Ever wondered just how crucial nutrition is to a horse's health?
That’s the question our latest podcast guests want you to ask more often.
Mary Hartman and Olivia Sobczak are on a mission to make horses around America healthier, and it starts with what they’re eating.
Mary is the founder of StableFeed and Olivia is her first employee.
They’ve traveled all around the country to educate horse owners about the relationship between feed and their horses’ performance.
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. 🗞️
Ever wondered just how crucial nutrition is to a horse's health?
That’s the question our latest podcast guests want you to ask more often.
Mary Hartman and Olivia Sobczak are on a mission to make horses around America healthier, and it starts with what they’re eating.
Mary is the founder of StableFeed and Olivia is her first employee.
They’ve traveled all around the country to educate horse owners about the relationship between feed and their horses’ performance.
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 it creates this big circular chain reaction that will have ramifications across industries if we as human beings start to say we don't want to eat that stuff anymore. We don't want to be your industrial waste garbage cans. You need to either find a way to dispose of this appropriately and in a way that doesn't have these impacts, or stop using it.
Speaker 2: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 episode, we are hosting Mary Hartman and Olivia Sulpchak of Stable Feed. Mary is the founder and Olivia is her first employee. Stable Feed is on a mission to make horses healthier by feeding them food that is actually good for their bodies. This episode is particularly interesting if you want to learn about the relationship between nutrition and horses, as well as how easy or difficult it is to be a sponsor at an equestrian event. All right, let's get into it.
Speaker 3:Mary Olivia, it's great to have you here Now for the audience. Do you just want to give a quick introduction about yourselves age for a minute?
Speaker 1:Sure. So I'm Mary Hartman, I'm the owner and I founded Stable Feed. It was a complete accident. I didn't really mean to start a company but over my probably 15 years of horse ownership, horses that we had were constantly getting sick and there were things that the vet would say, try this medication or this supplement, and at the end of the day most of them just really didn't work and it became really frustrating for me. So I took my background in biochemistry and I did research and I came up with a formulation using chia as the base so nutraceutical type foods that could address the issues. My horse and previous horses that had and tried that and it worked great. So from that word spread and this organic evolution of stable feed occurred and, along with bringing in clients and things, I also organically got Olivia.
Speaker 4:So I'm Olivia Subchick. I was Mary's first full-time employee in college. I was on the pre-vet track and quickly realized that's not what I wanted to do. Chemistry is very hard, that's all I can say. University of Minnesota. But during a summer job, I was sitting eating my lunch and my boss at the time brought Mary in, as Mary was talking about the products, and she first started asking like you know, do you think these would sell, or how do you think they'd sell in your business? And my boss at the time was one that you don't say no to or question her. So I was sitting there just eating my lunch and she asked Mary oh, can people eat these? And she, of course, said yeah, like everything's human grade ingredients. And so my boss then took a chia biscuit and slid it towards me and went eat that.
Speaker 1:And she's alive, I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive.
Speaker 3:Mary woman better know what she's doing. What did you think it?
Speaker 5:was good. Yeah, it was good.
Speaker 4:And so it was so funny to see my boyfriend that night being like I ate a horse tree. Today, that was my day. But now I was great and then. So from there, when I realized I really didn't want to go down the conventional track of being put into the little pigeonhole that is the equestrian marketplace in terms of feed and companies, is where I kind of stuck with and messaging Mary and my boyfriend and I'll take full credit for that on Instagram, and from there that's I just stuck with it, and so it's been almost five years, almost five years Wow.
Speaker 3:Fantastic, fantastic. And so for the listeners, we, jen and I, met you two when we were actually at Equitana. What year was it?
Speaker 5:2021. It rained out outside.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it forced me next to us, right yeah.
Speaker 1:And you had fudge. That's all it took, yeah.
Speaker 5:And clothe and clothe. No, it was amazing because it was a very serendipitous meeting Cause yeah, to your point, we were based outside. There was this really hectic storm that came through and everyone had to scurry inside as soon as possible into the covered arena at the Kentucky horse park, and we were right next to you guys and so we've been pals ever since and seeing each other on the horse show circuits and really exciting to see your growth and you guys being a part of our journey as well. So, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And for the listeners. If you go to our website and you go to the sponsor and vendor section of the website, we've created a tool that allows Equestrian Brands to basically sponsor and vendor events virtually as well as in person, and just for organizers to manage that a lot better. So the reason we're really excited about this podcast and what we're going to spend most of today kind of talking about is it was stable feed and Marion Olivia. They were the ones who on that day at Equitana, when we all got out of the rain, we were talking to them about the trials and tribulations of being a small brand with a limited budget, trying to advertise and market your products Equestrians and it being very hard because the distribution channels, as far as marketing go, were outdated and expensive and to travel all over the country and attend a question events and vendor is also very expensive. So that was basically the conversation that germinated into the product we've built.
Speaker 3:So before we get into more detail about the trials and tribulations of advertising the question industry, let's just go a little bit deeper into your guys, company, your product, what it is, as well as the company and your journey of growing the company to date. So, mary, you gave a brief synopsis of what the actual product is. Do you want to give just a bit more of a rundown of exactly what the product is and maybe the different products you offer, so the customers can get an idea for it?
Speaker 1:We actually offer a few different things. It's almost a protocol that helps restore health in horses. So what I realized when I did that deep dive for my own horses is that what we're feeding our horses is actually largely responsible for making them sick, and that's something veterinarians recognize, nutritionists recognize. But we've been stuck in this model of feeding upcycled foods really ultra processed foods to horses for about 70 years, and that started when we started. The EPA and large feed companies didn't want to have to pay to dispose of their industrial waste materials. So they went to Congress and Congress said if you clean it so you don't cause toxicity right away, then you can put it into feed for animals that we don't eat and at that time horses and dogs.
Speaker 1:So over time, as those foods have become increasingly laden with chemical residues, we've genetically modified them with anti nutrients.
Speaker 1:It's been harder for horses and we're seeing increases in obesity and diabetes and laminitis and all the things that go along with endocrine problems and neurological problems. So in order to fix those, I just dug down and said well, what do we need to do? Well, we need to reset the microbiome, which is the regulator for everything. We need to reset that with probiotics and good foods, and then we need to maintain it. So the steps that we develop for that are to actually test the microbiome of the horse, the regulator for systemic health. So we can do that now. We can see where the imbalances are. With the knowledge that we have, which grows weekly, we can provide horse owners with a way to rebalance that, a way to feed the microbiome and then a way to maintain that. And we do that with first testing and then prebiotic and probiotic foods and then maintaining on a high value, nutrient dense, very clean forage program. So that is essentially what we do and it probably sounds a little complicated but it's really not.
Speaker 3:Before we deep dive on the actual product and what you guys do. Just going back to your points about the history of where these issues came from, how did you do that research and come to that conclusion, and what did horses used to eat before we moved to this more modern system?
Speaker 5:And it's really terrifying to think about too.
Speaker 3:I mean it makes total sense. Humans are going through the same epiphany ourselves about our own diets and human obesity issues. It makes sense that the same systems exist in the equine world and probably a lot worse.
Speaker 4:Well, and Mary likes to say that our generation is one that is starting the move for dogs. I mean, that's why you're seeing all these. That's when the green free started, but then now you're seeing more of the raw feeding and more of going towards the natural feeding. We like to think that we're kind of the first steps in that, for horses is where we want to make that change, because they were fed the same things ingredient-wise. When you really dig down and look on those ingredient lists, there's actually quite a bit of similarity. That was on for kibble that there is in horse grain now, and so I think back then the ingredients were cleaner, they weren't as processed or they weren't things that were cleaned up and used for cattle feed, sheep feed. All of those things, those ingredients. We like to say you know, a stem of oats is not going to be the same stem of oats that it was 20 years ago.
Speaker 3:It is just not.
