This episode is brought to you by Zoetis.
Jim Greendyk did not grow up riding horses. Yet that didn't stop him from becoming one of social media's most vetted reining trainers.
Together with Pegasus Podcast cohosts Jen and Sam, Jim takes you through the remarkable narrative of a man who found his calling amongst horses, crafting an online space at ReiningMasterclass.com where fellow equestrians can hone their skills.
Embarking on a quest for authenticity, we discuss the trials and triumphs of building a credible personal brand within the equestrian industry.
We examine the landscape of online mentorship and the impact of content creation during a time as challenging as the pandemic.
Join us as we share insights into the commitment behind the curtain, and how Jim's YouTube channel and social media ventures have transcended mere passion projects, evolving into an influential digital presence with a global reach.
Lastly, we touch on the ethos of community within the horse training world, where Jim's masterclasses become a nexus for connection and education. Reflecting on the social media marketing strategies that have transformed how enthusiasts interact and learn, this episode is a testament to the power of genuine engagement.
In this episode, we discuss:
Before you listen…Zoetis is always by the side of horses and their caregivers with products like Dormosedan Gel®.
Did you know that you can help calm your anxious, excited and fidgety horse for bandaging, body clipping, first time turnout after stall rest, farrier work and more?
Speak with your veterinarian to learn more about how this oral sedative prescription may help.
Visit ZoetisEquine.com or follow us on Instagram and Facebook for more information on our expert-informed horse care solutions.
🐴 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. 🗞️
This episode is brought to you by Zoetis.
Jim Greendyk did not grow up riding horses. Yet that didn't stop him from becoming one of social media's most vetted reining trainers.
Together with Pegasus Podcast cohosts Jen and Sam, Jim takes you through the remarkable narrative of a man who found his calling amongst horses, crafting an online space at ReiningMasterclass.com where fellow equestrians can hone their skills.
Embarking on a quest for authenticity, we discuss the trials and triumphs of building a credible personal brand within the equestrian industry.
We examine the landscape of online mentorship and the impact of content creation during a time as challenging as the pandemic.
Join us as we share insights into the commitment behind the curtain, and how Jim's YouTube channel and social media ventures have transcended mere passion projects, evolving into an influential digital presence with a global reach.
Lastly, we touch on the ethos of community within the horse training world, where Jim's masterclasses become a nexus for connection and education. Reflecting on the social media marketing strategies that have transformed how enthusiasts interact and learn, this episode is a testament to the power of genuine engagement.
In this episode, we discuss:
Before you listen…Zoetis is always by the side of horses and their caregivers with products like Dormosedan Gel®.
Did you know that you can help calm your anxious, excited and fidgety horse for bandaging, body clipping, first time turnout after stall rest, farrier work and more?
Speak with your veterinarian to learn more about how this oral sedative prescription may help.
Visit ZoetisEquine.com or follow us on Instagram and Facebook for more information on our expert-informed horse care solutions.
🐴 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. 🗞️
Well, Jim, you're obviously a decorated rider and trainer, and I've just now learned that you're also a remarkable artist, Woodsman, don't you think, Eric? So, for those that don't know you do you want to just start off by providing listeners of who you are and what you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what? It's awesome to be here. All of my friends would laugh and say I'm certainly going to start with. Well, I was born in Michigan. You know the long and short of it is. I was born in Michigan. My parents were very urban. We had no animal background of any kind. Over the course of the first 15 years in my life, we moved across the country. We ended up in Southern Alberta, Canada, which is very Western, very cowboy country.
Speaker 2:I was always interested in animals and horses. I volunteered at farms and then all this stuff, and then I was homeschooled and got into clean installs in a barn and I didn't ride a horse I was 17. So I certainly didn't grow up in it. You know, here I am now in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I'm an NRA ran and horse trainer. I start colts, I buy and sell horses. I'm the owner of reigningmasterclasscom, that entire online program that I think we'll get into chatting about a little bit later. It's been a crazy journey for me. You know my parents don't ride, my wife doesn't ride. It's been one of these things that none of my family rode, and now all of my younger sisters I have. So I'm the oldest, I'm the only boy and I have six younger sisters Six.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the boy in Michigan, huh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, it got cold there a lot. Oh shoot, you know what. I'm really grateful I wasn't the youngest, you know, I was the oldest. I feel like otherwise I'd have been a manicurist or something. I was grateful all those years. They brought their girlfriends home with them. It was not a bad life. It's not nearly as bad as you think it would have been Right.
Speaker 1:So do any of the sisters ride? No one rides except for you.
Speaker 2:Now my two oldest sisters rode the one showed with me a lot. They're now married and have kids and whatever. And then my two youngest sisters rode and showed with me an awful lot and actually fast forward all the way through. My youngest sister was Canadian but she got her dual citizenship and she came with us in the move here in September to Scottsdale, arizona and so she works full time for me. So there's 19 years between myself and my youngest sister and she now works full time for me and you know all the video stuff that we're doing now and stuff like that. So she's very accomplished. She's probably going to end up moving on and riding for somebody down the road here at some point, because she's a very talented 20 year old, super cool.
Speaker 1:So what was the catalyst that finally got you into riding? Because you moved to the cowboy region of Canada, which, as a Floridian, I did not know that exist, so I'd love to learn more about that too. But what was the catalyst that finally got you in the saddle?
Speaker 2:You know, calgary is often called Dallas North, so it's very similar. It looks the same as North Texas. It's a very similar climate, quite a bit colder. The catalyst was really, you know, I'm a precocious, miserable, kind of pushy kid. So I got a job clean installs in the barn and I told the trainer there that she had to promise me that whatever list of things I had to do would just be that list and if I got finished early and I did a good enough job, then she would allow me to sit around and ask questions and watch horse training and see what they were doing in the arena.
Speaker 2:And so the first Saturday that I got finished early and I did legitimately sit down there on a mounting block and start asking questions, I mean I lasted 15 minutes and she rode over and said you know, if you're going to actually sit here and be this annoying, you probably should just write, you probably should just ride a horse. And that was like, yeah, that's the reason I stayed. I mean that was the whole thing I was after this whole time was, yeah, let's do it. And she was really really kind and really fair and I worked for them for five years through college and all of that stuff and I learned a lot there. We started colts from all over the place, every breed, shape, size, color, everything you can imagine and I think before I went out on my own I had started 2000 young horses.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow, how many falls. What's your? What was your hit rate?
Speaker 2:You know what. It's amazing and I'm grateful for that, but I mean, I didn't get bucked off that often. There was a weird sixth sense that some people have in certain sports or certain disciplines or certain whatever, and I always seem to have this feeling of today's not a good day, and that's something that people ask me all the time, like, well, when do you get on that colt, what you know? How many days do you work it before you get on and ride them?
Speaker 3:I honestly I can't tell you in the moment.
Speaker 2:Like, yeah, you know what, today's the day I'm going to ride that horse. I can feel that, but I can't explain that to people. So it was a weird thing that somehow I always managed to get around the edges. I mean, I've certainly gone on my head, I've certainly fell off many times, got bucked off a bunch, but if you do it correctly and you listen and you go through that process, it doesn't happen nearly as often as people think. Right.
Speaker 4:You mentioned that you were working at this property while you were at college. So what did you study at college and when you graduated, did you have to make a decision between going the corporate road and going the horse trainer road? Or was it not even a question? You know that's a funny thing.
Speaker 2:I did a year of pre-vet and then I struggled because most of the kids there were really smart and I had all this practical knowledge. So it was really hard for me at 18 to look through all of the bookwork and everything that had to be done to get into vet school. You know, when I was already training colts I'd already been through so much horse stuff, I had so much practical horse knowledge I could have schooled them all on how to handle horses and doctor horses and all of that sort of thing. So I switched over and did a Bachelor of Arts in English.
