Episode 11 - Inside Solo Select: Tarleton State Q&A on Building an Empire

Hi, everyone. This is Melanie Smith with Silla Select Horses. I've got Hayden Dixon here, a previous Tarleton student, and we are here this evening. You guys cannot see them here, but we've got a whole set of students from Tarleton State. They are the Tarleton Collegiate Equine Leadership class. I think I got that right. And it's a really neat group that goes around. They came and saw us last year. They go around and tour a lot of different facilities to really get an inside look at what happens in the horse industry and get to see all the opportunities that are out there. So we always look forward to them coming and we're going to have them. They ask great questions. So we're going to use this as a podcast episode.

And hopefully the people that would love to have the opportunity, like what this group is getting tonight, is going to get a little bit of inside look at having some questions answered from college age students about what the next steps in their lives are or how we got to where we are. We're going to do that and start taking some questions. I'm Taylor Ewing, and my question for you is, how have you navigated being one of the top equine professionals in the world? Just... To be honest with you, I can't even tell you how it got to this point. It's like there's no obstacle we don't think that we can make it through. And then you build this team around you that is the same way. It's like you can conquer the world.

And so it sounds cliche to say that, but I think when you say, like, how do you navigate it? I would say the first tool that's in my toolkit is the team that we have here because they are really passionate about what they do. They love the horses that they're around. They're passionate about taking great care of our customers and surrounding ourselves with the right people is probably the best thing we've done. And learning to get rid of the wrong people has been a big part of it. And I think you'll hear a lot of business owners say that, but it's very true, having that team around you. The other thing, I think the second thing I would say is just the ability to just out dream what you ever thought was possible.

I would have never hand and it's not that I didn't believe that I couldn't do it, but I would have never handwritten seven years ago that this is what solo would be. But it's like you just come up with these big ideas and they just stack and then you just all that work just keeps stacking. And suddenly you look up one day and you're like, wow, this is actually happening and it's really cool. And so there's not a magic potion to it. There's not you have to get up at four o'clock in the morning and read your book and do a cold plunge. And it's none of that. It's just like being around the right people, including your teammates. Like Ty has been a really integral part of this because it's just nothing scares him. He's always, what are they going to do, Edis?

And don't kid yourself. This place has been built on bank debt and hard work. It hasn't been like, oh, we had a trust fund to work on or I don't. There's lots of gossip that goes around of how this was built. And that's that. And Ty has just been one of those people the whole way that stop stressing about it like it's going to be fine. And having somebody like that's in your corner is really important, but also having the team to perform is great. The third thing I would say is allowing myself the space to grow as a leader, because when you sign up for this, you don't know how to be a leader. When I was so I'm 32 now, so I guess that was whenever I was 25, 26 years old. I didn't know what being a leader was.

I had no idea. and taking the time to step back and still learning, of course, every day, like how to be a great leader and how to responsibly take care of this monster that we've created to make sure that it sustains, because there's a lot of people now that rely on what we do to feed their kids. And giving myself the space to learn to be a leader was a big deal. And still, of course, learning that and bringing the right people around us, I think. And it's not something that I think you can go to school for. I think you can read your books and you can do. but it's I am such and I'll say it like over and over again it's about who you put yourself around so like I always try to put myself around people that know more than me or doing bigger things than me or whatever and that I think is what's made me grow more than anything and so if you look at your friend circle and they're not at the same level you are as far as working at it or whether it's your friends or your wife or your husband or boyfriend girlfriend whatever yeah you become the people you're around.

And it is so true. I can tell you without a doubt, it is the most true thing in my life because I spent a younger part of my 20s around people that weren't pushing me to be better. And I just wasn't surrounded by the right people. And whenever I did get surrounded by the right people, it was like rocket fuel. It's like you just go straight up, like you're going like this and then you just go like this. And that's probably my number one thing I tell people is who you really need to take a hard look at who you're hanging around with and, that's where you're going to be in the future. You're right. I'm Janie Timms and I actually have three different questions. Okay, sure. I guess I'll start with first, how'd you come up with the just like the brand or like the logo for Solo? Sure. So I get that question a lot.

So branding and marketing was really my first love. And now I don't get to do as much of it. And we laugh because the girls, I'm always like, I can't even get into my own Facebook now. They have the access codes. And that was my first love in this business was I love marketing great horses. And so I'm. Whenever I set out to build a brand in 2018, I really wanted to build something that I could brand around. And that really spoke to my heart of what do you want this to be? And so solo at the time was because I was going out on my own solo. It was like, all right, it's yours. This is your second shot at it. And, you know, you're going to start with nothing. And maybe one day you'll have a cool story to tell from it. I don't know.

But it was me, myself and I then and the short legged dog. And so that was where solo originally came from and then i said the spade because i always felt like i wasn't a gambler like i wanted to go to the casino and gamble it was like anybody that's in the horse business is a serial gambler it's just something and all of us that are in here somehow involved in the horse business so you're all guilty by association and then and i always thought the spade is like the very best card you could have and i always said i wanted to do the very best job. Doesn't necessarily mean every horse I sell needs to be a maturity champion, but I think that there's a horse for every single person in the world when there's different tiers of horses that suit people.

And I wanted to do the best job of representing them, the best job of marketing them, and just have a wholesome, good brand. And so that's why I always said the very best. I want to have the very best stuff. And Hayden probably hears it. Matt, I know, hears it. Marie hears it. I'm like, we got to have the best stuff. And so sometimes with my media team, I'm up here and they show me something like this is good, but it's not the best. Like we need to have we want to have the best things. And that was where the very best came from. And that's really something that it sounds cliche, but we all, I always try to remind people like, hey, does this set us apart? Are we doing things that make us the best? Are we doing things that make us the people that think outside the box and that bring new things to the industry and new ideas? And all of that ties back in together, too.

And select was like select horses, right? Like we're not taking every horse. We're not looking at every horse. We don't want everything. We want to select our horses. We want the best ones. So that was where all of that came in together to make our brand. And yeah, we ran with it now. I love that. I actually didn't know that about this phase. Yeah. But that's actually really interesting. I guess my second question is, do you have an internship program here at Solo? Yeah, good question. So we had an internship program for several years and we backed off the internship program last year. And right now we're out of places to put people. And so we've had a lot of interest in starting it back up. And we'll probably consider doing that next summer and hoping to be able to accommodate that and have some room to put people. But we had just straight ran out of room. Yeah.

