Grace Purdum - What Service-Based Businesses Can Learn from a Horse Rescue

In this episode, we’re diving into an unexpected source of business wisdom: a horse rescue. Join us as we sit down with Grace Purdom, President of Hope for Horses and co-owner of Advantage Horsemanship,  to uncover how innovative strategies for managing a horse rescue and riding school can offer fresh perspectives and approaches for service-based businesses. 

Grace shares her journey of relocating a nonprofit across the country and rebuilding its entire donor and volunteer base through community outreach, marketing automation, and innovative business models. We’ll discuss how she applied tech solutions like automated email campaigns and subscription-based services to streamline operations and increase profitability—lessons that service-based business owners can learn from to improve efficiency, build stronger relationships, and scale sustainably.

Whether you’re in marketing, consulting, or any service-based industry, this episode will challenge you to think outside the box and adopt new strategies from the barn to the boardroom. If you're ready to innovate and automate in ways you never considered, this conversation is for you!

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Transcript

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Marketing and Community Outreach

Natasha Clawson 0:11

Hello and welcome to the podcast . Today I have my friend , grace Purdom on . She is president of Hope for Horses , a nonprofit that helps horses , and she's also co-owner of Advantage Horsemanship . You might be wondering what horses have to do with the type of business I run , which is online , but I think really anything can have a lesson out of it , and , even though this is different than some of the service-based businesses I work with , there are so many things that we can draw a connection from . So I'm really excited to talk to Grace . I know she has lots to share . So , grace , hello and welcome Hi .

Grace Purdum 0:46

thank you for having me . I'm really excited yeah .

Natasha Clawson 0:50

Tell us a little bit about Hope for Horses . We're going to talk a little bit about some of the systems you've implemented . First , marketing for Hope for Horses and how it's made a huge difference . And Hope for Horses has been around for many years , but you took it over about two . Is it two years or is it longer than that ? Two years , okay , yeah .

Grace Purdum 1:09

So Hope for Horses started in 2013 in California . I took it over about two years ago and we did try to run it in two different places . I'm from Virginia , my family's here , and so we tried to make Virginia a satellite facility . I went to California , ran it there for about a year and we decided , you know , we really had an amazing support system and base here in Virginia . I already had a farm and a big facility , and so we decided that moving the entire operation to Virginia would be best for it to be able to keep going and keep growing . So it officially moved this year , in 2024 . And we adopted out our last horse in California in April of this year . So it's kind of a very fresh start here in Virginia .

Grace Purdum 2:03

And so the marketing has been actually a huge thing for us because , moving a nonprofit from one coast to the other , we had all of our marketing and donor base . Everything was in California , and so one of the things I had to talk to the board about was I know that we're all super stoked to have it coming to Virginia , but everybody needs to be aware that we're going to be cutting our donor base in half . So you know , let's say we were bringing in $400,000 as a nonprofit , look this year to hope to bring in two Probably pretty scary yeah . So I you know what I had to explain to everybody was moving the nonprofit to a new coast . We're going to . We aren't known here , so marketing ourselves to new donors is going to be crucial and essentially we're going to be starting over here in Virginia .

Natasha Clawson 2:57

And so , when you knew that you were going to be starting over , what things did you start looking at ? What did you do differently , and how are you seeing success now ? You start looking at .

Grace Purdum 3:06

What did you do differently and how are you seeing success now ? We really started with community outreach . I know social media is great , the internet is great , so obviously we , you know , tried to work harder with TikToks and reels and really spreading who we are , that we're here in town , this is what we do . But community outreach for us was huge and trying to connect with even businesses that have nothing to do with horses . So , running a golf tournament we ran our first annual golf tournament because something we know is that you don't have to like horses to want to play golf and win a tournament . Right . So being able to reach out to businesses even that have nothing to do with horses .

Natasha Clawson 3:47

Yeah , thinking outside the box and going outside of maybe the normal donor pool that other horse rescues could be tapping into too . So that's great , yeah . And when you say community outreach , you definitely have the social aspect , but were there other elements of like in-person community outreach that you did that worked for you ?

