[00:00:00] In 1976, Duncan Taylor founded Taylor Made, one of the world's leading thoroughbred horse farms. His company has raised horses of legacy. In 1999, three Taylor Made horses won the Breeders Cup races, the probability of which is .00000… you get the point.
[00:00:22] And more recently, American Pharaoh, raised at Taylor Made, became the first Triple Crown winner since 1978, and only the 12th horse in history to win that title. And while Taylor Made is a business entirely focused on horses, this story isn't.
[00:00:38] It's about legacy, creating systems, finding your values, and a man named Joe Taylor. My dad, you could really say was the founder of the business even though he never owned it. That's Duncan.
[00:00:53] His father was Joe Taylor, who wrote the book on horse breeding, The Complete Guide to Breeding and Raising Race Horses. He was in the same business line that we're in. He was in the horse business and he was working for another company.
[00:01:07] He trained us all within the business, was all of our mentors and worked us very hard when he wasn't at his job and doing other kinds of entrepreneurial things. Joe Taylor's values and approach to horse breeding form the foundation of how Taylor Made operates.
[00:01:24] But in order to scale, Duncan needed to take the processes his family has developed over so many years and begin to get them down on paper. Duncan and his emith coach Steve Edkins have worked together over the past 16 months
[00:01:37] to set a clear vision and a set of values, processes and quantifiable metrics that his team could rally around. With a clear direction and a shared sense of purpose, Taylor Made is on track not only for the next year but for the next generation. Here's Steve.
[00:01:54] I think this whole emith paradigm has challenged how he thought he should think about his business. I think he's been challenged but he has done a spectacular job of overcoming that challenge. I'll be talking to Duncan and Steve on this episode of On It, a production by Emith.
[00:02:20] Each month we tell the stories of owners and how they transform their companies. You'll learn about their struggles, their successes and the changes they made to create the business they always wanted. One that, in the end, serves the life they want to live.
[00:02:36] I'm Martin Kamensky, CEO of Emith. Emith is the original business coaching company and over the last three decades we've worked with tens of thousands of business owners to help them systematize their business, improve their bottom lines and find more meaning in their work.
[00:02:52] Schedule a free one-hour session with an emith coach at emith.com. That's E-M-Y-T-H.com. We'll personally match you with a coach based on your industry, location and what help you're looking for. You'll have a real coaching experience and learn the steps necessary to produce both
[00:03:10] immediate results and long-term change. Learn more on our website, emith.com. Hi, Steve and Duncan. Welcome and thank you all for joining us today. Yeah, thank you. Great to be here and be with you and Steve. Thanks for the opportunity to be involved, Martin.
[00:03:31] I'm just really looking forward to hearing what Duncan can tell us. Steve and you both mentioned before the podcast that one of the most, the more difficult processes that you worked through on your business was values, passion and purpose.
[00:03:46] Steve, I was wondering if you could just explain briefly for the people listening what that process is about. Certainly. It's about looking at the owner's perspective on life and his business so that we can
[00:04:00] get some pieces to work with in terms of building a business that serves that life. It's a very personal, very introspective exercise. It's an exercise that is often met with some resistance but once we've worked through
[00:04:15] it most owners and I think Duncan clearly falls into this category come to appreciate it. They appreciate the taking a look at some stuff that they don't always take a look at. I think it's buried within you.
[00:04:30] For me, I'm a spiritual person but I've also got some greed that sort of conflicts with that and the greed can also in ways be a blessing because it's a driver and when you're looking at that and you're thinking what I want to put on paper?
[00:04:49] What do I want to admit to? What do I think about one of other people to hear? That's personal and it's also something that's deep within you. You've got to think about it a while to really understand what is in yourself and what means
[00:05:05] the most to you and why are you doing every day what you do. Once you have revealed that to yourself and you understand it and you put it down on paper then coming to your vision and your mission and your core values is basically
[00:05:24] they're being based on the real you. I think it also helps you to enjoy what you're doing and to understand how your different values can work together. When you were talking about the process of trying to admit some of these things to
[00:05:42] yourself and then what you wanted to put to paper, I can just feel how challenging a personal process that would be. What Duncan is saying, part of what I'm hearing is the journey has become worthwhile because we've got the destination to find.
[00:05:58] We know where we're going therefore it's easier to do some of this stuff that we might not have taken on without a good destination. That's really the trick for any business owner who's feeling stuck right? Who's feeling like their company has become a ball and chain that they're
[00:06:16] dragging around because the systems are broken or because they're losing steam or losing the right people or losing profitability. It gets hard to do the important work when you don't know how this business is
[00:06:30] going to become a vehicle that brings your life into focus, that helps you get to whatever it is your goals are, whether it's to amass a whole bunch of money in the bank or just to buy your first house or to put your
[00:06:43] kids through school or whatever the point is, whatever you're trying to do. When your business is on the track to bringing you that reality, it puts all the rest of it in a different focus. Yeah, that gives you a system of how to get there.
