Exclusive Clinton Anderson Interview by Tracy Wager

Q - You recently were competing in Scottsdale at the Cactus Classic Reining horse show against some of the biggest names in the sport, and we’ve seen you competing many NRHA events for years. Why are you taking on that challenge?

A - Well I’ve always wanted to be a horse trainer, I never really wanted to be a clinician. I always wanted to train horses for a living. I’ve always wanted to compete and like competing, but I never got to do it for over 20 years at the level I wanted to do it because I was too busy traveling, touring and being on the road doing clinics. I couldn’t focus on the performance horses, ride 6 days a week and basically put in the effort you needed to put in. I showed when I could and was part of the industry, but now I have somewhat retired from Downunder Horsemanship. We still have the company going but I’m not actively pushing it anymore and I’m certainly not actively on the road. I am only on the road three times a year now touring so I have a lot more time on my hands. So, with that time, I want to get back to doing what I love and enjoy which is showing performance horses.

Clinton Anderson enjoying the ride

It’s been Reining in the past, but I’m pretty much getting out of the Reiners here soon and going to focus all my effort on the Cow Horses. I just found that the Cow Horse shows are a lot of fun, the people are a lot of fun, a very welcoming industry. Training a Working Cow Horse is extremely difficult because you are training three horses compared to one. It’s a very big challenge for me and I just find that it’s interesting and it’s something new. You know the Reiners I’ve been doing for over 20 years, not that I’ve perfected it by any means but it’s something I’m very familiar with where the Cow Horse is a new challenge, so it’s very interesting. Honestly the horse shows are a lot more fun. Honestly the Reiners are stuck up a little bit, the Cow Horse people are a lot more fun, they are a lot more social. They’ll welcome newbies, they welcome beginners. They don’t give a hoot if you have a million dollars in your pocket or if you are poor and show up with a single horse stock horse trailer with rust in it - they don’t care. They just welcome you. I personally enjoy the atmosphere a lot more. It’s the Cowboys against the cows, where at the Reining shows it’s a lot more of an individual sport. I just don’t find that you have the camaraderie the way that you do with the Cow Horse events. The NRCHA have a special culture and every trainer genuinely wants the next trainer beside him to do well even though they are a competitor. In the warm-up pen everybody’s wishing everyone Good Luck, they cheer for you, and it is not fake. It is not something that is just for show, they genuinely want each other to do well. It is something that I have never experienced before.

Q - You built nationwide brand recognition using RFDTV as a distribution channel for your TV show, becoming one of, if not, the most recognized equestrian brands in America. Today you’re producing a podcast for your fans, how is that working out?

A - So far it is working out really well. We have only been doing it about six months now and the podcast is already in the top 1% of podcasts in the entire Country. There are over 5 million podcasts in America and to make the top one percent you’ve got to have 50,000 downloads per episode within the first 30 days of an episode’s release. We’ve done that on all but one show so far. So, to do that is especially the reason why I think that’s so significant, is that the horse industry is a very small niche industry. Compared to hunting, fishing, racing, sports. You know, horses really are very niche market, so for a horse podcast to break into the top 10% in the entire country is pretty unique. I’m not trying to brag but I kind of am a little bit. Like that stuff doesn’t happen! It’s been watched in over 105 countries all over the World and the whole purpose of it was to talk about people that started poor, started broke, started with nothing in life and through hard work, determination, business skill and sacrifice ended up being very wealthy and very successful. So, I wanted to talk about money and personal lives, and it’s called “Uncut & Real Raw” for a reason. Because we are very raw, we say what’s on our mind. The reason our podcast has been so successful is because I say the stuff that’s on most people’s mind that nobody really wants to say it. It’s been very successful, I only did it for a hobby, I never intended it to turn into basically what it’s turned into. It’s turned into something extremely popular. I just did it because I thought it would be interesting and something fun to do. I really didn’t know if would take off or not but it’s certainly has. I think the public is absolutely starving for genuine uncensored conversation. We are so sick as a culture, sick of politically correctness, cancel culture, all the bull crap politically correct horse shit that has been going on the last 20 years, I think it’s really just built to a complete peak right now where everybody’s had a gut full of it. So I think another reason why the podcast is so successful is because I don’t have a filter, I don’t want the guests to have a filter and we’re willing to talk about not just success, but people want to know our values, they want to know that you get a bloody nose from time to time. You know no matter how much money you have, whether you are poor, whether you’re rich - we all put our clothes on the same way every morning! The podcast to me has been very relatable to the audience because we’re not trying to hide anything. In fact, the uglier the story is and the uglier and more embarrassing it is the more we talk about it, and it makes everybody laugh. It’s relatable.