Grace Purdum 4:06

Yeah , opening our doors to volunteer orientations . So we made sure to host a annual open house where we had bounce houses and food trucks , so something that really had nothing to do with obviously obtaining volunteers , obtaining money , but just opening our farm to the community to bring kids and families . And we do a trunk or treat yearly . So it's free , you just come and you bring your kids and you dress up , and so these things . Ultimately , we know they're not going to make us any money . There's no money that's going to be made at a trunk retreat , right , um . But the hope is then that they'll say hey , do you have volunteers ? Do you want volunteers ? Or maybe their kids want to come for riding lessons ? Uh , so being able to open our doors to have free events to the community , where you know it doesn't cost us a lot but it lets people know we're here , that was huge . And then that was able to grow into having volunteer orientations where we open our doors to talk about how you can volunteer here and all the different aspects of that .

Natasha Clawson 5:17

Yeah , and I want to take a second just to loop this back for some of my service business folks who might be in the audience and just talking about marketing and where most people I know start is , you know , some social media but a lot of personal outreach .

Natasha Clawson 5:29

The reality is most businesses start with referrals . They start with the people you know . They start with your local chamber , and I think sometimes the thought is now to just jump on social media , which is great , but I think it's can be slower to get results in the beginning , and so really leveraging your personal relationships , those in-person connections , and what it all comes back down to is relationships , and building relationships take time . They take in-person or they take , you know , social media is great , but you can build a connection with someone in person so much quicker . And so the natural cycle I see of building a business is starting with that referral base and then growing your social and then eventually that becomes the engine for bringing you leads . But it starts kind of in that referral space , which is what you guys have done in rebuilding this business . I know that you have also done some email marketing and some changes to that . What have you guys done and seen success with there ?

Grace Purdum 6:20

Yeah , so definitely creating a new portal for donations and email marketing , being able to run campaigns and better track our donations . So finding a system that was relatively all in one was huge for us . Somewhere that automated emails could go out , you know you could schedule them and but not only schedule emails , but every time a donation comes in , having an automated thank you that instantly gets pushed out , things like that . That was huge for us to create . And that doesn't mean you don't follow up to nurture your donors and I know we can talk about that in a bit but that doesn't mean you don't follow up . But being able to just have that instant , like they automatically get a thank you , that's huge for us . So that's optimizing right the systems .

Natasha Clawson 7:17

Yeah , I guess I should have introduced that . I used to volunteer for Hope for Horses years and years at the beginning of this podcast , which I forgot . Well , I didn't forget that I did , I just forgot to introduce it and one of the things I helped set up was that donation portal . But one of the things I know is that when we did donation campaigns , getting the thank yous out was always a pain point because there just wasn't a lot of manpower . And so having that automated thank you is this touch point . You know that's always there and definitely like reach out with a personal thank you too , but if you miss it it's like a fail safe and it's immediate recognition because you know we might not be able to get to it for two to three days . So that immediate recognition is huge and any business owner can benefit from like email automation or automation on social .

Natasha Clawson 8:03

Some of the tools that I'm working with , like mini chat , being able to instantly like respond to a DM , even if it's a bot . The instant recognition , because people know that these things are automated . But that touch point makes a difference as long as you're not presenting it fakely , like some people try and pretend that the bot is actually them , and then that feels disingenuous . But people just want information quickly , they want recognition quickly , and that's awesome . So yeah , tell me a little bit more about how the Drip campaigns are . Are they increasing your donor funds ? How is that working for you ?

Grace Purdum 8:37

They are . They are increasing our donor funds . I actually went after it first . I know I probably should have focused on donation , but what I actually focused on when I started these and we really started implementing them just recently , because where I felt that there was a big disconnect was actually with our volunteers .

How to Engage and Nurture Your Audience

Grace Purdum 8:56

Every time we host an essentially open house for volunteers , it's the second Saturday of every month , so it's scheduled . It's there . We would have 15 , 20 people and we still do . But then where are the people ? What happens ? Why are all of these people so excited and they come here and they do the orientation ? Why aren't they signing up for anything ? Where are they ? And so what I realized was there's a hole , there is something missing , because if these people are so excited on a Saturday to come out and do a volunteer orientation , why aren't they signed up for anything ? Why ?