Speaker 4:We've made so many different changes in the agriculture sector that it's just not the same. We like to reference your horses out in the wild. What would they choose to eat? What would your horse pick and choose if they were out in a field or woods? Even horses now you can watch horses. If they have access to those things, they won't just sit there and eat the same thing all day long. Well, as long as they have a variety in that pasture, they will. They won't excuse me, but that's kind of we think how it all yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think, sam, I think you have to look back historically, right. So let's just look at horses. Horses used to be livestock, right. We pulled plows with them, we pulled ambulances with them, they took us into town. They I mean, they were working animals, and so we kept them out in pastures and they were unclean pastures. We didn't spray our pastures with anything. The animals ate the weeds, they ate everything that was in them. When we started the industrialization of food, like in the late 1800s, and started adding chemicals for preservatives and things, that was one aspect of this Then we had machinery to take over the place of the horse, right? So then the horses now become more pleasure animals and performance animals.
Speaker 1:But the big change, as I see it, happened in 1972, when Richard Nixon signed the or created the Environmental Protection Agency. So when you have the EPA, the big problem there was everybody stomping their toxic waste into the environment, into our rivers and our lakes and into the land, and so the EPA's funding is supposed to come from industry paying to dispose of their hazardous waste, right? So they pay to get rid of this stuff. Well, the larger grain manufacturers and feed manufacturers for livestock realized that that was going to cost them millions of dollars. It was going to take money out of their pockets to actually have to responsibly take care of their hazardous waste.
Speaker 1:So Congress passed the 1972 Hazardous Waste Recycling and Relabeling Act. So and the name says it all that allowed these big feed and food companies to take their hazardous waste, heat it, treat it and put it back into the feed sector for animals that are not food animals. So they couldn't feed it to cows, chickens, but they got to take their hazardous waste and feed it to horses and dogs and cats things we don't eat. Interestingly, that move is now taking place in the net zero economy that we're creating, where they're calling it upcycled foods, where we're taking that waste again and now they're upcycling it, which means ultra processed, and they're going to be putting it into grocery stores and into school food programs, all of these other programs. So, yeah, so hazardous waste became byproduct. Byproduct is now upcycled food. So we're changing the name of things and, despite the science that shows it's linked to chronic health problems, with obesity and diabetes and these things, it's cost saving.
Speaker 5:How have they been able to get away with that? Because you're taking hazardous waste that doesn't just become an organic thing to eat after heat, treating it and recycling it and changing the packaging so it's original substance is hazardous. So how have all these different new legislations and packaging been able to now make it something that people are able to sell to their animals?
Speaker 1:So there's an interesting part of the FDA that we all think. Food and drug administration they're there to protect us, right. And USDA they're there to protect us yeah, they are. However, there's also part of their framework that says they have to balance protecting health with profits and tax revenues. There's regulatory capture.
Speaker 1:So as part of that process, the FDA recently refused to authorize their independent studies of all of the surfactants and other the inactive ingredients that go into agricultural chemicals to determine their level of toxicity in the human body. They just said there are too many of them. We're not going to look, you just have to trust the companies. So the companies provide the information to the USDA and the FDA and the research that says this is safe. It only causes toxicity if we get to this level. But if we keep it here, then it's not toxic.
Speaker 1:And the research shows that maybe it's not toxic immediately, but when the cells absorb and take that into the system it does become toxic. And that's why things like the more popular agricultural chemicals that include glyphosate the glyphosate itself is made 125% more toxic by the addition of these other chemicals. They've just linked that and the feeding of that and those things in the environment to equine metabolic syndrome. So it means it's disrupting their endocrine system and their neurological system and all these things that we're seeing in these horses. But if you feed it in little bits and you spread it out over the population, then it's not immediately toxic and that seems to be okay. And that's where a horse owner and just as a human being, I just you know my choices are immediately toxic or toxic over time. And I said I just I don't like those choices, I'm just so we've abandoned that old model and said no, we're not, we're just not buying into that anymore. We're going to keep toxins out as much as possible and try to just give them good food.
Speaker 3:Right. So two questions. That's all fascinating and obviously you know the topic and the research very well and the laws, which I suppose is arguably the most important part, because it creates the environment in which these things can happen. So two key things is one is so, what's an example of how this manifests in common problems that horse owners today may be having that they don't realize is linked to this, so they know what to look for? And secondly, how are the major feed companies that have done this, who have distributed this quality product in the past, how are they responding to these changes? Like, are they catching up with the times or is it just a matter of let's keep this, let's keep this train going as long as we can, until we're forced to change?
Speaker 4:So what do you think, olivia? Well, I was going to say I can address so the second part of that. I'll address the second part because she can recite the, especially the EMS, the metabolic stuff. But what I noticed because I do a lot of our marketing and a lot of and I do all of our social media and stuff, and so I follow other companies just to see what they're doing, and a lot of them have kind of responded to going the more natural route as adding certain ingredients around their stuff, around their pellets, so like, instead of just a pellet now, for instance, they will add sunflower seeds and carrot chips around it to make it look more natural and make it look more appetizing. So obviously I mean that's a brilliant marketing way for them to play into that mindset.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Kind of pulls people's attention away from wait. Why was I going to switch off of that in the first place? I think they're going towards that and I think, just as a customer base, people are starting to switch more. But otherwise, yeah, what people are seeing literally, I mean we see it every day. We get messages every day about how those are affecting horses and it's not even the common issues per se that are being seen more which they are, but you're starting to get more weird things popping up or more issues happening really early in life.
Speaker 4:For instance, I sent out a survey to all of our customer base. I even posted on Facebook for anyone to answer questions about their metabolic horse and I asked for age range and we on that survey have an age range of six months being diagnosed as a metabolic horse to 32 years old, where you used to think of that as just, maybe, older horses. As they got older, they struggled with that more. I mean, that's what I learned in class. In school was that was kind of just an older horse issue or rarity, and unfortunately it's becoming way more common to see that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and these are generational things, right? So some of these things you can pass on generationally from the mare to the foal to the neck. So generationally we're seeing more and more issues like obesity. I mean obesity in horses in the United States. More than 50% of the horses here are not just fat, they're obese. So you know, in laminitis and I think that we keep seeing all of these sites that are popping up saying balance your nutrition. We have ration balancers and you can input everything from your horse's bag and their diet to balance their vitamins and minerals.
Speaker 1:I think there's a level of desperation in horse owners out there to try to figure out what's going on, and, from an industry standpoint, this just creates more money, right? So I personally don't think industry has really responded to this in an appropriate way, because if the problem is what we're feeding, the solution we're being given is supplements. The supplements are not the solution to the problem. The problem is to stop what we're feeding, and since we know what we're feeding, it's toxic to certain systems in the body. Well, that means we have to clean that up. However, they can't, because that costs money and a lot of it, and so I look at this and see that industry isn't responding appropriately to this, that there is a level of desperation by horse owners who know there's something wrong.
Speaker 1:And the other part of that that makes it complicated is we not only have regulatory capture by the industry, which I mean, which means the government gets regulated by them, because they provide the science that says it's only toxic if you feed this much, but we also have capture in our educational system, which is increasingly coming under scrutiny. So all of the nutrition courses in our universities are fed by industry. All of our medicines that the vets are taught are taught by the big pharma companies that have captured that in the universities, and part of that is because they have the money to pay for research and funding. So if you pay for the research for those guys who are academics, whether it's published or parish, and that research then allows you to control the narrative and you're controlling the education of the people coming out, you're really doing a good job of controlling the messaging and creating an army of people who are parroting what you need them to parrot, and we've been doing that for 60 or 70 years.
Speaker 1:So you know, dupont's slogan is better living through chemistry. Well, now they're paying huge millions of dollars in settlements for forever chemicals in our water. So in the feed industry we have science. You can trust that science was the science used for the cost saving measure for the 1972 hazardous waste recycling and relabeling act. So it wasn't about the science for the horse. But after 60 years we've forgotten that history and so I think that's a large component of what we see is there's not really been. We need to disrupt that cycle and I just Education cycle.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I'll say also so I can speak to this, in that my college roommate is a vet now and so I live with her through her whole vet teaching. You know, learning at home, I gosh all of it. She only took two nutrition classes in her four years of veterinary medicine. One of them was based on just small animals and the other one was based in large animals. So that's one class for one semester for each of those, and I even worked at a vet clinic myself, so I know that they try their hardest. Sometimes depends on the vet to really understand nutrition, but they can only learn so much, right? They didn't go for that as their PhD. They didn't want to specialize in that. Let's be realistic. They didn't want to specialize in nutrition, but because those two are so linked, it is really important. That's very unfortunate that there isn't more time spent on not the research that's developed by the companies they may be selling for.