Q - Why do you think Rip’s character on Yellowstone is so popular?

It is not a shock that his character is so popular. He is popular because everybody feels that part of Rip inside themselves. Now everybody’s just so scared to let it show anymore. That’s why his character is so successful, because he’s real he is not counterfeit. He’s a good guy, he’s like the modern-day Zorro. He defends the little guy. You know what I mean? He’s tough, he is caring, he believes in the Code of the West, and you either like him or you don’t. And if you don’t like him, he doesn’t give a hoot either. He really does not care. He really does not lose one little bit of sleep.

Q - That is hard to learn how to handle Clinton….

A - Yes, it is Tracy. And again, me as a personality, I’m very much the same. You either love me or you hate me. I get it - there is no in-between with me. You’re either a fan of mine or you hate my guts and I’m ok either way. And even if you hate me, I still wish you the best in life. I want you to listen to somebody you enjoy, why would you listen to somebody who don’t enjoy? I realized this a long time ago. You cannot keep everybody in the world happy, not even close. In fact, the more successful you become in life the less people you do keep happy. I think the best you can really hope for is maybe 60/40. 60% of the people like you and 40% hate you guts. Because as you get more successful politically left or right or how you think, you are going to rub half of your audience the wrong way and that’s OK. And why is it OK? Because there is such a big audience in 50%, who cares about the other 50%?

Al Dunning, Clinton Anderson and Rex Wager at the 2005 NRHA Futurity

Photo Credit - Tracy Wager

I have an old saying that is, “When you sit in the middle of the fence you get splinters in your butt.” So, when you sit in the middle of the fence, and try to appease both groups of people, all you do is make everybody angry! You might as well be just who you are. Half the people will love you for it and half the people will hate ya. So, the people that love you for it, engage with them. The people that hate you, just smile and ignore them because they really shouldn’t affect your life. You certainly do not want to affect their life and I don’t want to change anybody. I have no desire to change anybody. If you want to go to church four-times a week, I don’t care, more power to you. I encourage you to do it, but in return, I politely ask you not to try to change me. I’m the way I am.

Q - On Yellowstone, John Dutton’s personal horse, in season five was one of your favorite horses… a beautiful buckskin. You could spot your brand on the horse. How did that come about?

A - That hose is by Nic It In The Bud, out of Princess And Diamonds. He is extremely well bred. Princess And Diamonds is an NRHA Hall of Fame mare. He was originally trained as a Reining horse and then over the years got passed down to a rookie Reining horse, then I sold him to a lady and then I don’t know how he eventually ended up on the TV show. I’ll be honest about that. I never asked Taylor how the horse ended up there, but he is a very pretty horse, good minded and well-trained. You can’t buy that kind of advertising. Last time I saw Taylor I shook his hand, and I said I feel like I need to write you a check, and he said, “Why?” I said, “Because putting that horse on the TV show got me a lot of free branding and advertising”, and we just both chuckled. So, you know, to be honest I don’t know how he ended up there. I’d like to tell you something fantastic story about how I planned it all, but reality is it just worked out that way.

Q -This has become a new program for you?