Speaker 4:Hey, I did a Bachelor of Arts of English. Yeah, it was my first degree as well, my first year of my first degree.
Speaker 1:I was a Bachelor of Science. Sorry, guys.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there's a Bachelor of Science.
Speaker 2:They think this is good, you know, they're a little more black and white. I realized the horse training things, this real life, horse training isn't art too. If it doesn't work today, then you try something else tomorrow. If that sentence doesn't work, you delete it and you're right. No, actually you don't. When you're writing things in college, you leave the sentence there and you write something after it that starts to fix it, and that's how you fill up the paper.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I'm still trying to justify that I'm still somehow an engineer, but the worst engineer.
Speaker 3:Very much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got out of that industry really quickly. Well, that's awesome. So that was my story. That's what got me into horses, that's what got me my foot in the door was somebody that was willing to let me work hard and do something and say here, let's try it.
Speaker 4:Right. So for those of us who aren't very savvy when it comes to the cowboy scene or cowboy slash, western horse sports scene in Canada. So how does one go from jumping on a horse on a Saturday at a bar that you work at to getting really actively into the competitive?
Speaker 2:field. It's like how do you move to Nashville with a guitar and play one time in a bar and then end up with a contract?
Speaker 2:I mean, you want it really badly, you bust yourself to do it. You don't take days off, you always stay positive, you always stay enthusiastic, you stay like, hey, you know what the next thing will be, my good opportunity. And then you're surrounded by a lot of good people. I mean, I could have been rode off so many times and there were so many good people in my life that give me a chance or gave me a good horse to ride or showed me something. I mean, there's nothing keeping you in the industry except your drive and desire and the kind of people that you are surrounded by.
Speaker 2:And I've been fortunate to be surrounded by some really great people who were honest and told me what they thought and allowed me to get better. You know, allowed me to make mistakes. That's how you get better. But you have to find somebody that allows you to make enough mistakes that you're comfortable making mistakes. And if you make mistakes, most people are relatively intelligent and after they've made a large mistake, they're normally okay to go wow, that's, I probably better not do that again. And you have to be in an environment where that's okay. But if you're in an environment where you're absolutely not allowed to make any mistakes or do anything deviating from whatever said trainer's program is, the chances of you developing into your own person are very small. I mean, you'll end up being an employee for one of these big barns somewhere and there's no shame in that whatsoever. But some of these programs don't develop people to go on and be independent because you're not allowed to do anything outside of what that trainer says is their program, and so it's very difficult to get out of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean coming from the English side, I've seen that that's pretty prolific, especially in particular discipline. But for you and when you did meet those other people, those other like mentors and people that kind of made you better for lack of a better term were those people that you met at the barn, when you were training or when you were out at horse shows? Was there any particular area or place that you found you were able to kind of get better with others and that lifted you up?
Speaker 2:You know what? I think it was all of those. I mean there were always professionals that would come in the barn from other professions, from totally unrelated professions. You know, you learn a lot about life and about business and about how to do things from people that aren't at all connected to horse training, like I knew the horse training part of it. But how do you make this a business? How do you become a good person in life? Those are more important than whether you can make a horse go left and right, to be honest. And so there were people in the barn that were professionals, would come in and you would be able to hang out with them, certainly other horse trainers, at the horse shows.
Speaker 2:And then you know, as I got out early on on my own I mean my own customers I've got some very great guys that came into my life in their late 60s, early 70s. A lot of life experience. And then this hey, you know what, jim, you're fine man, you're plenty talented to do this. But I want to ask you a hard question. I remember this, my good friend Ross Buchanan. He stopped me one time and he's been a CEO of things. He's a chemical engineer, he's been on the board of like big, big companies.
Speaker 2:And he stopped me one time I was riding this horse in the arena and he said you know, I got a question for you. Do you want a real question? And I said absolutely. You know I was pretty nervous. I'm like this guy's a tough character and I'm like in my mid 20s, maybe late 20s. At the time I got to go back and think of it, what it actually would be. And he says you know, I just need to know, like, what do you want to be when you actually grow up? What are you implying?
Speaker 2:And so yeah, and so you know, the way that you handle that question says a lot about yourself, you know. Do you say, wow, ok, well, I'm certainly still pushing myself to be this good, I'm certainly still trying to develop into this. I certainly have this as a goal. Or do you put the hair on the back of your neck up and go? Wait a second? Dude what the world is saying. You know I'm pretty. You know I've got my big boy pants on growing up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm riding and training your horse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at a point I had a wife and I think two kids already know.
Speaker 1:So what did you say?
Speaker 2:You know what? I was really quiet for 30 seconds, 45 seconds because as soon as you say something, then you're down that direction, You're down that road. It's really hard to come back from it, and so there's nothing and that's something that I've said so many times there's nothing wrong with being quiet. And you just stopped for a second and I said you know what? I'm going to develop into the horse trainer that lives in one of the biggest places in the world, among the best horse trainers in the world. I'm never going to quit learning and I'm going to turn out the very best possible horses for the industry.
Speaker 2:And I remember that's seven, eight, 10 years ago. And sitting here talking to you guys, I'm now sitting here in Scottsdale, Arizona, among the best horse trainers in the world, with an online course that sold in 37 countries, and I think that questions like that, hard questions like that, are things that have really made me go okay, what am I doing and why am I doing it? And so what kept you in it and what got me here is stuff like that, those hard questions, somebody that was honest and said this is what I want to ask you.
Speaker 4:Out of interest. Do you think you were going down that path regardless of him asking you that question? Or do you think it was kind of like manifest destiny in which he asked you that question forced you to put it into words and that almost created the North Star that made you fulfill it?
Speaker 2:Those kinds of questions for me always distill something. Was I going that direction? Absolutely, I'd been going that direction long before he showed up in the barn. You know like it's very easy to go that direction in multiple colors of light and at some point these questions distill it down to what is exactly your color.
Speaker 1:Are there any other questions that you had wished that you had been asked like sooner to be able to get you to where you are today? Or was it one of those things where, to your point, you were always heading in this direction? So it's just a matter of time? But yeah, I guess just question being like could there have been another question that would have taken you to this path sooner or differently? That's a hard one, you inspired, me yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a really hard one, you know. I think it is a factor of time. I always say there's no shortcut for time. You have to do it badly long enough to know what doesn't work. You know, sure, I remember in 20, I believe it was 2013, maybe it was 2014.
Speaker 2:I was here in Scottsdale showing at this show and a good friend of mine very similar you know came over and said hey, like can I give you some advice? You know, your horses come down from Canada, they look prepared, they look really good. But she said I think the one thing about you is that you forget to take the horse that you train with you in the show. Pinch, she says, you go in there and you try to make it a different horse.
Speaker 2:I remember that making me so angry. And those things have those have been crossroads for me. I remember that making me so angry because it was so true that I went home after that horse show. I went back to Canada and the next three, four months of showing horses, I put my hand down and closed my eyes and ran that thing as hard as I could out there and didn't give about anything. And you want to know in the next three months. How many people came up to me and said I don't know what you changed about your program over the winter, but, man, have you become a showman? What happened?
Speaker 4:I got out of the way.
Speaker 2:I got super angry and I thought you know what? I'm better than this. And this drives me crazy because you're right, and I'm out there trying to make something. It's not put your hand down, go show what you got, ride the horse you got that day and follow where you do in the thing. You're not going to make anything else up. Yeah right, so are there more questions that I would have liked to be asked? I, that's an interest. I don't think so. I think they come up when they come up and I don't think you can plan it, because if you plan it or if you imagine it, then they're not as effective.
