Coming Back to Horses with Purpose - Jaclyn Burke

So I typically just kick the episodes off by having the guests tell us who they are and what it is they do. Thanks so much for having me. My name is Jacqueline Burke, I’m a three star FBI event rider and I own and operate Hablin Hills Equestrian in Damascus, MD. I consider myself a juggler of it all though, as I also work in tech sales and am a mother of a four year old and a wife and have a very busy program both in and outside of the barn. Yeah, How’d you find yourself in tech sales?

Yeah, so I growing up, I rode and competed. That was like my whole dream and life career goals, right? You’ll be a professional equestrian. And my parents were like, you have to go to college. And so I ended up taking my horse to school with me at the University of South Carolina, which I was really fortunate and started my business there, did a lot of teaching, even started getting into horse sales in my early 20s just to be able to afford it.

And when I graduated, I ended up going to work for the Bashir family and worked with them both for like on the vet side as well as helping Emily in the barn, breaking horses with the working students, all of that. And I was there about a year and a half and I was at a crossroads. My horse, we were trying to get to move up to advance, just wasn’t going to probably do that job and stay sound. And I’ve really broke, had no money, which I think a lot of people can relate to. And being originally from Chicago, I was up on the East Coast and I was like, all right, I need to figure like, I need one, I need a break.

And two, I need to kind of like figure out how I’m going to make this work. I’m like 44 years old, was multiple figures of debt. And so I ended up, my stepbrother was in DC at the time and I didn’t want to go back home to Chicago. So I went up to DC. My degree was in marketing and finance and my parents all had different jobs in their respective industries and stuff.

But both my dad and my stepdad were in sales. And I was like, I think I’m going to be in marketing because I went to school for marketing my dad. If you want to actually figure out how the marketing team supports sales, you should do sales. Plus you’ve been selling horses. Like it’s really not that different.

Long story short, ended up moving to DC, started a career in like HR and payroll which then ultimately led me to a big ERP company and now I’m at a big data company. It’s been a wild career over the last almost 15 years, but what’s afforded me the ability to buy a farm to own my own horses now? So in some ways, I feel like my competition goals have gotten put on hold over the last decade or so, but at the same time, I feel like financially it just didn’t a lot better position. Now to be able to go pursue goals of competing at the upper levels again. Makes sense.

Yeah, here we are. So how do you work remote? Like how do you find time to balance? You mentioned three things, right? Being a mom, which in itself is a full time job and running slash.

And the barn, yeah, we have 16 horses here, like 12 students, 12 full time students, yes. So I work remote fully. I’ve been fully remote actually prior to COVID. For me, it’s like business as usual. But sales is an interesting career.

And actually somebody was asking me this like in one of the, hey, what’s like the best career? And I think it’s interesting because it’s, you have the ability to, yes, set your own schedule to some degree. There’s certain calls I have to be on and connect with my team and my manager and the team that supports me and obviously the customer. I’ve gotten to the point now where I support 1 customer globally. I could be on a meeting at 6:00 AM with a team in the Netherlands or I could be on an 8:00 like all hands call.

But for me, I’ve just, I’ve always been so busy since I was in high school that like not, I’m just used to like being active from 6:00 AM till 10:00 PM and it’s just got to be filled something. So it can be like, hey, I log on, do emails at six, go out to the barn, check on the horses, ride a couple, come in, take a bunch of calls, go back out, ride one or two more, come back in, take some calls, go teach some lessons, pick up my kid, have dinner. My husband and I, one of us swaps evening depending on if I’m teaching or not. And then I can finish up the day by responding to emails and stuff. And then I do occasionally have to travel, but it’s maybe once a month, maybe twice a month.

It’s not much. That’s so interesting. So how did you find the, I think sometimes the horse business in general does not follow the rules of business. So how did you find going from selling some horses to selling like products? First off, it’s the same.