A - I am no longer breeding performance horses, but I am selling them now. I buy really high-end yearlings or two-year-old’s and then I sell them and keep them in training. So, when I retired, I moved from 250 acres down to basically 11 acres in northwest Arkansas and now I don’t want to do the breeding anymore I’d rather just buy. So, if you kill a cow I just want to come and buy your filet. I want to buy the best cuts of that cow from you, and I want to leave you with the rest. When you’re breeding 20 to 30 foals a year, you know you might end up with four or five outstanding ones but now you’ve got 26 that you’ve got to find homes for, so I’d rather pay a premium and come to you as a great breeder and pick the best ones. I’ll pay a good premium for them, then I only get what I want. I enjoy that a lot more and I think it’s increased my odds of finding great horses and because I don’t have the land and all the stuff. I don’t have all the apprentices around anymore and the people to handle the breeding operation as I did it for 25 years, so it was just time for a change. I enjoyed it, I made money at it, I was good at it, but reality is I can only ride so many horses. I have a very small boutique training barn. I need to ride about 11 horses a day. I can’t do the numbers game. I can’t start 30 two year-olds to find three good ones. Doug Carpenter, my mentor that passed away from COVID. He always said, “Your better off going and buying the Stock you want rather than waiting for people to try to send it to you.” You might get 30 customers to send you 30 colts, and a lot of them might be well bred, but the reality out of 30 there might only be five that are going to stay with you. For a level 4 kind of horse as a big-time Open horse. I would rather pay a premium to you, and I’ll buy your best one and I expect you’re going to charge me accordingly, but I still feel like I am money ahead by giving you a premium for your best stock rather than me trying to do a numbers game.

Q - So, You have a New Performance Horse program that is part of your return to the show pen. Can you tell us about this?

A - I have people ask me all the time, “Can I put a horse in training with you Clinton?” And they kind of think that I am untouchable now, and the answer is no I’ll train your horse the only difference is this. I won’t accept you sending me what you want to send me but if you buy something that I already have I’ll be happy to train it for you. Because I’m not like a traditional horse trainer where you just send the horse you’ve bred, and I see if it works or not. I take all my own horses and I buy them with my own money so that means I’ve got skin in the game and if I like riding it and it’s a really good horse, I’m happy to resell it to you and you leave it with me to train. So can you get me to train a horse for you, absolutely. The difference is I will only sell your horse that I bought first and that should show some confidence that I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is. I’ve got skin in the game, and I’ve already rode him for six months, so I know what I’ve got. I’m not interested in selling a horse to you if I don’t want to ride it. Because again I don’t make my money from riding horses, so I have no incentive to lie to you and tell you it’s a good horse when it’s not. Because I want to get rid of it if it’s no good, I don’t want to own it! If I already own, it and it’s a good one I’m willing to sell it to you. I have never done anything Tracy the way everybody else does it, that’s why I’m so successful and I’m not bragging but I do the opposite of what everyone does. If everybody’s walking, I start running so I have a completely different business model than everybody else.

In fact, what I do, I have such a unique business plan I actually sell the horses to my customers with a money back guarantee. That’s never been done before so let’s say you buy a two-year-old for $150,000. I’ll sell it to you, and I give up until the futurity finals. On the final’s night of the Cow Horse Futurity, if you don’t want it for any reason. If it goes lame, you get a divorce, you just you woke up one night and say, “I don’t want to do it anymore”, I will give you your purchase price back. I won’t give you your training money and paid board or vet bills or any of that, but whatever your purchase price is, I actually guarantee in writing that I give that back.

Nobody in the horse industry has the guts to do that. I do! You might say, “Well why would I do that?” Several reasons. Number one, Tracy I already know what I got so when I sell you a good one, I know it’s a good one, because I’ve already been riding it. OK? Number two, let’s say I sell you a 2-year-old for $150,000 to $200,000 and I guarantee that on the night before the futurity finals of that horse’s futurity year, if you don’t want it, I write you a check back. What do I care, you have paid all of the bills for 18 months. I basically got to train my own horse for free and not pay any expensive for 18 months. So, if it’s a good horse, how willing do you think I am to buy it back off you? Really willing, aren’t I? I hope you sell that horse back to me! I know he’s ready, and now he’s worth $250,000! I sell horses with a money back guarantee! Tell me who else who has done that? Nobody!

So, I put in writing, that when you sign a contract with me, that you have up to (now you have to insure it in case it drops dead), but I put it writing that I will buy it back and for any reason too! Let’s just say it ended up being lame, or have an accident, I just buy it back! Someone might say, “Why do you but it back if it is lame?” Again, I am gonna have skin in the game. That’s mindset to keep something healthy, isn’t it? That’s my incentive to not cripple it! In the back of my mind, if I cripple the horse or something, I end up the owner again!

