We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tara Singapuri. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tara below.
Tara, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
Resilience to me means having the ability to continue to go forward despite circumstances that want to prevent you from moving forward. I developed my resilience from being in court, getting yelled at by a judge in a court full of people – that judge ended up marrying my husband and me, being cold-called on in law school to answer legal questions, and having a lot of people tell me I’m not good enough to go where I want to go – yes people actually say these things. Not only that, but I was diagnosed with a really nasty illness at the end of law-school. I had every reason to give up and succumb but instead I persevered and completed law school and went on to own this business after several years of legal jobs.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I was always told to go to vet school because I was around animals 24/7. I participated and taught in animal camps, I liked to learn about different habits of different animals, I participated in USEF and IEA (equestrian sports). Throughout law school I worked in barns and with horses. I never wanted to go to vet school because I didn’t want my love for animals to become an exhausting job… not to mention math and chemistry aren’t my friend.
Fast forward to several years after law school. My renters made a space for goats and boarded them on my property. A year later they realized that they had to move back to the city so I took over. I began hiking with them, as there is a small pack-goat community. People were enthralled. I decided to allow people to start hiking with me, paid. It took off so I quit my job and went full time. The community requested baby goat yoga so I opened up baby goat yoga on April 20, 2024. I also began working with bars/breweries/distilleries. I bring my bottle babies and yearlings to the happy hours so that people can pet them and feed them. I usually bring 10+ with me.
Having 31 goats is a lot of work but it’s so rewarding when I see how happy they make people. Yes I deal with my own sick animals, yes my husband and I do our own injections and blood draws to do on goats, yes I feed 10+ bottle babies three times a day. However, I truly enjoy it and I have a lot of farm hands who help. Some days when I’m exhausted from rebuilding fencing, or taking care of 31 hooves, or 31 blood draws, or 31 injections, or birthing goats I want to collapse. But at the same time, when I’m having a bad day all I need to do is take 10+ baby goats out on the driveway and sit and watch them for an hour. There’s nothing better than a bunch of baby goats hopping around!
Why is this different than being a vet? I don’t have to deal with sick animals all the time and I truly think that it would kill me to see what some vets deal with. They’re worth their weight in gold and I probably know my vet too well.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I honestly don’t know how to answer this. There are very few businesses like me across the country. I will share three things that I struggle with.
1 – You have to persevere while also taking care of yourself. I will be the first one that advocates for therapy and the biggest thing I discuss is rest and time off. You have to have time off, you have to put aside time for yourself even when all your admin work isn’t completed, even when you feel like everyone needs you to do something for them, even when you have something important to do (not urgent). Sometimes you have to put an away message on so that people understand your not reachable for one or two days, as those are your days off. Sometimes you have to turn down clients so that you have your own sanity left. And that’s okay.
2 – Value yourself and your time. So many people underrate themselves, underpay themselves, offer cheap services, or allow people to get to their brain and be negative about their business. In the beginning I did this. I mean, I live with goats so who the heck wants to pay to hang out with them? ALMOST EVERYONE! I charge based on the effort I put in. I had two people openly criticize me on facebook about my business essentially being useless and too expensive. LOL. Let me tell you – I went and raised my prices intentionally AND had even MORE clients. Do they know that? Probably not. But I realized that they’re probably jealous and that I was probably on point. Forget the haters. There are always jealous people who want you to fail for whatever reason. GET RID OF THOSE PEOPLE.
3 – Believe in yourself. When you feel like quitting, remember why you started. I started because I needed a serious break from the legal field. I didn’t want to move to practice (I’m not licensed in Colorado), and I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing wholeheartedly. There are days I have felt like quitting. It’s hard in the first few years to break even, especially when you are dealing with living animals and huge overhead costs. I’m not even a year in yet and I am just barely breaking even. Some days I think there’s no way to do this. Then I look at other companies across the country who have similar businesses to me and I remember that I, too, can do this! At the same time – don’t justify yourself based on someone else’s success.
Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?
This question makes me tear up. I have an AMAZING team of people who helped me get started, help me continue to grow, and who support me when I’m exhausted or frustrated or wanting to quit.
My biggest thanks goes to my husband who has supported me since day one. Another one of my best friends, John, is always there to help when there is an emergency or when I desperately need help. They’re both there all the time. They help me clean stalls, do injections, shots, get to the vet, build fencing, essentially anything that needs to get done. Then there’s my parents who totally freaked out when I first told them I’m quitting the legal field to walk goats… they have now gotten over that and support me in every way they can since my business has proven to be profitable. I mean, who doesn’t think it’s nuts to quit being a lawyer to walk goats? Even I thought I was nuts at first.
Brittany is also my savior of goats. She has been my mentor since day one and has been goat farming for years. She lives two hours away from me but always makes sure I have time for myself – paddle boarding, teaching me things I had no idea existed with goats, and she always picks up when there’s an emergency to let me know if the vet is the best option. She’s even agreed to handle my goats if I die. LOL. It’s scary but it’s something you have to consider when dealing with living animals.
I will say the organization who has been the most helpful has been the Evergreen Chamber of Commerce. They helped me network an immense amount. I have found the most supportive team of people there, especially Maddy who helped me learn and grow with advertising, instagram, etc. But the most amazing thing that the Chamber has done is help me get nominated and win Young Professional of the Year. The thing that made it even greater was that all the nominees are happy and supportive regardless of if they win the nomination or not. I have been humbled by that experience and was shocked when I was nominated because I wasn’t around long enough to even know they had nominations!
A few other people I have to mention: my farm hands – Elizabeth, Kimberly, Rachael, Maddy, and Aspen Creek Vet. They are literally always there if I need a quick backup. I also go out of country every year and they take care of everyone and also back each other up! I would literally be at wits end without them. Aspen Creek Vet has saved my animals when they’re on the brink of death from a severe disease that came up to a goats birth going bad.
I know the question is how they helped me overcome challenges. I can’t even answer that because they have all helped me realize how amazing people can be, how you need to have the right people rooting for you, and how you need to accept help sometimes because you can’t do everything on your own. I definitely ditched a lot of judgmental people. To my surprise, I learned that there are a LOT of people rooting for you.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.guidedgoathikes.com
- Instagram: guidedgoathikes
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SingapuriSurprise
- Linkedin: Tara Singapuri
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/guided-goat-hikes-conifer
Image Credits
I took these photos. All photos have waivers for me to use images in any appropriate way I want.
