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Hannah E. Broaddus

Marketing & Writing | Inspiration on Women and Horses

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An Open Love Letter To My Customers

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Dear Customers,

If I haven’t told you yet, I should: what drives me is you. What gives my job purpose is you.

I want to see your young brain-children, your start ups, your little natural brands succeed with all of my heart. You are builders, creating things from scratch, trying to bake a brand-new award winning business-recipe. Or sometimes, you are children taking your parents legacy on, and transforming it, and making it even greater.

No matter how you do it, I am proud of you. I want to do anything in my power to help you succeed.

Our natural food industry is filled with young go-getters, who want to change the world one plate and one snack at a time. We want the ideas of craft and health to be celebrated. We love, love, love good food. And we are the future of the food industry.

We want to build meaningful brands from the ground up. We want to build meaningful places for people to work, and better the lives of those around us, who all work so hard to push our company forward. We are all just trying to hustle, and to do our very best.

I want to see you succeed in your own career. I want to see you grow through your current position and jump to the next, and help build something new.

I want to see your company grow 10-fold. I want to see you grow 100-fold. I want to use my connections to help you grow your career, to be better as a person and surround yourself with motivated people just like you.

I know you are up against challenges in your job that reflect back on you. People rely on you to be the feet on the ground to make things happen. I want to be that person behind you, helping you to come through for your team.

I want to help you analyze hard questions that don’t have easy answers. Develop new product lines, solve R&D conundrums, strategize through supply chain challenges. I want to help because these problems have no easy solutions, and because I know you’re stuck with them whether you like them or not.

I hope to make your load a little bit lighter, and put all of this oil knowledge to good use. Otherwise I’m carrying around a lot of details about smoke points and flavor profiles and consumer trends for nothing. You are the real reason I hold on to all that information anyways.

I promise to tell you the truth about what is best for you – even if that means pushing you away to another company, including to my competition. Your interests are first and foremost. You deserve sales people who believe that the gut level and act on it every day. I will never understand sales people that put their own interests first, can’t listen, or that will try to convince you of something that isn’t really right (if you were one of these people and you are reading this, please go away. Nobody likes you anymore, you are 10 years too late.)

I promise to always focus on staying true to you, at the heart of the work I do.

To my customers, if I haven’t told you this week or this month or this year, you are the reason. You are the passion of my career.

Thanks for being you and building what you do. I’m cheerleading for you.

– H.

 

 

The Story Behind The Letter

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I wrote this letter after attending the Restaurant Food Show recently in Chicago.  I had a conversation about the root of what personally drives us to do the work we do everyday.  And what I finally put into words is that it’s really you that drives me — what excites me about working in the food industry and working with Centra Foods is all of you who are working your butt off trying to build something big.  I really do believe in you.  

I promise to live this as my mantra, and keep guiding my work and our company towards supporting you — so that you can hustle and do what you do best.  Go out there and kill it.  You got this.

This article was originally published on the Centra Foods blog.

Traveling Alone – The Solo Trip That Helped Me Build My Life Again

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My boyfriend and I had just broken up, and the best way to describe me was ‘a shit show’. An absolute mess. And amongst all of the crap that you feel when you’re is in the middle of a terrible break up, the most painful to me was a future of… nothing. All I could picture was this gray foggy mist, a completely unknown wall of darkness that lay in front of me.

(If you’re already depressed, then you get the picture. If you’re nodding in agreement, then you’re amongst the best of us that have been through this kind of loss. But hang in with me here, I promise things will look up.)

You see, I thought he was the ticket. The story I told myself was that he was the key to doing all of these wonderful things in my life — he had the motivation and the drive, he had the experience, and he had the equipment to do just about anything. And more importantly, he wasn’t afraid of anything — he’d just get up and go, wildly creating his path as he went.

In fact, he was so much the epitome “all things” to me that I had begun to cling by his side for the last few years. I had transformed, slowly but surely, from his partner to his sidekick. He knew it and I knew it. So now, as I was tasked with facing life without him, I felt like I couldn’t even start to tackle some of the wild fantasies I had for my own journey, things that were just starting to glimmer in my peripheral vision.

You see, the problem is that you can’t be your own sidekick — someone needs to play the lead role to have the job description of “sidekick” open up. I knew that heroic leader could be one of two options: a new man in my life (which I couldn’t even start to fathom) or it could be ME. The feminist in me said, “You don’t need no stinking MAN!”. Which left me with really only one choice: I knew I had to become the heroin of my own life. And I was fucking terrified.