That’s what I do, I buy with my money. I ride him for, you know like six months, and if I don’t have a real good feeling about him, or if I don’t like them or they’re not good enough they just disappear. They go to a sale. If I like them, they stay, and then customers can buy them. I price them high enough so that if the clients never sell them back to me, great I made a profit. If they do sell them back to me, that’s OK because I basically got them trained for 18 months on their dime. Either way I win and it’s really good for the customer!

I am not actively searching to purchase 2-year old’s for Reining right now. If someone came to me and says that they really want to go do this, I am not going to say that I wouldn’t, but I’m not actively pursuing reining prospects. Right now, I am pursuing the Cow Horse prospects.

Q -You have maintained a leadership position in the horse business for decades. What has motivated your drive to work that hard over an extended period-of-time?

A -Honestly money……. That is as simple as it gets, money. I did this for the money and I’m not ashamed for doing it. A lot of people in the Western industry think it’s a taboo to say that. That you do what you do for money, but I did it for money and I’m not ashamed of it, just like everybody has a job. If you really want to be honest, with 95% of the people in the World, if you said, “Would you go to your job if it wasn’t paying you money? What would their answer be? No… And they would say, “Are you crazy? Heck no I wouldn’t go to my job if it wasn’t paying me!” Except, when you say it out loud everybody thinks you’re a piece of crap for some reason in the Western World. Everybody thinks you’re a horrible person because you say you did this for money. Very few people get lucky. When you get to make a lot of money or have a career and you genuinely loved that career, I never loved what I did, I was just good at it. I was good at it, there was money in it, I recognized there was money in it and I have a flair for business. I went with it. Now that I’m a horse trainer, I love what I’m doing now, but is there any money in it? No, No, not at all! There is no money in training horses. But I love doing it, so yeah now I’m doing something I love to do but heck it’s a good thing I made all my money and invested it, because I sure wouldn’t like to be living off the horse training money right now. You know what I mean? I did it for the money. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy some of it, some of it I did enjoy, but it was a job, and it was a business. If a guy has a multi-million-dollar concrete factory? Do you really think that guy enjoys waking up every day and making concrete? Of course, he doesn’t, but he sure likes spending that money from his concrete business on a nice house and a pool! So, you think that guy’s passionate about concrete? Course he is not. Society wants you to say, “I love what I do.” I don’t know why we have to be like that. 95% of us don’t love what we do, we do it for income. How you know that is if you’re boss says I’m not going to pay you, will you show up tomorrow? If you do, you probably love what you do! Let’s just be honest, it’s not like I’m doing something nobody else is doing, I just seem to be the only ass that says it. That is why the pod cast is so successful, because we say the things we are not supposed to say and everybody chuckles and relates to it!

Q - When you landed as a skinny kid from Australia in America and we first meet at Al Dunning’s ranch any reasonable person could recognize that you were handy with a horse, but there was no reason to think you would rise to the top. What is it about you that propelled your career?

A - What made me more successful than everybody else when I was in the clinician business is my work ethic. I wasn’t that talented with a horse and I’m still not. There are many other men and women that can train a horse much better than me. But where I beat my competition was not in talent, it was in raw determination and work ethic. So, to be perfectly honest my secret weapon in life is I just out work my competition. I couldn’t beat them on talent, I couldn’t beat them on natural ability, but I sure as shit could out work them. And that’s what I did. If they did ten tours a year, I did twenty. If they worked 12 hours a day, I worked 14. Whatever they did I did 25% more. That was my real talent. My real talent is that I had to outwork them! I’m still using that to my advantage today. There is many other men and women I’m training against right now that are better horsemen than me, so I have to work harder to try to even it up. Right now, you know in the performance horses I’m kind of getting my butt kicked a little bit, but I still keep showing up every day. Trying to get better, trying to get better, trying to get better…..Really you don’t have to be the most talented person in the horse industry, you just have to have the best work ethic and that’ll take you a long way.

Q - What horse people have had a major impact on shaping who Clinton Anderson has become?