Natasha Clawson 9:35

do we never see ?

Grace Purdum 9:36

them After day one . Yes , yes , yes . And the orientations are , they're fun . You know there's always horses here in the barn , so they're getting to put hands on horses during the orientation . So we know it was nothing , we didn't scare them away . So , as as a business owner , I had to realize we're failing somewhere on the follow up , the follow through . We are failing because we're not reengaging them to come back , failing because we're not re-engaging them to come back .

Natasha Clawson 10:10

And so that was the start of the nurture or drip campaign was to have , and it is automated .

Grace Purdum 10:13

So this is all via email , right ? This is all email and I know you can do them via snail mail . You could have messages . There's a lot of different ways to do them . We do tend to stick with email , but now we have decided we also followed up with either a personal email , a Facebook message or a call . So we'll send an automated email just a few days after the orientation . We'll thank them for coming out and their interest . We make sure to let them know .

Grace Purdum 10:42

There's a multitude of ways to volunteer . So if you're scared of horses , if you don't want to get dirty , if the weather bothers you , there's some other things that you can do from where you are remotely . There's different committees that we have that they can be part of and be part of it remotely , so they don't have to be hot and cold and wet and dirty if they don't want . Not everyone wants to do those things , right ? So we really make sure that they know that we can use their service in any capacity from anywhere .

Grace Purdum 11:13

And you know , we just let them know then about some upcoming events and then we follow that up , especially if we don't hear from them . We follow it up about a week later with a phone call , a personal email from our volunteer coordinator that kind of you know lets them know . Hey , you know , we haven't seen you guys , we'd love to see you on the farm , we'd love to chat with you about things you'd want to help with , and so that has helped . That has been a huge help , and so now we're implementing it . Something even more important is we're implementing handwritten thank you notes to every person that donates that I have an address for , so they get an automated email , but I handwrite a thank you note , no matter how much it is that they donated , and so that was a big thing for us . Now the problem is I don't always have addresses . If they donate through Facebook , through social media , I don't have an address , but anytime I do have an address , I send a handwritten thank you card . Yeah .

Natasha Clawson 12:18

I'm such a big proponent of handwritten thank you cards and I think that some people discount how meaningful something like that can be , because we can all send an email and even sometimes an email is enough , but to go the extra mile to send someone something . Oftentimes when I have brand projects I'll send a client gift , like just the excitement of getting something in the mail . And these are all again just touch points for building a relationship , for making someone feel special , for making people included , and after COVID there's just this huge gap for connection you know , whether it's just friendships or community based around , like a nonprofit , like Hope for Horses , people are looking to feel connected and plugged in and these things make a huge difference .

Grace Purdum 13:02

It's huge and you know it was . I had always heard about the handwritten thank yous . I'd , I'd heard , I'd heard it , I'd heard it and I was . You know , I was always like I'm doing too much , there's not enough time for me to do this . And a friend of mine does large scale marketing for the Y and she called me and she said Grace , I'm telling you , you've got to start doing hand handwritten notes . She said we have seen an massive ROI on handwritten notes and donors donating again . Each time we ask if we sent , if we had sent them a handwritten note and so she had said they were really starting to implement it and the return has been huge . So it was her that I . You know it's kind of like fine , I'll take the time to do it .

Natasha Clawson 13:51

Yeah Well , and the other reason it works is it's so funny how some things can go back right Because we're like , well , everything's going to technology , we're moving away from print and all of this . But at a certain point , when so many people have left a certain thing , like writing handwritten thank you notes , it becomes your differentiator , like it's an easy way to differentiate yourself from everyone else and you know , in marketing you're always looking for a way to differentiate your business , like why donate my dollars to Hope for Horses versus the other rescue down the street ? So that's beautiful .

Natasha Clawson 14:21

The next thing I wanted to talk about is you have a pretty interesting business model for your for-profit side , which is your horse lessons and riding , and I find it really fascinating because horse boarding and lessons have been around forever . But I feel like you have really innovated at your barn because , for those listening , horse boarding is not the most profitable endeavor and I believe in most cases people are looking for the money from their lesson program and they're really breaking even if they're making any money at all , or they're breaking even or maybe even a loss for the boarding . But you've really systematized this and taken something that has been around for a long time and innovated , and I think this is fascinating . Everyone can learn from this . So tell me a little bit about that model and how you go out to the decisions that you made .