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Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's just the way of the world, right? A pharmaceutical company comes out with a new product. They want vets to use their product. They go to their vets and they say here is a new product. This is what it does, Unless the vet was to go and find or run themselves a controlled trial to test it versus everything else, which no one's going to do because they're too busy doing their job. You're just going to take the word for it, and that assumed that they're also not getting a kickback for using the product. It's just obviously going to happen that way. It's no one's fault in particular.
Speaker 5:It's just the way the world works the system yeah, the system fundamentally broken. That must be so interesting to now having working with stable feed and then seeing what you were being taught before. And, just in general, I think everyone is kind of having this awakening, like you said, the dog market. Chloe, for example, she gets the raw food in addition to some vet food for her hip dysplasia, but so I'm very cognizant of that. We're very cognizant of what we're putting into our own bodies. Even though you love Diet Coke, we're trying to wean Sam off Diet Coke.
Speaker 3:Everybody has my cold dead hands.
Speaker 1:We can't use his cups here too, yeah.
Speaker 5:It's like all organic green green sauce. Sam makes the sauce called the Greek goddess sauce and it's all green goddess sauce, but yet you have it with a Diet Coke. It just anyway, but it is. But all that said, because there is so many systematic issues to your point that start right from when people are being taught this. So how do you change the narrative and how do you get people to start think, really thinking about, you know, not so much treating the symptom, but starting from really questioning really everything from the get go?
Speaker 4:This company has grown Since Mary started Mary, the first day she started this. Everything is grown by word of mouth, pretty much. I mean, it's so organic in that and because people are changing their mindsets, for dogs it's starting to get them to be like, oh well, what about my horse? And so it's really about there are I will have you on this there are some people you will never change their minds. We have met plenty of them and you just say, okay, have a nice day, you just can't do it, you just can't.
Speaker 4:But there are plenty of people who you're right, people are doing it for themselves. So the and many times when we're talking to people at vendor events, people will be like well, I did that for myself and we like, exactly, it's the one in the same. It's all about changing that mindset, and using marketing, for instance, is a huge thing, and I will admit I do take some things that are either sent out in newsletters or on social media and I may put our little spin to it in flipping the narrative to be like wait a minute, is that? That's not true? I'll flip it, and obviously in a positive way and just an educational way, but it's so that people do start to think differently and do start to take a step back. Even simple as I'll put what's in your bucket.
Speaker 4:All that phrase gets people heated sometimes, but it's just a matter of taking a step back and looking at, just looking at the ingredients, even like humans do it now. Oh my gosh, the amount of people that you see sitting there looking at an ingredient lets in a grocery store, yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, they even have these things that you can scan now, just certain apps to be able to easily scan the barcode. But for the people that are pushing back and, as you said, are really setting their ways and they don't want to try this food, what are they saying? Because even people we would never defend a McDonald's burger. I mean, we might want to eat the burger, but there's no way I'm going to defend McDonald's over, say, a really healthy salad. So what would be?
Speaker 3:I'll defend McDonald's over a really healthy salad. Okay.
Speaker 1:I think that we have just a few different types of people. Right and I think that that's what we've learned to recognize in the marketplace is that you have people who are seeking answers, like I was right. You have this group of people who are just going why, when I buy a horse now, versus 20 years ago, is this horse always sick? My other horse I never had to do anything. They saw the ferrier. They saw the vet twice a year maybe you know for the vet, the ferrier regularly. They were never sick. Now why is my horse always sick? And they seek out answers on their own. They seek out and those are the people that find us, the people that are really looking for and understand there's something fundamentally wrong. And those are the ones that find us. And then you have the people who are interested and they recognize that there's something wrong but they don't really know where to go or how to begin that process of looking right and they're a little bit afraid to take a step into something completely new because they just don't have the confidence of somebody who is just kind of like I was and says I'm done with this. They will talk to someone who's that more of a seeking type of a personality and say what are you doing? And they may be willing to then give it a try.
Speaker 1:And then you have your horse owner, whose comfort level is in doing what grandpa always did, and they never want to look any further than that. It's like this always worked before. I don't know why it isn't working now. I kind of don't care, I'll just do whatever I need to do along the way, and they're never going to step out of that box and they're always going to be in that box. So where we live is in that smaller population of people but it's growing. Who are looking at those solutions? They're solution oriented and that bleeds into this next level. So that's kind of where we are and we're really happy to live there. We don't really pay attention to what the big feed companies are doing or anybody else is doing, because it doesn't really benefit us. We just do our thing.
Speaker 4:And even, yes, I know, in your guys podcast you guys talk about how disciplines are so different, like how, I mean, and there's so many of them. I mean there really is, and so what we've found. Mary started in the eventing space. What I started noticing with the vendors is they really are more individuals rather than, like sure, some of them do kind of follow trends, some of them whatever, but I feel like a lot of them are more into. I'm going to do what's best for my horse, like this horse in front of me. I'm going to do what I think is best for this horse.
Speaker 1:They're a different breed of human. They are a different breed.
Speaker 4:But I think that's great, because those are the people. A lot of times that will be the ones that will. I mean, they'll sit in our booth for an hour just asking multiple questions, because they continuously will think of questions. And now we're starting to get more into the hunter jumper space and, for instance, there's a barn now that has all their horses on our product because one of her horses had an issue and so she was like, well, can it make all these changes for this one horse? Yep, and then she thinks, oh, so even my horses that aren't sick or maybe don't necessarily need help, they can still benefit. And it's like absolutely so. Yeah, that's where the vendors are. Yeah, they're a different breed, but they've given us the stuff that we're at now A lot of them.
Speaker 1:The difficulty for us in that and that's where the Pegasus app, where Pegasus comes in will be really valuable is that we're not able to go to all these hunter jumper shows From Minnesota, and the educational component for people is really critical, right? We can't be at all of these places, so it's just financially it's impossible. So to make advantage of the Pegasus app, to be able to reach out and to be able to then interact with these people in a virtual way so we can educate from here, is going to be a really useful and critical tool for our growth, I think, because that really does expand our ability to penetrate that market in a way that otherwise we are simply not going to be able to do.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and what you could even do too is, say, sponsor a clinic where you have 50 people in one area a vendors or hunter, jumpers, whoever they might be, and then send samples, because for me at least, seeing your product and smelling it, it just it's a whole other level of realization of the quality in which you're feeding the horses. It's the difference of, you know, when you get something from Whole Foods or, even better, from a fresh farmer's market and you can actually touch it, smell it. So that would also be an option too. I think when people actually can experience it, they will realize it's fun if it's a lot more.
Speaker 1:It's like the orange juice they squeeze in front of you, versus the one you make from the concentrate.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. It's fascinating what you said about the event as versus the hunter jumpers.
Speaker 5:As an event. I'm proud of that statement, yeah.
Speaker 3:So it's actually of all the conversations that we've always had about marketing in the equestrian space and sales and advertising and customer segments and demographics, and, as you're right, we do talk about how the disciplines are very different, but we've never talked about it this way and it's actually really fascinating to think about, which is that the customer profile is different, not just because the sport is different, but because the sort of sport creates a different sort of person and that sort of person turns into a different buyer, both in personality but also in terms of unit economics.
Speaker 3:So, looking at the event as, as you said, their horses are triathletes, right?
Speaker 3:So getting the most out of that horse to be able to be a dynamic animal rather than a short term sprinter, hunter, jumper horses might be more like NFL.
Speaker 3:You know linebackers who need to do a short sprint and perform at a high level and because the event is usually are more individualistic, as you say, and they, a lot of them, operate off a more shoestring budget, they have to one get as much out of the one horse that they can and also prevent that horse from getting injured, which means preemptive care, which means they would be the early adopters in the market because your product solves a lot of problems, which would mean that from a marketing perspective, it would make sense that you would go after, in the early stages, the eventing, the event as a, as a discipline. But then when you get it now, you're like okay, we've got some early adopters, we've got some traction, now how do we scale this as a business? That's when the hunter jumpers be kind of become a really attractive market because they do operate in big barns. So you get one customer in a barn, you get the whole barn. So for one customer you might get 20 customers or a hundred customers.