A - In the beginning my two big mentors were Gordon McKinlay in Australia and Ian Francis’. Gordon showed me all my colt starting skills, problem solving skills, how to handle a bad horse and groundwork. Ian Francis’ showed me a lot of riding techniques. He has won the Reining Futurity five times and won the Cutting Futurity 3 times in Australia. He showed me more skills towards the show pen. Then in America I have tried to take a blend from a lot of really good people. Andrea has been a really good influence on me over the years. He has helped me. The late, great Doug Carpenter was very instrumental as a mentor, helping me with the bloodlines, breeding and conformation. You pretty much cannot name anyone in the Reining world that has not been successful that I have tried to pick up tips from here and there. I’m still doing it. Bob Avila is helping me a lot with the Cow Horses, and I still try and get help every day and learn something new.

My life would have been completely different if my job with Al Dunning had been different. Meaning this, Al was the greatest boss I ever worked for, and I’ll say that. He was the greatest and I loved working there. The reason I left, and it’s not a bad reason, it just is what it is. I was third stringer. So, Al got to pick what he wanted to show. Mike Wood was there, and Mike got what he wanted to show and there was nothing for me being third in line. And at that time, Mike had been there like four or five years at least and Al Dunning said to me, after six months. He said,” Clinton are you going to stick around?” and I said, “Honestly Al, I don’t think I will.” And he said, “How come?” And you can print all this. I said, “Al there’s nothing here for me. There’s nothing, there’s nothing for the third guy in line. I said, “You know, you get what you want, and Mike gets the leftovers. Well, there’s no leftovers from Mike and honestly, I don’t see Mike leaving here anytime soon. Al said, “Well you are correct, it’s the Code of the West. Whoever’s been here the longest gets seniority,” and he said, “I can’t put you ahead of Mike”, and he said, “You have to wait your turn.” I said, “I respect that, I’m not mad about it or upset. I respect the law.” But I said I also want to get a chance to go show. Because remember, back in those days when you first met me Tracy, I wanted to be a horse trainer. I had no desire to be a clinician. Well, it turned out that Mike stayed on another 6 or 7 years! It was a wise decision me leaving, because Mike didn’t go anywhere for a loooong time……… you know what I mean? Now, if would have thought that Mike was going to leave in the next two or three years, I would have stayed. And I’ll tell you this much, if I would have stayed, my career would have been completely different. I would have been a show horse trainer! I would have been training Reining Horses, Cow Horses, Cutters. That’s what I would have done. But you know fate and life takes you different directions and I went a different direction.

Q - When you left Al’s, what happened that you became a clinician?

A -Well, after that I got married to an American girl. We were just young dumb kids. She was 18, I was 20. We didn’t know the difference between love and lust. So, I got married and went back to Australia for a year. I came back to America a year later and knew that if you were not working for one of these guys that had enough show horses that you could get something to pick from, you were just gonna be slave labor. So, I called up Avila, because that’s when he was really hot with Todd Bergen and John Slack and couldn’t get a job there. I called up Stone Ranch. That’s when John and Todd were working together with Brett. Couldn’t get a job there. Called all the major trainers and couldn’t get a job and eventually I got a job with Mike and Barbi Boyle in Ione, California. I enjoyed that. I got along with Mike really well, and you can print this because Barbi and I get along really well now. At the time, Barbi and I didn’t see eye to eye, and after a few months she ended up firing me. We always joke about it today, and I buy her a cocktail every time I see her, because she gave me the best firing I ever got! She fired me and it basically forced me, because I was broke, to go teach lessons. Because I had no money and I had given a lot of lessons for Mike in that local area, so I just went back to giving lessons to just try to get a little bit of money in my pocket so I could get back to training Reining horses again. The lesson business took off and got bigger and bigger and bigger and I started to make more and more money. Pretty soon I just kind of became a slave to the money. The money was so good it was hard to walk away from it. I decided ohhh, I’ll just go do this for three or four years, make some money, save it up and get back into the performance horses. After three or four years, you know I’m grossing $500,000 to $600,000 a year. That was a lot of money for a young guy, you know? So, at that point I was like well, do I want to go back and be a broke horse trainer? Where even if you are successful? There’s a lot of horse trainers that are very successful and are still broke. But just because you are successful doesn’t mean you are not broke. Just because someone is successful does not mean they have made a lot of money…..So do I stay a clinician? I chose to stay being a clinician. Now, what I didn’t realize is that I got on a hamster wheel with the clinician business that took me 25 years to get off the damn thing! However, I ended up retiring at 43. I am very proud of that; most people never get to retire at all in the horse industry. I got to do it with millions at 43, so yeah, I am proud of that because it’s a real hard thing to do! You know most people can barely make a living in the horse industry, I got to retire. That’s how I got back now at 47. I’m back to training horses again.