Grace Purdum 15:08

Sure . So just to kind of those that aren't into horses or for farms .

Innovative Solutions to Increase Profit

Grace Purdum 15:17

What Natasha was saying is the expenses of owning the farm , owning the horses and running just that alone for boarding , You're supposed to tell them what boarding is too , because some people might not know .

Natasha Clawson 15:30

If you own a horse and you don't keep it at your house , you pay a farm to keep your horse . They feed your horse and take care of it . You go out and visit and ride . There's different arrangements for who does what , but that's it . You're paying rent for your horse . Yeah , yeah , yeah .

Grace Purdum 15:44

Um , the overhead for boarding . So the cost for us as a farm the overhead to take care , just to run the farm and take care of the horses is so high that your profit margins are nothing , if anything at all . Um , the cost that we would what we would have to charge you as an owner in order to actually profit and be in the black , would be hundreds of dollars more than what we are charging , right ? So then , a lot of places that have a boarding for horses , they'll offer riding lessons and in hopes that then that money they're bringing in from the writing lessons will help the business then actually be profitable and then you can afford to pay yourself and pay your bills . Um , because with boarding alone you tend to just break even . Um , and so what we ? There's really no way , like a lot of things , even selling products , right , selling yourself as a boarding facility is selling a product , and if you place yourself and price yourself too far out of reach when there's other competitors in the area that do provide just as good of care , why would they come to you , right ? If there's five other farms that all have a riding arena and the care is just as good , but you're $400 a month more , why You're not that special , right , um ? So you can't price yourself too far out of the market when it comes to that .

Grace Purdum 17:17

So what we decided to do was we owned at the time about 10 horses that we used in order to teach lessons off of . So when you own horses , you have to do things like their veterinary care , which anybody that owns animals knows how that works . It's expensive , yeah . So then we also have to do things like pay the farrier to come out and trim the horse's feet or put shoes on . That's all dependent on the horse , um , but they do that every four to six weeks and you're running about a hundred to $200 a horse then every four to six weeks for the farrier . So when we owned the 10 horses that we were using for lessons , we paid all of their expenses . So , essentially , we owned 10 horses that nobody was paying board on right . No one was paying board and their expenses , and we hoped that the lessons would cover their expenses then . And it wasn't really working , especially if you wanted to hire an instructor to also help you , right , working , especially if you wanted to hire an instructor to also help you , right . So , um , as we grew and grew with the lesson program . I could not care for the farm , train the horses and teach 50 hours a week of lessons and be a mom and do all the other things , right ? So we had to hire an instructor . And the going rate for paying an instructor is one third of the lesson fee , right ? So if you charge $60 an hour , she gets 20 , then the business gets 40 . So we did hire this person , because you can only do so much .

Grace Purdum 18:57

Um , but the biggest thing we changed was we decided we weren't going to own any horses anymore . What we realized was there was such a need in the industry for people to board their horses , but that they could only come out once or twice a week to ride their own horse anyway . So oftentimes we would be asked oh , can we pay you to ride our horse throughout the week when we weren't here ? Can we pay you to exercise our horse throughout the week when we weren't here ? Can we pay you to exercise the horse , can we ? So what we decided to do was we're no longer going to own a lesson horse . If you want to board with us , the stipulation is we get to use your horse to teach riding lessons and you get discounted board in exchange for us being able to use your horse . But your horse is now getting exercised and free training , because it's only getting ridden and worked when we are teaching a lesson off of it .

Grace Purdum 19:55

So we are careful as to who we put on each horse . We're very picky and choosy , so we were able to take away our farrier expenses , our vet expenses , because that's still on the owner . They own the horse . They have to provide the tack , so the saddle stuff like that for their horse to use . That way we're not at fault if something doesn't fit correctly . And they do pay us boarding , but it's discounted and so we take care of their horse , we exercise it for them , we train it for them . They benefit , we benefit . But it has turned our business into . The way we run . Our lesson program has been amazing . And now when people call and they're like I'm looking for boarding , do you want your horse ridden five days a week in a lesson program ?