Speaker 5:And you have the case studies from the eventers to be able to show to some of these bigger barns that operate as a group rather than an individual, to then have the credentials and just that trust, to then be able to try it on their own horse as an expanded to the barns.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's actually a blueprint here that's worth exploring more, which is, if you are a small business, especially in the nutrition game, maybe there is a go-to-market strategy based on which discipline you go after first in order to create a go-to-market strategy that is scientifically based, in the not scientifically but data-driven, I suppose, is the best way to put it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think the other thing that's really important is that horse owners, increasingly, are really skeptical. I mean, jen, you know how many supplements do you put your horse on for their feet and then, six months down the road, you're looking at their feet going. I don't know that they're really any better, right, but you're just going to keep doing. It Are the people who feed? There's a feed out there that is market as something for ulcers. Can't tell you the number of people who come to us looking for a solution to ulcers in their horse, chronic ulcers in their horse and we find out they're on that feed. And so the question is well, if you're on that feed to remedy ulcers, but your horse still has ulcers, do you think it's working? And the answer is always no. So that's the other thing is that they're skeptical.
Speaker 1:So, while the science is important, science has really been bastardized because the research is paid for in the big universities by just a few companies, right, and so we're finding that the narrative is predetermined. When we went in to do a research study, I was asked what I wanted the outcome to be, which is the wrong question. The question is not what do I want it to be. It's like here's the study, let's see what the outcome is, but you go into it with them telling the researchers what they want the outcome to be, so you can't even really trust the science. So for horse owners and I think especially in the eventing world is you need to be able to show it. I had a woman who wanted me to do an inclusion into my chia products for a while and she said if you add this, it can clear sarcoids, it can do this, it can do that. And I said, great, show me crickets chirped.
Speaker 5:So they wanted to incorporate their supplement into your food. Is that right?
Speaker 1:Yes, and my cheese supplements right Seeing that if we include that, we can clear sarcoids, we can clear rain rot, we can do this. And I said well, I'm already doing that.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So why would you want to include this? Especially because it would bump the price point to over $100 for an event or an equestrian. It's like that's a big ask. You know we want to try to keep things so everybody can afford it. And I said great, if you can do it, show me it does it on its own, and then we'll test it on a horse to see if it does it more effectively and efficiently. And then we'll talk. They could not and would not show me that it would work on its own. So, needless to say, I didn't do it. So I think you know that's.
Speaker 1:The other part of it is that we've got catalogs and catalogs of supplements and if you look at our product offerings, I don't have a lot of them and it's. I'm not going to give things to people or create things If they don't work. We've got enough of that. We don't need another joint supplement. We don't need another fancy marketing thing. We don't need another balancer. We need things that go back to the basics, look at the function and work, and eventers are a really great test group for that, because if something works, they're so loyal, they're very, very, they tell everyone and they tell everybody, but they're also going to be highly critical if it doesn't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. There's a few podcasts we listen to and one of them they have a nickname for these products. They call them FUD products fear, uncertainty and doubt. They talk about them in the context of humans and our dogs and stuff, which is the amount of money that's made out there by businesses that sell FUD. And it's just. I don't know if this supplement's working, but it seems to be working, and the most premium one of that is athletic greens. Half of Austin takes it every day. No one knows what it does, no one knows if it works, but there's just that fear of like well, if I stop it, what am I? What's going to happen?
Speaker 5:And I think it's even more so when it comes to your animals and your in your, in your horses, because you almost feel irresponsible for not trying so with Chloe. I almost want to do a separate deep dive with you guys and and dissect Chloe's diet, because she has hip dysplasia and so she's got this particular food. She's on Cosa Quinn. She's been getting these weekly adiquan shots that weirdly, she's now limping. Wasn't really, I was trying to do it as a preventative care, but now she's limping after the fact, which is very counterintuitive. So, yeah, I think that even more so, most people are trying to do something and so you could kind of capitalize on that fud for animals.
Speaker 1:I mean you're going, she's limping, now what the heck right? And so that's where I was at. And then you're like, if you're a seeking type personality, you go, this isn't working, I need something that works. And then you do the deep dive on that with Olivia, because she knows a lot more about dogs than I do.
Speaker 4:I'll even use one of our ride. Actually to Ashlyn is another Goma, but one of our riders is Elisa Wallace. She with her Mustang it's not her competition horse but it's still a horse she cares deeply about had a nasty summer sore on her foot and she had tried everything. Granted, you know she wasn't posting about any of it because, let's face it, people are kind of mean on social media.
Speaker 3:But yeah, let's not invite extra commentary, yeah.
Speaker 4:And so and she told me she's like no, I you know, we kind of hid her for a while because I couldn't figure out what to do. And you do take it personally, you take that as my animal's failing. And I don't know what to do. And so once she actually found well her, she sent her a groom and then and her husband also came over and showed me a picture of it, and I was like we'll try this.
Speaker 4:And so we sent her our boosted spirulina chia and within a couple of months I mean within a month she messaged me and you know it was messaging us and calling us and saying this is actually working, this is making improvement, when nothing else did. I mean, she had put her in the hospital for laser treatments and nothing was working and so that worked. I mean, one of her posts generates a ton for us and it's because she does have that following. I mean, granted, she's also on YouTube and things like that, so she has a little bit of bigger reach than some do, but she won't do it if it doesn't work.
Speaker 4:Yeah, she even has that in her video she did for us. She goes I do not stand by brands and products I don't believe in and that don't work, but I believe in stable feed, I believe in your product, and so that was a huge thing for us, because that shows that inventors are some of them are a little different in that. It's just whatever works for my horse is what I'm going to do, that's what we care.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So she had that with one of her actually two of her competition horses too where scoped for ulcers with her vet, found ulcers, treated for the ulcers and the ulcers got worse. So in the second treatment they were worse. So she called here and said hey, what can I do? So Olivia put her on the feed product which, because of the components with that and the probiotics, allows the body to create the chemicals it needs to repair the mucosal lining on its own and to meet integrity in the mucosal lining, which is what the horse needs. They don't need things to soothe it and to coat it, they need something that will allow them to fix it. That horse is doing beautifully, she's doing great.
Speaker 1:So we're excited for the next scoping. We do that. That's kind of what we do. It's where we live and we find that these riders who've been with another company, or supplement or feed, who try one of our products, then try the regular course, and then they come to us and they go OK, I did what I've been doing for eight years and it didn't work. Now what and funny thing is, the simplicity of this works. That's how we're getting at the issue.
Speaker 5:Your expertise is obviously in equine nutrition, but I can't help but hear this and want a supplement from you guys, or just some kind of food or something for the horse show dog. But I mean, when we've talked about this before, which is there's so many different athletic products or supplements that tailor to other athletes and other sports, but there's nothing that's particularly focused on equestrian. So is that in your scope at all, or is this your 100% focused on the equestrian nutrition only?
Speaker 1:It's in our scope. We're set up so that we could include other animals in the future, but there's so much to do with horses. Yeah, actually, we've been asked to do racing camels, so that'll be a fun one.
Speaker 4:We currently feed two camels. So at the first event there was a girl came up to me and just asked about her horses and I didn't think anything of it. Later on she emailed me and was like can camels eat this? And I was like I have no idea. Like I say, for all I know, a sunflower seed could kill a camel. That's how you have to look at every single spec in this to make sure that it's safe. And she goes, I sent it to the nutritionist that works with our camels. Where we get them from. It'll be great. Well, it turns out those camels live at Sight and Sound Theater, which is a huge amphitheater in Pennsylvania, where they have a stage that's like 100 by 100. And it's a Christian theater and so these camels are actually actors. So we have two camels, six alpacas and eight horses that are all on our feed product and I have a great picture with one of them and his coat is super soft and shiny, yeah, so that was kind of a funny thing. Is it's just food, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and you can eat it.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so what it all comes down to, jen, honestly, is the microbiome right. So when the microbiome is messed up in the bacteria and enzymes and all of those things are messed up, they can't create those chemical reactions and they can't communicate deficiencies to the brain. And it's sort of, if you were it, would envision the horses gastrointestinal track as a giant telephone system, right, whereas somebody's in there and they've got a plug in. You know, they used to have to plug into the circuits. And so there's this, matt, this really intricate communication that takes place, and some of the bacteria trip these neurotransmissions to the brain. So if you're missing bacteria, then there's nobody there to send the message to the brain that there's a problem. So then the horse finds a way around it. They find a way to compensate for the lack in that bacteria, but you can only compensate for so long without something before the system goes off the rails.
