Corporate Retreats

Read below about how Shayne got started and how his companies have grown to exceptional levels today:

Shayne and his family grew up as a working-class family in Idaho.  He jokes that he didn’t taste beef until he was in his late teens.  His family his family couldn’t afford it, so they ate game that they could hunt.  All he knew growing up was work.  His Mom taught him early on, “Son, get out of bed.  People die in bed.”

He was working from the age of 12 on newspaper routes and lawn care.  He had his first 40 hour a week job in a restaurant at 13 (he says he lied about his age to get the job).  He was even noted in the local newspaper as an up-and-coming entrepreneur in his early teens.  He seemed to have a knack for business and the hard work that went along with it.

He also worked hard at academics.  He was a straight A student and graduated at 17.  No surprise that his favorite subjects were math, business and economics!  Graduating early gave him more options to get his feet on the ground with work (college wasn’t an option at this point).  Shayne had a job in high school at a gas station where they washed and serviced vehicles.  One day while washing a truck for the local masonry contractor, the contractor, who was impressed by his work ethic, offered him the job of being a Hod Carrier.  At the time, he thought hod was sod and he’d be working in landscaping!

Instead, he was low man on the totem pole on a crew of rough and tumble brick layers.  He says, “In those days, hazing wasn’t a word it was a way of life.  And I was hazed constantly.  They’d drink a six pack for lunch and another one for dinner.  They were tough and crude but they taught me a lot about life.”

So, Shayne started as a Hod Carrier at 17 and moved out of town for jobs.  Although becoming an apprentice bricklayer was next to impossible without family ties at the time, his work ethic and attitude were so impeccable that he was offered the position.  In less than 2 years, he became a journeyman bricklayer and by 19 he was a foreman running crews of 10-15 guys.  He was doing all of the accounting and payroll for them too.

He didn’t think this was what he wanted to do forever though, and so while still running his crews, Shayne also started a pre-med degree at Boise State.  In addition, he was buying and selling cattle and farming land for hay and corn.

The masonry contractor that Shayne was working for at the time went broke but the general contractor asked Shayne if he could finish the jobs for him.  He suggested Shayne go out on his own in Masonry, because he could make a lot more money than being a veterinarian.  Long story short, Shayne finished the masonry jobs and ended up going out on his own in the Masonry Business.

Before long, Shayne got a job to build a prison in Pendleton, OR.  He moved 16 families to Pendleton for two years.  During that time, he asked his crew if they wanted to go back to Boise, or move further west to Portland or Seattle where the wages were better.  They voted to move west!  Shayne’s company, J&S Masonry was really performing well and in short order he became the largest non-union contractor in the Seattle area.

The company just kept getting bigger and expanding further.  Big enough that he eventually had to go union.  J&S went from doing a few million a year, to their biggest year being 40 million!  He also created Sun Scaffold, which is the largest hydraulic scaffold company in the West.  And they are also the largest FRACO dealer (where they scaffold high rises).  J&S has won numerous awards for their projects at the State level, Country level and they have even won the number one International Masonry Award for the Washington State Historical Museum!

Many of Shayne’s employees have been with him 20-40 years.  The company has built a reputation for consistency across the decades.  Shayne believes that his success in business has been because of Consistency, Work Ethic and Laser Like Focus.  And he says his laser like focus was learned from being a bricklayer—he says there is no trade that requires higher focus.  Bricklayers are laying brick for 8 hours a day, they have to focus on laying brick within a 32nd of the stringline, while not touching the line.  If your line isn’t perfect, the rest of your crew will have their brickwork impacted and the wall won’t be straight.  It takes extreme focus.  Most bricklayers aren’t college educated, but Shayne believes that the focus level is far and above what many people in the world have experienced in their professions.

Because of all of the travel needed for the business, Shayne also obtained his private and commercial Helicopter pilot’s license.  He flew the Northwest from jobsites to his offices and then back to the ranch in an MD 520 Notar Jet Helicopter that he owned.  He learned from the very best, and was able to harness his “laser like focus” into another area that spurred his growth—with over 900 hours of flight time!

So how does this all tie in with the ranch and the horses?  Believe it or not, as busy as Shayne was, he also rode horses for most of his life!  He took a break from it during High School and his busiest masonry years, but once he was settled in Washington he got back to it—the love for horses never waned.  Back then, he didn’t know much about horsemanship and he had some touchy horses he was riding.  Through a friend, he learned about Buck Brannaman, who was doing clinics nearby.  Shayne went to his first clinic and realized that at 30 years old, he had to completely re-learn everything he knew about riding.  Always being one to try and work hard at challenges, he gave it 100%.  His words were, “Today, I know nothing.  Today, I start over,” even though he had ridden throughout his life.

He and Buck ended up becoming best friends and Shayne has ridden in thousands of clinics with Buck and has hosted hundreds.  For many years he would live on the road with him going to every clinic he could.  If you ever have a chance to listen to some of the stories of these early days, the listen is worth its weight in gold!

In the mid-90s, with his love of horses and devotion to Buck’s way of working with horses, Shayne decided upon another new venture.  This was something that had never been done before (and hasn’t been replicated since)!  Shayne was going to create a place where people from all over the world could come to ride and learn Buck’s style of horsemanship in a real ranch setting, with horses that could do every job asked of them be it inside or outside, and be safe enough for any level of rider.  The stories of this start up are also not to be missed if you ever have a chance to ask!  There was a LOT of blood, sweat and tears that went into building McGinnis Meadows.  Shayne, and a small group of very loyal friends made it happen.  

The beauty of the ranch, no different than with J&S, is that over the years, it has not only stood the test of time, but each year the quality of the program and the impact it has becomes greater and greater.  

Whether it is success in horsemanship or success in business—success has some common denominators.

Focus

Work Ethic

Loyalty

Being unafraid to fail

Earning Respect

Humility

Living in the moment

Shayne often teaches in his classes how much the horse can do for the human.  Horses are the great equalizer—it doesn’t matter if you are rich, poor, successful in other areas of life or not, it’s an even playing field with horses because they don’t care.  They only care about what you bring to the table for them.  And it’s mostly a mental game—at the end of the day riding with us, your body might be tired, but if you’re brain isn’t tired, you aren’t doing it right.  The horse teaches you how to see something from his perspective, which also transfers to working with people.

Shayne strongly believes in two ideas that Buck teaches:

There are two types of people in this world, givers and takers.  The greatest gift you’ll ever give somebody, or your horse, is your time.  Time requires real commitment and loyalty.  And the horses require loyalty because you’re asking a lot to be on the back of a prey animal.  There’s nothing natural about that.

With that, Buck’s second statement—there are two types of riders in this world—those that ride for their ego and those that ride for their soul.  Shayne has always ridden for his soul.  When he met Buck, he had to have the humility to completely start over with horses.  Buck told him one day, “The best humble pie you’ll ever eat, is the one you throw in the microwave before you start the day.”  Shayne had to have an open mind and an imagination.  More than that, he had to be unafraid to look bad and fail over and over.  He believes many people just get frustrated too easy—and horses just don’t understand it.  

Shayne often tells groups that no matter what he has going on in his life, when he steps into the arena and is with the horse—everything else going on in the world disappears.  When he rides, he rides in the moment because you have to have the ability to feel everything that the horse has to offer, you have to be able to put your full focus onto him—otherwise, riding will be mechanical and it won’t go into your soul.  And that’s what Shayne hopes that everyone who comes here can leave with—the ability for the horses to penetrate into their souls to show them how much deeper our hearts can open and our connections to the horses and humans can expand beyond anything we have ever dreamed to be possible.