Natasha Clawson 20:56

no , well then I can't help you so well , here's the fun thing about what you did . You had clients who had a need , and many barns meet this need by offering . You know exercise . Writing this is a very offering . You know exercise .

Natasha Clawson 21:07

Riding this is a very common thing . You guys looked at that and said is there another way that we can do this ? So you offered a solution and it was a win-win for both parties . They get to go out the one to two days a week and their horse is more calm because it's been ridden , it's getting training . They trust you to do that because of the program that you put together and how you match horses . They trust you to do that because of the program that you put together and how you match horses .

Natasha Clawson 21:28

And you've created this win-win situation and you're actually being profitable , whereas before you know , it was like can we even continue to do this business ? And I think it's hard to innovate , especially in something that's such a common model . To be able to innovate , I think it's a special thing . But as much as it is a special thing , I think that people can innovate in all sorts of things that they think are stuck the way they are , and so this is just a great example of . Has anyone really thought through this in a different way ? Is there a different way that we could do this with the tools available ? And technology is another big piece , and I know this is something you've also done . So , in addition to maximizing your profit while still providing this great benefit to your customers , you have also brought in some tech to your horse business for a subscription model for your lesson program .

Grace Purdum 22:18

Yes , that was the other thing that you know .

Grace Purdum 22:21

That's . That's a tried and true . People pay you for their lessons , right , you set your price , they pay you . There are all different barns and facilities throughout the country . Some of them will say , oh , if you pay for 10 at a time , you get a discount . Or , oh , if you , you know . So there's some , you know , some people , some facilities force you to pay for a month at a time , you know , if you buy a block .

Grace Purdum 22:40

No , we had , we had done all of those things . We had done all of them , but what was happening was with we teach about 70 students a week , and what was happening were people were getting , because money was coming in through paypal , it was coming in through venmo , it was coming in as cash being left in the box , it was checks . It was coming in from all these different avenues and at all different times throughout the month , and some people were paying for four , some people were paying for two months . We have different prices for semi-private lessons and private lessons , right , so all different price points . I was getting so behind keeping track of who had paid and who was up to date that there was one day I found a check for over $800 . And I asked somebody what it was for and she said , oh , that family was like 10 plus lessons behind on , or 10 plus lessons behind on payment . And that was when I was like , oh my gosh , who else hasn't been paying me ? Who else is this far behind ? How can I ?

Grace Purdum 23:42

So we went to a subscription model and it is mandatory . There is no more cash or check or Venmo . It is mandatory , um , and you can choose . There's three of us that teach myself , my husband and our instructor . You can choose your , you know who your instructor is and if you want a private lesson or semi-private , but you must pay for those four lessons and it does charge your card . So if you buy them today , on all you know , let's say August 23rd , it's going to charge you again on the 23rd of next month for four lessons .

Grace Purdum 24:17

And we do have a contract they have to click to understand um , that says you know , if you cancel , uh , within a 24 hour period , you forfeit that lesson . There are no makeups . Then If we cancel due to weather or sickness , we will make it up within 30 days for you . So if the cancelation was on us , we will make it up in full . You don't get makeup lessons for last minute cancellations . Now , if you cancel on a Monday for your wednesday lesson we have , we do agree to fit you in then , um as well . So we went through the whole contract and it has been amazing . It's held people accountable , but it has . Also , we can see instantly if somebody cancels their subscription . We can see exactly who it is and write to them right away .

Natasha Clawson 25:08

Yeah , so that way you can actually recover loss if you have lost , so you can react more quickly to your base . And there's just so many things about the subscription model that are fascinating , because you talked about accountability and in a way , it actually helps them too , because they signed up for this for a reason . They want to be there . There's obviously sometimes where we're just not going responsibility and in a way , it actually helps them too , because they signed up for this for a reason . They want to be there . There's obviously sometimes where we're just not going to be able to make it and if we don't give enough notice then we should probably pay for it because we've held someone else's schedule . But your contract also lays out very clearly what the expectations are . So there's really clear communication .