I did two things in this gut-wrenching downturn.

The first: I started seeing a counselor. Regularly, desperately, like it was the only air left in the world. Because it literally was; it was keeping me afloat.

I will write more on this sometime, but I mention it to continue chipping away at the stigma of seeing a therapist. Mine acted as a big sister to give me the healthy emotional insights that no one else could or would. She helped me retrain my thoughts and make sense of my life. And most importantly, she helped me to plan and think ahead – to start to dream about a future that felt joyful and light.

Which brings me to number two: I planned a trip. Just me.

I had never traveled alone, nor had I even considered it as an option. I did everything with another person — at that time, I didn’t even want to go to a restaurant alone (and I know a lot of people that still feel this way!). It felt terrifying, the thought of getting off the plane in a different place having no one else for company. No one to talk with, no one to bounce ideas off of. No one to keep me safe.

But once the glimmer of the idea came into my head, I couldn’t quite let it go. I wanted to travel, I wanted to leave, I wanted some downtime. I wanted to leave my home and my work behind, and do absolutely NOTHING. And I wanted to exit the country.

Mexico — why yes, Mexico sounded particularly good. It was a place I deemed reasonably safe and reasonably close. What a good baby step. I did some simple research (thanks Costco Travel) and closed my eyes tight, and pushed the button to book a last minute trip.

I jumped on my own. I traveled alone.

I will spare you the boring details of this particular vacation. In summary, it looked like this for me: sleep, eat, drink, read, read more, walk on the beach, swim, read again, eat more, go for a stroll, read again. Rather boring if you can imagine. But it wasn’t. It was everything that it was supposed to me.

The thing I didn’t expect to happen was this: with all the quiet, and all the time by myself, my mind stopped yelling 100 different things to me at once. It. FINALLY. shut. up.

My churning, angst-filled mind — you know, the one that had been grieving and panicked for months now — finally quieted in a way that I hadn’t ever experienced before. It was still. I didn’t cry, I didn’t stress about work, I didn’t make plans for my day or try to fit anything in. I just… was.

It’s amazing how much your mind can slow when you’re not thinking about someone else (are they upset?), making a shared agenda (does that timing work for you?), or planning someone else’s needs (is this what do you really want to be doing right now?). For once, it’s all all all about you. And you don’t have to feel guilty about it, because it’s literally. just. you. There’s no other option.

The final result of this trip — the most important piece — was a side effect that I hadn’t even imagined.

On my flight home, high above the US, a list of all the most important things came to me: a “you-better-focus-in-on-this-shit-because-it’s-important-if-you-want-to-live-a-good-life” list. It was like they were being thrown at the plane from the heavens themselves and I was just catching them, like someone trying to add extra beanbags into their juggling hands. I know without a doubt that I was finally able to narrow in on these focus points because my brain had quieted enough in the days that had just passed.

I wished for random and sometimes simple things. But all things that meant something to my life:

  1. Go to more dance classes.
  2. Be with Grampa when he dies, and hold his hand.
  3. Live in a hut on the ocean.
  4. Be honest and upfront about who you are. Chose people who are safe to be around.
  5. Nurture friendships that make you feel lighter. Get rid of ones that don’t.
  6. Name my daughter Libby.
  7. And about 20 other things…

This was my first of many life lists that I’ve created in the last few years, as I’ve transformed what I’m doing, and how I’m living. These lists have become goals and then realities. But this was the very first list that let me dream of something more, and imagine a different life for myself. A happier life. A life where I was in charge, where I was the hero. For the first time since the sadness had descended in on me, I had actionable steps that I could start living.

That was the start of the grey cloud lifting, the fog of the future turning into a colorful picture that I now call my life. That trip cleared up the space in my mind to dream, to create my own journey, and to start to take action on it.

Take a Solo Trip

So my suggestion is to you, you beautiful girl out there doing you: go on a trip. More specifically, take yourself on a trip. Take yourself on a long extravagant date alone, all by yourself. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a just long weekend away or a month-long adventure. Just go.

Since I went on this first trip, I’ve taken two more, I’ve had multiple friends do the same. Just like exercise or eating healthy, it’s a way to take care of yourself, your mind, and your own well-being.