Speaker 4:Yeah, okay, I've got one for you then, so I'm going to segues into the next kind of part of the podcast, which is talking about your content career that you've kind of embarked on the last few years. So, for the listeners, jim has gone and invested heavily in building a content that he's distributed across, like YouTube and Instagram, et cetera, to build an audience which has done great things for the sport. What have you learned from making content and taking that risk that you think you could have done it? You should have done it sooner, or do you think it required you to go through just focusing solely on being a horse trainer and getting better and better to get to a point that your content was valid enough or the industry respected you enough to make your content take off Like, could you have done it sooner or did you do it at the right time?
Speaker 2:Oh, you know what? Yeah, it's a great question. It's always the right time. I mean, you can never be enthusiastic and positive and go back and think, man, that was terrible timing. You know, everything has to be the right time, otherwise you get depressed and frustrated. But I know exactly what you're asking. Could I have done it sooner? Yes, was I under pressure to do it sooner? Yes, I had all kinds of European working students come and ride for me, probably from 2010 and onwards, you know, over the years I'm trying to remember which the first year was that we have.
Speaker 2:Anyways always, and these girls always said man, the way that you say stuff, the way that you teach stuff, like you got to do this, you have to do this, people need to hear this. And I always imagined and I think that's that imposter syndrome where you just imagine you're not that good because this is normal for you. So if it's normal for you, you imagine it's normal for everybody else. And having said that, I just kind of dragged my feet about it Nobody cares. I have the same thing. I start making a YouTube channel of man. People are going to talk about me. Then they all look at me and I'll. Then I'm at.
Speaker 2:I think you have to go through at least 10 or 15 years of doing it to have any credibility to talk about it. You could start earlier, but you will certainly sound like you started too early. You will certainly sound like you haven't done it enough. There's so many things there that I think there's no shortcut for time. And the reason there's no shortcut for time is that time is a very fair, albeit cruel, judge. If you're good enough, you'll stay. If you're not good enough, time doesn't care about your feelings. In time, your barn will be empty. You won't have any horses to ride. Nobody will come for lessons, like, clearly and I've heard that from so many young trainers well, that's not my program, and I was laughing.
Speaker 2:I think, man, you've done it for three or four years but you're still riding around in circles trying to figure out what doesn't work and you have to do it long enough that you can really have that. I think it's an internal credibility. I think it's for me to say you know what. I've done it long enough. I truly know this doesn't like. I truly know this is the best way to do it. If you go after it just for content creation or just for the fame or just you know I say this all the time and people start to meet me at horse shows now and kids come up and want to take pictures and all that stuff, and it's the first thing I say is I just come and say hi because I don't give a shit about the Instagram fame. It's empty. If you're just after it for being famous, it's worth nothing. And some guy in Pakistan is going to hack your Instagram and you're going to have to start all over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if there's no follow through, like for you, there's clearly a follow through and people want to ride with you, they want to buy your horses, they want to train with you. I mean, I, as an inventor, want to come up and have a lesson with you in Scottsdale.
Speaker 2:Now you're welcome anytime, do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but also, just, you have this really impressive series all over the world. I mean, you're going to be training in Sydney, so, and probably elsewhere in Australia, right? So if it does get hacked in Pakistan, it doesn't matter. People are going to go out of their way to be sure to connect with you in some capacity, because they know your name and they know the results that you provide and the training pieces that you have, and people really resonate with that. So I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 4:To your point about no replacement for time. It's not. You know, it's obviously not just the horse world, it's all things. There is something about experience and time, which means that it's not so much that you learn how to do it but I think you said this earlier you also learn how not to do it, and it's that knowing how not to do it that gives you the confidence that the way you're doing it is correct.
Speaker 4:You know, in the business world they call it business acumen. Right, it's like what is business acumen? No one can clearly describe it. It's just that you've been around the block enough times that you know one way, the right way to do it and the wrong way to do it, and you just have the confidence that you're doing it the right way, because you were mentored by someone and you worked alongside someone who did it the wrong way and you were like, okay, well, if they're considered the best in the industry and I think they're doing it the wrong way and I'm going to do it this way, that now gives me the confidence that I'm doing it the right way and it's like all things, and so this is tangent. But if I ever went back to university, I'd love to do like a PhD in sociology and to discuss.
Speaker 1:Do you think you could pass that? I think I could try, I could bullshit baffles brain.
Speaker 4:I could PhD, I don't know.
Speaker 4:Yeah yeah, but the one thing I would love to do it on is how do you get people to like get it quicker. Like everyone has that like moment, no matter what you're doing, where it just hits you, you're like oh I, now I get this down to my bones and now I feel like I can improvise. Now I feel like I can go out and do it my own way, do my own thing, and I'm confident that it's going to work. But up until that point, you're always like I think I'm doing it right. I should check the manual, like.
Speaker 4:I don't want to take risk because I don't know if it will work, if it won't work, but like something happens eventually over time and experience, where it just clicks and it makes sense.
Speaker 1:There is like an aha moment. I'm sure you as a trainer see that often with your students, so you could probably speak more to this than anyone. Is there you want to be able to curate this in like a potion and dab it on you to get it.
Speaker 4:I want to be able to like figure out how do I teach trainers, how do you create a model that speeds up how quickly your students or your staff can get it, because that will increase productivity and decrease waste of time. But yeah, I mean in the horsework, I suppose that's a huge part of it. I mean you probably see it every day like someone you can see when it just clicks for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know I would say there's no magic potion for desire. I mean somebody who wants it, because they want it, because they want to achieve this, because they're after something. I mean you can come back to any sales program at what's your why? What really drives you? Do you want to do Instagram because you want to be famous? Do you want to get to 100,000? Do you want 10 people to like your post? Or do you have something to say and you're putting it out there and you don't really care? What is your why?
Speaker 2:You know it'd be the same thing in training. People come in and they just want to tell me about how their day was at the office and ride a horse around. Well, the chances of them picking up on those little X factors that make you a professional rider is very low, because their desire does not match that level of intensity, and that would be the same. I mean, I think you need to build a program that selects people better, because if you select the right people, it's no problem to teach them. But it's the same as horses If you select the right horses, they come almost broke, like more horses have made horse trainers famous than the other way around.
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Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, Well, it's going to say, because your programs are, they're like white glove, like high touch, Like there's fewer people. You know, it's not just like the masses can come, it's very much. There's a lot of attention on each rider. So for you, is that part of your I don't know registration process. But when people are coming to you, like, do you select people or is it kind of like there's a program for anyone? How do you go about doing this?
Speaker 2:There is a registration form and there is a list of things that you have to be comfortable with to be able to come here and get something. But I think what you need to build in these programs is flexibility for learning styles. You need to build flexibility, for the only thing that I need from you when you come here is just the passion to want to learn, you know. For the rest, just that power clinic that we do, you know, I mean we do theory in the morning. You know it's whiteboard stuff. If you're that sit around the table and ask questions and want to talk about it and make notes, this is when you do it Then we ride from 10 to 1130 in the morning and it's very much me on the ground coaching you through it. You know, if you're the kind that has to go out there and ask the questions and then try it and ask another question and try it, that's your learning style. And then the third is what those people who want to sit on their horse and watch me do it. So in the afternoon session I ride all of my horses along with you and my help will just bring one out after the other, and then you can ride your own horse through the pattern and then I'm going to ride mine and how many people go wow, okay, I thought about this all day. I've done it already in the whiteboard sessions. I've done it already with my own horse this morning and now I've watched him do it and I can see that one little thing that he does that I struggle to explain because it is that little X factor, but you'll see me do it and if you really understand what we're doing here, as we've gone through the entire day, by the end of the day you have a different horse and if you cover all of those learning styles and if you make it flexible enough that you can find I guess it's the same as you said, sam, you're distilling it down to what are the few things. When I say that a really good horse is quiet when you deal with him and he steers easily when you ride it, everything after that is extra, and so if you keep it to these really, really simple, basic things, you'll see everyone get results, and they get huge results, because actually that's the only thing anybody actually wanted. Did they really come here and want to run and slide 30 feet? Well, they thought they did until they had to run that fast, and then they changed their mind really fast. Thanks, sam.
