Entrepreneurialism Information

By Mark Harbeke

How did Paal Gisholt, a self-described “notable nonrider” of horses, create a business which, over the course of only seven years, reinvented how horses and other animals are given supplements? It helped that Gisholt studied business at Harvard and that he brought experience in running a successful enterprise from his time as a partner in a Boston-based venture capital firm. His secret weapon, though, was his wife, Becky Minard.

Also Harvard educated, Minard had been riding and caring for horses since she was 10 years old. In the late 1990s, she began researching through her network of horse-owning friends the triumphs and pitfalls of ensuring correct horse supplement feeding, and discovered there were many more pitfalls than triumphs. These included the sheer amount of time involved in dispensing as well as barn staff shift changes, which often complicated feedings. A personal interest drove Minard to find a better solution. “Becky was frustrated that her own horse was not getting the proper vitamin supplement he needed every day to keep a degenerative eye condition in check,” Gisholt says.

Then came the “light bulb” moment. “She said, ‘I wish somebody would create a custom TV dinner for my horse with the right nutrients and ingredients that he needs and ship it to me automatically each month,’” Gisholt recalls. With this thought a viable business plan was born. Gisholt and Minard raised the initial capital to start SmartPak Equine in 1999 with the help of friends and horse lovers and ran the business out of their home. By 2003, the company had relocated to a traditional office facility, it was shipping more than a million wells of supplements, known as SmartPaks, each month and it had attracted customers in all 50 states. By the time Gisholt was nominated as a 2006 Best Boss (he was one of 18 winners [link]), his staff had grown to 70 and revenues reached $23 million – a 50 percent increase over the previous year.

In the first few years of the business, the blessings of horse supplement manufacturers to repackage and sell their product, along with the endorsement of notable horse riders, helped change horse owners’ perceptions of supplement feeding and sell SmartPaks. However, it soon became clear to Gisholt that a properly trained staff would push sales over the top. “We give our employees extensive training in our products and the way our [order-fulfillment] systems work, as well as training in horse nutrition,” Gisholt says. This not only makes his staff more effective consultants when it comes to handling customer inquiries, it better equips them for careers in the equine industry.

This career-oriented focus on training is abundantly clear in the customer service area. Jessica Normand supervises a staff of 16 and raves about the insight her staff receives through a combination of in-house training and a yearly package of web seminars the company purchases from a local resource, The Call Center School. Yet, despite the fact that staff receives online assistance on topics like “First Class Phone Manners” and “Tyrant Turnaround,” problems can still occur. Normand says the most common one is employees not being as confident as they should be on the phone. Additional training on mock calls, where staff call into the call center, as well as quizzes and role playing help alleviate this and other issues. “We’re small enough that we can cater the situation to what a person is struggling with,” Normand says.

According to Gisholt, however, smallness may soon be a thing of the past. While SmartPak’s revenues have more than doubled in the past two years, the staff has also doubled, from 35 to 70. This led a group of employees who had been with the company from the start to come to Gisholt with the notion of putting together a program that would help retain the small-feeling work culture by recognizing employees quarterly for working above and beyond – for instance, taking on a task outside of their job responsibilities or department. This “by and for employees” recognition program was coined the SMARTER (Speed, Maniacal customer focus, Analysis, Risk-taking, Teamwork, Execution and Respect) Award.

Production Manager Kevin Wilson, who tracks SmartPak orders for fulfillment and shipping, is on the SMARTER Awards selection committee. “Anybody can nominate anybody,” he says. “They then have to back it up, either in an e-mail or in a written explanation.” What does he and the selection committee, which includes Gisholt, look for in nominated employees? “We love numbers and particular incidences,” he says. After a vote, which Wilson says is usually unanimous, the committee visits the winning employee in unannounced, Publisher’s Clearinghouse fashion, complete with balloons, a ribbon, a plaque that lists the nominating employee and why the winner was chosen and a monetary gift.

Wilson says the SMARTER Awards help improve the morale and productivity of not just the nominating and winning employees, but the whole staff. “People know that if they go outside of their area of responsibility or really rise to the occasion, it’s not going to be overlooked.” He says that even if someone isn’t honored in a particular quarter, Gisholt and the management team are still taking notes for future quarterly award ceremonies.

SmartPak the product was aptly named: The custom-delivered supplements represent the evolution of horse and small animal nutritional care. Yet, even though it was named after its innovative product, SmartPak the company’s title is also apt. Gisholt’s employees are given the training, resources and, most importantly, the leadership’s encouragement to work, more often than not, smarter instead of just harder.

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