Duncan Taylor: Taylor Made is a business that's within the thoroughbred business. That's the breeding, raising, racing, buying, and selling of thoroughbreds.
Frank Taylor: And then we've been continuing on to just grow this business and to, yeah, we've become the leading seller of thoroughbreds in the world.
Duncan Taylor: Our purpose is to bring our thoroughbred customers' dreams and goals to life. We want to be a force for good. We want to live out our Christian values.
Frank Taylor: We were blessed with great parents. I always joke that's a lot of pressure because my mom and dad were named Joseph and Mary. So I said, that's a lot of pressure on a kid. And the best thing our parents did for us was teach us our faith and to work us hard.
Nick Alexakos: And it's a family. A family, I mean literally a blood family that runs it. But they were a strong spiritual faith family. And the father, the main one that started this was very strong in his faith and he passed it down and it permeates in everybody and it permeates with the people they touch.
Duncan Taylor: What faith looks like in our company is evolving all the time. You don't have to be a saint or have to be holy. All you've got to do is have a desire to help other people.
Nick Alexakos: We're only as limited as our imagination. Because of the openness of the CEO and the leadership is wide open to wherever God's moving. God's already at work here. It's just our privilege to join him.
Duncan Taylor: When we first started doing it, basically we started a caring committee and that's where each division of the company elects somebody to serve on the committee and the company funds the committee.
Mona Ostendorf: Basically we do everything from prayer request. We will do food drives and we have a caring shed where people can just drop off any other extra things at home that they don't need. And it's open at all times that people can go and take whatever they need. We have English classes and Spanish classes, and we just do anything that's going to help them to get better. And we just all want to serve each other here, which has been great.
Nick Alexakos: For me as a chaplain, we're kind of like spiritual firefighters. The firefighter, everyone's running away from the fires. We're running into the fires, we go and we get our hands dirty. We're willing to be a part of whatever's going on.
Mona Ostendorf: I mean, the numbers speak for themselves. We get reports from Corporate Chaplaincy of America that are great and I just think it's very beneficial to bring into your organization and I think you would find instantly that it would be worth it.
Frank Taylor: So Stable Recovery is a sober living facility. Alcoholics and addicts that are in there are provided with a lot of structure and they go to Stable Recovery and then they're offered the opportunity to come work at the School of Horsemanship at Taylor Made.
Nick Alexakos: Really, it's kind of like a family where you eat together, sleep together, pray together, work together, and it's got a purpose, a direction, and you're surrounded with like peers, people that are behind you in their addiction recovery, people that are ahead of you. And we all know we're in this boat together.
Frank Taylor: The beauty of it is, is you have full support and you're fully immersed and there's such a bond that forms between these guys. And I'll tell you, the proof is in the pudding. Every morning at 6:15 at the barn, we have 20 to 25 guys show up every morning and we have a meditation for an hour. When you sit there and see the people that are just a few days sober to the guys that are up to six months or a year, you can just see the change the way they look, the way they think, the way they talk, and it's a great program. It lets them grow spiritually. Probably 80% of that crew has now become all in sobriety and come through that program, and they're just like a unit that is so tight and so effective and it's really making this farm a lot better.
Christian Countzeler: All of you guys that have been here for a little while now, we're doing this thing. We're doing this thing. You woke up sober today. Give this thing everything you've got and see what happens.
We wouldn't be where we are. We wouldn't be who we are without it. To get someone to give guys a second chance when everyone else is shutting doors in their face, it's hard to find nowadays.
Josh Bryan: Frank called me one day and said, Hey, you got the horse experience and now you got a little bit of recovery under your belt. You want to come and kind of manage this program and gave it a shot. And here I am, and I think God finally told me, this is where I need to be.
Christian Countzeler: A job can be a very dangerous thing for a drug addict. And knowing that we put faith first 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, it's just everything. It's changed everything. God is the star of the show. He's absolutely the star of the show. He has given us Stable Recovery and the School of Horsemanship, the right men at the right time. If we needed a leader, here's a leader. If we needed somebody that could do trees, here's a guy that's been doing trees his entire life. It's only through the experiences that I've had that I can share with other men about what God has done for me and that gets 'em to stay one more day.
And if they stay one more day, well then they get a chance at tomorrow. And if we can get 'em through tomorrow, before you know it, we have men that are walking toward God again, that's my mission every single day is to help guys understand that God's got his hand out. It's there. You have to look for it, and then you have to reach out to find it. And when you do that connection with that, you can defeat drugs, you can defeat alcohol, you can defeat homelessness, you can defeat the loss of family. You can defeat anything with that. There is no teammate like God. And so we do a lot of, I'm a military guy, so it's a lot of unit and a lot of teamwork and a lot of stuff like that. And look man, when we have God on our side, there's not much that can get in our way. I've never seen the change in people as quickly as I have with this to give them the peace of knowing that, man, I'm not alone anymore. I can do this. It's really awesome. It's awesome.
Duncan Taylor: We can change the world, one company and one family at a time.
Mona Ostendorf: I think one thing that's important is it doesn't matter what religion you are, it doesn't matter if you're Catholic or you're Christian. It's not where you have to be a certain faith. You can be any faith.
Duncan Taylor: But I think when you start to do good for others, there's, there becomes a deeper meaning and essence to working here. There's a higher calling and a higher purpose. God puts you in a position of leadership in a company. Basically you have the wherewithal to actually start to light a candle instead of cussing the darkness and to be a beacon of light for other people.
Mona Ostendorf: It just really makes it worthwhile to be able to come to a company where you feel valued and you feel that you make a difference.