Speaker 1:So when we work on this and we do the microbiome first, we're fixing the neurotransmissions so that now the horse's system has a way to say hey, you know what? There's bleeding taking place on this part of the gas through intestinal tract, there's pain. There's pain, you know. And then they can trip the sensor and it sends in or creates. If they have the food components, they can create what's needed to repair that.
Speaker 1:The body wants to be in homeostasis. Everything wants to be balanced, and it's the same in dogs, it's the same in people. So our medications, our pharmaceutical industry sells us ways to trick the body or ways to numb the symptoms, but they don't get at that root thing that can actually fix it. So for us, the microbiome is really kind of where we, where we live, where we like to start, and then we try to provide the horses with what they need. There is a company called Forleaf Rover that does the same thing in dogs and I can tell you, speaking from experience with my German Shepherd dog, that using their products to get rid of overproliferation of yeast and lactic acid and lactic acid bacteria works wonders on these dogs to get that. So it's really a large part of what we do, but right now we're really equally focused.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:And then I'm already putting on my wish list. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I think this is actually a really good point to pivot away from the science of your product and more into the story and challenges of building a business. Because, to Jen's question, have you decided to expand to adjacent markets, being dogs, et cetera. While that is the kind of low hanging fruit and could be very, very appealing from the perspective of you've got limited resources in marketing and attention and time, but you've kind of got to build a brand that goes after a niche so that you can spend those marketing and attention resources effectively. So, looking at the equestrian space, because that's what you guys have been doing over the last so many years what is your experience with trying to advertise through the equestrian marketing distribution channels that you've got at the moment? So what lessons have you learned as a small business trying to build a name for yourself in the equestrian industry in terms of what are the challenges that another industry that might advertise on Twitter or Facebook, et cetera, might not have?
Speaker 4:Magazine articles, sponsorships at venues and such. We have Facebook and Instagram. I've kind of stuck to those because there's always going to come up with a new app that it's like oh, I got to focus just on one or two. We kind of just started having our YouTube channel where our writer videos that we do are on there so I can link to those. Email marketing.
Speaker 1:What's really interesting. One of the things that we learned is that when you're very, very small, you have people who will advise you to put a lot of money into your marketing, like into social media, and doing these things For us at least, didn't really have a good return on investment. I think that you need to be in the market a little bit before you start to pay for ads in there, because people just scroll right past them. So you have to find ways to engage with people and Olivia has done a really good job on Facebook and Instagram with doing that and find those influencers. Those influencers are very, very important in the startup for the equestrian space.
Speaker 1:And then, once people recognize your product a little bit more and you've got a little bit more you start adding in before and afters to build people's confidence in the product. They want to be able to see what it does, and so from there then getting into paid advertising works. We found that magazine ads really don't do much of anything. They're not an effective way for us, at least not at this stage. Maybe when we're bigger, we'll look at doing that again, but they're really not an effective marketing tool.
Speaker 3:And they're the most expensive.
Speaker 1:They are. They're very expensive and we've had some really good placements in those, but they really don't help as much as doing the social media. That's where that is, and so for us, that's where, now that we're larger, we're still very small, but now that we're larger, we're going to start putting money into that, and so Olivia has been exploring where does it go Facebook or Google? Interestingly, facebook gets more purchase, google gets more looks, so I don't know what she's going to do with that.
Speaker 4:But I'm excited to see. Well, and even I was one of your podcast. You guys talked about Facebook groups, and so those have been interesting, to say the least, because obviously there are some that will not allow us in. That's fine, because they don't want you to be posting things about selling or anything like that, and so I try to find the groups where I know our client base is based in. So a lot of it is East Coast and I'll try to find. You know, I'm definitely, we're definitely in like the event or once where it's just a general group.
Speaker 4:right, that is kind of allows anything. But what I'll do for my posts is I'll alternate where my where they go like what group they'll go into specifically. So we have a couple that are more metabolic horse specific. It's just like a couple of the Facebook groups are, you know, metabolic horses. I'll specifically put a post in there that may intrigue those people more than just the general adventure group, if that makes sense. Or, for instance, I'll use our influencers in the specific groups where our influencers live. Those little things obviously can't necessarily track those to make sure that they that does convert to sales order, but I know then at least it's getting in front of the correct people.
Speaker 5:That makes sense, and even just posing the question, maybe in some of those groups where you're not technically allowed to sell, but at least sparking a conversation of who's having issues and what are you feeding and then maybe indirectly guide them to stable feed. I think that could also be sparking the question and then making people really think about and reflect on what they've been feeding, and the issues might just be enough to then draw them to your page.
Speaker 4:When she's on some of just the pages as her own independent person. So then yeah, and I'll kind of do it sometimes too, is my own profile going there and comment I see, if it's a horse, that is like a hives for instance, our spirulina chia clears hives all day long. And so I'll comment oh, have you tried that? You know, and I won't tag us because then it'll, you know, show up. So those little things.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I think, sam, that you guys did very well, that I think that is very much like what we did is your branding right. So when I think of Pegasus, I can picture your boot pink, that that really bright. No, it's, it's true it's, it's beautiful, it's beautiful and it's important, because walking across, say, the five star grounds, right, or going anywhere that I go, if I see that bright pink, I don't care how far away I am, I know it's you and I'm going to come over there. And so I think that not enough companies, small companies, pay enough attention to branding. They're so busy trying to put a product out and trying to put it out as cheaply as possible that we get a lot of white buckets and we got a lot of pictures of shiny horses and you get a lot of things without a lot of attention being paid to.
Speaker 1:How am I going to stand out on the shelf? You're in a warehouse and there's 600 equine supplements for joint support and you put them all up on the same wall. How are you going to stand out so that if somebody comes in and they have to pick that one supplement that they're going to lift off that shelf first. Which one is it going to be? You want to make sure that it's yours. You want to make sure, then, that if you're at an event and people are looking for Pegasus, they can find you. Well, you've done a really good job of that, and I don't see a lot of that careful attention to those really important parts very often in the equine space, and I think it's because it's been so dominated by massive multinational corporations for so many decades that they don't really need to do that, they don't really need to pay a lot of attention to that, but it's really really important. I think it's the single most important part of entering a marketplace is creating a way to be visible.
Speaker 5:I totally agree, and you've done a really great job with that too. Your bags are really beautiful, they look like no other feedback and, you're right, the rest kind of do all mesh together a bit, and we talk about this a lot as well with other companies in the space and how. It's almost like, instead of studying what the great companies in the world have done to be able to stand out, they're all just looking at what each other is doing. So it's like equidice, equidat and it's the same horse logo in just thousands of different ways, the same colors. So yeah, I mean, right back at you guys. You've done a really good job of differentiating your brand and your product from everything else that's kind of out there in a faceless brand.
Speaker 3:So as opposed to like thinking about your guys marketing as a business challenge to solve right. One challenge that you've got but it actually might also be your greatest opportunity, which is, I'm sure it is what you're actually capitalizing on is that you're more selling an idea than you're selling a product. You're selling the idea of better nutrition, so it's almost you need to convince them of the idea before they're willing to entertain the product, which means that you've got to sell two things in order to sell one thing, but at the same time, by selling that one thing, by selling the idea, it's also, in many respects, what makes you stand out and is one of the, you know, the greatest return on the investment is as soon as people buy into the idea, they won't be able to look at another product the same, and therefore, if you're the only product in the market, then you're the only thing they're going to buy.
