things, and you would be able to do it in a place that wasn't going to be taken down by Mark Zuckerberg. It was designed for that, and I know that there are other companies out there that are trying to solve this problem, but you can't help. At the end of the day, both the non-Aquastrians and the Equestrians are all on Facebook. It is the world's largest social media network, so it's still a challenge that exists today.
Speaker 1:It kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you have the words Facebook being largest social media network in the world. It is.
Speaker 2:It's funny, right, in public discourse we tend to believe like oh you know, Facebook's on the way out, the young kids aren't into it, blah, blah, blah. They still have more users than any other social network on the planet, like a factor of 10. Like.
Speaker 3:No, there was a stat. I don't know the exact numbers, but basically there are more people that are dying on Facebook. They're just old, so their accounts are going inactive because they're dead, and most tech companies have with new users signing up to the platform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's like their monthly churn, their monthly churn on people passing away and those accounts being not being used. That monthly churn and managing that monthly churn of accounts is bigger than pretty much every other social network out there. It's just goes to joke which, for us, as a tech company, it creates a unique opportunity and a unique problem. The unique opportunity is great. Everyone we're trying to basically attract to our platform is in one place. The problem for us it's our best friend and our worst enemy in a different way is that they all love Facebook so much. Convincing them to leave Facebook is a really big challenge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and every other aspect of their equestrian life takes place on Facebook. So getting them and especially if it's largely an older audience, getting them to take the leap to learn a new technology platform and use it actively on a regular basis, when they can basically do most of it through the existing Facebook infrastructure that they have, yeah, it's a really big challenge and I think that's kind of why there have been lots of equestrian businesses that have popped up that have tried to solve this problem of getting equestrians off Facebook and onto a platform that is more supportive and enabling of equestrian trade, equestrian sport, etc. And Pegasus version one. We tried to do exactly that and then a lot of them ultimately fail because getting the user base to make that move from Facebook to a new platform is just so difficult.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the biggest challenge is that the social shift is if so many people's businesses get shut down. But another thing that we talked about on the podcast with Shana was all of the scammers, and we've witnessed this ourselves right. Yeah, there's been so many instances of scamming.
Speaker 2:It's out of control.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's truly insane all of the attempted scams and if you're just savvy and you're expecting it, then I think you have the advantage. But I feel bad for people that are maybe a little bit older. They're taking it at face to face all of these traps and, of course, Facebook has people of all ages. But I think that has been a new development that we discussed on the podcast. That is another incentive to get people off Facebook and start buying and trading elsewhere so for listeners.
Speaker 2:Essentially, shawna alluded to the fact that there are scammers. So, like any scam, if you go on facebook marketplace we've been through this you try and sell a dining room table. Still can. Still can sell it if anybody wants a dining room table perfect.
Speaker 2:But, like, scammers will reach out to you and they'll offer you an insane price. And then they'll be like, how about right now? And then they ask for, like your bank account details. You've been more details. And then I'll say, hey, like it won't go through, can you send me an email address? Like an email, you a link to pay, blah, blah, blah. And that's how they get you. So shawna was telling us that In the question community there are a question specific scammers.
Speaker 2:So they are literally sending you trying to buy and sell a horse or a saddle or something, and they will reach out to you and run that exact scam, but they will tailor all of it towards very a question, specific questions, very a question specific requests, all this sort of stuff which blows my mind, because if you're a scammer, you think you'd be running the scam that can cost as wide a net as possible to get 100,000 people and hopefully find one gullible person who will actually fall for it. The idea that you would go after a very specific niche, like a question, and you put the effort into tailor your scam to a question, that really shocked me. I just didn't know that. I didn't know that existed.
Speaker 3:I think there's been a new breed of scammers on Facebook. I don't know I have you experience any of this, but when I think of a scam, I think two different types. One is the oh, I'm a Nigerian Prince and oh my gosh, I'm stuck. You need to wire $10,000 and give it to me and then I'll be able to get out of here whatever, just like the old school Craigslist scam that you know. You, they have these words up on their ad and it's clearly Very broken English and just assume right. And then the other one is someone who. That's the first of the scam.
