In the French language, l'espirit can be translated a few ways. First, it can mean “the mind,” and refer to the literal activities of the brain. It can also mean “spirit.” And in relation to Melanie Smith, founder and forger of Solo Select Horses, it can only mean both.
In a story Melanie has been asked to tell often in the past year, she candidly reveals her non-equine heritage, her endeavors in nursing, and her plucky courage to abandon both and instead capitalize on her passion for finding business opportunities in the horse world. In a sense, Smith's tale is of a typical, by-the-bootstraps American Dream realized. Until you realize that she's only just turned 30 and that, by 30, she hasn't only realized success. No, by Melanie Smith's 30th birthday, she has designed an industry disruptor that is changing the way horses will be bought, sold and bred from this day forward.
SELLING HIGH SELLERS
Six years ago, Solo Select Horses found its start with roots in the online horse sale market. Ironically, the horse market—which surely has roots as old as the domestication of horses some 6,000 years ago—has barely operated in the online space, even today, and even more so when the focus is narrowed to horses in the Western performance industry. But that's the space in which Melanie cut her horse-trading teeth, to the tune of online horse sales at a time when almost no one else had ever considered such a thing.
“When I was in nursing school, I was
