Three rural Dane County businesses — a sixty-one-year saddle-seat riding academy, a working farm with fifty calves, and a dog daycare that touches hundreds of families a month — run by two people who share a vision for what the next generation of kids needs: animals, land, and time outside.
Each operates independently. Together they share customers, cross-promote, and build a brand no competitor can assemble.
Southern Wisconsin's only saddle-seat riding academy. Sixty-one years on Meadow Road. Lessons, Academy group program, summer horse camp, show team pipeline. The heritage anchor of the portfolio.
Full-service dog daycare sharing the Meadow Road facility. The everyday-customer engine — families visit weekly, building pre-existing relationships that convert to lesson and camp enrollments at zero acquisition cost.
Fifty calves this season, plus pigs, chickens, and sheep on a working agricultural property. Summer farm camp, school field trips, harvest events, and private parties. The outdoor-experience arm of the family.
These aren't three random businesses. They share a customer base, a geography, and a family brand. Each one creates the next one's customers.
Weekly touchpoint. Sees the barn, the horses, the Academy poster in the lobby.
→Free intro event — daycare parent brings their child. Costs LaFleur a bag of carrots.
→$550/term Academy, $475/week camp. LTV: $3,000–6,000 over 2–3 years.
→Cross-promo: Academy families get 10% off farm camp. The younger sibling goes to farm camp while the older rides.
→Annual pass across all three — daycare, barn, farm. Predictable recurring revenue. Unbreakable retention.
The customer-acquisition cost for step 1 is zero. The daycare is the funnel. Everything else compounds.
Stable operations, Academy and camp at scale, farm programs mature, daycare steady. This is where the three businesses land as a combined unit.
The combined contribution margin — after all horse costs, farm operating costs, and program expenses — targets $180–250k at year three. The daycare P&L is the last unknown; when it's confirmed, the total picture sharpens.
Two businesses, two capital draws, one investment thesis. Fund both at once or fund each independently — the math works either way.
Kentucky horse transport, retraining, tack, insurance, marketing relaunch, 90-day working capital. Pays back in 12–18 months at base case via revenue share (8% of gross lesson + camp revenue until 1.5× returned).
Agritourism insurance, legal compliance (Wis. Stat. § 895.524), infrastructure (parking, porta, shade), coordinator salary, marketing. Pays back inside year one at base case ($95k net on $28k deployed).
Total raise: $63,000. At combined year-three contribution of $180k+, the portfolio generates nearly 3× the capital in annual cash flow.
LaFleur ran 700 lessons/month at peak. The barn has already demonstrated unit economics at 7× the current restoration target. This is not speculative.
The only saddle-seat academy between Chicago and Minneapolis, backed by a 61-year brand. Competitors can spend ten years and a million dollars and still not have what Neva has.
The dog daycare brings families through the door every week. Customer-acquisition cost for the barn and the farm is near zero. No other equestrian or agritourism business has this.
The barn peaks in summer (horse camp) and academic terms (Academy). The farm peaks in October (pumpkins) and summer (farm camp). The daycare runs year-round. Together, no dead months.
The Kentucky free-lease pipeline provides school horses at no acquisition cost. No other barn in WI has this supply line. It converts $35k of working capital into a $290k-revenue horse string.
The full business plan, worksheets, sponsor-a-horse program, and restoration one-pager are all live. What's needed now is a conversation.