Speaker 3:And then the second type of old school scam that I think people are familiar with is it is a real person and they are just trying to do something shady. They are actually trying to manipulate someone and get something, and it's they have bad intentions and they're just conducting their business over the Internet. What I wasn't expecting is so, for example, the table. So we came from middle of Virginia where we had an open layout and we had this big Table with a bench and whatever. It just doesn't really fit here in Austin, because our apartment here is just a little bit more. There's a lot more angles in this place yeah anyway, I think it's.
Speaker 3:It's good enough. Sam wants to get rid of it, so I put it on Facebook Facebook marketplace and I got this message from someone saying that they'd like to overspend. So I think we're asking a thousand bucks. They wanted to spend $3000 and I put on the ad. It was handmade, it is a really nice table, right. But they just came in right away wanting to pay more three times the amount that it's that I was selling it for and I was out. Maybe there's, maybe there just aren't really good handmade tables and Austin, for whatever reason, that's why this person so interested in it anyway. Then I get another request 30 seconds later from someone that's saying that they want to pay $5000 for it, and I'm like Sam, holy shit.
Speaker 3:Bidding war going here and it wasn't broken English.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I know it got up to $10,000 and then there were but there were some telltale signs, which was one person was like don't tell the other person that I'm going 7000, final offer, 7000. Don't tell the other person. I'm like that's weird. How would they know that there was another person? So there were a little, there was.
Speaker 2:That was the first red flag but when they're offering you $10,000, you want to believe it's real. So so you're like it's a red flag, but let's just keep going with this and the thing was is I was the one selling it.
Speaker 3:I would have thought that if I was, if they were selling it right, they could have been this camera, because I could have Given it to them and they never gotten something back. So I just never been in an instance where they want to pay me 10 grand. So this is where this is where I was like okay. So essentially what happened is I said, okay, so $10,000 to the table. And they're like, okay, so just just, venmo work. And I'm like, yep, venmo works. And so I gave them my Venmo and actually, sorry, first it was cash up or Zell was Zell, and gave them Zell.
Speaker 3:Apparently that didn't work and I was like, okay, this is kind of weird, but here's my Venmo. So then they said that they well, they wanted to get my number and they sent me this janky looking quote unquote screenshot of Venmo saying oh, this email address doesn't work for this person or this username doesn't work for this person. Please verify with their number. And I use Venmo often. One, their branding did not look like this screenshot. And two, they have never, ever asked for the full number. They might ask for the confirmation of the last four digits of the number to make sure that who you're sending it to is legit, but you also have the ability to forgo that process. So everything that they sent me was just absolute rubbish. So it's like, damn, I guess you're not getting 10 grand for this table, but all they said there's just this whole new breed of scamming happening that.
Speaker 3:I had never.
Speaker 2:Do you recall, noah? Do you recall what the scam was that Shauna said I can't remember?
Speaker 1:I don't remember what it was, but to extend on Jen's point because a scam that almost happened to me. It was even worse than this because, jen, you're bringing up that they sent you this janky screenshot from Venmo when it was not actually Venmo. One time, a year ago from now, I received an email from PayPal and everything was super legit. I mean literally I looked at past emails I got from PayPal to this email from PayPal. They use the same everything as if they were in PayPal's MailChimp directly from PayPal's MailChimp. To me it was insane, and so basically it was saying that I was going to be charged like $800 or something like that for some bill that I owed and this transaction will come through in 24 hours if I don't do anything. So basically I called the customer service number that they provided that PayPal air quote and it was already pretty sketch the guy who I was talking to transfer me to someone else and then they were like we need your credit card information.
Speaker 3:Do you speak to someone, noah, or was it I speak?
Speaker 1:to like two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm sometimes called people on scams and they always sound surprised like, oh yeah, what lie am I telling? Now they have to remember what scam they're right?
