Please don't become paranoid over what I'm about to tell you. Whether you like it or not, people are searching for your phone number, your e-mail address and your website on their computers. They want to learn more about you, contact you and even look at a satellite...

I wrote the following newsletter article in September of 2008 before the recession stormed into our lives. No doubt some of your customers were pinched by the recession and stopped taking lessons, reduced the amount of training they hired you for or got out of horses...

Our son Will's friend, John, parked his bike on the lawn in front of the barn. After a jaw drop and a double take, the wayback machine took me to 1962 and memories of my first bike. It was an identical black Schwinn with the same saddleback black and white seat with...

A reader e-mailed recently as a follow up to a Profitable Horseman newsletter about employees from the employer's view: Doug, Have really enjoyed your newsletter and have been getting it for a couple of years. Now, will you write one from the employee's view. How to...

If you are like many professional horsemen, finding the right people to help you in your business is one of your biggest challenges. That's partly because candidates with horse experience are limited, the rate of pay in the equine industry is low in comparison to...

"No brag, just fact." That's what actor Walter Brennan would cackle as he played a cowboy character named Will Sonnett in a TV series of long ago that aired about the same time Star Trek's Captain Kirk was starting on a five year mission. Will Sonnett was keen on...

Probably not, for these and more reasons: 1. It takes too long 2. The roast slices would be small and chunky and unappetizing 3. The knife blade, not designed for slicing meat, could easily slip and cut you In plain words, it's unwise and not something you'd want to...

"She's a screaming crazy woman", the boarding farm owner said in disgust, "and she is trying to make me that way, too. She's just not logical and everything in the barn is a drama even though there is no stage!" Have you ever had a customer like that? Unlike emotional...

Recently I was thinking about routines, patterns and assumptions and how they affect the way people move through their days, weeks and months. A memory flashback took me back to a kitchen scene in my fraternity house in college starring Juanita, the frat house cook....

When agriculture was making the transition from horses as the primary farm power unit to tractors, leather straps and wood were replaced with steel angle and channel iron to bolt and attach farm tools like planters, plows and pickers. Eventually, every farm tool and...