It’s, bear with me a second, right? But when you think about like selling something, whether it’s a car or whether it’s $1,000,000 piece of technology or something for a healthcare system like a medical device, somebody is looking to fulfill some sort of need, right? So same as a force, somebody comes to you and says, hey, my daughter wants to go compete beginner, novice and novice. She really wants something and they list out all the things that they want, all the qualities that they need. And so you have this like checklist, same on let’s say you’re buying a piece of tech.

You have a checklist of like your requirements, capabilities, and then what’s it ultimately going to do? And then you also put a dollar number around that. And then same with the horse, right? Somebody says I have a budget of $30,000 or I have a budget of $5000. It doesn’t really matter, right?

So you put together this list of requirements and today selling is very different in the sense that when a buyer comes to you, they probably already have done quite a bit of research either on horse or your farm, or they’ve flipped it up online and they’ve watched videos. Same with technology, right? Think of how much money is spent into marketing dollars of every product. And so then your job is to, one, make sure that it’s the right fit, right? Make sure that the horse is going to be the right pick for the kids, that they get along, that it’s going to do the job right.

And I ultimately find it like matchmaking and I find it the same on the sales side, right? Like I have, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve walked into a meeting throughout my career. And then like, yeah, this isn’t the right fit for you. It’s no different. It’s literally no different.

You’ll be like, wow, this is perfect. And then it’s magical and things work out. Then you still have to go through the hurdles of negotiating and figuring out all the logistics of the vetting. We do the same thing in tech, right? We’re like, OK, how are you going to implement them?

What’s it going to cost? How are you going to get it there? Sometimes we got to do multiple demos, like a trial. It’s similar in some ways, for sure. I don’t do a ton of selling anymore.

Just as you can probably imagine, like because you got to figure out where you’re going to put your time in different assets and selling horses is a big investment. And if I’m going to do it, I want to do it well. So we typically, we have, I don’t know, Hubble in the barn every year right now we actually have 3 for sale, which is like unheard of. But it is, it’s always interesting to me like the buyer who comes and is like, you have a conversation with them on the phone before you have a plan of what it’s going to be like. Those tend to work out really well versus just like the random person who sends you a note And it’s like, hey, I saw that Gray horse, can I come try him on Friday?

And you’re like, OK, what do you want? What’s your budget? What is your perfect horse look like? So I know people get a lot of gripe on social media and they’re like, oh, there’s a little tire kickers and stuff on his slate. Sam, I find that if you vet the seller on the front end, everybody’s in a much better place and it’s a much better experience for everybody in the whole process.

Interesting because I do feel like so many times. So originally I had a podcast before this, but it was based around entrepreneurship. And one of the big things I realized is that the reason the equestrian business I think seems so hard is because just no one knows the business side of anything. And it sounds similar with sales were like you’ve developed the skill of knowing what people are ultimately like what the process looks like. And so you’re able to replicate that across multiple different things where some people just, I’ve worked at sale barns, right?

I just showed up and I was told, OK, you have an appointment today with these three horses go show up. And so they never developed the skill of understanding the actual process. Yeah, yeah. It’s I think if you can be fortunate enough to surround yourself and let’s say you want to go down the pathway of horses, right, being a barn where you can really understand like the day-to-day of what goes into managing that, that it’s not sure we have to throw hay and throw grain and turn out change blankets, like all that. That’s all just fundamental force care.

And I agree, I think where people struggle is like, what’s the next level after that? Whether it’s sales, whether it’s teaching, whether it’s client management, what farm management, and it’s hard, it’s hard to teach it. It’s hard to you got to really immerse yourself in it. Students in my program like in high school or who have even written with me earlier started as young kids. I’m just trying to add that little bit of mentorship where you can or even for the girls, like working for me, I’ve handed them a stack of receipts.

I’m like, all right, you have to by law keep all of this. Now you need to organize it and look at me and oh like this is good winter activity. Like you guys want to learn how to manage a barn. This is what goes into it, but there’s so many opportunities outside of the barn. It’s just figured out how to make it all work and getting people in your corner that can help with that.