Speaker 1:Well, it's crazy that that happened to you then as well.
Speaker 3:So you call someone, so you call the number because you're panicking.
Speaker 1:I literally called the number and then I was trying to understand what the situation was, and this was a big waste of my time. This was during the work day. I spent like two hours in total dealing with this crap and then I figured that this has to be a scam, because then I noticed in my past customer support emails from PayPal have a different customer support phone number and on their website they have different customers support phone number as well. So what happened was that I called actual PayPal and they told me yeah, you don't have anything that you owe or anything. This is a scam. Hey, are you an equestrian event organizer looking to put on your next clinic or schooling show?
Speaker 1:Pegasus is about to release its new event management system, which is a modern platform that makes it easy to accept entry registrations, receive digital signatures for your event paperwork, as well as manage the logistics and scheduling of your event. You can even digitally showcase your vendors and sponsors, so that brands have much better visibility than the traditional logo. On offense, pegasus has made it easy to run an event from start to finish, with features designed for everyone involved, especially the riders, who can now easily register and receive real time updates. Gone are the days of running your event through Facebook or tech from the 90s. Check out the launch of the Pegasus event management system at wwwthepegasusapp. That is wwwthepegasusapp Wow, and I just be because. And the big red flag to me was one their composure. As Sam brought up their composure on the phone, they're so shocked I guess I don't remember Some idiot called us.
Speaker 2:I can't believe someone actually called the customer service line. We're an idiot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Usually they fall for it by replying being investigated. But the second red flag was that they asked me over the phone for my card information and not even banks do that, you know. Yeah, because a bank, they'll ask you for the last four digits, but they will not ask you for the full thing. You know what?
Speaker 3:I mean yeah, absolutely Well. So when you got that email, did you check the overall address? Because I will say that's a telltale sign too, where it might say that it's from PayPal, but if you actually click on it, it'll be PayPal at whatever, whatevernet. You know what I mean. It's clearly not from PayPal.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure I did that because, knowing me, I definitely did that. They did it in a way that made it appear like it was the actual customer, literally the email address as well.
Speaker 3:Wow, crazy.
Speaker 1:I really want people to hear these stories on this podcast because I know that I'm a tech savvy person. Guys are tech savvy people and if all three of us almost fell into scams, I mean, imagine people who aren't that tech savvy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, and just thinking about people who do fall for that Because maybe they hadn't worked in a corporate environment so they don't really know what to expect, until they see this email and they are fearful and they just respond right away because it's telling them to do something right away. So I remember at my last company there was a guy who I worked with young, super taggy, super entrepreneurial, focused. He was in sales and he received this email, allegedly from the CEO, saying that the CEO was in a meeting but he needed this guy to send over a $500 gift card Apple gift card right away to such and such address. I think it might have been via PayPal or something, but basically needed to get this particular $500 gift card over to this person. And he wasn't able to do it because he was in this meeting. Please and thanks signed the CEO right and I guess at first glance it looked like the email really did look like it came from him.
Speaker 3:Turns out it was absolute bullshit. But he fell for it Because the way that it was worded it was this urgent request that he was unable to get to. He had never received such a request before. But even this guy, this young techie dude, this was Max. He fell for it and so it became okay. Guys, the actual CEO. After this all happened, he was like guys, I'm never going to have any kind of urgent request like this, so do not expect it, but you really do need to get ahead of the curve and let everyone know If you do receive this. Just know that that's not real, because I would never ask such a thing.
Speaker 2:I mean trying to bring this back to the equestrian industry because this is supposed to be equestrian podcast the fact that there is a presence of scammers out there who are targeting equestrians specifically and they're putting in the effort to tailor the scam to equestrians, and considering that there is a lot of things in the equestrian space that are really time sensitive and there is a power dynamic. So this is an example where Max didn't want to go ask the CEO to clarify first, because he was his boss and he didn't want to look like an idiot. Right, Didn't look like he was questioning the boss. So, barns have power dynamics. You have the trainers, you have the writers and then you have the head groom, then you have the groom and the working students, et cetera.