And what would you be like looking for in a candidate? Yeah. When I think of any candidate, whether it's for an internship or one of our jobs, it's and it's funny you ask that because we're just talking about it this morning. We've done a lot of interviews in the last week or two for a position that we have open. And I am looking for people that have a great attitude. I want them to be come in and feel like that I can mold them to fit the values and the expectations that we have here at Solo. I want them to come in with confidence and I want them to be confident in what they do, but I want them to be willing to listen. And you get some people that either have no confidence or you get some people that are so confident in what they do. They're like, I know how to do it, I know what to do.

I'm going to come in and run your world over here. We don't need that either. We need the right in the middle person. I want somebody that has experience, but I'm a lot more worried about somebody that has a good attitude. We've hired a lot of people that didn't probably have the resume for the job that we were hiring for, but we felt like that they had a great attitude and that they were really passionate. That's another thing. Really wanted it. Those are big things for me. I, especially the media side of things, I'm always willing to teach somebody if they've got that creative spark in them. And I think with same thing with the internships, like I want somebody to come in and feel like that I can mold them and they have a good attitude.

That's the number one thing, really. And you would be shocked at how many people come in that have a terrible attitude on about day three. And you're like, this is just not this is not going to be a good fit. I wish you the best of luck, but this isn't going to be a good fit here. Awesome. And then my last question is actually for Hayden. How'd you get here? And then just how has it felt to make it and like just stick and say? I'll start by saying I haven't made it yet.

I've been in the trenches since day one and we're still there grinding out. I got here when I was in when I was at Tarleton. I did the horse thing before that a little bit. I worked for a couple of different places. Didn't think that it was going to be what I wanted to do long term. I had some bad experiences there. so I thought I was going to go to the cattle side. And I think I remember talking to y'all's professor actually about some jobs when I was in my last semester, my senior year there, trying to get out. And then Melanie had called into that class, the horse enterprise class, and sparked. The story that she had, the brand that she was building, the competitiveness that she had about her business was very attractive to me. But it was one of those deals I just, filed it back in the back of my brain and then went on.

And then I think I was in the truck listening to a podcast and it was another one where she was on. I was like, I have to give her a call. I have to give it a shot. It's like a sign. And so I called Madison, one of the office girls, and we joke about it now. And I called her. I said, are y'all hiring for anything? And she's like, no, we're not hiring, but I can give you Melanie's number. I said, OK, I don't like your answer. Give me Melanie's number. And so I called Melanie, didn't answer, and then just put it aside from there. I figured I had a lot going on and it was like nine o'clock at night. You called me back. We were loading horses back up and I called and I said, hey, I gotta take this.

And so we talked about it from there and said, hey, we gotta meet and sit down with Matt and Ty and it's gone from there. When she talks about people that didn't have necessarily the resume, that was me. They had no business or no, they didn't have any obligation to give me an opportunity here. There was nothing on my resume that should have said, He checks all the boxes other than the fact that I'm willing to work at anything and willing to learn at anything. But I met with Matt and Ty and Mel and we went from there, came up and looked around at this place and just loved the culture that they had made here as far as being wanting to be the very best and having that kind of competitive attitude towards everything that they went after.

And it's been it's been quite the ride from day one. And like Mel was saying earlier, I've tenfold come from where I was when I started and learning each and every day, whether it be during breeding season with some of the stud stuff or whether it be during sale fitness season now and learning some of that side of it, too. And so it's been every day since then, but it's been a great opportunity. That's awesome. And I think whenever you talk about your question earlier about what are we looking for in an interview? I didn't interview Hayden. He called me and was but he said all the right things. And granted, anybody can say all the right things. So whenever he called, he was like, I'm willing to start at any level.

I just really want to learn this. I'm really passionate. I was like, what are your goals? And I don't remember what his answer was, but... I think it was along the lines of, I just want to be the best at what I do. I don't know, maybe yet, but maybe stallion management, maybe it was something. It was a lot of, I don't know. Yeah. It was a lot of, I don't know, but I want to be a part of it. Yeah. And that was his answer was, I don't know necessarily. And he was very straightforward with me. I have some horse experience, but not, I haven't been, I didn't grow up in a trainer's barn or anything, but that's fine with us. We're totally fine with that. But it was just his attitude on the phone. I called I remember calling time management like hey you guys need to call him or answer his text messages or whatever and meet with him because he just sounds really hungry I know that was the word that I used and hungry is what we want here we want people that are hungry for more hungry for cool things like that and so I think that's where Hayden shined whenever I talked to him and that's why he got to have the opportunity he did and then of course you can say all that like I said and not actually live up to it but when he got here he's been hungry for it and so that's why he's gotten to do a lot of cool things this year and learned a ton just about our entire business.

And he's a whole different human than he was when he started here last year. Hi, Melanie. I'm Jocelyn. My question for you is, what's some advice you'd give to a graduating college student wanting to get into the equine industry, especially the reproduction side? And the reproduction side. So what part of the reproduction side do you think you're interested in? Do you know? I think like embryo transfer and inseminating. Okay. The first thing I would tell you is you've got to go get the hours in at a facility and be willing to start at the bottom of that because a lot of people think, oh, I graduated with a degree and now I get to come in and they're going to, whatever part you want to do, they're going to teach me to transfer embryos on day one.

And that's not how it works. If you want to learn to palpate, you have to start with palpating the reseps. And then once you show that you can do that and you put the effort forth there, you get to keep moving up the notches. But I would just say the number one thing would be being willing to go to one of these big places and put the time in and start at the bottom of those places, even though you are going to have a degree, which is going to come in handy for what you do there and probably accelerate what you're doing faster because you're going to have a lot of knowledge behind that. But just getting that hands-on is so important in the horse business. The next thing I would tell you is to make sure that you become, and you may already be, but this is probably my biggest bone to pick with everybody because it's probably been one of my biggest struggles is become super financially literate while you're still in school i don't know when you're going to graduate if you haven't done it yet take the accounting classes learn about the taxes learn about how to balance a set of books like it.

It would have changed the trajectory of my career tenfold if I wouldn't have gone to nursing school like I did and would have gone to school for anything else almost, but especially accounting, because I've had to have a crash course in accounting 101. And so whether this means that you're going to walk out of here and you're going to go to work for somebody, you're going to start your own business, do a little bit of both, whatever it is, like the financial literacy is, I think, one place that us in the agricultural industry does not do a good job of training or educating our younger generation about. And that is why you see horse trainers or ranchers or whatever it may be that are 60 years old and having to work and no end in sight no retirement in sight no nothing and that's probably would be my biggest suggestion to you besides the normal things you hear if you have to work hard and you have to be willing to get dirty and you're going to hear all that but and I think just trying to put yourself in the right places like you'll know when you're in the right place doing with the right people.