OK, so I want to chat more about you. You got not where you wanted to with the horses and you got financially burned out of it. You find yourself in DC, you get into sales. What brought you back? Did you continue riding through all of that or did you take a full step back and be like, I just need a break?

And then how did you find yourself coming back to the horses? Yeah, so the initial plan was to take a full break, like full stop cold Turkey. I literally had all I had sold a few horses. My FBI horse was on a lease to buy so he had left. So everybody was like taken care of and or being sold clients.

Horses were taken care of. And so I literally put all of my stuff in my living quarters trailer, dropped it off at RV rental place like along the side of 95, moved to DC, had a job. I did have some friends from college up there. So pretty quickly started just meeting people. I started playing a lot of like social sports and that stuff.

The first almost, I think it was like 7 or 8 months, like literally no horses. Like I didn’t even tell people I rode horses. Funny enough, my husband, who is now my husband, but we started dating at this point and he tells everyone I tricked him because he’s like when I met, you know, there was no horses. But yeah, so like I, I really needed that time, but I very quickly got bored. Like what I was talking about, like having to work through school, riding through school, all of that.

Like, you’re just used to, like, managing a lot of things, being busy, even if you just do horses, right? Like you’re in the barn from 7:00 AM until, oh, dark 30. Yeah. So it’s a lot. And so anyway, that horse that was on that lease ended up not working out.

And so I think at the end of January, he ended up coming back. And I was like, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do with this? Really Live in basically downtown DC. OK, so there was a small horse community outside of DC called Great Falls. It’s very expensive.

And, you know, I’ve always heard lots of horses in Virginia and whatever people would be commuting like an hour plus to go to the bottom. So I found this farm that was in somebody’s backyard in Virginia and ended up going and getting a stall. They made me pay for a stall for 60 days, so I was like, OK, like, at least this will start giving me something to do besides go play kickball on a Wednesday, right? Murphy came back and I maybe had him at there for two weeks, and I had somebody contact me about leasing him as a young rider’s horse. He then left and so I had this stall.

I was like, for those couple weeks, it was fun. There was something else to do that was the middle of winter, but like whatever. And so I had a client in Iowa that I had sold some horses for on and off. And she had called me and was like, I have this mare, can you take her? And so I called her back and I was like, I have this stall, I’ve already paid for it.

Do you want to send her out? And so she said the horse about and I’m sure you can guess where that went, but very quickly started riding and competing again and started doing even a little bit of teaching in that area. I had a ton of students over the years scattered at a couple different barns and then ended up basically leasing. I think I ended up having two or three stalls there at that little farm and we’re still doing the corporate job and ended up getting an opportunity to manage A-Team and move to Maryland. So my boyfriend at the time, Mike and I ended up moving up to Maryland and bought like a small, almost 4 acre property.

So I, we had two thoroughbreds at that time. I ended up buying that mare that was supposed to be sold. So we, yeah, we just bought a little small farm and I was like, OK, maybe this is how we do it, right? A small program. I just teach keep the horses at home.

I’m pretty sure my neighbors thought I was insane because I’d walk down the neighborhood roads to hack and my bottom field was full of jumps and my trailer was parked in our run yard. I was that girl for sure. And yes, we were in that house for a few years and the plan was always to try and figure out a way to go back to the Forces full time. And so in 2019, we ended up buying the farm we’re at now, which is a 25 acre facility that has a barn, indoor, outdoor, we have a cross country schooling field. And so we, yeah, we’ve been here almost I guess six years and it’s allowed me to take the business.

And at that point, like for the that I was in Virginia and stuff, it was a lot of teaching to really being able to get people back into like more of a program, right, where we have the horses, like in the house, people are taking lessons, we’re going to competitions and like really immersing themselves in what it actually goes into, like taking care of the horse, right? Everything from engaging with your vets to your chiropractor, farrier tech, all of that. And how do you become successful doing that, right? So go up to the horse show and win. So we have about 16 horses on their property.

