Meet Mark Fox

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mark Fox.

Hi Mark, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I’ve had a long career history of creative entrepreneurial endeavors, primarily in the performing arts and entertainment business. Beginning out of college, when I produced my first major concert/event, a benefit concert (14+hr festival) for jazz legend, Marion Brown, that brought together over 75 of the living jazz legends at the time, in NYC, to raise funds to help Marion recover from surgery. The event raised over $30k, which went to the family to help Marion.

This inadvertently led to an opportunity to become a commercial film producer, which became my career for the next 20+ years of my life. From New York to Paris, Los Angeles, Florida, and Denver the work took me around the world. Never losing sight of my heart being in the music as a musician, in my mid-40 I left the film world to pursue a career as a jazz recording artist.

The first concert we did back in 2015 in Denver was attended by an engineer colleague of mine who at the time had a small indie record label. Following the show, he approached me and offered to produce my first album, Mark Fox Quartet+ – “Three Octaves Above the Sun”, which got broad international airplay and reviews. Over the next 7-years, the focus of my life was the music, building the band’s brand and audience, and developing extensive relationships with top manufacturers as an artist endorser. These relationships led to me building a solid online music instrument & accessory retail business that supported my artist career. This was the focus for me up until about a year ago.

Following the pandemic with the economic turn that happened in early-2022, I started looking for what’s next for me to engage in. I started looking for businesses to purchase and seemingly completely randomly, came across a listing for an equestrian center that was for sale and in my price range. As you can clearly see from my history, I had no prior experience whatsoever in horses or animal husbandry, or anything even remotely associated with that.

Nonetheless, this sparked an interest in me that runs deep from a lifestyle perspective of wanting to live in & with nature and animals, outside the urban environment.

With how far a left field this opportunity was, it must have been a spiritual or karmic thing, as it worked out that I purchased M&M Equestrian Center and started running it at the beginning of November of last year. Over the past 4 months, the experience has been incredible. This has been one of the most radical life transformations I’ve ever been through, right up there with having a child and moving to France to raise him. And what’s most incredible, for me, is that my son, Moses, who is now 24, is here running the facility and business with me! He is an accomplished and very astute graphic designer and is bringing world-class branding to our company.

M&M is now a thriving boarding facility and equestrian center. We have a unique property on 40+ acres with 2 barns, an indoor dust-free arena, 2 outdoor arenas, a cross country course, streams and ponds on the property, and beautiful grassy, rolling hills for riding. We are family owned and operated. This summer, we are doing 4 weeks of horse summer day camp, June 12-16, June 26-30, July 10-14, and July 24-28. All of our offerings can be found on our new website – www.mandmequestriancenter.com.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Ha! Let’s see here on that one… jazz & music business, film industry, and now a horse ranch… arguably 3 of the MOST challenging industries on the planet and somehow I’ve been blessed to dance on the high levels of each of these worlds.

Obstacles like being supposedly “white” in the jazz and funk music world; living in Paris with a young family and having to survive, learning French and how to operate in a foreign country with a grossly different system than here in the US; having a successful career as a freelance commercial film line producer, director, and editor in an industry that I had zero interest in or knowledge of; making a serious bid as a bandleader for national/international stage presence in my mid-40s, releasing 2 albums and recording 5, all funded by executive producers and other peoples money; and most recently jumping into the equine industry as a horse boarding & equestrian center owner with absolutely zero experience with horses or ranching or anything remotely related, rapidly learning the business and turning a failing company around into a thriving one within 6-months.

Some of the biggest challenges with taking on a new business, in a completely foreign domain, as such is this case with us owning M&M, is not knowing anything whatsoever about anything. Deer in the headlights, if you will. The learning curve over the past 4+ months now has been dramatic. Out of sheer necessity, my son and I have become carpenters, welders, electricians, roofers, plumbers, ranch hand managers, public relations experts, and a host of other expressions of being and doing that neither of us could have imagined or foreseen prior to taking on this endeavor. The strength of character that is being born from this experience is extraordinary, as we are in this. And the only option is for us to do all that it takes to succeed, so that’s what we’re doing.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I have had a very diverse and creative career spanning many industries and disciplines. Up until these past 6-months, my life has been engaged in various aspects of the entertainment industry. My makeup is such that I have both a very deft acumen in business and am a highly creative artist as well. This is a super rare trait – to excel both as a creative and business person, which makes me unique in who I am.

My career history in the music and film industries has been broad and diverse. From performing with legends at major venues around the world; to producing over 150 commercial films and directing & editing a feature-length documentary film on the insider’s perspective of the music world; and creating a successful online retail business selling pro musical instruments, I’ve experienced success in most endeavors I’ve taken on in my life.

Last year, something shifted in me and the inspiration to be more aligned and working in nature and with animals, the opportunity to acquire an active horse boarding facility and ranch presented itself. This business opportunity came from so far out in the left field, it’s still surprising to me, even, though we now own M&M Equestrian Center and are successfully running and growing the business. This endeavor has brought my son, Moses, into the fold with this endeavor. We are co-running the business which is the fulfillment of life-long dreams of us both to work together and create a family business.

Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I would say that luck has had very little play, or possibly been everything that’s been driving my career, business, and life. I take the approach of setting intent, then doing my best to get & stay out of the way and allow life or the universe to unfold the intent in the way that it does. So luck could be everything, or it could be nothing actually.

For example, when I was in my 20s, a friend asked me if I’d like to go to a recording session up in Boulder. I asked how it was and he said he didn’t know. I asked if we should bring our horns and he didn’t know. So we put our horns on our shoulders and went up to a little studio in N. Boulder.

Turned out to be George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic cutting their first album for the 10-album Sony deal they had back in the early-mid 90s. At 3 am, we ended up tracking 2 songs for the album project. That parlayed into me performing with them at Red Rock, the Electric Factory in Philadelphia, Beacon Theater, and other venues in NYC, etc… Was that luck???? Not sure…

Pricing:

• Horse Boarding – Full-Service Stall Boarding – $700/mo
• Pasture Boarding – $475/mo
• Summer Horse Camp – $600/wk

Contact Info:

• Website:www.mandmequestriancenter.com
• Instagram: @mandm_equestriancenter
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063706922699