We recently connected with Tori Sullivan and have shared our conversation below.
Tori, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?
I created BarnWiz after purchasing a spirited Hanoverian mare, Galapagos, aka “Gala” as a barley started 5 yr old that my trainer had out in a “youngster” field. She has a very outgoing personality and is very athletic, but her stubbornness and bucking reaction was something I was determined to overcome. After buying multiple custom saddles, trying different trainers, moving her to Florida, then Georgia just to find a way to her to stop rearing and bucking. Nothing was helping and each time I looked for a new answer I had to search for months, asking friends, asking local tack shop owners, google searches etc. The search was endless and very frustrating.
After working in healthcare technology for 20 years, I knew technology could help modernize the horse industry and I founded BarnWiz. For 6 years we were a directory of professional horse trainers and boarding facilities offering English riding lessons and horse boarding. In COVID, I was working at a local tack shop to connect with professionals that were no going to shows at the moment. I listened to professional after professional walk through the doors complaining about how hard it was to attract the right clients, keep their schedule up to date when the are on horses or away from the barn and they were tied down with invoicing clients and chasing payments just to make ends meet each month. I knew there had to be a better way for professionals to run a business.
In 2022, I hired a team of designers and engineers and we designed and built the BarnWiz App as a business tool for the industry. My belief is that standard listings will help normalize the industry into a more structured business. The ability for professionals to book their services and be paid at the time of service like an Uber ride will help stabilize their revenue. BarnWiz App just launch with the vision of modernizing the horse industry for the digital era and growing the industry because we expose how easy it really is to start learning how to ride with a local trainer.
Tori, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I grew up in Reno, Nevada in a family that bred and raised Hanoverian horse to sell into the Sport horse industry. Many of our horses went on to Dressage, Eventing, Jumping riders and other breeding programs. After undergraduate school, I moved from Reno, Nevada to Bethesda, Maryland to start my first job. I moved my Hanoverian mare, Sherry, out with me after a year and struggled to find a close farm. So I moved her 45 minutes away. After boarding for a year, I randomly ran into a flyer advertising a farm that was 15 minutes from my home. I was shocked, how can a farm be so close and I never knew. 5 years later I wanted to retire her and find a new horse. The process of finding a new farm to train a young horse was just as grueling. I set out to help others find a local barns and professional horse trainers with an online directory. In 2014, I founded BarnWiz and in 2015 launched our first directory. It was riddled with holes and internet spam created random listings and it was a mess, so we took it down thinking we could just add security and put it back up. Only to find out that it was not movable and we lost everything.
After a good cry, I asked a friend to attend a local meet-up with a software team presenting at a Small Business Meeting event. We met the Founder and hit is off, after a year of planning and development, we launched our directory July 4, 2018 at the Great Meadows 4* Event. It was a huge event with hundreds of spectators. Thankfully, we had pre-loaded 24 professional listings with photos that we shot on site to get the listings set-up. It was really a fun first year, going to horse shows and talking with people about the directory.
I attended the Virginia iCAP (Innovation Commercialization Assistance Program) with the Small Business Development Center. There I learned how to get our ideas verified with customers before we built anything else.
Then Fall hit and professionals were stopping their listings because they had filled their barn stall, or their training program and wanted to stop advertising for the winter. It was crushing, We created a cheaper price point to try to keep them on and offered to advertise them at the higher price point, so they would stay on at the lower price point. That worked until COVID. All the shows stopped, riding horses was only allowed a few people at a time, People were coming out of the wood work to get to barns for riding lessons. We made everyone go free just to keep them on the platform and ride it out. No one wanted to advertise, it was too much chaos.
That’s when I took the job at the Tack Shop to connect with the professionals at a personal level. They provided me with the idea of expanding the directory to have scheduled booking, auto payments and a way to see a rider or horse profile before agreeing to meet. I kept networking with business mentors and that lead me to a tech team and the Tampa Bay Wave Accelerator programs. I applied and was accepted into the Women in Tech Accelerator program in 2021.
My team and I met with 7 different software development companies, hired a few and kept hitting ground mines. Finally we met our designer, through a platform for tech talent. It was brilliant, he blew me away with his designs. After about 6 months we were on the hook to hire engineers. Our designer asked that we consider his friends that had all just finished a gig with him at another company and were available to work. His friends were native app developers, every other team was trying to convince us we should do a platform and “wrap” the apps until we had more funding to build the native apps. My gut told me that I may never get funding to “build a native App in this tech market” so I needed to build it now. I agreed to meet them on a Zoom call and asked each one why would a native app be better than a “wrapped” app. They each spoke with passion and explained that a native app would enable features on the phones and a security level we would not get with a “wrapped” app. I fell in love with the guys and hired them as part-time contractors. One brought his wife on to help in the back-end and another found a local barn that offered riding lessons. I am very lucky to have such a wonderful and talented team.
Together we designed and built a business suite for the horse industry. Professionals offering riding lessons, horse training and boarding can create a professional listing for their business, then add a Trainer Profile to advertise each professional trainer. The listings include photos, business website, contact, service offerings and pricing, amenities of the facility. People can search for free and when they message a listing they can include a rider or horse profile to best match with the trainer.
We launched the Search and match features in the app on April 20th and are planning to keep developing with adding booking services and payments at the time of service later this summer. In the fall we plan to add a Community feature to enable everyone in a professional listing can see other member’s rider and horse profiles so they know who they will be riding with at the new barn. Also, a community calendar will enable the people riding at the barn to schedule group rides or social events and the whole community can join in.
We are located in Middleburg, Va in the heart of horse country. Most people see me at local shows or at major events across the country. Follow us on social media or stop by our booth to say hi.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
My development team is all in Europe, the marketing team is all over the East coast and all we can do is join a Slack channel, Zoom calls, text messages or phone calls to connect. Building anything is grueling and apps are no different. We had heated discussions, laughs and grinding calls to get through it. The one thing I started the first week and never changed was a weekly call and a monthly one on one with each team member. This one on one time proved to be so valuable in adding a team member that turned out to be key to the success of our back-end team. Getting one of our engineers a better exchange rate for his monthly payments, bringing him home an additional $250 per month.
I am a big believer in sticking to the main point of what we can control and use data to make decisions. We have a rule of not using assumptions to make changes to our designs. This has saved us multiple times. We don’t blame anyone, we find solutions, as a team with deep respect for each other.
Before we launched the App, I made “Founding Team” certificated and send each team member a certificate and swag to wear. and a personal thank you note. We all got together on one Zoom call, Marketing, Engineers, Finance and Execs. It was a call to celebrate our achievement and to talk about what we each appreciated about each other and the project. No one could talk shop. Everyone loved it and I was so grateful for the time to say thank you to each of them. We can never do anything alone, it takes a village. Always, be grateful for your village.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
Every founder seeking VC funding should read Founder vs Investor by Elizabeth Zalman and Jerry Neumann. I loved this book so much I listened to the audio version on a long drive then bought the hard copy and put tabs on all the key areas. Its a combination bible, comedy relief and survival kit for start-ups raising money.
Anyone starting a business can get miles of inspiration and business leadership advice from Brad Jacobs, his book. “How to Make a Few Billion Dollars” includes his unbelievable stories of starting companies, buying and selling companies riddled with problems, he talks about his high achieving team, mental health and processes that are repeatable and what makes him so successful. I loved hearing his advice on running meetings and how he gets the whole team engaged.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.barnwiz.com
- Instagram: @barnwiz_inc
- Facebook: BarnWiz