And sometimes part of your journey in the horse business, unfortunately, is learning what not to do. So sometimes it's staying in a place for a year and learning all the things that you don't want to do or don't want to be, regardless of what your goals are. And I went through that. I was at places that when I was younger that I was like, I never, I'm glad that I went through that process because that's what I don't want to be in the horse business. And so I think both of those really positive experiences and some of the negative experiences add up to creating and molding you into success into this industry. So thank you so much. You're welcome. I'm Sofia Varela.

For starters, this is such a beautiful facility. Thank you. And since it is a beautiful and big facility of obviously, look, there's going to be difficulties and challenges. What would you say your biggest challenge is and what have you learned from it? I think when you think about facilities, there's a lot of challenges with facilities. It's a monster to take care of this thing. And Ty does a lot of the things that seem probably pretty unimportant, but that actually make this go around. You don't think of hauling the manure off. You don't think of that being a cost center on your profit and loss. And it's a big cost center on your profit and loss. So I would say just learning how to scale with this company has been a big process.

I would say the accounting part of managing one of these facilities is a lot. Just making sure that you've got the funds to keep it like this? That's a really good question. That's a hard question. Managing the people to take care of it is a whole other part of the monster. And I think a lot of that is like we try to pay our people good here and we try to give them nice houses to live in. We give them benefits. We have health insurance. We have paid time off. We have a lot life insurance. Like we've tried to put together a very good benefits package because I want my people to feel like that we care for them and we want them to have access to all of those things. You don't think that matters to maintaining a facility, but.

Your guys that mow are just as important as that guy that's handling that stud in there to making sure the success of this company is what it is. And so we have to take care of those guys from every single tier in this company. And I think that is a lot of the facility and making it all go round. And I appreciate your comments. It's beautiful. And that's what we're going for, right? We've spent a lot of time and effort to try to make this a really pretty place that we're proud of and our team is proud to be at. and proud to show people. But I think that's one thing a lot of horse places do wrong is they don't take pride in the way their facilities look. And so you go and their horses might look good, but they have junk everywhere.

They haven't mowed. They haven't weed-eated. They just think it doesn't matter. It does matter. It makes a really big difference. And I think that's one thing we've done a really good job of is making sure that our stuff looks nice. Our trucks are clean. Our trailers are clean. Our tack rooms are clean. It just adds up. For me, if I'm walking into a place like if you guys can't even weed eat your grass, I don't have much confidence that you're taking care of my horse the way it needs to be taken care of. So I think it's all about the presentation and showing our customers and people that show up like we're as proud of this place as we are, as thankful, grateful and proud to take care of your horses and have the opportunity to do your breeding work or whatever service we're providing.

And all of that goes back to facility maintenance and maintenance. That's a big, long, we could have a whole podcast on facility maintenance. So great question. And it's probably one of the biggest challenges. I would say like when you think of big challenges, I think of accounting and a workforce and a team and all of that cyphering and the ability to take care of your facilities and your horses at a very high level. So if you could change one thing that you've done so far, not considering not taking financial or accounting classes, what would it be? Not doubted myself so much. In 2018, whenever all this started, I was like, like, I have so much confidence in some ways, but then in some ways you're like, I don't know if this is going to work.

And that's where surrounding yourself with the right people is so important because they're your cheerleaders. They're like, it's going to work. And if it's not going to work, we're going to do plan B. And it might not work, but plan B is still there. World's not going to end if it doesn't work. So I think just having the confidence in myself. And surrounding myself with the right people. And probably when you say changing something, I would have surrounded myself with the right people from day one. And it wasn't that I was with the wrong people. I just wasn't with the level of people that matched the drive that I had. That's really what it was. They weren't bad people. They just weren't the people that I needed to have the rocket fuel to take off.

Hi, my name is Montana Moore. I've been literally so excited to come here since I saw it on the agenda. You are exactly what I have on my vision board for me in 20 years. So when you said that you started with just leasing a couple of stalls, that really spoke to me because that's exactly where I am right now. So I've been trying to get my feet on the ground and I have three stalls that I'm creating a business with. And now that I've gotten that established during my time at Tarleton and not just with the repro side, because that is, it is really calling me, you know, what I want to do in the future. But overall from someone coming like me, who's trying to come up with a brand and trying to come up with a logo and overall just trying.

Everyone comes to Stephenville to succeed and I just want to be the one that does it. So what is your best advice like to actually get there and like actually be the one who stands out and becomes successful? What can I do to better my business and be successful with creating my brand and then also figure out how to do all the repro stuff that you're doing? Sure. On your vision board in 20 years, do you want to have a breeding facility with stallions and mares? Do you want to breed mares? Do you want to full out? What do you want to do? So my goal right now, I've got a couple two-year-olds coming up that I'm just hoping to get my brand on and get people understanding, hey, she's got nice horses. Let's look at her business. Let's look at her facility.

But my first goal would be to pull an embryo from my mare and get some babies on the ground and just make sure that my skills are really established. And then from there, my long-term goal would be to either own a really nice stallion or kind of do a situation like where you do, where you are responsible for these people's stallions. And so then in a sense, like it's your brand, it's your responsibility. But also having a system where I've got reset mare and I've got babies on the ground and then they turn into upcoming two-year-olds and then it turns into selling, just the whole cycle. Sure. So I'm probably going to give you an answer you're not going to. Okay. So you're a little backwards. And I think this is a really good question because a lot of people do this just like you and then they don't make it and they think that maybe it's because they're not good enough or whatever.

Right now, you're going to be paying premium for everything with. On a college income. I don't know this, but I'm assuming you're just pinged and pennies to try to pay board and buy a stud fee. So you're not going to be able to breed to the best stud. You're going to flush an embryo and put it to some random re-sip that's probably not lined up, right? That's probably not going to work because you're just trying to make it work, but you're just fighting against an aura that's not going to work. So the best thing to do is go get your skills. And you may have those skills, I don't know, but either go to work for the breeding facility that you can learn from, go to work for a vet. If you want to learn to palpate, Go find somebody that palpates that can teach you to breed and flush mares.