[00:06:58] I think that for me, I told you I was a very spiritual person and another thing that I was trying to bring into my business was a Christ-centeredness. I've been postponing that and the Holy Spirit kept knocking on my door saying,
[00:07:15] you need to be more integrated in your life with your faith. Really talking about that within this context is becoming very much more natural to me than it was before because I look at what am I doing for my people to really grow them,
[00:07:39] to actually care for them and not to look at them as objects and to love them so they can be the best they can be. E-Mith and the systems helped me to integrate that, started like a caring committee
[00:07:55] and through the E-Mith work and through his way at work, those two working together, our team members are happier than they've ever been and we're getting just as much done if not more, the systematic approach is helping the whole company.
[00:08:13] You put a big smile on my face when you told me about that committee because in our values process for E-Mith, we've identified care as one of our core values. When I joined the company and then took over the role of CEO,
[00:08:31] I said that having it as a value is a start and training people what that means in living it is another big step. But we went so far as to establish it as a part of our
[00:08:45] organizational structure so we have a care team in our company as well and I couldn't agree more with you that it's made a huge difference in not only the way our employees feel here but
[00:09:00] in the way that we relate to our coaches and our clients as well, everybody's starting to feel the impact there. The beauty of the E-Mith coaching material, the E-Mith coaching curriculum, the E-Mith coaching paradigm is it doesn't matter what business you're in because we're not working
[00:09:18] on the business, we're working on the business owner and Duncan is a willing participant in this whole thing. I mean he loved the fact that we held him accountable through writing down his
[00:09:30] company visions. He just is the kind of guy that gets it. One of the words that comes to mind when I think about him is a lot of humility. When I attempt to say, wow you really did a great
[00:09:45] job with that, he'd always deflects that about something somebody else did. Yeah it doesn't take much effort to have an employee function to invite the wife or the husband
[00:10:02] and give them a little gift and make just a little thing that much nicer than it does to be all grouchy and about half irritated and one to get something done. You know you read that all
[00:10:17] the time as a businessman and we're entrepreneurs and I said I'm partially greedy so I never could understand that in my mind. They said well some people how much they make in the most important
[00:10:29] thing and I never could understand that because I said hell I want to make this much again. You know I used to think money was the only reward now when you actually see somebody doing
[00:10:40] good and they're happy with what they're doing and they're enjoying being on your team. That is as gratifying as money and more gratifying a lot of ways. That's absolutely right. Staying true to your values is so important and actually
[00:10:58] reflects in how you treat everyone on your team and in many other ways but ultimately those kind of decisions to stay true to your values has a real impact on your business.
[00:11:13] You still need to be who you are in as far as instilling the things you want into your people. My dad met Biden instilling it in yet was that he was getting up at about
[00:11:24] quarter six and he was letting you go to bed about 10 30 at night. He didn't have to write it down because it was imprinted on your brain but my dad was blessed that he lived to be 79
[00:11:40] so he had plenty of time to teach me but he could have died at 40 and if he hadn't written everything down it would have been a lot harder on me learning it and he didn't write it down
[00:11:52] but he just lived long enough that they got transferred so I'm in no way a big proponent of writing down and having things systematized and the great thing that I love about what Steve
[00:12:07] shared with me is that your innovation is going to take place but your innovation and the new ideas they're always taking place when in your daily work when you're trying to do something
[00:12:19] better so that's going to happen and then but if you realize okay I've got a new idea now how am I going to quantify this to make sure it really is as good as I think it is and you have that
[00:12:29] system in place and then you have the system in place to say okay this this is the way I'm doing it and then you basically teach your team to orchestrate it that's what systemization is
[00:12:40] all about is taking the best ideas making sure they are the best ideas and then making sure they're they're acted out within the business when you say that you don't think you're really talking about customer satisfaction but that's exactly what you're talking about I've been
[00:13:00] very impressed ever since I started working with Duncan I think I think Taylor Meade's got something figured out and I think some of it's Duncan there's not just behind the back quibbling
[00:13:10] and quarreling I mean they're all in it they all know why they're in it they know what they're doing and their focus is not inward on themselves but outward on their customer Steve are all of your clients this naturally oriented toward towards systems and systemizing
[00:13:29] their business I wouldn't say so and I'm I'm not even sure that that Duncan is as oriented to systems as he'd like to be I think what he just was explaining and you can call me out on this
[00:13:47] one is that now when they talk about systems they have something to to root it in because they have a shared vision they have a brand commitment they have a series of values that they all agree to
[00:14:02] that that's posted over the water cooler and I think that's the difference in systems today in systems five years ago at Taylor Meade is that they make they make more sense now and I
[00:14:19] I love to hear what Duncan has to say about that I mean I could be all wrong on it he might have me fooled but the fact that we have these these this hard work that Duncan did around values
[00:14:30] around vision around his own purpose statement is making it makes more sense it makes it easier to have the conversation about systems yeah I would agree with that I think that that again we we are not where I want to be with systems we've actually taken we call
[00:14:56] four brothers and then there's the next generation we have a term for them we call next years so we have a next year that's actually going to work with our CFO and they're going to put together start documenting all the systems and you know that's if that starts