That’s what I do, I buy with my money. I ride him for, you know like six months, and if I don’t have a real good feeling about him, or if I don’t like them or they’re not good enough they just disappear. They go to a sale. If I like them, they stay, and then customers can buy them. I price them high enough so that if the clients never sell them back to me, great I made a profit. If they do sell them back to me, that’s OK because I basically got them trained for 18 months on their dime. Either way I win and it’s really good for the customer!

Like I got a customer now that just paid $200,000 for a 2-yearold, and his last 3-year-old that didn’t work out he had over 350,000 into it and sold it for 40,000. I said, “OK, you understand now, that if this horse doesn’t work, I’m going to give you the purchase price back?” He said, “I don’t really believe it, but I’m gonna try”, and I said, “OK!” I put it in writing, this is not a handshake deal. I have a contract written out that they get their money back. So, when word catches on that I’m doing this, how hard do you think it will be getting people to invest in my horses? I am the only one that’s got deep enough pockets. It’s not feasible for most horse trainers to go buy their own horses and guarantee their own horses back. They don’t have the money. That’s the difference with me I’m buying my own horses with my money.

I just bought four 2-year old’s and I paid almost $600,000.00 for these four horses. That is OK, I have the money to do that, and in business that is called inventory. Once I start winning more, competing more, I think people will be lined up to keep doing business with me. Especially with this guarantee that I’m going to buy the horse’s back from them. Here is the catch. After the futurity, they have to sink or swim. They have to sell it back to me or keep it forever. They can’t hedge the bet more than the 2 years. By the futurity we know what we have, so I show it at the pre-futurity and then we will show at the big futurity in Ft. Worth. After the prefuturity, we know what is under the dress. There is no guessing anymore. We know what we got. If you like it, it’s yours. And when I say keep it, I mean, I don’t owe you any money. If you don’t like it, and you want me to buy it back, you got to let me buy it back right then and there that night! The night before the big futurity! I have the check in my pocket ready to go!

I love Mike and Barbi to death, and we joke about it now. Barbi firing me, honestly is what made me become a clinician out of necessity because I needed money. We get along well; you can print that. I buy Barbi a cocktail every time I see her. We hug and joke about it, but really Barbi firing me was life changing. Because even though it was devastating at the time. I threw up for about four days, had no money, threw up for four more days, had no prospects, it forced me to go a different way in life. And my mother always told me, you know in life, “If one door closes, if you look for another, one will open for you.” At that age it was difficult to see the positive in such a bad situation, but it really was a major positive thing in my life. That’s why I hug Barbi every time I see her. Because if she wouldn’t have fired me, I don’t think I would have gone down the route I went……….

I never expected to hear that, it is a really interesting story. No, no. I was just good at it. I was better than the other clinicians, in the fact that I was good at teaching. That was my natural gift. It was teaching. I wasn’t naturally a good horseman or rider, but I was naturally good at the gift of gab and teaching people. I was good at it, and I made money to do it. People wanted me to teach and when you are broke, that’s what you do, whatever you can to make money. That’s what I did. You know what I mean? I really wanted to be a horse trainer you know. There was a job with Brett and John and Todd Bergen at Stone Ranch in Arizona. Andrea and I, we joke about it today. He beat me by two weeks to get that job. I called them up two weeks later and said, “I am looking for a job”, and they said “Man we just hired an Italian kid. If you would have called a few weeks earlier, you would have had the job.” Andrea’s and my career basically started at the same time. You know what I mean? Around 1997 we both got here. If I would have got that job working for them, I guarantee we wouldn’t be talking the way we are now.

Q - Most clinicians stay in their comfort zone, appealing to their base of followers and over time their game plays out and they become a has been. Few, if any, get out and compete in the real world. What is it that keeps you evolving when so many of your peers are unable to do that?