All the students here are basically in like at least half training. So they’re usually getting about two lessons a week. And then, yeah, we help manage like all aspects of the horses, fitness, dealing with everybody. Yeah. So it’s fun.

It’s it’s really been able to do that. And I think my plan initially was to, at this point, if I looked on paper, I would have not be working. I would just be focusing on the horses full time. But I just haven’t really had any horses in the last few years. That one we’re going to necessarily be like FBI vet horses just ended up going and doing different career things or things happened as I was trying to like rebuild the strings.

So I’ve been able to make it work work like with what I have and the students I had. But I very much anticipate probably within the next 12 to 18 months that I’ll be refocusing just on running the barn full time. But it’s lately me. How long to get there? Yeah.

So how do you manage? Do you have a barn manager? Are you the only person like teaching? What is the program on that side look like? So I do all the teaching and then I have two girls who work for me full time.

And then normally I’ve had a border to that kind of help with weekend shifts. And I have over the years realized that if you want people to stay, if you want people to enjoy their job, do a good job, you need to not overwork people and you need to make sure that they have opportunity and, and all those things and enough time off. So I have one full time girl. So she’s here five days a week, roughly 8 to 9 hours a day period. Sometimes it’s more.

And then I have a girl who comes Monday through Friday, half the day. And then like I said, a couple boarders who help work off some of their board and such weather weekends and just helping with like chores and everything. And so that allows me to have somebody here all like at least one if not two people here during the week in the morning so we can get horses ridden, the barn done. I do try and do all my riding during the day, whether it’s my own horses or client horse I need to sit on or anything. And then in the evening, slash afternoons is when I spend the time teaching.

I do sometimes that varies, right? Like I will have some students who are like, hey, can I have a lesson at 7:00? And if I can make it work then that’s fine. But I really try and stick to set that schedule because I have staff here to help tack and groom and hack. Then in the afternoon any of the therapeutic horses are doing.

So that’s been really good to have a couple different people in the barn. I will say I would love to be a little bit more hands on with my own horses so when I do have the ability to like tack them up and groom them, I will. But I do very much rely on Sequoia Court to help me like I there’s no way I could do when I do without. Help. Yeah, for sure.

And then on top of that, you have a child, yes. So how did that change things in terms of priorities, in terms of time? Because it’s not, you have a kid and then you just resume life as normal. Your body changes emotionally, things change. So how did that kind of change how you viewed all of your life?

And then this mythical balance that we’re all supposed to be trying to find, like what did that look like? Post or maybe pre kid and then post kid. Yeah, I was definitely the girl who was like, there’s no way I’m having a child. We got married and we were like, OK, maybe we’ll try and have a kid. There was a lot of issues trying to get pregnant.

So honestly, they wrote it off. It’ll take cool. I found out I was pregnant. I was almost 12 weeks when I found out, which is like almost through your first trimester. So yeah, that’s a whole long story.

I won’t go into that. But so it was very much a shock and like a surprise and. I just literally think I was really sick, like really sick. I ended up in the hospital multiple times. I lost 17 lbs.

Oh my gosh. I did not gain weight until the very end. It was wild for me, pregnancy was terrible. Like it was just, I was so sick. I wasn’t ready for.

It was such a surprise. I remember my mom saying to me at my baby shower, she’s like, you do know that this baby is going to have, you know, not legs and a tail for a legs and a tail. I’m like, yes, mom, I never read a book. Like I didn’t do anything. I was awful.

I just threw myself into like teaching. You asked anybody around here. Like, I think a week before I gave birth, I was like out walking cross country courses at Maryland. Yeah, it was a lot. Anyway, so Henry came and I don’t know, like people, this sounds so cheesy, but people do tell you they’re like, oh, it changes.