[00:15:18] and it's not that we don't have any of them documented now but they're documented in ways that are different everybody's got a different type of way of of organizing them they're on different PCs they're in different places and our company is working very well
[00:15:42] but I know that if I wanted to sell my company if I had a heart attack tomorrow and had a stroke and or me Ben and Frank were all killed on the car wreck God forbid that it wouldn't be as easy
[00:16:00] and I wouldn't have done the job that I wish I would have done for the people that have to follow after me to be able to run the business to give the customer
[00:16:10] the same experience that they deserve when they see our reputation they think oh yes I can go there and I know what I'm going to get you know that Duncan there's something interesting on your
[00:16:23] that's on your website where you talk about the probability of one farm breeding three breeders cup winners in one day is point zero zero lots of zeros eight five four that which is incredible and then it made even more incredible more recently with American Faro's success
[00:16:43] when you talk about what you about what you commit to your customers and the kind of quality you want to assure them what does that mean for you in your business what what does the
[00:16:54] quality look like how what kind of systems do you have in place to ensure that quality you know one of the systems we have the the groom who's the person that takes care of the horse
[00:17:08] a mixture of mud and vinegar and water mixes it up and it becomes like a paste and he rubs it on all horses four legs you know my dad first said well that keeps the flies
[00:17:25] from wanting to land on their leg and them stomping and breaking up their feet but what it really did is it made the the groom look at the horse's legs and actually feel them
[00:17:36] every day and it made the horses a lot easier to handle and a lot easier for the blacksmith to trim so he could do the best job he could do so that's like the the common sense approach to a system
[00:17:49] you know you could raise the horse very easily it could be a good horse without doing that but in any business it's the very little thing that separates you from the competition
[00:18:04] so if it's having a a business coach is one area that you might get a 1% or 2% or 8% advantage and it may be how good you put the mud on the legs gives you a percentage advantage
[00:18:21] you having a like a tailor maybe we have like a night watch team when the mares are following because that's a very critical time there's a lot of risk there and you know all it takes
[00:18:33] is for the american pharaoh the triple crown winner the man that was night watching that night if he were to fall asleep and the mare would have fold without an attendant and we got hung up and died
[00:18:47] we wouldn't have the triple crown winner and all it took was him maybe having a couldn't sleep or had insomnia and they missed the following well we've got a like a night manager when that
[00:19:01] following is going on and we got a night watchman in each barn and then we have the manager checking on them so it's a very you know we've got people that are covering that and we're
[00:19:13] eliminating that risk so the more risk that you can eliminate and keeping the horse safe you know i could go into all kinds of different systems about how fences are built and how paddocks are laid out to make it safer house how the barns built for the best
[00:19:31] health of the horse i mean there's just system after system that that just come natural to us but they are systems and and they can be forgotten if they're not documented and and and kept in
[00:19:51] orderly fashion so that's like the air the airplane pilot when when they have a crash i don't know how they have it set up but they know that they have to they have to go through the whole
[00:20:10] systematic process change and check things off before that plane takes off because he's dealing with you know people's lives we happen to be dealing with horses that we want to run faster than races but both of them need systems if you want to be the best
[00:20:27] that's exactly right now steve i uh i don't know if you came into this engagement with a whole lot of experience in in horses i'm gonna assume that the answer is no but my my guess is you
[00:20:41] probably didn't hand dunk in all of these ideas for systems that he could implement in his company but what what do you do and how how do you help him as his coach to reinforce them
[00:20:56] i probably asked too many questions about what the why what's the result what are you hoping to achieve by that all of these operational systems i think are just the natural outgrowth of a
[00:21:08] creative guy like dunk and leading a creative team and they're all the one thing that's really clear and i don't know a lot about the horse business but i do know that that people that
[00:21:21] understand this sort of esoteric concept of of dunkins of horsemanship seem to be the ones that have a a triple crown winner on their on their farm and that that's certainly an exceptional situation but there's been other great situations coming out of tailor made i just question why
[00:21:42] he wants to do things i would say one of our core values is always look for a better way i've never been stuck in this is the way my dad did it or this is the way my granddad did it so
[00:21:55] this is the way i'm doing it i just think that what we're hearing is the legacy of of joe tailor who told these boys stick together to do the right thing i mean joe tailor could have
[00:22:10] could have written the the value statement i believe that i i believe that whole heartedly that value statement uh although he didn't write it i can i could see easily coming from those
[00:22:26] ideas that he put in your heads and the ways that he shaped the way that you do things and and he may not have been involved in creating the operations manual or documenting your systems
[00:22:38] but it sure seems like they're just as much his systems as they are yours and that that generational strength sure seems to be having a great impact on your business hey listen i i really want to thank
[00:22:52] both of you for taking some time out today to share with me your stories steve for you in in working with duncan as his coach and duncan for sharing with us and giving us a sense of how
[00:23:06] things are working with you at tailor made and what the experience of coaching has been like for you is it's really been a lot of fun for me just to get to know uh you duncan better and and hear
[00:23:17] about your business and the ways that that it's been impacted thanks for listening to on it by emith we'd love to hear what you think about the podcast leave us your comments on our blog
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