Speaker 2:I think the thing with results is making sure that and it's the same with training horses you put it into these bite-sized pieces that are very logical and make perfect sense, and if you just chip away at that, the results happen very quickly. Now again, does it take passion? Sure, I mean, I've dedicated my life to this. You know, I always imagined to do a DVD training series and then we had to pivot again because the way that video was delivered was just different. We had to figure out the new technology and do it with streaming services and stuff like that. But I always imagined, for already 10 or 15 years, that this is where I needed to get to you, because it was just a good business move to do it.
Speaker 1:So was Taylor Sheridan calling you to train up all the actors before getting Yellowstone out there.
Speaker 2:No, you know what? That's a different deal again. That's an entirely different world. They have to do these specific things and I wish you know that'd be awesome. I probably would have made better money doing that than doing my own thing. But he's welcome to call me if he wants. I can make anything run off.
Speaker 4:Right. So it takes time to develop that experience, to develop that wisdom and develop that confidence. So what was the moment that you decided, okay, it's time to start making content and leveraging social media, etc. To grow my business? Like, was it the fact that you had so many people saying you should do this? Or was it a business decision, when you were sitting there thinking to yourself how do I really grow my business at scale? Like, what was the moment and what was the motivation?
Speaker 2:It was certainly the scale thing. I mean, we were doing tons of lessons in a month. My barn was full of horses. I can only do so much more in a day. It was certainly okay. You know what? It was the first of March 2020. And I said, okay, let's first of March 2020.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know the exact day. This was the day.
Speaker 1:Well, I feel like March 2020 was a pretty memorable time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, true, yeah, that's why that's probably why I remember it, because I put out the very first one and it was like I found a little old microphone and a speaker somewhere and I put my phone beside the little portable speaker so that it would video me, but it would pick up the sound from that speaker. That was truly how I started, right?
Speaker 1:How'd that go? What did you film?
Speaker 2:Well, it's still on YouTube. Actually, that very first YouTube video is still there. You can go back and find it. But it was super funny because it sounds really echoey and you know, it's me loping circles and just teaching on how to rate and steer around. It's probably about three or four minutes long and I thought that was really the. You know, that was about the limit of what I was physically and mentally capable of pulling off at one time, and then we're all going to start somewhere.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, oh yeah, you should see some of our first podcast recordings.
Speaker 1:They're pretty, thank you Well, at least, at least with Jim. It's like oh, you got to search somewhere on the archives, sam will still publish them. Like leave those in the archives, stop putting them up on like.
Speaker 4:They may not look or sound good, but the wisdom is still gold.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, yeah, it's super, pixelated, terrible, but you know it's still good stuff. It's the same as anything you know go and start right. How did you guys get here? Because you kept doing it until you realized what doesn't work. And now you're here. It's the same process and there's no magic to it.
Speaker 2:There's an X factor where some people seem to. Logically. If you look at them from the outside, they logically look like, or just in anecdotally, when you watch a person, you're like, wow, they really got it really fast. Obviously they're more talented, obviously they have an X factor for this. But I would argue that that's not even necessarily true. I mean, maybe that person, also out of the public eye, has spent so many more hours pouring over this than anyone imagines. I mean, pick up a guitar and get really good at it, really fast, but don't tell anyone that you play from 8pm to 4.30am every night. Wow, they're going to be. Wow, you're unbelievably talented. Well, for a whole year I never told anybody. I spent eight hours a night doing this, through the entire night. Well, does that mean you're that much more talented? Or did you just have that drive and that desire and that push to do it? And it's pretty hard to get worse if you spend that kind of time.
Speaker 4:Totally.
Speaker 4:I don't know if this is something that we've ever said online on air, but we quite quickly developed quite a good understanding of the challenges of the equestrian industry and the opportunities, because we spent three years living out of air B&Bs, driving across America and spending a month at a time in different horse hotspots meeting with all these key stakeholders that we could find and being like what is the situation here, what are the problems, what are the opportunities?
Speaker 4:And by doing that for three years, month by month, you start to develop the patterns. You understand that these problems are common across these disciplines and these industries and the Western world and the English world. They think they're facing different challenges, but it's actually the exact same challenge and blah, blah, blah, blah blah. So, like we were very quickly able to get to a point which was that we understood, from a business perspective and a governance perspective, all the challenges in the industry at a level of people who'd been in the industry for 20 years. But like you wouldn't know that from looking at our Instagram of our company account and stuff, that we lived out of air B&Bs for three years and basically lived out of a car to get there.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what I'm saying. If you don't tell anybody that that's how you did it, man, where did these guys come from? Well, they ate more McDonald's than all you all put together the last 15 years, because that's all they did was drive. I'm like that's exactly what I'm saying. It's really, really hard to spend that kind of time on something that you enjoy, chasing and asking all those questions and doing it wrong.
Speaker 4:It's really hard to do it that much and not increase so you put out this first video, four minutes long, bit janky, use the equipment you had. What was the response? And it must have been a good enough response that it energized you enough to keep going.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean I don't know if I even really was fed off the response of that first one. I was excited that two people liked it. I thought, wow, this, they didn't hate me. I didn't have a big following. I still don't have a huge, I mean, I'm probably still under 10,000 subscribers on YouTube, but what got me was that it actually went out there and I actually did it, and then I had this.
Speaker 2:It was really again just a disciplined thing. You know, after I did it the first time and thought I was capable, then I committed to doing it for a year. So I'm going to do it for a year and see what happens Good or bad ugly. I'm going to try to put out one a week for a year. I don't even remember if I managed to get all the way through that before I.
Speaker 2:You know, things changed and adjusted and whatever, but that was where it started. And then I mean it was obviously a large help that two weeks after I started doing this, covid came to Canada and everything shut down and I thought, what better? Like, here we go. Well, no, I got nothing to do but do videos. I may as well do the videos, because I was going to the barn. I was riding the horses anyway, so I went and rode and I set up my phone and I did these videos and it just seemed like the right thing to do. If the whole place is going to shut down, I'm going online to make sure everybody knows who I am still when this thing's over.
Speaker 1:So how did you map out your content plan? Like you have decades of wisdom and training and riding but to dedicate weekly or daily or you know whatever that cadence was in the early days? Like, did you have a plan as to you're going to talk about certain components of riding this week and certain aspects that week? Like, how did you think about structuring your output in the content?
Speaker 2:I make shit up as I go.
Speaker 4:I'm flattered that you thought I had a plan. Yeah, yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1:Which is probably the best, it seems, to get caught up and mapping it all out and, to your point, just kind of going along with what the people want, what you think the people want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've always been, but I think it was what I wanted to talk about and I think it was being genuine to who I was. And I've always thought, as soon as you make a big plan and a bullet point list and all of this sort of thing, then you take away the creativity, you take away the flexibility, you take away the ability to say what's on your mind, because you just stay in with those bullet points. And I am not good at that. I'm very comfortable to make up things as we go. Obviously, if you do it for 20 years, like if any discipline, any sport, any art were to soak into you for 20 years, promise me, it just soaks back out of you again.