I realize that to some people, this idea may seem like common sense or a wonderful adventure. But to others (and you know who you are) the prospect of traveling alone sounds terrifying — I know, if you can’t eat at a restaurant, how will you spend 5 days traveling on your own? You, my friend, are just the one that needs to do this most.

But wouldn’t you have more fun with your friends, you ask? I know, a lot of people say that they just don’t enjoy doing things alone. I understand that, but I also call bullshit on it. I can read between the lines — I can see that it’s terrifying to be alone, and it makes you really uncomfortable. Of course, friends and family are fun. But a trip like this is not meant to be only fun. It’s meant to be a reset button, a reclamation of your own life. And it’s hard to do that when you’re attending to everyone else, planning timing and schedules, and thinking about the rest of the people in your group.

I know it’s scary, but being alone is the key here.

Doing things by yourself takes bravery. It says, I am not waiting to start my life to have a significant other, to have best friends in my new town, or to wait for the right lineup of everyone’s schedules to do the things I want to do in my life.

It says: I am living, fully, by and for myself. I am designing the life that I want. I am taking control. And that in itself is incredibly empowering.

What’s The Story Of Your First Horse Love?

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The other day, I got an email that touched my heart. It was from a man named Rusty, who told me the story of his draft horse Duke.

The love that he carries for his horse was so evident. His story made me think of my own love story with my horse Gemini. And from there I got thinking about all of our stories.

How is that we find our first horse love?
What kind of place do they settle into in our heart?
How do we connect with them? What makes us fall for them so hard?
How do we make decisions about them and stay by their side in the long run?

Do you have a story like this? I bet you do. I think every horse person has a story of the first horse that really touched them to their core. You never lose that story.

Today, I’m going to share Rusty’s story. Next time, I’m going to share the story of my first real horse love, Gemini — because I realize that I’ve never really shared that story with you.

This is the brief introduction to Rusty’s story. I got this story in an email a few weeks ago, and it just made me smile (okay, I was on the verge of tears).

Rusty-Duke

When looking over horses at an Amish farm, I did not pick Big Duke — he picked me. He was about 18 months old and greeted me like a Great Dane puppy who did not have full control of his large puppy feet yet.

I returned a week later to look at him again and get a lesson from the Amish on how to teach him to drive. He was tied short in the stall to teach him patience, and to stand still. This seemed odd to me at the time, but he was patient for me, and would stand still for as long as it took to harness him.

I guess as my 1st horse I did have a bad case of “puppy love”. I purchased him, but kept him at there farm for a month, and returned daily to work with him in wide open spaces where we could both get to know each other and be safe doing it. He is 8 now, and is as much a part of me as I am of him.

I think it is a bit like your 1st dog as a child. Whatever breed your parents brought home, that ends up being your favorite for life. Big Duke is my only horse and could not imagine owning another.

When I asked Rusty if I could share his story, he agreed and sent me back more details. Here’s the long version of his story, which is just as touching.

After a month of training at the Amish farm, I showed up to bring Big Duke home. Without hesitation, he loaded right up in the trailer. This did not seem strange at the time, but would later.

It was 2008, and the housing market was in a free fall and the economy was tanking. Good paying jobs were not available. I lost my home, and was living at a motel.

My hope was to start a horse & carriage business and weather the financial storm.

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I had never owned a horse, and I did not own a horse trailer, so I borrowed one to bring Duke home. The farm I kept him at was 5 miles from the downtown area we were going to operate in.

Each afternoon I would saddle him and ride him to the downtown area where the carriage was stored. Then I would hitch him up and give historical tours of downtown until around midnight.  Then I would saddle him up and ride the 5 miles back to the farm.  This all started in December during the local Christmas parade, in very cold conditions.

This routine continued 4 days a week for about a 2 years. At the time I did not know how many miles I could cover each day with such a young horse, even though he was already 16.5 hands at this age. Could he handle 10 miles a day under saddle and another 10 miles hooked to a carriage?

As a new horseman, I loved and cared for my horse more than I can explain in words. I relied on Big Duke to tell me if we needed to stop and rest. We learned so much about each other in that year. Both trust and respect that just can’t be quantified in words. So many nights in the snow and very cold conditions.

I would ride him back to the farm through the woods along the power lines on snowmobile trails. He memorized every turn and hill, up and down. Many times I would close my eyes to try and nap as we rode home after a 12 hour day outside, knowing he would get us there even without my help.

Money was tight, and feeding him took priority over me. As time went on we had so many incredibly fun times at weddings and other events we were hired for. Eventually we moved to other towns to continue our business.