Speaker 2:In a time sensitive environment where some of these bills are big bills that they have to pay. It might be a stretch for us to basically say this, but considering there are equestrian specific scammers out there, it might be worth. Teams having a discussion of. This is our payment process. I will never ask you to go and buy something like this with no warning and no context. So if you ever get an email or a text message from me saying hey, go buy this thing and send it here. Do not hesitate to reach out to me and clarify first, I will not be annoyed.
Speaker 3:I think a bane of their existence isn't so much about that particular thing happening with the email. I think with Facebook it's a lot of people inquiring and saying that they're going to buy them and they're just kicking the can down the street and they're wasting their time or they're trying to scam. I'm willing to bet that a lot of the issue doesn't necessarily stem from these odd requests like what we've received. I mean, I'm sure they get those too, but at least in the Facebook world I think there are these inbound messages from people that seem legit and then they're not.
Speaker 1:But you know what and this is where our platform provides a really big solution in the equestrian space, because we process payments on the Pegasus app. And so what I'm thinking, too, is that if you're a barn and you hosted an event at your barn, maybe there's a scammer out there who's emailing people who attended that event and they're posing as the event organizer, saying that you must pay to this pay power, you must pay to this Venmo or this cash app account, et cetera, but if you're operating on the Pegasus app, you don't have to deal with any of that crap.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think as soon as you're telling people to go off your platform and utilize another payment method, you are setting yourself up for a potential issue.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, that's enough about scamming. Let's move on to another thing that Shauna said about running the Facebook group for New Hampshire, which is really interesting. Again, I'm an outsider to the equestrian world. I'm new to it. I haven't come up in the barns and especially as a professional working in the barns. But she was saying that a common trend is that the equestrian industry is really open to fads. A new sort of equestrian, like a horse care product will come onto the market A therapy product or a therapy product.
Speaker 3:You're five years in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I haven't been on the ground boots in the, as the military has. I've never been boots in the dirt kind of experience.
Speaker 3:You can't, as the Cowboys on the Cowboy office told us, jody and Brian, you can't yet wear a cowboy hat, because you don't know how to saddle your own horse.
Speaker 2:I can saddle a horse. I've had a little horse before in my life. Check that girth first.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're right, but yeah.
Speaker 2:so she made this comment that and I'm going to get this acronym wrong Is it PEMF? Yes, tool. So essentially, a few years back, a PEMF tool came onto the market and it was essentially this new therapy to basically help horses who had. Is it for pain? Is it like kind of like what's that other tool you use? Use it on the dog Like the beamer the beamer.
Speaker 3:Is it kind of like a competitor to?
Speaker 2:the beamer. No, it's not.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a pretty good tool. It might help, but it might be useful for people who are just feeling guilty about Crazy. This did not exist when I was competing. Right, I did not exist at all. So I think this definitely came on the market. It's been hot. I remember seeing it really popular five years ago, so maybe that's where it started. Maybe it started 10 years ago Right. But it wasn't a thing when I was actively competing, yeah.
Speaker 2:But the interesting thing isn't the tool. The interesting thing is that as soon as it became available, a lot of trainers, a lot of barn managers, a lot of just equestrians basically went out, bought this technology and then just basically marketed themselves as a PMF trained expert and would go around and people would buy their services and it became so prolific that there just wasn't enough customers for all the people trying to, all the technicians trying to live this as a service, which is interesting in itself that you have those fads in the industry. But what's more indicative of it, which I want to discuss, is what does this tell us about the equestrian industry, that so many equestrian's are always looking for the next wave of thing that they can flog because they aren't making enough money with their bread and butter. Shawna, for example she runs a training barn and a boarding barn, but even she went out and became a PMF tool expert because obviously she wasn't making enough money running the training barn or the boarding barn and she needed something else to basically bring in an income.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a crave for innovation, and so when there is a new product that comes out, that is actually a really good tool and the barrier to enter into that market is low. I think there's a lot of people that are interested in that, and she did bring up a point that I thought was concerning, which is anyone can go and buy this and use it, and there isn't any real regulatory requirements or certifications that you need.