Speaker 1:Right, which is, I think, what leads us into the other difficulty that we've had is that I think is quite intimidating to some of the larger companies that are out there that when we want to go to some of the venues and get into some of the venues as a vendor and even have a booth at some of these, they scrutinize some of the larger sponsors of these events will scrutinize that and say, no, you can't come because you're a competitor. We're not really a competitor, but I think that the idea is so intimidating to them because and it will be based on what happened in the dog food sector Right when all of these came out well then, the one of the largest companies sponsored three university research studies and those research studies were so skewed and maybe you heard about the whole thing, about the grain free and torene, how you have to have grain in because if you don't, dogs aren't getting torene and it's leading to heart conditions, and so everybody stopped feeding some of those, or a lot of people stopped feeding those grain free and those raw diets and things. Well, it turns out that the studies, the data, was skewed from the onset and that one company paid three colleges Tufts University, colorado and UC Davis paid three people and what they said is we want you to gather data on dogs that are on a grain free diet, that come in with heart issues. So you can do that, because what you have to do is just you have to look at what are dogs with heart issues? What are they eating, right? So you're skewing your results to show what you want them to be. So then, when those and they got paid, one of those researchers was paid $180,000 for that. So then this study came out and said oh, that dogs that are on a grain free diet are lacking torene.
Speaker 1:And well, if they can't dispose of the industrial waste right, the scraps, the upcycled grains, which is what they are going into horse and dog feeds, if millions of pounds of that are now left for them to dispose of, that's a big cost. But they saw that market. Just, they've lost so many market shares. They lost like 28% of their market shares in dog food in the first year because all of your generation said I'm not feeding that, and so then they gained a lot of that back. Now they've lost that again. But if you stop and you think about that, in the equine sector, where they get to use so many of those. This whole concept of feeding really healthy, clean, not upcycled food to horses would be incredibly intimidating, because we're not potentially talking about 28% in shares, we're talking about more.
Speaker 3:You guys aren't a threat to them in terms of sale size, but the idea that you're propagating is a threat that if it catches on, they're gonna have to go and re-change everything they're selling in their operations, and that is very expensive. They lose the market share very expensive. But then on top of that now they need to invent new products expensive and then to market new products expensive, and all that changing and changing of logistical supply chain and retraining staff and changing marketing. So very expensive.
Speaker 5:I think that they might do is they would create a line that's this like competitor to what you're doing and it's the healthy alternative, but I don't think it'll be truly good quality, and what I was thinking about was that.
Speaker 5:So if you go to, say, the grocery aisle and you're trying to get a really healthy dessert of some sorts you know, keto cupcakes or cookies or whatever it might be If you go to, say, the smaller known brands, the lesser known brands, and you get something from that label and you scan it with I think it's called you got which is any of those apps to be able to tell. You know, tell the nutrition. Those are usually always in a or a B. And then if you go to the larger brands so like Nestle, for example, who now have a Keto something, those are always D or F. So at first glance it's like, oh, nestle has a healthy line now, but when you actually look and see what it is that they're using to create the healthy alternative, it's still very, very bad. So I could still see some of these larger companies trying to have this line, but in reality it's nowhere near the quality that they have yet Nestle went 100% waste free, so I will not eat anything that has a Nestle's label on it.
Speaker 1:For that reason is because their waste has to go somewhere. So that's the other part of the cost is.
Speaker 1:You know, so it isn't just that they have to create a better product because people are wanting that as part of that better product. That's going to mean clean right. So it changes things all the way down the sustainability chain channel, all the way down to the growers and impacts soil. So when you talk about sustainability initiatives which is something else we're very, very aware of the impacts the soil to the plant, the nutrition, all the way up. But they're going to have to find a way to dispose of that hazardous waste now and that's going to be a huge cost because we're spray more and more and more chemical on things. So the parts per million that was allowed as being safe started at 550 or 50. Now it's at 360 parts per million. But in Cheerios that were tested, the parts per million in Cheerios were 2700 parts per million of toxic chemicals because they're allowed to self regulate.
Speaker 1:So now they're going to have to figure out. You know now they're with the upcycle food they're going to. They're going to have to use a new heat. It use ultra or infrared light to clean the pathogens and bacteria etc. It doesn't address the real problem, which is the endocrine disrupt disruption by the chemicals.
Speaker 1:So it creates this big circular chain reaction that will have ramifications across industries if we as human beings start to say we don't want to be your industrial waste garbage cans. You need to either find a way to dispose of this appropriately and in a way that doesn't have these impacts or stop using it. And that's a pipe dream to think that that would happen. Right to think that Cargill is going to do that, or Monsanto is going to do that, or you know, or even at the FDA and USDA would want that to happen. But it really kind of is where this needs to go and we can push it so far, which is what has happened in the dog and cat food areas, and I think that if we get enough traction, we can push that with horses too, and all it'll do is just move a piece of that market share pie over.
Speaker 3:What ultimately happens is that companies like you create this alternative narrative which makes people believe that or maybe these legacy products aren't great, and we put this new approach to things and then ultimately, the people who have been at the big companies for ages like I don't worry about that, you don't know anything about business, we're just going to keep doing what we're doing. And then some young executive comes in and goes you know what? I think if we don't get ahead of this, we're going to end up behind. And then they get to a point of seniority in the company and they are actually able to get permission and some budget to create the competitive product. And then ultimately, it goes that way. But it all starts with people like you creating the alternative narrative through the newer products.
Speaker 5:And then you're just expecting the discussion and it's really even just as simple as oh, you're trying to treat something and you've been doing the same thing for decades and it's not working. Hmm, yeah.
Speaker 3:What's the definition of insanity?
Speaker 5:Yeah, what about international markets? Because at least you know when you go to Australia, for example, there isn't just in organic, that is the standard of quality of food there and everything is organic. So have you looked into or started to or maybe you already do sell in international markets?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had a big bottleneck here, so we're looking forward to that next year. The big bottleneck is that our agricultural sector, with manufacturing, has really taken a hit in the last 20 years or so with some of its globalization. Some of it is companies wanting to take the tax benefits from setting up elsewhere and having lower labor costs than they do here. So, finding a clean mill and a mill that would take on a new forage type of product, even though it's just a forage that scares people when you say the word same point. They just they freeze like a deer in the headlights. Right, how do you say it? So is, but we just recently found a mill that is not afraid to take this on, that does only forage products. It's all clean, so we'll be able to penetrate that market. We're looking at Japan, we're looking at Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. We're looking at places like that where there's a demand for forages. So, yeah, right.
Speaker 5:Well, if you need any friends to come along on these trips with you, you know who to call Right.
Speaker 3:So we were talking about an hour now.
Speaker 3:The one thing I just want to cover on before we finish up is coming back to this idea that some of the larger sponsors and events push you guys out of events Because you present as a threat. So, looking at events in general, a lot of businesses in the equestrian industry view events as the best way to get their product out there. So you go to a horse show and the sponsors are usually the big dogs, and then you've got a few local sponsors and then the vendors are a combination of equestrian companies that travel all over the country and follow the events and set up a vendor booth, and then you've got the local businesses local coffee shop, the local jewelry maker who buys a vendor tent, etc. So you guys have been one of these businesses that has traveled the circus around.
Speaker 3:What is good about vendering or sponsoring equestrian competitions? What's bad about it? And talking about the idea of big brands not wanting you there, have you had conversations with show managers and how have they viewed that problem? Because in order to appease the big brand, they have to forsake the money that you were going to pay. So they're caught between a rock and a hard place as well.
Speaker 1:So it depends on the sponsor right. Some of the sponsors of some of these equestrian events have extremely deep pockets. They may be in the top five money making corporations in the United States. So they've got the $30,000 that we might put into this and that's both in terms of maybe 15 for sponsoring and 15 for the cost to go and everything. That's a drop in the bucket for those really big companies. So I don't think that they really that there's a problem from a sometimes depending on the venue, from a venue standpoint, if they can get that type of a sponsorship. I don't think they really missed the little guys, but I think ultimately they missed the boat on that because it is a community.
Speaker 1:The equestrian community is a community and those things don't go unnoticed by other vendors and I think it can create a bad taste in the mouth. It can create reticence toward other vendors wanting to go to that event because they don't want to be subjected to sponsoring for two years or three years and then being out, or they don't want to support something like that. My experience with the other vendors is that they're everybody's out there kind of wanting to do their thing and hoping everybody else does really well, I mean, we haven't really seen that in the smaller vendors. So for us, what's been really working out better is to find these smaller venues where they're looking to grow and they are growing, and we have conversations with them about some of these experiences and they're not fans of it, right, they really want to be more inclusive, and so that's kind of where we live right now is, with those smaller opportunities.