Speaker 1:That's refreshing to hear that. I feel like there's a pressure, especially in the social media space, to have a just like a plan of this month talking about these features, this release, this, whatever it might be, and like mapping your content in your plan out for the coming year. But I'm similar to you, which is like one day we'll have a conversation. Thinking about that will inspire me to create something that I think will really resonate and also just taking into consideration just what's happening in the world and what's trending or not trending or whatever it might be. So I like mentally aspire to be able to map it all out in like a campaign, if you will, but you're said then done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm way better to feel out the crowd or make it up as I go. You know, for instance, I spoke at the Missouri livestock symposium two weekends ago. I flew into Missouri, it was a livestock symposium, so I was like the only horse trainer and it's a very strong Amish population. And I mean I've never been so intimidated in my life as to sit in in a room with a whole bunch of Amish horse trainers all leaned up on their elbows staring you down. And I mean these are the real deal, like the straw hats and the bowl cuts and the suspenders. And I mean these guys, that's all they do is horses for a living. And I flew in from someplace in the big world to talk with them and I mean it was amazing.
Speaker 2:We had a lot of fun, did a whole discussion on why your horse isn't progressing in training, like what kind of questions do you ask in a big barn when the horse just doesn't seem to progress? You know, is it sore somewhere? Something else going on? And then we covered the mental side of it. And then at the lunch break on that Saturday it was hilarious because they all came to have lunch with me. We sat around the whole lunch break for two hours and kept going because we we had a really good time. But out of that lunch break discussion I got the sense that they had different questions from the material I had quote unquote prepared for the afternoon, and this is an hour lecture. So when I walked into the auditorium, into the room after lunch to do my third hour of the day, I just pulled up different content in the back of my head and I did an entirely different lecture that answered the questions that those guys had asked that lunchtime.
Speaker 1:I think, curiosity. What were some of the questions that the Amish trainers were asking you Cause I, having zero experience with the Amish and Amish trainers, my just stereotypical assumption would be that they were utilizing horses for plowing and things like that, not necessarily riding or training. But is there a different element that I'm not thinking of?
Speaker 2:They're incredible businessmen. So they train a lot of horses and they take them down to the local auction and they sell them off to you so you can go ride it. So they do a ton of that. And also, like these are all teenage boys or these are all young men of whatever with a couple of kids. I mean, they're all in the business of turning out good horses. Somebody has to breed it and raise it and then somebody else has to get it to pull the plow and somebody else has to make it do this and make it do that. Someone has to make a good Sunday buggy horse that's really calm and nice and goes to town and looks fancy and ties up outside the church and goes home again. So there's a lot to it.
Speaker 2:And their biggest question was softness, the steering, the softness. How do you make one do all that reigning stuff? Like? We're so mind blown by the fact that you can get a horse to do that kind of stuff, one handed on a draped drain, because they do think on I'm generalizing as certainly not an entirely true statement, but they do think a lot Plow, rain and steer the horse. They are very much a machine for them in a sense, so that their whole conversation was like more softness, more finesse. How do you get a horse like? They understand horses, but how do you get one to do that kind of stuff? In the way that I see some of that Liberty stuff at Cavalier or something and think, man, I know horses and I don't have a clue how those guys get that stuff done.
Speaker 1:Well, I have to ask, cause I don't think I know anyone else who's spent time with Amish riders and trainers but like, from what we know about what happens to horses after their careers, if you will, with the Amish, they might. This might be a gross like overstatement, but a lot of them will go to say like an auction, where they ultimately will end up in Mexico or Canada and then bound for slaughter and things like that. But like, is there any discussion in their training with the English world, probably with the Western world? When horses retire, it's like a soft landing or retirement home. You know they've become an expensive lawn ornament, but that's just what we owe them after all they've given us. But was there any kind of conversation with them as to where these horses go when they're done with them?
Speaker 2:I didn't get into that. I wouldn't speak to that straight up, although I would say that was a livestock symposium, but it was all aspects of livestock, it was all aspects of the business. But it would be the same. There's no farmer out there that wants to put his cow down at the end or wants to sell that old cow at the auction. I mean, we all want them to continue to do their job and be part of our life, because that's what we do for a living. I mean as an amateur. You know we've created the amateur market or we've created the non pro market where people can own a horse as a hobby and they make their money somewhere else and they pour it into this horse and you become emotionally attached to it and that's where you put them in a field in the back and you love them because they loved you and whatever it is that we tell ourselves. And those people don't have an amateur market. That's their business, that's that's what they do. Those are working animals, they're developed that way, they're treated that way.
Speaker 2:But there's an underlying assumption that treating a horse like a working animal means that it's treated less than something that is a shell horse, a competition horse, a retired horse. I mean you have to think that these people, their living revolves around those horses being sound and doing their job. They cost the same for them as they cost for us to do this every day. And there's not a one of them there that wants that horse to break down early or come up lame at some point. I mean, if your tractor doesn't work, you phone the mechanic and he comes out in an hour or two, puts a new part in. You often go again. I mean, if you lame that horse up, he's standing in your field or you have to develop another one to put in behind him, and that's a much longer process than just going to get a new part for your vehicle and then you go off down the road again.
Speaker 2:So I think they care way more Now. Does there need to be an exit plan? I mean, are they capable of going through horses as working animals in their life and then somehow keeping land at the back of the property to keep them all in a big herd? Is this humane? Is this possible? I don't know if I have the answers to that, but I think those are the questions that have to be asked, because it's certainly out there Like that's not. Your question isn't one that's never been asked.
Speaker 1:I mean, you have it in the racing world. So when the horses are kind of done with their racing career they go on to you know canter or some type of throw a red re-homing, rehabbing organization to then bring them to the next career. Yes, maybe a lot of these horses are big drafts and maybe they're senior citizens, but there's a market for that too. I mean, the drafts are some of the best horses that I've ever ridden. Just can go fox hunting on a draft. You can put Sam on a draft. Anyway, back to the previously scheduled broadcasting. Yes, sam loves this. I can. I can take us on a good tangent.
Speaker 4:So you put out your first few videos. You promise yourself you're going to do this for a year. Covid hits. What was the point? That you noticed? That your content to kind of took a turning point where it actually was done to be an asset to you as opposed to just this thing you had to keep going and doing because you promised yourself. I think it took two years.
Speaker 2:I think I kept doing it, I kept going, I kept building. In the meantime I'm training, I'm riding horses, I'm going to horse shows. I mean this wasn't in a vacuum. I mean I was doing this on top of doing all those lessons, on top of taking eight and 10 and 12 horses to horse shows the entire summer. This was by no means done in a vacuum, and so it was really an extra thing that I attached to my life, for you know, I'm going to do this on top of everything else, and so I didn't give it much thought, like I really didn't. I really trusted the process and I just did it. I just kept rolling, I just kept doing, and on occasion I fell off the bus. You know, on occasion it wasn't as consistent. I'd miss a week or two here or there and you'd come back to it. But I always knew if I kept doing it I would figure something out. And so then I guess it was April of 22, that.
Speaker 2:So what I had done, or what changed, is that I started doing it myself, and then at some point, the lady that worked in the office for me, her young son, wanted to get into video production. So he's like 16 at the time or something. It has a DSLR and wants to do this. I said, sure, I'll pay him 50 or 60 bucks a video he can come out and he can start doing this. He can shoot it and edit it and make me a thumbnail and I'll post it. So that was the next level of like OK, now I'm paying a little bit to do this. And at the same time it did start to take off and people commented all the time and I got all sorts of likes and all sorts of you know. So you think, well, ok, people are picking up when I'm putting down and obviously the way that I say it is something that the industry is interested in, because it again, time is a cruel judge, like it doesn't care about my feelings, like over time it either grows or dies. That's that's all there is to it, and I try to stay really emotionally detached from all that stuff.
Speaker 2:And so then we got to a certain point and I said to Lucas I said, ok, like we got to really focus on what is it that we want to do? Where do we want to focus? And he said I think Instagram Reels. He said that's kind of your demographic. He said I think you should focus there and let's just start growing it. He said it's going to cost you twenty seven hundred a month for me to do this for you. And I said, ok, sir. I went talk to my wife and said do you want to do it? We're going to give it 90 days and see what happens. And after two months, nothing. So we started shooting every week. We just started posting Reels seven days a week and all that content and it started to grow.