Speaker 3:But then the day it's a product that's used on a horse to make them feel better, and so it's just a concerning thing that if you don't know what you're looking for and you just see someone that has this technology and you want to use it on your horse, what is protecting both parties to make sure that that is done properly and safely?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's tough because in the United States we innovate so fast and it's so easy to start a business. I mean, in the state of Florida you could just go on sunbizorg and start a business for $160. And you have the certificate and everything on the same day.
Speaker 2:Here in Europe.
Speaker 1:Europeans complain all the time about how slow it is to start a business in Spain, really, yeah, and so France. We're about to talk to Jacques.
Speaker 2:Why is it slow?
Speaker 1:Because you literally have to go through all these bureaucratic coups In Spain, I think, you have to literally get file petition with the fire department or something like that. You have to do all these really stupid things just to start a business. But anyway, coming back to this, so in America, really easy to start a business, really easy to create a product, and because it's so easy to start a business, it's easier to create a product too, because, since it's easy to start a business, you have other products that already exist, and you could just take those other products and services to create your own product or service for your own business, and just take it the market. And so we innovate really fast in the United States and, as result, regulators can't keep up.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you've ever watched any of those hearings that Congress had with Robinhood, facebook, et cetera, it's just embarrassing like absolutely embarrassing how little the politicians in Washington really understand technological innovation and the technology in the market today. What gets really interesting, though, is that, if you're an entrepreneur selling one of these products, what I would think is that at some point, if a horse dies using this kind of product, for example, what's going to happen is outrage. This community is going to be outrageous and, as a result, that's when politicians will come in and start regulating this industry. So if I'm an entrepreneur selling this product, I would want to be a thought leader in the space by promoting self-regulation, so that politicians don't have to get in my way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Equestrian space is kind of, I will say. We were at the USCF annual general meeting this last year and amongst all Equestrian governing bodies, one of the key topics that everyone's discussing is social license, and I think it is. I think it's every year I mean it wasn't just this year, I think it's every year. It is a case of, like, something bad happens in the Equestrian industry that makes mass media attention, and it's often the racing industry, because race horses hurt themselves in a race and they get put down on public TV in front of everyone and then then it really calls into question is this abuse?
Speaker 3:I mean, the horse isn't asked to do this, right? Yeah?
Speaker 2:but it ultimately affects it's. You know it goes beyond racing and it affects the sport horse world. Because is the public going to turn against any industry that puts horses in a position by force because humans chose to put them in that position?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can relate that exact narrative to exactly any yeah exactly, and the reason I brought that up is in the USCF AGM, the general consensus amongst leaders in the industry is hey guys, we have to get ahead of this, we have to be the best standard. We have to report anyone that we see doing bad practices, because we only need one person to fuck up really bad and make that basically go viral on TikTok or Instagram et cetera, and the whole industry is screwed. So, yes, you may be this stickler who's reporting someone for bad horsemanship almost like the Gestapo but you're doing a good thing for the community and for equestrian sports in general, even at the cost of an individual in the short term, because in this current climate, the equestrian industry just can't afford a major embarrassment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're all trying to be united and advance the sport, not take us back. But she did say that she specifically had done this training. That was not just going in and getting the equipment Like she was properly trained, and you do have that option to go through rigorous training to make sure you do indeed know how to use it. The problem is is it's not mandatory, so people can just go out and basically buy this system, which is obviously in the best interest well, the best and worst interest for the manufacturer, because that means more sales, but then again maybe it's a risk, or maybe they sign off on that risk of some sorts.
Speaker 3:I don't know.
Speaker 1:I have a question for you guys, just to move on to another interesting part of this podcast that we did with Sean Mills of Southern New Hampshire is what did she say or what did you guys learn about Southern New Hampshire equestrian specifically, and the equestrian community in Southern New Hampshire that is unique for them, that we're not really seeing in other equestrian communities, and what are some of the similarities that we're seeing in Southern New Hampshire? Or questions as with other equestrian communities around the United States?