Speaker 1:For us we have better access to the riders, we have better access to the grooms, we have better access to the people who are actually going to be using our products. Then we do it. Some of these larger places where you can't get into the stabling areas, you're not allowed. So if you happen to run into a rider in the VIP lounge, that's great, you grab them, you grab them. Or if they're the owner of the horse happens to stop by their booth, you chase after them, you chase after them. Oh my God, poor Boyd. You know what, though?
Speaker 1:I did literally chase Boyd down, but you know he's he's walking through end of day.
Speaker 4:We're all cleaning up. Had his like jeans on sunglasses. And we were like everyone was like that's him, and there was before we were stable feed and Mary was like I have to, I have, and so she turns and he's already like further down, about to get on a golf cart, and she just yells.
Speaker 1:So he, he sneaks out, right, so he sniffs out. Behind this is at Kentucky, at the AECs. Oh geez, not my proudest moment.
Speaker 5:We all have a boy bangle moment. He knows her by name.
Speaker 4:We can go up to him and say hi, and he knows who you are, because he's, he's just, he's such a nice guy.
Speaker 1:I mean I think Boyd and silver are just really good ambassadors for any type of equestrian sport. I really do. I mean he just he takes time for the kids, he just takes time for old ladies, so anyway. So Boyd walks by and I'm wanting to give Boyd a package of product just to try, right, and it's the last day and he's gonna be in the jump off and it was Philip, yeah. So I Sorry say boy, you know, go behind. And I'm like, oh shoot, I missed him. I was waiting for him to come back front. So I grab a bag of product we're packing up to go and I just take off. So I'm in jeans and a t-shirt. It's 95, 110% humidity.
Speaker 1:My hair is like this I'm sweating, run enough to point and and so he's got, I mean he's got legs up to here and I don't, you know, and I'm tired, so I find to get to up this corner and it's shady, and I'm exhausted and I'm like Boyd Martin, stop stop making an old lady run after you. And he looks at me and he just smiles, you know, and he comes walking over and he's like what can I do for you? And I said, well, in, in case, and at that point at the AECs, you had to give a Bag of or give product to every rider. So we'd given as a sponsorship, as a sponsorship, so we'd given a certain amount and it would go to the winners. And I said, in case you don't win, in case something goes Tomorrow or this afternoon, I want you to have a bag of this.
Speaker 3:Mary, you trauma.
Speaker 1:Olivia's dying. She's like, oh my god, she goes back to base was awesome I mean like when she yelled stop making a lady run.
Speaker 4:He like to her starts laughing like oh Mary's like out of breath and was like Mary's.
Speaker 3:Like I'm not sorry.
Speaker 1:Since then it's been God. I hope he doesn't remember that.
Speaker 5:Did he win, did he get more product?
Speaker 1:He won he won, he got more product yet so that he's not able to be sponsored by somebody outside of the companies that he's with. So it was just yet fun memories of boy anyway. Yeah with Olivia saying, oh God, I hope he doesn't ever remember that.
Speaker 4:I mean, I don't want to ask him, I do. There's a little part of that. We're like, do you remember? Oh geez.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a great founding story.
Speaker 5:There's always something you know. When you look back at all the great companies, there's always something that the founders did to really advance and get the word out. And I mean, I think we've all got that.
Speaker 1:I don't know if that advanced anything, but it's just you know.
Speaker 5:He's secretly feeding his horses table feed.
Speaker 1:But you know, what I found is I'll tell you this is that the riders. I don't care what the discipline is. What I have really found is in a lot of other sports, other professional sports, whether it's football, baseball, they are the big ones. It's really difficult to have access to the superstars, right, I grew up in Green Bay like best football team ever, best everything, and so as a kid we always had access to the players. We could just, you know, you'd see in my grocery store, you could go up to them in the practice field and everything. So that's kind of what I was used to. It's not really that way anymore. And so what I found in the equestrian world and I don't care if it's been dressage, hunter, jumper, stadium jumping, whatever the riders are, always they always, even in their busy take time. They're really kind of remarkable that way. I really I admire everything they've accomplished. They're amazing. But the fact that to see somebody like Boyd Martin, mclean Ward, stefan Peters, these people who they take the time, it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 5:I agree there's a lot of legends in this sport where we've been really fortunate and I mean it's also, to your point, just a testament to them and how much they really care about the industry and advancing this sport. But even as we've been building our technology because we do want to make sure that it serves every kind of event, every kind of rider, every kind of brand, and so we've gotten a lot of feedback from legends who took the time to take a look at our technology and let us know what they like, things that they like Us to build and all these things. So I don't know any other major sport that would be doing that would you know does.
Speaker 5:LeBron, take time to work with the nutritionists and the technologists? I don't know, but the question in your old LeBron James does.
Speaker 1:So the other thing for other small companies to keep in mind is that they don't just go to the five star events, right, like they're bringing horses up all the time. They've got. I think most of Doug Paine's string right now are these really really young horses. So I love Carl. Carl is kind of crazy, but I love Carl. I love watching Carl the horse, you know.
Speaker 1:So they're at these other events, right? So they're going to go to these events that are not sponsored by these big, big companies. So they're, in some ways they're lesser known, but they're not as busy, they don't have as much pressure, they don't have all the press stuff that they have to do. So in some ways, for us I think it's been really advantageous to go to these smaller venues to participate, because they have the time to interact with us, whereas, say, at the Kentucky three day event or the Maryland five star or, you know, the big cups that take place on an O'Callan Wellington, they don't have time. They just really don't have time and they're really focused, and so there's a lot of value and benefit in that and it is a way to go over and under and around the big companies, because if you get the people before or during that process and that thought process and really get him thinking it really doesn't matter what happens at those bigger events.
Speaker 5:You got him before they get there. That's really good advice.
Speaker 3:Do you find it cheaper to go to the smaller events? Is it only cheaper in the cost to participate but the travel costs are the same, or do you even find the travel cheaper?
Speaker 1:No, the travels about, about the same really, but I think that the impact is better.
Speaker 1:And when you're working with particular venues and I'll name one that we love stable view and a very insinual of our what we're really big on is having partners. We don't want to just be a sponsor, right, we want to be a partner. We did partner at another venue and gave them a lot of ideas that they implemented to really improve the overall venue, and that's what we found at these other places. They're really interested in partnerships and in ways that they can help us and we can help them and it changes. It changes everything, it changes the flavor of everything and they really will work much harder at making sure that you get your money's worth out of your sponsorship. So if you give them, say, $5,000 or $10,000, which is a lot for a little company to give to sponsors or something they will make sure you have access to the riders, access to the grooms, access to happy hours, access whenever there's access available, so you can make those connections and at stable view they went so far as to schedule connections with some of these people for me.
Speaker 5:And that's it.
Speaker 1:That doesn't happen at other big venues. They keep you away from them.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, in terms of travel also, we've kind of learned our lesson. We now ship our booth in a box and then we need it there. We've kind of cut back on the amount of driving we've done, but we're going to. This will be the first time we're going to like equine, a fair, which is another whole different equestrian event per se, because it's not an actual event taking place. It's more based on the clinicians, but people are going there to shop.
Speaker 4:It's a market, yeah, and so we're hoping to get a really big bang for our buck with that one, because people are going there to we'll learn, but also purchase and buy, and so they're looking at the new and upcoming products, they're looking for those things to do. That's an event we're going to be at in November that we're super excited to go to for the first time. But I think there is a balance between just going to strictly the horse events, where there's vendors surrounding this event, people are going to watch, versus where people are going to maybe purchase, like an equestrian specific market event If you have a particular product, that's you know the benefit.