Speaker 2:And then I got super nervous because the thirty seven hundred Instagram followers I had at the time, I pretty well knew them all personally. So then when you start to grow like that, or when you start posting stuff, you get really anxious that maybe somebody will hate on you. You know, maybe this thing will blow up in your face. And so, from thirty seven hundred to ten thousand in that first month or maybe it was two months it really really took off. So I still took it really personally. And then I would say, at some point they did start. All the Germans came out and they started to really hate on me, the German specifically the German.
Speaker 4:It wasn't the trolls, it was the German, but the German.
Speaker 1:But the Germans based in Germany or the Germans based doesn't matter where.
Speaker 2:No, no, they were. They were all still at home in Germany. I think it's the clouds and the rain and stuff like that. And I'll explain this because I have tangible, like I have the graphs. I have the proof of this that every time there was a German comment on Tik Tok or Instagram, if you translated it it would be negative. And it's super funny because I love the Germans, like I absolutely love the Germans. My favorite working students have been German and they've come over and they're hardworking and they're sarcastic and funny, and I have some of my favorite working students are German. So I always make this joke because I love the Germans. I've never had a bad German working student come over. They've been incredible people. But there is a culture of you can't be more than 20 percent of your horse's body weight, otherwise it's illegal to ride it. And they have this Wendy culture, which is a magazine over there. What is it called? Wendy? Yeah, the Wendy books, the Wendy books, the Wendy magazine. It's like a heartland for Germans.
Speaker 2:I mean, I started to get some pretty good feedback and some pretty good flak and some pretty good stuff would go viral on people hating on me and at that point you have to have another discussion with yourself and say, why am I doing this and is this worth the mental pressure and is this really something that has to change me? And I would say that it was the best thing for me, because it distilled down for me that nothing that went on social media would ever be something I didn't fully stand behind. So that distilled all the way back to everything that I said, and we almost never edit anything. I almost never do something as a second take. I very, very, very seldom, like the masterclass videos will be minutes and minutes and minutes on end of me breaking down very, very detailed things, and I'll never do a second take. It just comes off the top of my head, it just comes out the way that it does. And so I distilled that all the way back to being that intentional whenever we shot footage, to say everything that comes out of my mouth needs to go on camera and needs to be able to, whether we actually use it or not, be posted directly, because I truly believe in it and that was my way to keep it ethical, because it never became about creating content for content's sake. It never became about the likes. It never became about anything like that.
Speaker 2:The first time I got my backside handed to me a few times online, I realized if I was going to stand up and say you guys are crazy, I had better believe in everything that I said, and that was my way of keeping.
Speaker 2:I mean, there were months in August, september, october of 22, where we were growing at 12 and 1500 likes a day, and when you have that many people coming in, you obviously are picking up a huge horse demographic, and so you have to be very clear that you stay being the person you are on the ground, because now it's so easy to become so much cooler online I mean, there's a Brad Paceby song about that and you have to be so careful that you don't, because it'll kill you as fast as it made you. I mean, that thing will eat you up. If people find you disingenuine, if they think that you're after it for Instagram, you'll be the first one to be canceled because you're just not who you are, and so it's very important, if it's going to take off and if the universe is going to give you an opportunity like that to have a stage of that size, that you have to be very careful that you are entirely genuine.
Speaker 1:Genuine person putting out content there that 1 million percent stand behind. And yet, the internet being the internet, it'll still attract trolls in Germany and all over the world that just they're behind fake account or what have you and they can say things online they would never actually say to anyone in real life. And so I think also probably getting past that too and I imagine that's also a component of it as well as like, when people are saying mean things, to do the gut check of like was I truly myself, was I completely authentic? Yes, okay, well, I can't help the people that love to just poke fun and poke same mean things and then the day it helps the algorithm and boosts up more engagement.
Speaker 2:So silver lining silver lining oh, negative publicity is amazing. No, and that's exactly what it was. It was a gut check, saying that you know what if you don't like that? Again, I've done this for 20 years. I know that this is how it works. If you don't like this or for some reason you can't stand this, there's two options your ignorance, or you haven't done it enough. You're inexperienced, and those are kind of the same.
Speaker 1:Are they out there trying to do it themselves and grow an audience and become world renowned horse trainer? It's easier just to say negative things.
Speaker 4:Right. So at this point you've got hit that point where you've gotten liftoff and it's grown and you've had your taste of you know, for lack of a better term minus celebrity, where you get both the haters and the lovers. So where is it at today and how has creating this content transformed your life in your business?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, you've got to go through all your friends that also called you Mr YouTube for however many months, and you know all of that stuff too, but it's really just.
Speaker 4:Gen Z. The number one job they all want is to be a YouTuber. So you're the head of the curve yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what? For me, the confidence of millions of people around the world hearing the honest, genuine version of what I do, I think that made a big difference for me. You know, it validated me in a lot of ways to say, hey, you know what? There's that many people Sometimes you reach a million accounts a month and there's that many people out there noticing and liking and sharing your stuff and obviously you're resonating. You know I get up every morning and just pray to make a difference in somebody's life and there's that many likes and that many shares and obviously it resonates with people and you pray. It makes a difference. So the confidence to say what I'm doing isn't crazy, coming from 17, never riding a horse, being in an industry where so many people around me have grown up in it their whole lives, or you know their dad and mom they've got a lot of money. It's really hard to come through all that stuff and create something that you believe in. But when you get an opportunity to have that stage and people back that up, you say, ok, this makes sense. So then I mean the next step was to go to Lucas again and say, ok, now we have to make a marketable product. I mean, just to be famous on Instagram doesn't do me any good. I always dreamed about creating a DVD series. So we built reigningmasterclasscom, that whole online deal, and we launched that last year November 1st and in the last year and a bit actually, I was shooting some content for it today because we're going to do 12 days of Christmas running up to Christmas and it's a whole bunch of one liners. On the first day of Christmas my true love came to me and said that you know a horse often bucks are off and I said, well, that's probably OK. I've been praying that you'd be more grounded and so we did a whole bunch of one liners. We did 12 one liners and they'll go in the email campaign. So we built reigningmasterclasscom and that launched last November and for Christmas we're rolling it back for the fund before Christmas to the original prelaunch price from last year. So it'll just be a fun marketing thing and scoop up a bunch of people that have wanted to have it but maybe it's a little bit out of their price range and that's sold in 30. I think it's 38 countries now that we've sold to around the world.
Speaker 2:In the first year we cracked 100,000 in revenue and that also was a big part of me moving out of Canada and having the confidence to move to Scottsdale, arizona, and say you know, at owning this property, the mortgage on this is less than the rent I paid on my facility in Canada, and I know that we run marketing campaigns like this. I know that that online stuff is relatively reliable, you know. I mean it's had like a 10 percent conversion rate on it, so it's like it's a good conversion rate and people love it. I mean nobody sends it back, everybody buys it and then they cancel their other subscriptions to the other horse trainers because they like mine and all of yeah, which is fabulous. You know I'm grateful for that every day.
Speaker 2:It's the coolest thing and it really has allowed me probably that last straw to say, okay, 20 years I've come from nothing to this and the entire world appreciates what I'm doing. Let's move to one of the epicenters of horse training and let's throw my hat in with everybody else, because not that I think I'm that good or think I'm not much better, because I know I can do more here. I can touch more people here, those clinics that we do in our own yard. More people travel here in the continental US than they would on the west coast of Canada. You're able to touch more people and change the lives of more horses and more horse owners with this location, and if anybody in North America wants to have a horse vacation in the winter, they go to Arizona. You know whether it's Ropen in Wiccamburg or whether it's Barrel Racing or it doesn't matter. You come here.