Speaker 3:It's about the topic of pricing being an issue and overall cost going up. So I mean that's pretty much the same topic of discussion, like all over right, that cost is going up.
Speaker 3:It's so where they are, hey, he's more expensive. I mean, everything is just really really expensive. What I hadn't heard before and maybe because this is a smaller group but a smaller region was that she had seen the boom from COVID, so all the people that were going in and buying horses, and that was happening everywhere, like all over the world. But maybe because she's in a smaller region, she said that she has seen those same horses coming back through and being sold. She's already seen that sales cycle, which I hadn't necessarily seen before, but also I'm familiar with Florida and Virginia.
Speaker 2:There's just a lot more supply and I think those horses that go through there they are maybe a little bit more transient where they're competing all up and down the East Coast and so maybe up in New Hampshire they're in that same level, yeah, and as a secondary effect of that she mentioned, at least in their part of the world, was that they're getting to a point where there's too many boarding bonds and too many trainers for the amount of students that are actually looking for a boarding bond or looking for a trainer.
Speaker 2:So she has become quite competitive, if you're an equestrian professional in that area to basically find and retain business. And that might be because of the surge in riders getting back into the market during COVID that there was a swell in boarding bonds and training bonds to meet that demand and then since that demand has fallen off as people have returned to work or they just realized they didn't. Her belief was that a lot of the reason the horses were coming back through and being sold was not because people were going back into the office but because, just as inflation and the price is going up for everything, it just got too expensive. But when that happens and those people leave equestrian sports and that surge dies down, you left with all these people who have already changed their career and left their jobs and invested in opening boarding barns and opening Training barns and becoming horse trainers and now they're all competing over not enough students to train and not enough horses to board.
Speaker 3:They made the mistake that a lot of companies made, especially when things are good and there's a lot of growth go out, you get a bigger office, you hire a lot of employees, you get all the space because you think that the money is going to never stop coming in, and then all of a sudden it starts to dry back up. But now you have this infrastructure in place, so you have the barns, you have all these horses, but no one can pay their bills. And now those people are wanting to sell the horses, which means there's more and these stalls. But you still were budgeting on having ex capacity to be able to pay that monthly board rent. Yeah, typically, right, a lot of people will. They won't necessarily going by these properties and open up boarding barns. They'll do these leases and so they lease the entire property and maybe these stalls or maybe these barns have 20, 30 stalls. So you expand because you have all this demands, but now there's five horses. We still have to pay the bills. That is for 20, 30 stall.
Speaker 2:The question is that in New Hampshire, business is not good For trainers and boarding barns. There's too many boarding barns to be trainers and there isn't enough people. There is enough students and borders and at the moment the average boarding barn or trainer is struggling to get enough customers to make the business work as opposed to like they could be two problems here. Right, the problems that we've noticed over the years is you've got an inefficient market when it comes to trainers and boarding barns because people are constantly changing, so you got so much churn that that churn of customer base and losing one and having to find a new one and losing one and finding you want that costs you money. And then there is this problem, which is that this isn't even got to do with churn. There's just not enough. There's too many businesses competing over too few clients and that's putting a lot of stress on the equestrian professionals in the region.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting because my intuition wants to tell me that maybe the economic crisis has something to do with lack of consumer demand in New Hampshire for people to pay to be students. At the same time, I don't think that logic necessarily works, because people will spend money, even if they don't have it anyway, on things that they don't necessarily need. So that's one and two in a previous Oxford edition that we wrote. In England they're having the exact opposite problem consumer demand is through the roof, but they just don't have enough trainers.
Speaker 2:That goes back to your point, right, or maybe it is a case of it's so easy to start a business here that you've got a bit of land, you've got a bit of a janky old shed out back, so that could be a boarding barn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, work, pay, pay the new Hampshire Department of State to start a business and boom.