And I don’t know if it’s the hormones or whatever, but it is like the baby shows up and you’re like, wow, I’ve never this is so different than when I could have imagined. And it was such AI could not imagine my life now without him. It’s amazing. I think the biggest shift that has changed with anything is I’ve actually learned to say no. Hold space for family time.

That doesn’t mean that I’m teaching less, that doesn’t mean that I’m competing less, doesn’t mean I’m working less. You just have to get even more micro about how you manage your time and literally putting space on the calendar for family time. For example, a couple Saturdays I got last few Saturdays like I got up 7 worked Rd. taught till probably 1 and then Henry and I went to three different parks in the afternoon. And when I’m there, I’m like focus playing.

I don’t have my phone out like it’s him and I and those just being like present with him. Or I’ll have student who will be like, hey, can I ride on Thursday at 6:00 PM? And I’m like, no, I’m not teaching on Thursday this week. And so it’s more like I will say, OK, my husband and I will be like, OK, these are the competitions for the next couple months. These are The Saturdays or Sundays I need you to take him.

These are the weekdays I’m going to teach. And it’s just trying to be like, not necessarily like the people pleaser for everybody else. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I say, OK, I’m going to teach everybody on Monday and Tuesday this week. So I’ll teach from 5:00 until literally 9:00 at night.

Now we have an indoor so I can do that. And then that allows me to on Tuesday I can take Henry to swim and it can be a Mommy Henry night. And then on Fridays we can do family night. And so it’s just been a little bit more intentional, so. When you’re doing your schedule for the week, what does that look like?

Are you Google Calendaring time slots? Are you writing everything down in like a schedule book? Do you sit down on Sundays and schedule or are you scheduling weeks out? What does that look like in terms of the organizational side of things? Yeah, so too, I have a big whiteboard in the barn where I track lessons for the month.

So I write down like who if I’m going to be gone at all and I already know I put it on the calendar and then I’ll write that. So I don’t do, I tried like Google Calendar and stuff. I just haven’t found a good way to make that work yet. So like literally I have an old school like planner that I write down every day, like what the horses did and then I schedule all the students stuff through there. We tend to be a bit more fluid here in terms of I would say typically I’m touching base with each one of the students on a weekly basis and we’re making a plan for the upcoming week.

And so I’ll be like, OK, and that kind of happens organically and then we’ll be like, OK, we jump today. Next week I’m going to be teaching Tuesday and Thursday and then Saturday we’re going to go cross country schooling. And what I do is at the beginning of the year, I do send out like a survey per SE. And I’m like, OK, what are your goals for the year, short term, long term? Are there any key events you want to go to and then have like in my head and, or written down the plan for everybody?

Let’s be real, Plan A never works out. But if you know that, OK, this coming year, I my guess is we’ll probably have six to eight horses at AA CS. So that’s a big, that’s going to be a big ask of everyone. And so we know when that is, we know what events may be good for each individual horse to run up to that. We also know that, hey, this horse tends to need Adaquan.

So let’s do it. We know we do it twice a year. So let’s make sure we do that in July. And then let’s maybe sure we have that vet check at the end of June, right? So it’s even planning stuff like when is the vet going to be here?

When is the fairy are going to be here, Take a line with some of those big bigger goals or what I would call it destination events. And then working backwards from there even to like when do you do your fitness work and then when do you have your lessons? So it’s very much a like kind of a semi annual slash annual plan. And then I do think you have to be flexible on a pretty ongoing basis and being able to adapt to what the horse is telling you. And then also life, whatever my own life or what the client has going on so.

What kind of got you into the teaching side of things? I started in Pony Club and even as you start as like AC Pony Club where you start teaching the D kids and I was like teaching. I started teaching honestly in high school. So it’s just been a easy way for me to money aside, I actually really like it. I think I’m pretty good at it.

Move. Stay. Yeah, it’s so interesting because I think so many people when they start out as professionals, they just want to be writers. And it sounded throughout your journey you were even talking about how in college you had students and whatever. It sounds like the teaching kind of came to you or was just something that you had like doing, but I wasn’t sure if that was like intentional or if you just found yourself like I.