Speaker 1:How were you acquainted with the international clients and the international riders? Was it something that stemmed from the social media and then they were able to engage with your content after that? Or like I don't say it's easier, but like when they're in your backyard they know gym, they know the venue. It's easier to grow a local following, but to connect with people in dozens of different countries, that takes a lot more skill set and outreach. So how is that done? Well, do you mean for this course? Well, yeah, even, I guess even starting from then, even your initial working students. So how did that happen? And then, how did it happen with your current program?
Speaker 2:You know, originally I spent some time in Texas and I met and it's really funny, I met Leona, young Austrian girl there and became really good friends, friends with her family. She went back to Austria, I went back to Canada and at some point she had a young family friend who's graduating high school and said, hey, she really wants to go work for a trainer. But the most honest, genuine guy I can think of is that gym guy and he's in Canada and I think it's entirely safe for you to fly there and go work for him for a couple months, because I'm nervous if you go to Texas. You know, young girls end up all kinds of situations in some of those training barns and that's the reality of what it is. And so that's really how that started, was kind of word of mouth, and one after the other they just had so much fun with us and became part of the family and that was relatively easy. All of the marketing, all of finding all of these places to sell this to, has been social media, the legwork of YouTube, Shorts, TikTok and Instagram, and I think it's been that real, true, genuine, like that. It's just it's me I've always made sure to wear, you know, some weird t-shirt like make sure you wear.
Speaker 2:Like you have to keep it approachable, because if you make it too professional and if you make it too sharp, the video content and the quality and the sound and all of those things has to be bar none that the threshold to entry has to be so high that very few people want to copy you. That's really the way it should be. Make it so good that no one can imagine actually putting the effort into doing it and then you're going to be relatively safe. But on the other side, you have to make sure that you make it approachable enough, that you're genuine enough, that you are vulnerable, that you make mistakes, that you leave things in it, that people actually engage with you, that they actually see you as a human being. It's very easy to take all of that video quality and then also imagine that your shirt has to be perfect and your hat has to be perfect and everything you say has to be. You know it's become the same in music Everything has to be auto-tuned and it has to be absolutely perfect. All of the album covers have to be auto-generated, All of it has to be photoshopped.
Speaker 2:Because we believe it has to be perfect to be approachable and I think you got to be really careful when you're just a little guy in the industry that you don't make yourself unapproachable too soon, or unapproachable ever, because you're selling to the masses. You're selling to the average person who has a horse and wants to ride and if you make it believable that they can contact you, they can be a part of what you're doing. That you'll be a part of what they're doing. I mean, that's what sells. You sell the sizzle in the quality of the audio and the video and the quality of the content and the way that it's outlaid and the way that it's delivered to everyone. You sell that sizzle but when they bite into the steak it has to be good.
Speaker 1:You had a pretty significant uptick in following once you did bring in the artillery to get the professional videos and just to have that professional like level of photography, videography et cetera. So would you say that because of that investment in the quality of the footage that was one of the key indicators to expedite the growth?
Speaker 2:Absolutely no question whatsoever. I mean, the first thing you do is see, right, I mean on Instagram, on TikTok, while TikTok I hate, because when you open it the microphone's always on.
Speaker 1:This is just really revealing right when you said your demographic was on Reels, I felt that, yeah, that's me yeah.
Speaker 2:People see first, you open it and you see that reel and you see it going before you ever turn the sound on and think, oh, I think I'd like to actually listen to this one, unless you're one of those people that listens to everything with the microphone or with the sound always on and that you just go from one sound clip to the next. But most people are somewhere watching this discreetly, relatively discreetly, and they'll watch something after they've seen the quality of the video. So the editing, the quality of the video, the lighting, it has to be right, because that's what people see first, and then they'll listen to what you have to say and if you do that often enough, they'll come back to see what you have to say next.
Speaker 4:Jen and I talk about this regularly. The equestrian industry is arguably the worst example I have seen of companies wanting to do collaborations, because they mistake activity for progress, so they always want to do it. Oh, we should collaborate, we should collaborate, we should collaborate, we should collaborate, we should collaborate. And then a bunch of staff from one company talk to another bunch of staff from another company, and then they basically post each other's logos on their Instagram and then they feel like they've achieved something when they've really achieved nothing right.
Speaker 4:So and the equestrian industry does it more than anything I've ever seen and then collaborating and just posting things on Instagram. I think the equestrian industry often makes the mistake of thinking that that is value. And what you've proven, which is quite common thought-leaded, quite common belief in other industries, which is that you create the channel, you create Instagram, you create something good, you draw an audience and you give it away for free and you put the effort in because you make money off something else. You sell once you have the audience and that's what you've done right. So you've done the channel for free. And then you've built the course and you sell the course, and that's where you get the return on the investment of all the time you put in to developing your social media channels and doing that.
Speaker 4:So, with that in mind and you know we'll kind of end up here what does the future look like for you? Is it more of the same with the course, or have you got plans for bigger aspirations, what you want to do with it? What do you want to do Now that you've built the audience and you've built the foundation? Is YouTube paying you?
Speaker 2:yet. Yeah, that's the one thing that when we switched over and went to Instagram and TikTok and started going that direction, I stopped. Actually, that's the one thing that's come back up in the last couple months is I stopped doing long form content on YouTube For one reason or another. It just kind of fell by the wayside. So I'm like I'd have to go back to check. I'm maybe 100 or maybe I'm less than that. Maybe I'm in the double digits now of public watch hours to get me to monetize. I mean, I'm long over the thousand subscriber mark and I'm long over all the other things. Everything's ticked off, but the public watch hours were a little bit lacking or a little bit slow for one reason or other, and that was the only thing. And now, because I've got so focused on the course and because that's obviously a better investment, in the last 12 months I haven't focused on YouTube as much and it might be something that I've got to pull back up and just have a little fun with and start making, and I've been approached by other producers and other this or that.
Speaker 2:I really want to do this and trying to get this thing up and going. I want you to be the spokesperson for it. But again, those collaboration things. I mean I've put it back to them so many times and said great, make me a plan. You tell me what you want, how I can help you and how this is going to work for both of us. But for me to just create content and share it back and forth between the two of us and you think that we're collaborating, while I'm the guy out there standing in the arena making the content to send to you so that you can post it, so that you hopefully get famous too, and that's just. I can sign myself up for a lot more work. I have all kinds of crazy ideas.
Speaker 2:My goal is always to keep this. You know we've developed it so it's a one time payment. There isn't a subscription service, and then I add videos, I change this, I edit that, I plan to go back through it and kind of recurate it. So I mean, every time you go and look at it and think, god, I could restructure this and make it better. I've also developed it now where I have a do it with you program. So it came from just buying the video content and that was very successful. Now we create a larger ticket item where you get the content, and then you get a Google Drive link and you can upload your training videos and then we book zoom calls and I'll pull that up and share my screen and I'll do the same, play by play, with your video as I do with my online clinics. So every month I run an online clinic as well, and it's free.
Speaker 2:We had 700 people signed up for that in October when we streamed an online clinic to a Facebook group and I pull up video and I break down the video and I talk about what I'm doing and how I do it and I mean that's another way that we've met all these people. You know hundreds of them from around the world will sign up for this over the course of a couple of days that I do it, and so out of that, I would like to touch more people. I'd like to be able to take this more individual to more of that small group. Hey, I've got this deadline in mind. I really need this kind of coaching. There's nobody in a hundred mile radius of me that I can get this quality of coaching from. I'd be happy to help you out to get you right on track to hit that deadline or whatever that show is that you're getting to, I mean I love doing that.
Speaker 2:I've enjoyed that immensely with some of the people that I've worked with. And then the in-person stuff here I mean I probably still did it because I like people. That's really. I don't want to be in an office all day creating content and doing online stuff. I mean I love showing horses. I'm here in Arizona. I've got a barn full of horses and I intend to go to horse shows. So you know it's one of those things that it's going to continue to grow.