Speaker 3:I think that's really is a huge. I think that's a huge component of it, because, thinking about the people that we know in this space that are really good riders, really good drivers, really good trainers there if not national, renowned, world renowned I mean these people are at that. They, everyone wants to train with them. They are always busy, right. So you have to have the reputation. It's kind of like anything. The ones that aren't really struggling, if you will, are those that have really, you know, they've got really solid foundations, they've got the reputation. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that is a problem. I mean, we've been over the years, we've been to multiple occasions and there are multiple places we go to where, like, the training isn't good, the trainers aren't good they. But fortunately in the question world you can be an average trainer, but if your students are beginners they think you walk on water and you can't convince them otherwise because they're so dedicated to the trainer.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, look, if you're, if you're a new rider and you just want to get a good foundation in your trainer can't, hasn't done an upper level and can't do an upper level, but they're really good at teaching beginners.
Speaker 3:I mean, I remember when I first started to ride my trainer I mean I don't even think she was really riding, I mean just for fun maybe, but she was excellent with beginners and what made her so special was that she was really able to provide those fundamentals for kids, so that, you know, we knew how to tuck up our horses, we knew proper safety, we knew all the things that were then going to make us build upon that. And so once we got that foundation, that's when we would advance to a different trainer in a different facility. The problem is is that because it is so easy to start a business, there are lots of people that aren't qualified even at that beginner stage and yet they're bringing on beginners and they're not providing them that proper foundation, which is which is a huge liability. That's a big problem, and I'm sure everyone in the equestrian industry can attest to having first hand experience with seeing trainers that really shouldn't be teaching.
Speaker 1:I have a question about this and this is I think this would be a pretty controversial subject verification system, certification systems. Right, we have on X the blue mark, which I mean these days. How does what does that matter anyway? Because now you could just pay for that. But I mean, with FEI you have FEI level one, level two, trainer, etc. So, other than that, do we have other certification processes for trainers in equestrian? So that's my first question. And two, is there anyone in particular that is just viewed as, if you have this certification as a trainer, you are a legitimate trainer. And then finally, three, what is adoption like for even for beginner riders, in the sense that are they aware of these certifications or do they not really care about certifications when they're looking for a barn to train at?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the certifications don't really exist in the States. I can't really speak internationally. I think in England, from the conversations that we've had and speaking with some trainers here, that adopt international standards, there are standards that exist, but it's not something where, if you want to start training here, that you have to have something right, so that's kind of the first thing it's. You, too, could start a, a barn and a training service tomorrow, right?
Speaker 2:And it's basically yeah, the trainers, basically all the credibility is based on have you competed before? If so, what level did you compete at? And if you didn't compete before and you didn't compete at a respectable level, then are you a qualified judge in your discipline, and what level were you? Because there are certificates in judging, because you need to be at, know the standards to judge professionally, and so they people basically trade off either the judging experience or their competition experience.
Speaker 3:So it is important.
Speaker 2:But that also does assume that the beginners have any concept of that right. So that kind of becomes more valuable as your five, six years into the sport. But if you're a dad who's got a girl, a daughter who's seven, who wants to learn to ride and the data is no experience with it they're not going to know the industry enough to know that those are the two things look out for, and there is a certification they can point to as well. So they're just going to end up going with the trainer that's a commutable distance to home, who seems like a nice person, who feels safe with a kid.
Speaker 3:The hundred percent that's it and that's part of the problem and that's where you start. So much about that bridge from interested to now. Riding is based on Google search. And where are the barns nearby? You go, you see it, do you like the people? Is your kid like it to the ponies? Look healthy, happy, whatever, but that's kind of it right.
Speaker 3:And, like I said before, as long as it is a solid foundation, is a safe Environment, then you don't really necessarily need to have all those yeah but the problem can become when, okay, now you're there, now you're really into it, you really like riding, and you haven't chosen the trainer that is going to give you that right foundation. So, for example, there was a place that we've gone to last year and we were in an area we're invited to come right just because it was a tech thing, that what the reason why we were there? But new people who had horses and was invited to take a lesson for fun, I was like sure, why not? And gosh, it was kind of scary, really, like the horses were not that healthy. That quote unquote. Training was really scary.