Some people will set out because they know teaching in terms of like less wear and tear. You don’t need to spend the time tacking up. You don’t. You just are in the arena. And people are.

So in terms of like financial, it can be a better option than being a writer. But I sometimes think things just find us in the our careers. It would be the later. I think it would be more the finding. I think if you had asked 16 year old me, I would have been like, no, I’m just going to ride ten horses a day.

But yeah, I’ve definitely wouldn’t say that I’ve first been intentional. I have been intentional about how I’ve developed as a coach and a teacher and how I bring some of the things outside of the barn into the barn and vice versa. My mom was a teacher. So maybe it’s, it’s hereditary, genetic. Yeah, it’s genetic.

Who knows. But yeah, no, it wasn’t really like on the business plan per SE, but I would say now it very much is. When I look at the business plan and where the different sources of income come from, the teaching is a great 1. So you have to find that ratio that you’re like, OK, I’m, I can manage this. I can be present for my students, I can be available.

If I take on too much more than this, then the quality starts to decline, right? And I think at the end of the day, everybody, 99% of people who are doing this are doing it because they love horses and it’s an outlet for them. It’s a fun activity and hobby. And so it needs to be enjoyable. They need to find joy in.

So how do you find ways to continue improving as a trainer? Not just as a rider, but as someone who like. We see it all the time where there are some great riders who can teach their way out of a paper bag. And then there are some teachers who aren’t the most skilled in the saddle, but visually they can just pick up on things and whatever. Is it Just the more you are in there teaching, the more you can see patterns?

Or is it you go and take lessons and the thing, maybe the thing you take away is something that you find yourself. I know I do that. Like I’ll go and take a lesson and then I find myself like repeating that lesson to clients. But how do you are you reading? What sharpens that tool?

Yeah, it’s a little multifaceted. So one, I do take my lessons and I’m very intentional about making sure that I have eyes on me. I’ve been riding with Linson Anski basically since I’ve moved to DC, which has been fantastic because there is something to be said for riding with the same person who, you know, on a regular basis. Look, it’s been, I don’t know, 12 years. She’s probably sick of me.

But which is you guys are able to like develop a relationship and a partnership that’s a mutually beneficial. And I would say one, yeah, for sure. I’ll take pieces of my lessons from her and bring those back to my barn. Now you have to be careful with that, right? Because sometimes I can all of a sudden be like trying to get the beginner novice kid to, to ride like they’re going to darn.

Maybe that’s not maybe that’s not going to be appropriate. So you do have to cater that. While I ride mostly with Lynn, I also find it very important that I do still ride with other people. I’ll go take lessons with folks locally, clinic with individuals. And then I’ve also ridden on and off with John Holland down in Ocala, so like when I’ve had the ability to go down South for the winter getting lessons with him.

So there’s that piece which definitely is helpful. And funny enough, I find so many riders who start doing the upper levels and all of a sudden they stop taking lessons and you’re like, what are you very come around? We all need help. And I have done some of the like continuing education stuff through Yousef in the USAA with the ECP program. I have not gone through like the full certification, but I’ve attended a couple workshops and the symposiums.

Those are really helpful. It’s more than a time thing for me, especially with my job just to take two weeks off basically certified. Like financially it just hasn’t made sense yet. I will do that though at some point. And then also things like outside of the equestrian world I’ve gone through, I just finished up like a program with Natalie Hummel, who you might have heard of.

She’s doing a lot of like nervous system work. So that was really interesting. I think there’s definitely things I’ve taken from that course that I just in terms of like how I view how somebody is like processing the info when you’re getting them or how they’re like emotionally in the showing up in the lesson. I’ve had the ability through work like my corporate job to also attend like ongoing trainings there, things like 11 training I went to, which was fascinating. It was called storytellers.