Great. Go do all that. Start creating yourself your little business. And it's going to be a little business at first. You're going to get this person's mare, that person's mare. You're going to make some little deals. And all of a sudden, you're going to look up and you're going to have some consistent income. And you're going to be working somewhere and collecting studs. You're going to learn to collect studs. You'll find a little place to lease. And all of a sudden, you're collecting studs and getting a little income. And then a little income turns into more and more. Because all you have to do in the breeding deal is communicate, have a clean place, and do a good job. Get their mares pregnant.

And you have a business and it will be booming immediately. So after you get the booming business and you get that rolling, then you go buy the mare that you flesh and you raise the baby out of. And people forget to add all the costs that get up to getting that baby of the year. So if you're pinching pennies, breeding to a stud with, and I don't know that this is what you're doing. I'm just throwing out a scenario I hear a lot. I've got this mare and I love her. Has she won anything? No, but she's a great, she's been a great horse. Okay. I want to breed to a stud. What stud do you convert to? What's a stud that, you know, is a rainer that one... 20,000. Okay. We're going to flush her. Okay. So now we're feeding another mouth.

Now we've got this baby on the ground. Now the baby's trying to die. So we got to take it to that and we've got it to live. Now we're at the yearling stage and we get 8,500 and it actually costs us 15,000 to get there. Yeah. So that is all something you want to do a little bit later in your career. And right now you want to get rid of those things hanging over your head like that, where you can be free to go and learn and then start easing yourself into that business and getting that revenue built up and then you start owning horses. That would be my suggestion. Like I said, I know that's not the answer you want to hear, but I think. That you're doing what a lot of people do, where they think they can breed their way into a career.

And I don't think that you can. I think you have to have a service line in your business first, and then we can start buying those mares to breed and full. And that can definitely be profitable. It's just really hard to do it the way you're doing it right now. It definitely makes sense to look at it as part of a profit standpoint of having to have multiple heads. Like by the time you get done paying for one, you might as well have three or you're not going to make any money. Yeah. It's just a lot of risk for somebody that's just trying to get started. So what you really want to do for yourself, if this is something you really want to do, is start getting a revenue stream. That's what you want to do. You've got to get some consistent monthly revenue and then you can build up to owning those mares.

That's great advice. And right now, like I've got the revenue coming in from the people that board at my facility. Yeah, for sure. And that's great. So I'm like hoping I can get that more consistent, more stable. So coming from that and saying, hey, back off on your own breeding and offer more services, would this be something that you would consider saying, once I get my brand built up, hey. Blank company, which would be me and my facility, is looking to partner with either another repro company, bring in some sort of a vet that does this. Yeah, I mean, you know, could bring a vet in that just palpates at your palace every day and you manage those mayors. That's how we started this. We managed mayors for people and a vet drove in here and not here, but at our north facility and palpated mayors every day. And that was how we started. We didn't have a full-time vet.

We did that. We managed the contracts. We kept communication with the people. We did a lot. And that's how Solo became what it was today. That's what it started at in 2019, 2020 was we filled a gap of people that were sick of calling a breeding facility and getting no answer. Yeah. And no, why is my mare open? I don't know, but I don't have time to talk to you right now. That's the gap that we filled. Very good gap to fill. There's your business plan right there. You don't you're not paying a vet salary. You're not but you can bill all that out. You can build a mare management out. You can build a board out. You can build the falling out out. And that's what creates your business. That's really good advice because another woman that I talked to that I worked for temporarily before I went or break said the same thing.

Like most people that come to me for AI and embryo transfer are people who had a bad experience at a large place, like an overall salient station or whatever. And she has now created a pretty good business. And she said it was because like it took one bad taste at a big business and then it became private. And now I have what I have. So it was a good relief to hear you say that. Same exact thing. Yes. Thank you so much. Yeah, for sure. You're welcome. Hi, I'm Nylee Perkle and my question has to do with kind of your habits of risk-taking coming from being a nurse not having a horse background and coming in and starting this business and especially solo select is really known for some things that we haven't seen in the horse industry before like all of these online sales previously like most people want to look at the horse and see it before purchasing it.

And now it's super common to just get on one of your sales and just place a bid and buy a horse. So what kind of justifies those risks for you and what gave you the confidence to take those steps? I think for me, I learned a long time ago that when I had a gut feeling, I just need to run with it. And that's just something that personally, you know, when Ty and I discuss different things within the business, if one of us ever uses that term, we don't use it lightly. A great example is going to buy Third Edge. We had a pro forma. We had a number we were going to go to. It was not a lot less, but quite a bit less. The number that we ended up giving that day and Ty was back there bidding and he was like, what do you think? And I was like...

I think that's good. I think that's enough. And he's I just got a gut feeling. We got to have this. Yeah. I'm like, OK, that's it. And then you go to work to get them paid for. I remember the night I started the online sale, I told him I'm going to start an online sale. And he was like, OK. And I was like, I just have a gut feeling like this is the time to do it. Like it was during COVID. There was a couple others popping up here and there. And I was like, I just think that we can like really make this take off. Like, I think I can do it, In a non, not to be like cocky, but I was like, I just think I can do it better. I think I can do it at a higher level. I think I can do it bigger, whatever.

Some of it is also, I think some people will spend months planning stuff. And everybody that's in this room that works for me absolutely loves and hates the fact that they will walk in the door one day and I'm like, this is what we're doing. And they had no idea that this was even a thing. Like the other day I walked up here. I'm like, hey, we're starting an online racehorse sale company. I need a logo today, preferably yesterday. And so I think a lot of it is just like the delusion of if I think of it too much and I think about it too much, I'm probably going to talk myself out of it. So I don't think about it much. I just do it. It's like I have a gut feeling. I think it was time to do an online racehorse sale company.

And then the next day I was on it. It was like that we had a logo. We had a website. We had the auction website ordered. We had. And so for everybody's different. But for me, what I hear a lot of people do in the horse business is they're like, I'm going to do this and here's my plan. And I'm like, OK, when are you going to do it? Let's go. If we're doing it, let's go and do it. So I think that is where most people have a lot of great ideas and a lot of great plans and they just never act on them. And so you just have to have the delusional confidence that it's going to work. And if it doesn't, just know that there might not be a backup plan, but you'll figure it out. Now, does that mean you should go out and spend a million dollars on a place tomorrow with no business plan? That's not what I'm talking about.

Yeah. You build up to that. But I don't know. I just always knew when it was time. But I always in my mind kind of balance out, like, what is there to lose? Like, when I quit my nursing job, I'm like, I can get another job tomorrow. If I do this for two or three months and it doesn't work, then it's not really a big loss. If I start an online sale company, I'm out. The website design, I'm out some money, but it's not going to drown me. Yeah. So, yeah. I don't want people to think that one day I was just like, oh, I'm going to go buy this $5 million stud with no plan. Yeah. That's not how it worked. But sometimes you just know when it's time to step outside your boundaries a little bit. For sure.