Speaker 3:It ended up being where I was just writing by myself, because I think the trainer just realized she couldn't train me. I could train her, I mean, it was just very evident. I was beyond putting my heels down and my shoulders back and that's kind of where she Just kind of started and ended.
Speaker 3:But what was concerning was all their other people there and they were all falling and they were all being told to do things that they really shouldn't have done. And I asked them after the ride. I was like, hey, you know, you know, you guys knew I'm because I'm writing for these are the men. They've been riding with this trainer for six years and they couldn't do basic cross rails. They couldn't. They were falling in the lesson, they were riding in a way that I thought that they had just started in the sport. So the fact that they've been riding with this one particular woman For six years and had an advance beyond just basic fundamentals, it just went to show there's so many people in this space that should not be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and six years and still deadly loyal to the trainer. Thinks the trainer walks on water.
Speaker 1:It really sounds like we need more standardization in the industry, and this is not the solution or anything. I'm not proposing this as the solution, but I'm saying that this is one of the many, probably tens, if not hundreds, of things we could do in our space that add up to a collective solution is, if you remember, in the cowboy office Brian was talking about, why is there no, no equestrian in high schools? I know a lot of the fundamentals of basketball for free. For free because he had. Every high school pretty much has a basketball coach at least one.
Speaker 1:Yeah my high school had three basketball coaches and actually more because my high school was really good in basketball. So we have a guest coach who used to play for Virginia Tech. It was so funny, this guy, we would call him like the shop doctor and he's literally this guy in his sixties, seventies, but no matter, he could be 50 meters away from the hoop and he'll shoot it and he'll be in Shut up For basketball. Even if you were not that good of a player, you knew the fundamentals. You knew who was a good shooter, who was not. You knew basically how to shoot, you know how to defend, you know things like that. But for a question, I mean we didn't have an equestrian team in my high school, we didn't have rodeo in high school, high schools and we don't. We don't have that and I think that's really. If you have the sport more ubiquitous, then inevitably more people are going to know about the fundamentals of the sport, including who's a good trainer, who's not, even if there were no certification process.
Speaker 2:We got to wrap this thing up because it's an. I think we've come to the end of our time for the day, but just to finish that on that point, you're right that there is a certain thing that happens if you can get mass distribution of a sport to children when they're still interested in everything and they're not managing their time between work, working out, seeing friends and not being bothered by the world and just relaxing. Kids are open to doing everything, anything or once. But trying to get through the schools, considering how strapped schools are for cash public schools and how expensive a question, it's not the right way to do it. But there is definitely something to be said for like Concerted effort by the equestrian industry to create digestible content on YouTube that is highly engaging, that teaches inadvertently young kids the fundamentals of the sport. So the same way in which pepper, pig and bluey and stuff is bingeable by young kids. If someone was to create pony club and animated version of pony club that talk everything about the fundamentals of horsemanship and all that sort of stuff and then distribute that through YouTube and put that on for like every young girl and some young boys under the age of 10. Yeah that would be, that would be huge, that would that would. That would go a long way to solving that problem.
Speaker 2:And guess the pod for this week. We are, we're going to move on. We've got another podcast, which record answer wrap.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening, everyone. We really appreciate you and, yeah, you know where to find us.
Speaker 2:See you next time. Bye.
Speaker 1:Later. Thank you so much for listening to the latest episode of the Pegasus podcast. As you heard from our midroll, we are also releasing an equestrian event management software platform. Now it's easier than ever to host, sign up and sponsor for any equestrian event in the world, thanks to all the features of the Pegasus app. To sign up, go to our homepage at www dot the Pegasus dot app, that is, www dot H-E-P-E-G-A-S-U-S dot A-P-P. See you next time.