Cathy's Farm Blog

All it took was for Cathy to say "Why don't we start a petting zoo to get these guys to start earning their keep?" for me, ever the entrepreneur, to say "Sure!". We financed the first few months from some TI stock options we sold, had business cards made from the logo drawn by our dear (and departed - another story) friend, Gail DeLay, and ran an ad in Dallas Child magazine. We were only willing to sign a 3-month contract at first, because we really didn't know how long the business would last, or whether it would pay for advertising.

We knew we ought to get liability insurance in our overly litigious society, but finding insurance for a niche business is not easy. We had to call about 10 agents before we found one that served the "Petting zoo/pony rides" market. We had to get coverage based on our expected annual sales. They asked what we expected - and realized we had not even given it a second thought. We had to back it out like so: "Well, let's see - if we're lucky we might get 2-3 parties a month, at $125-$175 per party - probably $5,000-$6,000 per year". Looking back, I understand why the agent looked at us funny. He was thinking "Why start a business that's going to make less than most part-time jobs?"

Our first party was in April, 2005, and was done for our friend's daughter. We had no idea what we were doing, but we had animals and a horse trailer. I spent the whole week before our inaugural event building fences for containing the kids and critters. They were built with PVC frames and some kind of plastic mesh material. That lasted for about a month before we knew we had to build something sturdy and reliable. We switched to metal. We got the first few from a friend in McKinney who runs a sort of retirement home for big cats. She has lions, tigers, even a camel or two. Since then, we've had more built and I've learned how to weld to do the occasional repair or modification of them.

The summer of '05 was pretty slow, but the calls trickled in. I built a small static web site which I was proud of at he time, but later knew *had* to be updated. Most of our business came from the Dallas Child ad, and even a few referrals. By fall, we were working every weekend. We had multiple bookings on Halloween night and the week leading up to it. We were, of course, spending it as fast as we could make it, but we could see this transforming into a "real" business.

The winter months were pretty dead. I think in our first December we made about $1000. We had to turn away a lot of business because everyone wanted a donkey, which we didn't have, for nativity scenes. When I was a kid, nativity scenes were plastic and had lights inside. What did I know from donkeys? It picked up again in Spring and we got our first big corporate gig with Sneaky Pete's at Lake Lewisville. A 4-hour party with a large petting zoo and two ponies. Holy Cow! We didn't even have enough trailers to transport that many animals! We bought an old rusty horse trailer for $1500, had it sand blasted, painted it, replaced all the interior wood, and took our whole caravan up Hwy 35 to Lewisville for our most exciting event so far. We couldn't believe we were getting paid to have so much fun.

Now it's 2007. We've got our 2nd annual Sneaky Pete's Easter Sunday event coming up (it's advertised on the radio - 105.3 - when you hear the bit about the petting zoo and pony rides, that's us!), and I imagine they'll have us back for the their Mother's Day outing as well. We've automated our contract submission process to allow parties to be reserved via an online form, we have taken to using the second horse trailer to be enable us to perform two parties at once, and most weekends we have 2-3 parties ... per day ... per trailer.

We've had to start devising graphical systems to help us schedule events, track wages, plan which animals go with which crew, etc. In short, it's *much* more difficult, but it's so rewarding when you get the warm thank-you notes and hand-drawn pictures from kids that you entertained the previous weekend. I don't know if it'll ever replace my full-time job, but it sure is a lot more fun.

I've been meaning to write a brief history of Cathy's Critters, and I guess this is fairly brief. I've left out a lot of the "lessons learned the hard way" and screwups, both minor and major, that we've had on the way to where we are. I'm sure we've got much more to learn, but being too busy at something you love is a good problem to have.

Thanks until next time,
--
Kevin and Cathy