And then my other one's a little bit more of a lighthearted, like, fun question. So I absolutely love the marketing campaign for the fireman right now with all of the Gainesville Fire Department. It's amazing. so when breeders are having these foals and we're choosing these registered names what are your thoughts on having fun creative names that could go into marketing campaigns like that versus using their bloodline to generate a new name yeah so what are your thoughts on that from a business standpoint my me and cody in my front office have the most fun ever naming horses and we never name them with their bloodline almost never okay and so i love a fun name on a horse And so like the fireman is awesome to me.

And I think it's really cool when you can tie it into something like he's by Inferno 66 and then to come up with the fireman is really cool. So I am a big, I love the dark side. Yeah. That was a one that I'd had that name on my list for years. And I was like, when I get a really cool stud, I have so many good branding ideas with this. So I have this, it's like the most locked up thing that I have is my name list, jokingly. Me and Cody's AQHA name list. the dark side's out on that for a lot of years. But I renamed him as a two-year-old because I was like, I think this is a great horse. And I know I can just do great things with that name. So yeah, I'm all about giving him cool names that you can market around.

And it makes your job a lot easier. Like we have LBR Hingham and Marie is responsible for marketing him. And we can still do a good job marketing, but we can't take him to the fire station because his name is not the fireman. So that's less fun. So I'm all about making him cool names. Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. Absolutely. I'm Ava Wright, and I wanted to start off with a question for Hayden. Being here as long as you have, what's the soft skill you think you've grown in the most? Soft skill I've grown in the most, probably just overall like willingness to learn every day and like new things every day. It's like Mel said earlier, she walks in with an idea and there's a trickle down effect with that for sure.

I probably don't. Hayden might not be the first to know it's a new idea, but he takes the run of the force. By about two, three o'clock in the afternoon, the idea has trickled all the way down. But there's a little bit of that, like you don't know what's around the next corner. and just being light on your feet and willing to learn every day and ready for a new challenge would probably be one of the soft skills that I've worked on most here. And flexibility, I would say. It's a good name. It's a good way to describe that. Like the ability to walk in every day and be flexible and excited about different and new opportunities. And Hayden's really good about that. And really everybody here is really good about that besides Matt. Everybody's really good about that.

Jokingly, I say besides Matt, but no, I think that's a really big deal. And I would say that's how you would describe that. Yeah. Like you said, everybody's got to be that way around here because that's just that's part of it. And it's just how it goes is being flexible. And if if you're too rigid, I don't know that it would work out very well. And Matt's just brittle. He'll bend eventually. He's flexible eventually. And I think like here we've got growing pains all the time. I always describe it to everybody. I'm. This was not a fun experience, like going back five times to Hamilton to our rope horse maturity this year because we kept forgetting the stands or not bringing the right stands to put our marketing material up. So Hayden, unfortunately, had to deal with that.

But I'm always like, and he's good at being flexible. Everybody here is good at being flexible, but we're going to make it better on the next one. We're going to get more organized and we're going to get it together. So it's just we're growing so fast. That flexibility is important. But then also being able to step back and say, what do we need to do different to make it better next time? So there's a lot of that here because we're just growing faster than any of us know how to handle. We've never been in this position before, so we're all making it up as we go. That's great. Yeah, it's great to be adaptable and flexible. Yeah. And then I have a question for you as well. Is there any current or upcoming legislation that has impacted how you do things such as the Horse Protection Act?

My knowledge, the Horse Protection Act isn't affecting us yet, but it sounds like it might. The biggest thing that we're dealing with right now on that is the export frozen embryos. And that is something that I know there's people working on both the Australian side, the Brazilian side, and our side to work with USDA to figure out what regulations we need to follow when aspirating those mares and freezing those embryos in the ICSI lab to make sure that they are within the limits of being quarantined and eligible for export and all the proper testing has been done and all of that. But also getting those different countries to allow us to send those genetics over there, that has been a big hurdle.

So not only making sure that we have a set of USDA guidelines to follow, but also the acceptance of those embryos in other countries. Hi. My name is Serena Rikio. Okay, so it might be a little redundant after the whole export talk. Yeah. But you were saying that you export to Australia and Brazil. How do you generate clients from those areas? And then also honing in on Brazil, because at the APHA, they talked about they don't really do a whole lot of cow horse stuff. It's mostly raining. So I was wondering. Yeah. Those are good questions. So for Australia, we have an agent over there, and this is all just making great connections. We have a wonderful agent over there, Tish Healy, that we've had a great relationship with for probably about two years.

She is the one that generates a lot of the hype around the stallions. And of course, in Australia, fortunately, we have enough social media momentum that the momentum still feeds over in Australia. And so those people are very excited when our studs come over there, and they typically sell out. Super well. But as far as getting the clients over there, it's a mix of those two. Our media and our marketing here, it reaches all over the world. It doesn't just reach the United States, which has been wonderful for us. We don't do print advertising or anything over there. Their sources are name brand because of our media presence. And that's why you see us with what you're walking into up here, a podcast studio for full-time girls here that are working on media all day, every day. That's what they do.

And it's for reasons like that. Same thing in Brazil. We've created a following for those horses. The media presence has been a huge part of that. I would say the large majority of that. Obviously, you still have to have good horses. Miles and Trevor winning on the rope horse studs has been a huge part of it, too. But we've got to make sure they know that they're winning or it doesn't matter. So the. I always tell Miles and Trevor or Kenny or whoever's riding horses, you just have to win and I'll make sure everybody knows about it. They'll be sick of looking at them winning, I promise. Just make sure that you win and we'll handle the rest. And so that's what we've done. It's been a great partnership between the trainers that we have that have successfully shown in taking care of these studs and our media team.

And I think that's what's led to the success and essentially the acquisition of those customers because of the demand in those other countries. So do you think most of that popularity in those horses has grown because of your media or are there other outside factors? I would say it's first of all because they're winners and then second of all because of the media. You can't, you can only media a horse so much. You can't just throw one in and it's pretty and they'll breed to it. But them seeing those horses win plus growing to be fans, right? That's what all of us that are up here are trying to do is we're trying to create fans and culture and followers and a brand recognition for these studs.