Natasha Clawson 25:42

You guys have a predictable income stream . You're not spending time chasing people down and I think , especially as smaller service-based models , sometimes we get in the mindset of well , it's just me , I can go chase down Susan or send the invoice at random points . But when you systematize , it creates a system that can scale . You guys could now go and create another location or something with more ease because this is predictable and these things that feel manageable at the bottom as you scale your business , become the things that cannot be manageable . So if you're looking to scale any kind of business , building in these systems and processes at the base when you're small and don't have a lot of employees is going to save you so much headache because it's so much harder to do each person you add in without those systems in place . So I think I think that's a game changer for you guys . It sounds like you've had to be more comfortable .

Grace Purdum 26:36

Yeah , the the lesson changing around to the new lesson model , right , where we utilize other people's horses . You know we had to do some research for liability , right ? How do we make this work , liability wise , so that way they're safe and we're safe , and um , and that was all all workable . Um , but you know that it is . There's such a mentality even in the horse world . Um , well , I don't want people to ride my horse , okay , and then don't board here , yeah .

Natasha Clawson 27:09

There's some . You guys have very clear expectations of what you do and who fits there and who doesn't .

Grace Purdum 27:11

Yeah , yeah , so there was , there was . You know , in the beginning we were kind of like , oh what if people don't want us to use their horses ? But more times than not , the people that own the horses , they're . They're not people that own the horses that want to board them with a place like us , they're not professional riders that are wanting to ride their own horse five and six days a week , right ? They're the middle school teacher who her and her daughter likes to come out and take a lesson or two a week , but she's a school teacher so she can't come out five days a week and ride , right ? So she wants her horse to be good when she comes out . So she's like yes , please ride my horse , help it , help it be good .

Natasha Clawson 27:50

Yeah . So the lesson here is listen to your clients . They're going to tell you what the problems are and then figure out how to make a solution that feels good for both parties and everyone's excited about , because it's easy to sell and it's easy to implement if both sides feel that way . I love the different things that we got to learn from horse businesses today and we're going to yeah , you're laughing over there yeah , it's hard work . Business is hard work .

Grace Purdum 28:17

It doesn't matter if you have hard work , yeah , and it's the thing you know , talking about volunteers , right , and filling that gap . I think that's that self-reflection that a lot of businesses and small business owners , they don't , they don't have right . They're like well , I guess I don't know why people aren't coming back . I don't understand why people aren't coming back . Well , there's a reason , right ?

Natasha Clawson 28:38

Personal responsibility . I think , as a business owner , most of the problems that are in front of you are something you have to look in the mirror about and see where you could show up differently . They're not all your fault but at the end of the day , like you have to be the problem solver and you have to figure out no one else is going to do it for you and so , being able to self-reflect and be humble and try new things , see if they work they're not always going to work and try different things than other people have tried . Obviously , you guys did something and it was very successful , and not many people are doing that . They're doing the old way , they're not making a lot of money . So take , take the risks , take the self-reflection .

Advice for Younger Self

Natasha Clawson 29:17

So , grace , I want to close by asking you a question , which is what advice would you give your younger self ? And this can be any advice . It can be business advice , it can be personal advice , your younger self , and this can be any advice . It can be business advice .

Grace Purdum 29:29

It can be personal advice to be more confident making decisions , because decisions most of the time they can , you can make a decision and if it's wrong , that's fine , you just change course . Be confident making decisions . I think that's great advice . Make the decision , just do it .

Natasha Clawson 29:48

And you are very good at that . I've worked with you and you're good at making a decision and going forward . I deliberate for too long and I take too long in decision making . I've gotten better at it , but you're someone I definitely see is just making a decision and going forth and I think you get a lot of progress through that and it is wonderful advice . Well , thanks for coming on today and sharing of progress through that and it is wonderful advice .

Grace Purdum 30:08

Well , thanks for coming on today and sharing . It's been a pleasure to have you . Thank you for having me .

Natasha Clawson 30:11

So I know it's not your normal business that you do , but business is business right , it is , and I think , actually looking at things that are not your normal business , you can have these great epiphanies because when you look and try and be like everyone else , you're missing something . So I'm sure you'll be back , Grace .

Grace Purdum 30:29

Well , thank you so much for .