Speaker 1:The Pegasus can connect all of that, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's our goal. And this is why I find your experience interesting is because the thing that shocked me you said if you spend $30,000 on an event, you spend $15,000 sponsoring it and $15,000 traveling in accommodation, right? So if everything goes to plan, I mean, as you saw on in the video from the website, what we envision is that every single event in the equestrian industry becomes a sponsorship opportunity, because it doesn't need to be just the large events that get you know, the old way of thinking is that a large event, a large event, you have your big logo and so it's streamed on TV and apparently you're supposed to get a return on that investment, right. And what brands really want is we want you to put our products physically in the hands of our customers so they can touch it, feel it, smell it, taste it and see if they want to buy it again. And so, in an ideal world, once we launch the ad integration into our platform, every single equestrian company, whether you're a major company or whether you are a small company, you can find a clinic you could be going. Hey, most of our customers are English equestrian, english writing disciplines. We want to break into the Western market.
Speaker 3:Okay, let's find a reigning clinic happening out in Nebraska that has 30 people attending. We will basically sponsor the event. So we'll page the event organizer $1,000 to sponsor the event. The event you don't have to travel anywhere so you save on the travel costs. The event organizers $1,000 they never would have got and they and then you just ship some samples ahead and the people will participate. They get free samples and, who knows, 10 of that, 30 might become customers and that's it. And as far as selling an idea, all you have to do is get the clinician to basically tell the 30 participants this product is special because, and then they repeat the health benefits and your guys idea about why it's different. And then you've got, you know, 10 new customers that otherwise, if you'd paid that money for a large event and a sign of a fence, probably would have picked up one, if you're lucky.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I mean it's so obvious though I think people would love that. I mean, like as a rider at a clinic, to be able to actually see and feel and try things that otherwise you would have just seen online or heard about. Yeah, yeah, and to your point about stable view doing that and being able to connect to you, the brand, with the, you know, potential leads and people that would be interested. It's so obvious that such an obviously great idea, so more people should be doing that.
Speaker 3:And this comes to I mean, you'll see that we talk about this quite a lot on the podcast and on LinkedIn and Instagram is that we want to try and create more professional opportunities in the equestrian industry for people who go to college.
Speaker 3:They don't have to choose between working in the barn and leaving equestrian behind and going in real job. Right, if you think about it this way, if you take it one step further, if this becomes a thing and this ad tool works the way we intended to work, you could basically just run pop up events like hey, I'm going to be in some part of missing Mississippi this weekend and all that is is all the e-commerce brands send me samples in advance and you pay to turn up and it's your opportunity to basically try all the samples and touch them and fill them before you buy them online. And then that person all they do is run professional pop ups and their job and their income is running those events and taking their sponsorship fees to try for equestrian staff access to products in real life to run. Yeah, and that becomes legitimate career.
Speaker 1:It is, and the other thing is that. So from a marketing and marketing research perspective, it takes a person seeing something about eight times before they will make a decision whether or not to buy it. So when you think about that, you know, when you think about the cost to go to an event, maybe somebody walks past your booth eight times, maybe they don't. Maybe they walk past it twice. Maybe they don't see you for another two years. Maybe they see you twice in a Facebook ad over the next year. So you've got four views in a year, maybe eight views in a year.
Speaker 1:So to do the sponsorship and we'll just go back to the one that I just mentioned for $15,000. Well, if I can do eight sponsorships of different clinics for 1000 bucks a piece, and I can send samples of my product and it hits 20 people each at each of those times and I go through the app and I select them, so maybe it's 800 jumper things right. So then all in one particular area. So I have these people, there will be overlap. So now I've got 30 people or 20 people who've seen my product eight times, who've been able to try my product any number of times, and it's cost me $8000 for that versus 15,000 for a. Maybe our logo up on a big drum. It is a it is a it is.
Speaker 1:I mean it's potentially really short cuts that whole marketing part of it. You still have to pay attention to the research science with these six to eight times right, or eight to 10 times, and then consider the skepticism. But it makes it a really manageable and affordable way for a company that's kind of got its feet on the ground and running a little bit to reach more people in a way that's much more meaningful than a Facebook app. Well, I'm saying to you.
Speaker 4:I know we, I know for fact I mentioned it when we were with you guys to originally just asked like where we're from. We're in Minnesota public, like we said, probably farthest away from a lot of major competitions and events and things like that.
Speaker 4:Sure, we have our small little area and like still water that host things but we may not know about certain events that go on. We just don't like. All the events we go to are pretty much because someone told us hey, have you gone to this? Or hey, are you going to this? And that's another part of the vendor experience, especially with the smaller companies, is talking with other vendors to be like, was it worth the money for you to go? And and most of them are very honest, Most of them will give full feedback on why didn't do so. Well, or yes, but you should be in this part of the building or on this side of this ring kind of a thing. So that's where you guys have been like oh, so I can just look it up on there because you can Google that like you can't Google a question.
Speaker 5:You talked to someone to know the ins and outs.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's. I mean, it's a huge deal. So even someone like when Maria's first starting, if she would have wanted to be like I want to go to the question and I don't know where you would have found to go to the Bitcoin fair or something you know to be like something random, like that that's large, but on an app right but on, and then be able to go to a place where everything is right, there is well and equestrian focused, is so I mean it's really cool, it's very exciting.
Speaker 1:The cheapest magazine page you can get is 850 bucks. That's the cheap for the quarter page or a third of a page and sometimes you can get it and get a half a page for that, depending on if it's like a news or a newsprint kind of thing. So think about that in terms of turnaround. So if it's $1,000 and it's direct targeted, right there versus $1,000 going wherever.
Speaker 1:Right. It makes it a much better value to in terms of dollars spent and it's also a way to test that too. So you can test that. You can test it in your markets. You can market test your products in the hunter jumper market, in the reigning market, in these markets, without it costing you a lot of time and money. By using that app, by saying we're going to pick these and see how well they do so, you do it three times. It's $3,000 plus a little bit of product out there to do so. Maybe it costs you a total of 3500 bucks for a market test. That's brilliant, because in that market test you're also eventually you are going to undoubtedly get probably a third of those people buying product from you. So it's not a total. I just think it's much less risky. I think much less risky and more targeted than other types of advertising might be or other ways to reach your audience. So I think the whole thing's exciting.
Speaker 5:No million percent. You guys are like the best brand ambassadors ever. Tell all your friends so beautifully said.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you very much, guys. That's been a great chat. It's been fascinating. I mean, I was expecting to come on here and talk all business, but I actually found the science about the health care of the horses fascinating at the start. So I really appreciate you taking the time.
Speaker 5:And I'm going to send you a message off the record of just like what I'm feeding Chloe. Can you tell me where I need to change?
Speaker 1:When you start to see the upcycled stuff on food packaging, just give it a swerve. Don't eat it.
Speaker 5:Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, don't eat it. They infrared, treat it and treat it to move back, remove bacteria. But it's, it's, yeah.
Speaker 5:Well, where can people find you and connect with you? And, you know, buy your products.
Speaker 4:So we're on Instagram and Facebook is just at Stable Feed. Otherwise, our website is stablefeedcom. I joke with people that the sale is. The sales at stable feed is our email and it looks fancy, but it literally comes to both of us. That is it. It comes to us. You literally get directly like people who, when they get to talk to, like the owner of the company, and so those come directly to us. But, yeah, everything is on our website.
Speaker 5:Great, and so if anyone's experiencing any kind of whether it's issues or they're curious about feeding better products and just you know overall the best nutrition for your horse whether it's just a backyard older horse or an upper level competition sport horse then they should talk to you and learn more.
Speaker 4:I've been sent a full Excel. Each horse has its own line feeding, exercise, age, breed Excel spreadsheet. I've been sent everything from that to just a simple question. So, yeah, we do everything. Yeah, perfect.
Speaker 1:We're not. I will say we're not veterinarians, we're not even equine nutritionists right, we're totally independent with the science that we use. So there are questions we don't know the answer to. So the nice thing is that we have partners who are? Veterinarians and equine nutritionists and people who think a little out of the box, outside of the box, like we do, that we then can consult with and get those answers for people. So we find ourselves doing that routinely too, is we?
Speaker 5:don't know, we find out, or even just going to the people who are using it right now with their own horses, like Alisa Wallace, and learning about their experience and hearing it firsthand right from the horse's mouth.
Speaker 3:All right guys? Well, thank you very much Till next time We'll see you soon.
Speaker 5:Thanks All right Bye.
Speaker 2: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 wwwthepegasusapp. That is wwwthepegasusapp. See you next time.