Speaker 2:I really believe in things happen organically, but I try not to force stuff. I continue doing it and I let it just grow to what it needs to be. And as long as people come back to me and have this much fun doing it, as long as I can connect with those people and continue to be the same genuine ethical person I've always like. The value is the biggest thing for me. As long as you can get the same value out of what I do and it doesn't become too commercialized or it doesn't become too standoffish, or if it doesn't become too big, I'd rather charge more and keep the value and really have people feel like this is the only place in the world to get this kind of thing than to try to make it big and do the whole Costco thing, walmart thing and try to sell it cheap to a lot of people. I'm just not that way.
Speaker 1:Are you already in China?
Speaker 2:No, I got one Chinese guy that actually works really closely with me, but he's originally from China, but he's in Spain. He's in southern Spain, so his family's moved all over the place. It's one young guy that I work with. I actually talked to him quite a bit on WhatsApp, but that's the only one that I know with the Chinese background. I mean, he is Chinese. He's just based in Spain right now.
Speaker 1:A desire to have quality content, not content, just content, just instruction from people like you who've already putting the course out there. But yeah, we've had a few conversations now with people in Asia, especially in China, so we can actually connect you to one of the women who know there, Because for them, I mean, it's like there just aren't enough of you in China, there's not enough quality instruction, it's hard for people to actually go and ride I mean courses are actually been being stable on the top of parking garages in China. I mean it's wild. So the ability to be able to connect there and then have a whole new audience and program.
Speaker 4:Yeah, to that point and I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's something that you do here, but it sounds like at the moment you train students right, Whereas the problem China's got is they need to train the trainers. So they need someone to train the trainers, because they've got the demand, which is all the students, but they haven't got the infrastructure of trainers to train all the students. So that's kind of where they're at the moment, which is, how can we get more and more of our trainers trained so that we can then support our customer base? So I'm not sure if you have a train, the train course, but that might be worth considering.
Speaker 1:Well, in addition to it's like B2B and B2C, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, and you know, the crazy thing is that I guess, as three or four months ago we talked about doing that kind of thing here and saying why wouldn't I do a small mastermind, a small masterclass of young trainers that say, man, like if I spent $2,500 on this and I spent six months with you, like this would change my business.
Speaker 2:You know, this would entirely pivot how I'm able to teach and how I'm able to take the students and customers. So that has crossed my mind. I took that organically and put it on the back burner because I just didn't have a place to put it or some way to use it. But the content in the masterclass will change the life and the way that anybody trains horses. If you're a young trainer coming up or if you're trying to figure out how this works, it really is truly a reverse engineer process from how those Western horses work to what the trainers are doing in their barns to make them look like that when you see them on the run for a million or the last cowboy or whatever it is. So that's very possible. And all of those reels as far as content, like a year and a half of seven days a week reels I have on a hard drive that was like two years worth of content that could be downloaded to another platform and subtitled and turned loose.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and German, you might find out. They're giving a compliment for a long yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I don't think the Germans will. No, there was no question there. But you'd be surprised if I said the same thing in really good German. They might believe me.
Speaker 4:Right, so that's been amazing to have you on. Where can people find you? If they want to buy the masterclass or look at the masterclass or follow you on socials, where can they find you?
Speaker 2:Well at Jim Greendike Horses on TikTok, on Instagram, same on Facebook. Youtube is the same Jim Greendike performance horses. The reigning masterclass is that simple. Reigningmasterclasscom is the base program. There's a payment plan on there. We break it down over five months to make it more affordable for people. And then there's reigningmasterclasscom slash RM program, which is that more intensive. You want to sign up and spend six months or a year working with me. Then you get to upload videos and send me stuff and we break it down and work with it. There's so many links there.
Speaker 2:Obviously, I do the clinics here at my place clinics dot raining masterclasscom, and that's how you would book me for any clinics around the world or that's how you would register yourself to come here and ride with me for a week. I mean that whole deal riding here is. You know I round stakes over the fire and three times a day riding horses and I mean by the time you get to Friday afternoon like nobody can walk. It's really fun. You know I have two horses that you can rent out. It's a little bit extra and that's obviously. I've got two good raining horses that you can rent out here at my place.
Speaker 4:You say there was stakes and beers in this thing.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I'll text you after. I'm not using my phone for this interview. I'll text you a couple pictures of stakes and beers. I feel like you'll come before Saturday, you know.
Speaker 1:Riding. Well, we're gonna learn how to paint, how to make tables, how to sing. I get such a formal watching your Instagram account.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go, it's. God's been good to me. I think I was never afraid to make mistakes. I've never been afraid to try something. I've never been afraid. I've never met something I couldn't learn. I've had a lot of stuff I don't want to learn. I've no desire to learn it.
Speaker 2:But I think that comes back to that talk about that X factor, like if you have a desire, there's someone out there that will teach you. There always is if you have a desire to learn something. So it's the same. If you have a desire to be better at this I mean shelf at my place and if we have an unbelievable party, then you get motivated to want it more. I mean, that's the other thing is like when learning becomes fun and you have the best time of your life and you learn a pile of stuff, then you think, man, I don't want to stop doing this, this is the best time I've ever had, and so that's what this whole thing is built around is really solid content, really honest, true life. This is how it is. I'm not going to pretend. That is just how it works. And then the people side of it you know you're not just a number I mean you believe that everything happens for a reason, then every time you cross paths with someone, it has to be for a purpose.
Speaker 1:You can't believe one enough yet unique in special series that you have going on. So if people do want to come and do this, so, like you already have your call it a tour like your tour locations lined up, because I know you're going to Australia, you're going to some other places overseas. Is that already lined up or should they just follow your website to get more updates as to when those become available?
Speaker 2:we're working on the dates for all of that stuff I'm doing. It's funny enough you leave Canada. I'm doing a Canadian tour in May and June. I just actually my assistant just had a call with somebody from Norway this morning where it sounds like I'm going to Scandinavia at some point too and doing a bunch. So I'd love to do a European tour. I was joking with my wife and said I'm going to travel the world on horseback and it's just this way the horses and what I've taught and learned is going to take me all over the world. So if they want to get in contact with me about that, it's clinicsrainingmasterclasscom and you can click on the host a clinic button, or you can look at the power clinics for the Arizona clinics here, the dates for the ones here. They're all posted. Those dates are all there and you can register for a date that works.
Speaker 2:I've got an RV here in the yard and actually I'm planning to build a tiny house here as well. That would be open for rent, and then it's also. I mean it's Scottsville, so there's air B and V's, there's. Everything is close, so it's very, very easy, and then we make stalls. So you come here and your horse gets a stall and it lives here in the barn and you can park the trailer in the yard and you can be around.
Speaker 2:Breakfast is always on everyone. I mean we make coffee and have donuts or cookies here in the morning or whatever it is, but lunch and dinner are catered every day that you're here, so you never have to worry about lunch or dinner and it's capped off at eight people. So it's a small group. I mean there's no auditors. You can bring a significant other along if you'd like to, but it's very much about the people and so it's a small group and by the time that everybody's made the mistakes or rode badly, you become really good friends and you go home after that with like a bunch of new friends in the industry that were total strangers at the beginning of the week and that, to me, is really cool if you see us in a golden retriever just knocking on your door, just don't be alarmed a chubby golden retriever.
Speaker 4:All right, jim. Well, thank you very much. Really appreciate you taking the time to that anytime.
Speaker 2:Guys, thank you for having me on. I mean, hopefully we covered some good stuff and it's useful. I mean it's something I'm very grateful to get to do and so it's a ton of work and it's it's always something, but you guys are awesome and I've enjoyed myself immensely. So let's see what there is next. You know, let's do something else.