And so that feeds across borders. And I think that's what has I think it's a mix of both of those two things. To say, too, we also have great agents. Tish is a big part of it. If we don't have a good agent in Australia and they don't have somebody that can speak their speak, understands the shipping logistics, makes it easy for them to get contracts and it's not going to work. Same thing in Brazil. We have Carlos Bengal that handles all of our stuff there exclusively. And it's the same thing. We have a great agent over there that he's on the streets every day talking to those people. And that does have effect on it. But we have to give him the tools in his toolkit to be able to promote those horses, which is horses that win and meet.

We give him, it's a team effort. The trainers do a great job, allows us to do a great job marketing those horses, allows our agents to do a great job selling the contracts, allows the breeders to get a return on their babies, which all comes back into they're going to breed back. Thank you. You're welcome. I have a couple of questions. First one, I actually have on my notes, so I'm sorry. I have a follow-up question for you. I think Ava asked you about soft skills. What other skills did you learn outside of the technical handling of the stallions in the stallion barn? What did you learn as a person in your time here with Melanie and her company? As a person, just like overall in my experience, I've grown a lot in.

Like I said, learning every day. What they're teaching me extends far past just like handling the studs in the barn and whatnot a lot on the i'd done more mericare side before this and so the stallion side was definitely new to me and processing semen and handling frozen semen shipments and all that was it's been it's been all brand new to me so i've learned quite a bit i'm gonna interrupt you and tell you juggling.

Basically professional juggler. I need you to take Seaman to North. I need you to go pick up Memorial South. Just kidding. Go to North. Just kidding. Drive to Weatherford right now and go pick up this stall sign, please. And I need you here in one hour. I know it's a three hour drive, but hurry up. Yes. That is, I think, what you've had to get really good at. Juggling for sure. And like on a more serious note, just time management skills as a person. And then And ordering your priorities throughout the day has been a big part of it. Organization. Yeah, 100%. We talked about flexibility earlier, but having that built-in flexibility, knowing where you can bend and where you can't. And what absolutely has to get done first off the bat and where you can fill some other things in. I think communication, too.

I'm just thinking back on things that I feel like you've really grown in is learning to communicate with you. You don't talk to the customers much yet, but just with your team and learning how to, make sure that there is enough communication when there's as much going on as there is around here. We are like group techs nuts around here. We have a million group techs. And I think Caden's probably learned to love and use those because they're very important here. Absolutely. And just being like with what I do here, it extends to everywhere else other than just South. So I'm in talking to people at South and Repro and North all at the same time trying to get game plans together, especially during breeding season, when we're trying to get embryos from point A to point B or trying to get semen from point A to point B.

Lately here, it's been getting different mares and weanelands from point A to point B. So the communication is a big part of it. And Mel's absolutely right. They are group chat fans. I want everybody to know what's going on and I don't want anybody to have an excuse they didn't hear about it. Absolutely. If you look at your group chat, what's going on here? And it getting lost in the group chat is not an answer. No, that's the wrong answer. You need to read it. Coming out of that, what are your goals for your future based on your point that you're in our career right now? And how much did you learn from this experience? Do you plan to continue here or do you have other goals for your career? What do you think for your future?

As long as Melanie and Matt and Ty will give me a place to sit down and continue to put up with me, I'd love to continue here. That's my goals is, like I said, coming into this place, we, I wanted somewhere that I could invest in someplace that would invest back in me as far as time and knowledge and I've found that here, it's a really unique opportunity and I'd like to take that and run with it as far as they'll let me go. But as far as goals is just continue to grow. Continue to grow in my own role, but as long as well with the company, as this company scales, scale with it and continue to learn every day and improve on my individual skills and see where the opportunity can take me. Marie, that's behind this podcast wall right now, is a great example of somebody that came in and very passionate about the media.

Had a background in it, but didn't necessarily have the experience of picturing horses or videoing horses in the specific way that we do here and like she's completely taken a hold of it and she's very passionate about it and for her just like Hayden there's it's a cool opportunity here because we're growing so much so they can grow with us and there's this we never know what they're going to be doing in a year most people that have been here this time last year were not doing the same thing right now that they were doing this time last year it's cool to see these people that are growing with us and I always say some people can take the growth and some people can't and that's okay there's nothing wrong with that some people are super they're finding their role here they love it and they don't want to grow past that they want to go home every day and that's totally fine there's not a thing wrong with that and then there's some people that really want to see how high they can reach and that's a whole other trajectory for that person one's not right or wrong these people that do really want to grow here have a place to do i guess is what i'm trying to say and there is a lot of places is that they're capped off and you're getting what you get.

But we always say we want to rule the world here. So there's no telling what we're going next. And to Melanie's point there about not being where the same place you were in a year is when I started here, it was doing stuff in the diagnostics lab and frozen semen. And in three months, it was processing semen and handling more of the studs. And then immediately after breeding season, we went head on and the racehorse stuff and self-hitting yearlands and. Now we're transitioning towards the cowhorses as we get ready for the NCHA sale. And I'm in a very different place than I was at the beginning of the year when I started here. And I think there's a lot of people that kind of fit that bill. Yeah, that's cool.

You generating this space for people to grow is awesome. Based on that, how involved are you on a daily operations, the book of Stallion, the managing of the mayors? How involved are you in those activities? So I am really involved day to day and everything here. I usually get here to the office when it's quiet somewhere between 5, 530 in the morning and nobody's in here and I can get a lot of my things done. And that's my time to knock out things that I need to knock out. And then I am very involved in everything from stallion contracts. I'm in there talking to Madison just about every day. What's going on? What fires do we need to put out? Whatever it may be. I'm down in the stallion barn. What are we freezing on?

When do we have semen ready to go? So during breeding season, I'm at the recent farm every day to check in on that and make sure logistically everything's happening because we may have 30 to 40 embryos to put in one day. And sometimes there's decisions that have to be made that I have to make about those. And so I'm very involved in that, too. Laura is our controller. I spend time with her every day. They make this idea that when you have a business, you have all this free time. There's no free time. But I'm okay with that right now. I love what we're doing. I love the build. I love the journey and the experience. And it's fun to me right now. So that's good. One day, maybe it won't be. But right now, I love it. So I am very involved day to day, probably annoyingly involved.

In fact, Marie just gave me a speech about two weeks ago that she was like, you got to get out of our group chat for media a little bit. You got to let us do our thing. I try to give them their space still, but I want to be involved. It's hard because you want everything to be at your standard. And so when you're building a new social media team that you had one person last year and now you have five, it just takes time and training to recreate them into you. And it's how all of it's been. And once I get like the ReSIP side is pretty self-sufficient now. So I don't have to be there as much. But when that very first started, I was there half the day. So it's building out these little pieces of the business. And I find myself always like less involved in places that I've got.