The extreme downturn in the economy did not appear to have any end in sight, and was going to require some rethinking of our future. Facing another year in a motel and getting by on the dollar menu at McDonald’s just seemed unbearable. Doing anything else was admitting defeat, a hard pill to swallow! I had been very successful before 2008, and had plenty of experience, energy, and faith that I could be successful again.

But what was I going to do now?

Although becoming a truck driver was going to a new low for me, it was the only option in late 2010 that seemed viable to get steady money coming in. I moved Big Duke to Ohio and went to work driving a big rig. The 1st 18 months was tough financially, but allowed me to board Duke and eat at the same time:)

While we may not need to ever pull a carriage again, the time we spent doing it taught me more about myself and Duke than I can explain.

In the meantime, I want you to think about your first horse love story, and tell me about it in the comments below.

If you have any kind words for Rusty, please share them below in the comments too. I know his love for Duke may have touched your heart like it touched mine, and I think he should hear our words.

8 Reasons You Should Go To Horse Shows

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The best words to describe horse showing, for me, is anticipation and relief.

Image Source: GMHA

You know that moment before you go into your class? They call your name, and you know you’re up next, and you gather yourself and horse — hopefully to go do something great. And if not great, at least something worthwhile.

Showing (and for the sake of this argument, I’m going to include going to clinics under the same umbrella) takes a lot of time. And it takes a lot of money. So why do we do it?

The American Horse Council estimates that there are 481,000 people in the US that are involved in competing across every discipline. For the average girl that owns her own horse or has been riding for a couple of years, horse shows are often a highly anticipated next step.

I’ve narrowed it down to 8 reasons you (and your daughters) should go to horse shows and, if you’ll give me 5 minutes, I’d like to argue why we should be encouraging riders (especially our young girls) to do it more. And, surprise surprise, it has nothing to do with the competition itself.

Let’s get started!

 

It Gets You Out Of Your Comfort Zone

As riders (and as people) we can get in a habit of doing the same thing every day. Go to the barn, talk to the same people, get your horse from the same paddock, groom with the same brush, ride in the same arena and – here’s the kicker – rencounter the same challenges in your ride every day.

I realize, all the time we are working and growing and learning through baby steps. But haven’t you struggled with your horses shoulder in that same corner? And don’t you do that with your leg at the same spot in the circle? Sometimes it’s not that we are struggling with the same problems, but more that our routine habits can cause the original challenges to linger on. (Haven’t you heard that saying, it’s never the horses fault?)

Leaving your normal routine can help you get unstuck from your rut. Of course, it won’t magically fix your problems but being out of your comfort zone can help you tackle them in a new way, simply because of your surroundings.

Leaving the property, riding in a new place (sometimes with a ton of riders to navigate in a warm-up ring) will bring new obstacles that may help you tackle old challenges.

I always found that the week after I went somewhere new – rode on the beach, went to a clinic, went to a horse show, my riding was refreshed and both my horse and I were much more “on top of it”.

Getting out of my normal routine was one of the best things to help me take both my riding and my mental ability to the next level. If I had to put money on it, I’d bet the results would be the same for your girls.

 

It Makes You and Your Horse Travel

Traveling brings new and exciting challenges. Traveling with a horse brings many things… Stress for one. Exhilaration for another.

Traveling with horses can be stressful and wonderful at the same time – they are always more “awake” than they are at home. Their attention is here, there and everywhere, and you really have to focus to connect and get your job done. Depending on your horse, you may also spend a lot of time training because they’re out of their normal element.

For a young rider, this experience is spectacularly fun but also can be very daunting. Your horse doesn’t act the same at home as they do in a new location, so not only are you dealing with your own nerves, you’re also dealing with theirs.

This all may sound very daunting for a young rider, but it’s spectacularly good practice. Just the act of traveling to a new place will allow you to deal with a little bit more horse than you may be used to, but your horse is still your horse — you handle the situation because you still understand who they are and what makes him tick.

On the flip side, have you ever had a really great ride in a new place? It’s the best feeling — being able to connect and focus together, despite all of the hubbub around you, makes you feel really accomplished. All in all, the act of simply going to a new location can be stressful but wonderful mental practice for both you and your horse.

 

You Get Feedback From Different Perspectives

Whether you are going to a clinic or a show, you will get worthwhile feedback from a new person, whether it is an instructor or a judge.