A - First of all I’m very competitive by nature. I like the thrill of The Chase of being a competitor. And two, I want to become a better horseman and the only way you become a better horseman is hanging around horseman that are better than you. When you compete against people that are kicking your ass, if you keep competing and keep learning eventually, you’ll get (hopefully) as good as them or maybe even better. I don’t know, I just like competition. I feel like competition and horse shows is a true leveling game of talent and ability. You know the problem with the clinicians is you can tell 2000 un-educated people that you are the greatest horseman in the World. They just believe you, because they’ve got nothing to compare to. I want to win the respect of my peers, the people I am competing against. If they respect me as a horseman and they respect me as a trainer and tell me I did a good job, well I have earned my peers respect and vice versa. I think the difference with me is, and you know this, only one other clinician that really does compete a lot is Richard Winters, and he mainly just does the Cow Horse, not the Reining. Richard loves to compete as well. Most of the clinicians, quite honestly, they’re not willing to humble themselves Tracy! You know it’s not easy to get your ass kicked at 47 in front of 100’s and 1,000’s of people! You get what I’m saying? If you are NOT uncomfortable you are NOT growing. I’m willing to get uncomfortable, because I want to get better! It’s easy to stay in your own little pond, and not only that, but I also don’t care how successful you are at any industry. You could be the best Reiner in the world, best Cow Horse, best Cutter…… If you change industries, get ready to go back and be a Rookie again! I promise you. I promise, you take the #1 Reining guy and you put him in the Cutting pen. He looks like a Rookie really quick again! It would be really easy for me to stay in my lane and not get uncomfortable. Especially at 47 years old and I’m trying to compete against young guys in their 20s, but again if you’re comfortable, you are not growing. You’re not getting better. You gotta be uncomfortable to get better. In anything in life, I don’t care what it is, but if you are not uncomfortable you are not getting better!

Q -We touched on it earlier, you’ve got a lot of guts to get out there and compete against the best riders and horses in the western performance horse world. So many of us have high anxiety when showing. How do you feel knowing everyone is watching you in the show pen?

A - I don’t really care about them watching me, per se, because again I got pretty thick skin. I have dealt with the public my whole life. So, the insults and embarrassment doesn’t really hurt me anymore. So, I’m not worried about being in front of people. Do I like losing in front of people? No! I don’t think any man or woman that likes to be successful likes getting their ass kicked. So that bothers me. But I like the fact that it bothers me, because it bothers me to get out of bed at 3 o’clock in the morning and go do my job!!! You know, it’s the embarrassment of sucking that makes you want to work a little harder! I use the negative energy of getting my ass kicked to get out of bed and try to do better. You know what I mean? I take negative energy and turn it into positive energy.

Q - What are real tips that you can offer aspiring horse trainers?

A -Number 1: Nobody ever drowned in their own sweat. People are so lazy today, so if you’re a young person boy or girl and you’re willing to work hard, two things will happen. Opportunities will come your way. People think luck is about luck. Luck is when hard work and opportunity start meeting in the middle. When opportunity and hard work meet, that is called luck……. OK, so make your own luck. Usually, you’ll find the harder you work, the more opportunities come your way. So, work really, really hard.

Number 2: Be willing to start at the bottom. I worked two years at my first job at 15 years old. He didn’t pay me a cent, I worked two years for free! He gave me food on the table, a little shitty caravan to live in and I worked for free for two years. But he was willing to teach me, and he was willing to give me an opportunity to work with horses. So today I can make millions of dollars from the information he shared with me. But if I would have been a little Punk kid at 15 and said, “You should pay me to learn how to train Horses”, he would have said, “Get lost!” So be willing to start at the bottom. If being at the bottom means you clean stalls for a year, you clean stalls every day! You show up first and you leave last. And when you show up before everybody else, including the boss, and you leave after everybody else. If you do that long enough, not a week or two now, but a year…… people will notice that. And America right now is starving for young people that have a work ethic. Because we’ve got so lazy as a culture. So, if you are willing to show your boss that you’re not lazy, opportunities will come your way! Opportunities will come into your life. And be willing to start at the bottom and prove your loyalty.