And it’s like the art of how to tell a story and how telling a story can draw connection, right? Which then through connection, you get people to be more vulnerable. You get a human element to it. And it was just this two day workshop that was just like, so transformative, right? And there’s just so much of that that I’ve taken into like everyday life.

We got in a room and we did this big training. And like, I still remember one of the biggest takeaways was like, start from curious, right? So when you think of like your emotional scale of, OK, really angry or I’m like completely shut down. Like what if you just came into a situation and we’re curious about why it was happening instead of creating judgment? And you can take that into a lesson, right?

So I’ll say, let’s say the person does the course, I’ll walk up to them after and maybe I won’t talk to them like while they’re riding, you also have to figure out how they learn best. And I’ll be like, So what did you think of that, right? Because I have my point of view, but let’s hear from them because they may be the most self deprecating person ever and tell you it was the worst round of your life. Or they may be like, that was the best course I’ve ever did. You don’t want to walk up to that person, be like, this was all wrong, right?

So. Yeah, I think just. Exactly that, like start from curious, like I’ve taken into my teaching into just everyday life and how I act, interact with people. And the other thing that came out of that course too was like, be here now. So being present, being available, focused on your individual.

So just there, there’s so many ways to get better at what you do regardless of what you do. But you do have, you have to make time for that as well, right? Self improvement is I think that’s why we’re here for 80 to 100 years to get better. Exactly. Yeah.

And it’s super interesting to hear. So I, my business is I work with a lot of problem shut down type horses and the first thing I do in the training is get that curiosity back in the horse. And so it’s interesting to hear that on the human side of just being curious about why something is happening or why you’re feeling a certain way. But sometimes I’ll be working with a client and something will be happening and the client just feels like something should be going a certain way. And to be able to be like, why do you think it should be doing going that way?

Why are you feeling these emotions about the things is such an important tool to be able to get people? I think even just getting people curious brings them more into the present moment. Yeah, that’s super interesting. So when you’re doing, you mentioned riding with John down in Ocala, how do you balance, even if it’s for a short period of time, going away from your base, with the kid, with the job, with the program, Like how do you find that time and how do you communicate like two people about it? Are you bringing people from your barn down?

What does that look like? It’s been a SO for I’ll give the latest 2 years as like examples. So two years ago going back to what we talked about, we were doing like goal setting. I had a bunch of folks who said they wanted to go to a CS, so we ended up going down to Aiken for five weeks. I went down at the beginning of that time period with maybe 8 to 10 horses.

We found a barn to rent, we found an Airbnb, and then I had a group of students who showed up on the last like 2 weeks and I think we even planned it around a competition or two. That was very intentional in terms of like when we went and that was a plan that we probably started discussing 3 or 4 months in advance. I started socializing. Hey, who does anybody want to go to Aiken? Does anybody want or for it outlets, you know, either here is a general idea of what it would cost and we start those conversations to be able to get an idea of because we don’t own property down in any place, right.

So you have to look for stalls to rent. It’s very expensive. You got to even things like how are you going to feed the horses? Because I’m not sure if you’ve looked, but hay is very expensive and even it can be cheaper to bring down a trailer full of even with gas and paying someone to do that, then buying hay that’s twice as expensive while you’re there. So that was a big production and in general for my students it was we were successful.

Everybody who wanted to go to AA CS got qualified and went, which was great. It was about half the barn and I think all of them did end up coming to Aiken just to kick off some cross country schooling. Not even everybody competed, but we just did some schooling. They spent a week or two being intentional, getting lessons, taking a break from their own lives and what they have going on. So that was good.

Henry, my son, did not come with me on that adventure. But what I did do is I went down for two weeks. I flew home for two days. I taught a couple folks who weren’t going to be coming down, and I hung out with Henry in between that period and then flew back and then we were there for another three weeks or so. I was a big ass on my husband.

He did have some family come in to help. Luckily we have grandparents who are around and want to be involved in Henry’s life. They did come to help during that, which is nice too. Then Mike’s getting time with his family. Ken and last year, I think because we had done the big aching trip and we didn’t, I wouldn’t say that there was a ton of flocks in the barn this year.

