This Saturday, the 105th running of the Far Hills Race Meeting takes over Moorland Farm in Somerset County, New Jersey. Tens of thousands of people will turn up for tailgates, tweed and some of the best steeplechase racing in the country. I used to be a regular attendee - not so much anymore. It’s a daylong party surrounded by a steeplechase.
Most of those in attendance won't be thinking about cash flow. I did, as my father used to run our tail gate parimutuel window. After many years as a CFO, COO and CEO, I've noticed that steeplechasing explains how companies are actually run better than most business books do.
A flat race is about speed. Whoever is fastest from gate to wire usually wins. A steeplechase is different. The fastest horse often doesn't win, because the course is full of fences. You win with pacing, judgment at each jump and enough left in the tank for the final stretch.
Very few companies run a flat race. Here are five lessons from the jump course:
1. Pick Your Steeple
The sport got its name from a bet. In 1752 in County Cork, Ireland, two huntsmen, Edmund Blake and Cornelius O'Callaghan, raced about four and a half miles cross-country from the church steeple in Buttevant to the one in Doneraile, jumping walls, hedges and ditches along the way (RTÉ).
They chose steeples for a practical reason: a steeple was usually the tallest thing on the landscape, so a rider could see his destination the whole way (RTÉ).
That is what a strategy should be: a destination you can see from anywhere on the course. It might be profitability by a certain quarter, a financing milestone or a sale to a strategic buyer. If your leadership team can't name the steeple, every fence turns into a debate about which way to go.
(For the record, history doesn't say who won the bet (Europeana). The race is remembered anyway. Destination matters more than legend.)
2. Pace for the Last Fence
In steeplechasing, the horse that goes to the front early and burns everything in the first mile is often the one that fades before the finish. Distance races reward horses that ration their energy.
For a company, that energy is cash. I've watched good businesses spend aggressively in the first half of a plan as if the course were flat, then reach the hardest fence (a refinancing, a slow selling season, a customer renewal) with nothing in reserve.
The practical tools aren't glamorous: a rolling 13-week cash forecast, a liquidity floor the board has agreed not to go below, and downside triggers that tell you when to ease off. They are how you still have a horse at the last fence.
3. Walk the Course Before Race Day
Serious riders walk a course before they ride it. They want to know where the ground is soft, where the turns are tight and which fences come up sooner than expected.
Most of a company's fences can be seen months in advance, if anyone looks:
Debt maturities and covenant test dates
Major customer renewals and contract expirations
Tax payments and seasonal working-capital swings
Planned hires, equipment purchases and lease renewals
The date you need your next round of capital, which is always earlier than you think
Put them on one calendar with your cash forecast. Most crises I've been brought in to fix were fences that someone could have seen coming.
4. Know Which Fences Are Timber
Not all obstacles are alike. Far Hills runs hurdle races and timber races. The marquee American Grand National covers about two and five-eighths miles over 14 hurdles (Mr. Local History Project). Some obstacles forgive a sloppy jump. Solid timber does not.
Business decisions work the same way. A pricing test, a new marketing channel or a pilot program is a brush fence: if you clip it, you adjust and keep going. A debt covenant, a large capital commitment, a senior hire or signing a long lease is timber. Get it wrong and you may not get up.
Spend your analysis where the fences are solid. Founders often do the opposite, arguing for weeks over reversible decisions and making the irreversible ones under deadline pressure.
5. Thank the Landowners
My favorite part of the Far Hills story is how it began. The hunt club that started it created a "Farmers' Day" race meeting to thank the farmers and landowners who let riders cross their property (Far Hills Race Meeting).
Every company rides across someone else's land: lenders, investors, landlords, key suppliers, early customers. In my own career raising capital, including a 2008 acquisition financed with $20 million of mezzanine debt, the relationships that held up under pressure were the ones where we communicated before a fence, not after we’d clipped it! A lender who hears about a covenant problem early is a partner. A lender who hears about it late is an adversary.
Thank the people whose land you cross. Keep them informed. You'll need their gates open again.
The Finish Line
The Far Hills Race Meeting has given more than $22 million to local nonprofits over the years (Far Hills Race Day Guide), a century-old reminder that a well-run event can do a lot of good long after the last race.
If you're heading out Saturday, enjoy it, and give yourself extra time on the back roads. If you're looking at 2027 and seeing more fences than finish line, that's exactly the course I help founders and leadership teams plan for. Let's talk.
John Mortenson
Fractional CFO · Straiteis Consulting