Up and going and more involved in new places. But I'm probably over-involved in some parts of it. But I just want it to be great. I want it to all be at the level that it would be that I think it would be if I was in there doing it. Most of these people can do their job better than I could do their job, but I like to think I'm as good as they are sometimes. I have two more and then I'm over. Sure. To your point, though, you're, like you said, you're usually the first one here and usually the last one to leave. And as somebody that comes in and sees that and creating that culture, it's really easy to buy into a brand when the person that's at the head of it is working just as hard and harder than everybody else that works here. Absolutely.

Yeah. And I think it's a respect thing. And we try to have a good work-life balance here. Hayden probably gets a short end of that stick because he's the new guy on the blog. But that is one thing. I feel like a lot of horse places, nobody gets any work-life balance. They just work all the time. And work-life balance is a myth, to be really clear. If you're passionate about something, there is a balance. It's never going to be perfect. It's always going to be a little more work, a little less home, a little more home, a little less work. Like, it's never going to be in balance. It's work-life juggling. Yes, that's right. It's a juggle all the time. We push trying to make sure that people get to have a life.

And because I want them to be here for a long time and that doesn't mean everybody will and that's okay but we want them to be able to have a real career here that gives them the opportunity to have a family and have a life and but also be really passionate involved with their career so that's as a leader that's always something that I'm trying to juggle is we want to be the best and I want you to be the best and sometimes that requires extra time in the beginning but do we see a light at the end of the tunnel where that's going to pay off one day. If you were to buy a new chunk of the equine industry, what chunk would you choose? Oh, that's a bad question because you'll get my brain running.

All these people in here will be like, no, don't say it. So I'm very interested right now in like the biologic side of the industry. I don't know how to describe it because I did not go to bat school. But breeding technologies. Yeah, and medication supplies. And just I think that's like a whole world that we could be really active in because we have such a volume of horses here that we have good ways to. We're always seeing what that industry is lacking. Hey, we need a better vaccination for this or we need a whatever it is. So that's one side of the industry that I think we'll ease into at some point. The racehorse side is a new part of it, the quarter horse racing side. The part that I would really like to trump one day, and I think this is our...

10-year plan is the thoroughbred world. Like, I want to go take that world on a little bit. I think it would be cool to see. That's something that would require a Kentucky facility realistically and all of that, but that's something that I would love to take a hold of. I think that there's a lot of opportunity there, and it's done on a whole different level. It's just new and exciting and fun, and it would just be something cool and different. So, I would say those are the two places. What are things that, if you have to educate yourself throughout this process of growing your business and if you did what kind of content do you recommend for people to consume become better it's just sure so I would say the first one is a little bit of a cheesy answer but self-care has been a really big deal for me when I first started this like I didn't drink water every day I didn't eat good I didn't sleep enough I didn't do any of those things what I began to learn is first of all you get older and then it's just hard to compensate from no sleep so that's part of it but the other thing is I was like I can't be as good of a leader and I can't do a good job and have a good attitude and be there for my people when they mean me to be there if running on four hours of sleep last night and I'm grumpy that doesn't work for me some people can do four hours of sleep and they're golden that is not me and so a lot of my personal growth has been like creating a routine for myself.

This is a lot of on the surround yourself with the right people thing. I used to not be an early riser. Like I didn't, I wasn't on an early riser. And a lot of people I started to be around were. And they started, they get up at four o'clock in the morning. And then all of a sudden, what do I catch myself doing? Starting to get up at four o'clock in the morning. That 4 a.m. wake up time has really only been like maybe in the last two years. I'm a morning person now. and it's crazy how much you can get done that early. I swear that's accelerated this place because I get two hours. I feel like when everybody walks through that door at eight, I'm already two to three hours ahead of them. Like I'm already way ahead of what they're doing for the day.

And it sounds silly, but just learning to get in those areas, habits to take care of myself to make sure that when I walk in these doors physically, I'm being the best that I can be every day. And I'm not having to fight that I'm tired or not on point that day. As far as what did I listen to or do to get better at that, I love the Huberman Lab podcast. He's really good. I was having a really hard time sleeping and I listened to all of his podcasts about sleep and changed a lot of things. And now I can lay down, I go to sleep, I get my eight hours in every night my phone is on do not disturb at seven o'clock and I might be asleep then it might be eight but sometimes it's seven but I've just learned that I'm so much better that way I just feel like I'm ahead of everybody every day instead of always behind I'm ahead of them like I said it sounds silly but that and meeting with the right doctors and getting the right supplements I take a ton of supplements every day but I'm just like I have to be the best I can be all these employees rely on me to be the best I can be that day so that's It's something that is really important to me, and it's made a huge change in my career.

I really think that you talk about personal growth, and my personal growth over the last couple years, just being around the right people and getting into those different habits has been like, I've said it a couple times tonight, but it's like jet fuel. You just, you get it, and all of a sudden you're taken off. My name is Sylvia Nelson Martinez, and I'm just blown away by this facility. But walking through your stud barn, they all come from different backgrounds. Disciplines, whether that be cutting, cow horse reining. But I guess my question is, was the goal always to have your foot into each one of those disciplines? Or what was your turning point if not? That's a great question. Honestly, in the beginning, whenever I started this, I couldn't afford to have cutting horses. I could afford to have the first studs I started with, which were just really nice, big, pretty strong, good horses.

They were probably not going to sire, and maybe not because they couldn't, just because people weren't going to try them to be cutting maturity champions, but that's what I could afford. That's what I could promote, and that's what I started with. Yeah. Felt like they were really quality horses. Goes back to the very best. They were horses that a lot of people could afford to breed to. We did our best to put them in the best incentives. And that was before incentives were such a thing. We did a really good job of marketing them so that these people had resale on their foals. And that was like my stepping stone. Then I stepped up to some cow horses. And that was good. And I could afford those and made those work.

And then I stepped up into the rope horse world. And that was the same way. Like it was the right place at the right time getting into that and then being able to partner with Miles and Trevor. And we both brought really great things to the table. They bought the training program. We brought the marketing and combined all those together to create what I think has just been magic as far as partnerships go. And and then really being able to start getting into the cutting where I could finally afford to buy the colt or the prospect that I thought was good enough that was just the most expensive one to buy and I think it was just like I don't have to buy the best cutting stud that exists seven years ago to start this I just had my stepping stones and every single stepping stone was really important to Woody, to Third Edge, to LBR Hingham, to these studs that you see in the barn.