We had clients getting new horses, people getting new jobs, like just, there was a lot going on. But so at the beginning of the year, I was like, I, what was great about Ocala was that my students got the time and attention that they needed. I did not have the best or I can, I did not have the best time. One of my horses got sick, the other one got hurt. And so I said I made the deliberate decision that like I want to go spend time and just focus on me, which I have done on and off in the years, whether it’s been 2 weeks or whether it’s been 5.

And so I told everybody honestly, months before I said, look, I’m going to go to Florida next year for the month of February. Anybody is welcome to come. But I’m literally going with the idea that I’m not really going to go down to compete. I am going to take lessons and I’m going to invest in myself and my education and my horses. I ended up having one student come down with me who brought their horse.

Literally we had three horses and two of us was awesome and I took, I must have taken a lesson almost every day and it was I actually had to stop counting how much money I spent because it was a lot. But it was like to your question earlier of continuing education, like it was the best month long boot camp I’ve given myself in forever. Luckily, I have friends who also do this who are good at this and they’ll come and teach and I have no problem with them coming and teaching my students. And so people didn’t feel like, hey, I’m not going to have eyes on me for a month. And also it’s February.

So let’s be honest up here. It can snow. It can get cold. Yeah. So it tends to not be the worst time of year for everybody to go, hey, we’re not going to the Olympics tomorrow and just taking that pressure off both the individual and the horses, right?

They don’t need to be running around the indoor jumping and doing dressage 5 or 6 days a week like they don’t. And so it, it worked out well. And then in terms of the family balance, Mike and Henry did come down to Florida for probably 5 or 6 days. And so I planned it like even at the beginning I was like, OK, the horses will cross country the morning of like when Mike is going to come in. So then they can have the next day off Disney World or something.

Just to again be very intentional in terms of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. And so this year, unfortunately, I had surgery last week, I had a broken wing. And so I will be not riding for Unreal. I don’t want to think about it, but at least. Probably 8 weeks, if not longer.

And one of my horses actually went down to John’s at the end of October because I wanted to start. Then my other mayor will go down with Lynn at the beginning of January. And again, so it’s like a team effort, being willing to tap somebody else in to help you and help. And then my hope is that I’ll be able to go down and watch those horses compete in January and then hopefully go back down at some point in February, even if it’s for a week, just to sit on them, get a couple lessons and then probably bring them back. And then my babies, I have a coming four and coming 5 year old.

And so the girls who are in the barn are helping me with those, which is fun for them too. They’ll get to jump them a little bit and I don’t need to be sitting on them right now. It’s working. But yeah, it’s a traveling circus to see. Yeah, it sounds like a lot, but it sounds like you use the word intention a lot.

And it definitely sounds like you’re very intentional with your time and just the way you view all aspects of your life, which I think is such an important even just in the horse training side of things. Just being intentional with what are you going to do today? How am I going to show up to the barn? I think intention is like the word of 2025 is what I’ve come to learn. But this has been such a great conversation.

How do people find you? Follow along with what you do, All of that good stuff. Yeah, no, this has been super fun. Thank you so much for having me. I love having these conversations and just having people see a little bit different way you might be able to.

But yeah, so I am on the socials, I am on Instagram. We under Hablan Hills Equestrian, which is HABLYN, which is basically my husband’s last name and my first name put together. It’s Hablan hills.com on Instagram as well as Facebook. You can also find me on my personal Instagram and and Facebook page at Jacqueline Burke. Yeah, it’s I’m there.

I have some help in terms of a team behind me who helps manage that, which is something I started this year, and that’s actually been really nice to take that off my plate and I’ve been doing an excellent job. So shout out to the Mythical Landing team for helping with that. Awesome. Thanks so much for joining me. Yeah.

Thank you so much for having me, Sam. I appreciate it.