For better or worse, this person does not know you, your horse or your history. Because of that, you’ll have to take their insight with a grain of salt.

However, this “outsiders perspective” can be spectacularly helpful to your training. It means their feedback has no strings attached, and can either confirm or deny what your instructor at home has been saying.

They can also may bring to light issues that you have avoided that are ready to be addressed. For example, when I was young and used to go to dressage shows, I’d hear very similar comments to what my trainer was saying at home. That would always confirm to me that I was on the right track and then I needed to keep working on exactly those things.

I’ve also been to clinics where I’ve been able to approach an existing problem in a totally new way, which helps you grow leaps and bounds in your riding. To be able to fully understand the theory that you’re applying in every ride, it’s helpful to be able to look at problems from different perspectives through the training of multiple instructors.

 

You Get To Watch Other People Ride

Being able to sit and watch so many great riders is one of my favorite past times when I’m at horse shows.

Of course, I know you can always watch people ride at home (if you’re not sitting down to watch other peoples lessons regularly, you should start. Listening to other people’s lessons and watching other people ride really help you get a fuller understanding of the theory you’re trying to learn).

At a horse show with all of the great horses and riders around you, the value of doing this is even more undeniably clear. There’s a huge range of skill found at these outside events. Often the greatest riders aren’t even people you could ever hope to learn from— simply because they’re not instructors or because they live far away from you. So take advantage of this precious time to watch them closely and try to understand what they’re doing on their horse.

 

You Get A Deeper Understanding Of What It Means To Be A Rider (To You)

Being able to watch other riders gives you a broader understanding your discipline’s community as a whole. I’d like to tell you a story.

Once I was at a dressage clinic at a big college in Massachusetts. I was in high school at the time, and I was watching a spectacular 20-something rider. She was confident and strong, on a gorgeous young horse who looked to be about 4th level. I was swooning with a horse crush.

Of all of the things that this girl could have taught me, I only remember one thing about her: she was wearing leggings. Yoga leggings. For years, I had always thought that good riders only used expensive stuff, including expensive breeches. I believed that, to earn my place as a good rider, I needed to have equally nice expensive stuff. But this girl, made me completely re-evaluate what it means to me to “be a good rider”. Had I never stepped out of my barn, I never would have learned that with the same impact.

I’ll give you one last example. When I was 13, I was at show watching a musical freestyle test. An older girl on a gorgeous bay horse entered the arena. Instead of the usual classical music, I heard rap come over the speakers as the pair entered the arena. She halted in the center on, “HOLDUP”, a classic line of the 90’s song The Next Episode by Dr. Dre.

It completely shocked me that a musical freestyle could be done to any music. And I would never have learned that had I not stepped out of my comfort zone and gone somewhere where they were completely different people, at different age ranges, doing different levels of riding.

(PS – If anyone can track down a video of this test around 99’ – 01’, I’d love to see it! It’s still my favorite musical freestyle of all time.)

 

You Get to Spend Time With Your Neighbors and Horse Community

Some of my favorite times at horse shows have been when everyone is sitting around at the end of the day enjoying food and sitting on lawn chairs. It’s such a community filled time— you’re done with cleaning for the day and there’s nothing more you can do to prepare for tomorrow. The evening is spent talking with friends, eating and prepping for the next day.

Even if you’re not at a multi-day show like this, you will still get some downtime to spend with your friends. Unlike the usual time at the barn, you’ll see people from neighboring barns and other places.

You can watch people ride together, you can browse tack stores or just graze your horses and hang in easy silence. It’s a time where you’ve been forced to slow down, when you can really just enjoy each others company in a setting that you both love.

 

You Get To Spend Quality Time With Your Horse

horse-show-2Yes, your neighbors are cool, but you know who you’re spending even more time with at a horse show? Your horse. From morning till night, you’re cleaning stalls, grooming, braiding, riding, grazing and grooming again.

How often do you have a day where you can spend the entire time together, just hanging out and riding. Chances are, at least for most adults, if you’re at your barn at home, you can’t commit that kind of time very often. Most people are in and out, always on the move, with a long list waiting for them at home.

Show days have been put aside for you and your horse to enjoy, so sit back and spend some quality time together!

 

You Have Fun

You go to horse shows in the first place to have fun, to learn and become a better rider. So at the very least, you should always be enjoying your horse show experience and feel at least somewhat accomplished when you return home.

 

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