But all of those studs in 2018 and 2019 that weren't maybe that caliber of horse were They were extremely important in my personal development to learn how to manage people and talk to people and go through the ups and downs of a breeding season and manage a stallion's contracts and just all those things. So I think I didn't really necessarily start out and say I want to have a stud from every discipline. It was just how it worked out. But now we use that to our advantage because it makes us it just we can appeal to so many different people. And we love that here instead of just having cutting studs. So I wouldn't say that if I was writing the business plan seven years ago, that would have been the business plan, but that's what it's morphed into.

And we've kept it that way because it's worked well. So we have a little bit of everything here now, and we have all tiers of horses, right? So we have studs at $1,500 stud fees that I still feel like are really quality horses. They're big and pretty and kind and good-minded, and they're bred good, and they can breed to them for a price point and get a great return on their foal. We have studs that are age 10,000, and it's the same way. So it's cool. I enjoy that. And I enjoy getting to serve every tier of the horse population and that group rather than just having, oh, I only want to have best studs in the industry. I want to have a stud that fits everybody. And I think that we've done a good job of that here. Yes, ma'am. Absolutely. Awesome.

Not so much of a question, but the class that you took, the Horse Management Enterprise, that's my husband's class, Dr. Martinez. That's cool. So I just, it's more thanking you for being a great representative of Tarleton, but also thanking you, Melanie, because proof's in the pudding. So your impact on a small equine program at Tarleton obviously got you, him. Yeah, it's awesome. No, I think it's cool. And I love, I tell everybody that comes every year. You guys have no idea how much opportunity there is in the horse business right now because there is a lot of people in that generation and the 20 to 25 year old to 30 year old generation, they are just not going to hook up and do it. They're going to give you about 50% effort. Yeah. And that's cool.

It's just like you can't do great things at 50% effort. Yeah. It's cool if that's what you want to do. It doesn't fit around here very often. And yeah, it is cool to have somebody like Hayden come. And we have Dawson Price, who's Dustin's son. And he's how old is Dawson? Probably 22? 22, 23. 22 or 23. Like he's amazing at what he does. And he's learned a different way than Hayden has. he's come through it with his dad and raised in the industry and got out of high school and went to college for a little bit, but then got out of college and did this. And so we have a lot of great young people around here, which I love. Like, it's cool to see them starting to just get their bearings about them and figure out what direction they want to go.

Yeah, absolutely. But it's easy to follow a great leader. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Hi, my name is Anna Honeycutt. I am currently horseless for the first time in my life. And I was curious about what your thoughts are on your nursing background and doing that? Do you regret the time that took or do you see yourself using your nursing experience in the horse world today? Do I regret it? In some ways, not at all. I think it's the path that you take leads you right where you're supposed to be. If I could go rewrite it, would I do it again? If I wanted to do what I'm doing today, no. I would have done differently. I would have either gone to law school or got an accounting degree, one or the other.

But I didn't. And did the nursing helped me here? Not really. I'm not a very good vet tech. They try to get me to help with vet tech. I'm not much help to them. I pretty much dumped all the medication names from pharmacology out of my mind. Had I not wanted to start a business and I wanted to live what I call a normal life and have my barrel horses or whatever, cutting horse and go show and work 40 hours a week or whatever, would that have been a good job choice? Absolutely I think it would have been very good you have great job security good benefits there's a lot of ways you can go with it you can go from a nurse on the floor to medical sales to you know the ER and I love the ER and the one thing the ER did teach me I worked nights whenever they were short staff so we were in the trauma rooms a lot and it was like having to make decisions on your feet that you probably weren't really prepared to make but they're you're all they got that day and that's a little bit where I come into this today where I'm just like, listen, you're either going to sink or swim.

And I think y'all can swim today, but sink or swim and you're going to figure it out. I treaded water today. I'm like, that's fine. We didn't sink. And so some of that comes from some of the ER stuff is it's like it was sink or swim and sinking wasn't an option. So you just figure it out. But back to your question, would I go back and change it? Yes. If I wanted to live a normal life, would I? Probably not. I think nursing would have been a good career. Hey, my name is Sarah Sheeler. And my question is, I know you talked about the accounting and finances and stuff. And then you talked about how your love is really marketing and stuff. What more trait in yourself were you surprised that you used in starting your own business?

The ability back to the sink or swim of just figuring it out. You should just all write that on your mirror in the morning. Let's just figure it out. Because no matter whether you're a business owner or you're somebody that's a part of my team that works here, that is such a big deal. If somebody comes in and I'm like, I don't have time to deal with this right now. You're trying to figure it out. And they can actually figure it out. That's huge for me. I'm like, you're amazing. Like, I love you right now. But same thing for me. Some days it's like, you just have to figure it out. That's the only choice you have. And so I think personally, what I've said seven years ago, that was going to be the thing that gave my business the momentum to get to where it is today. I probably wouldn't have had a clue how much figuring it out I was going to do.

You talk about accounting and I didn't have a choice. Me and ChatGPT have figured out a lot of accounting over the last year. Don't kid yourself. And but people think that you run these businesses and you just know everything and you don't. It's not and it's not anything to be embarrassed of. You don't know what you don't know. I've had to do a lot of reading, a lot of studying, a lot of asking dumb questions and to figure out whether it's accounting or marketing stuff. I didn't go to school for marketing. I've winged it and it's worked really good because I think naturally that was probably one of my strengths was marketing. Once again, we just figured it out, made it work. That's, you do that, you can be, you can run a business or you can be very successful working for somebody.

But I think that's the biggest trait of people that I think find the most success here is their ability to figure it out without me holding their hand. And some of that as a leader is learning to let them have the space to figure it out and not just giving them the answer to. So that is like when you think of personal development as a leader, that's probably a big thing that I've had to take a step back and be like, I can't fix everything for you. I can fix it, but I'm not going to today. You're going to have to do it. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. So we had a lot of great questions tonight. Me and Hayden answered some questions from Tarleton students. It was wonderful. Hopefully some of this applies to you guys. These guys came last year and had amazing questions.

And that's why I really wanted to try to capture this time because they, just like tonight, had very thoughtful things that really make you think deeper than you wanted to on a Friday night at seven o'clock, but great questions. And appreciate you guys coming out and taking the time to ask all of those and coming to see us. If you guys want to follow Sola Select, of course you can on all of our socials, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. And we'd love to have you guys along for the ride and appreciate you guys listening in tonight.