Dorman 'Determined' To Play The Long Game

New investors at the elite level of our sport are clearly being well briefed in the odds they need to overcome. But if nobody can have failed to notice one operation pronouncing itself “Resolute,” only gradually are people becoming as aware of another that had already been branded as “Determined.”

As we'll see, a certain staunchness is not only innate to Matt Dorman of Determined Stud but has also been fortified by experience, some of it as challenging as life can throw at us. The upshot is a conspicuous sense of purpose, whether in business or beyond.

Dorman could scarcely have started more modestly on the Turf, with a marginal stake in a $5,000 claimer with Phil Schoenthal in Maryland some 15 years ago. By the time he sold his business in 2020, however, he could execute an exponential leap long planned for his program, assembling as many as 20 broodmares that fall. Those and subsequent investments–including several in partnership with existing Bluegrass powerhouses–are gradually beginning to cycle through to wider attention. For instance, a Curlin colt co-bred with John Sikura of Hill 'n' Dale was sold to Coolmore for $1.3 million at the September Sale. At the same auction, Dorman played up some of those winnings on a $410,000 Twirling Candy filly for his racing division. Partnership interests on the track meanwhile include a piece of champion juvenile elect Citizen Bull (Into Mischief), and similar involvement in fellow Keeneland graduate Getaway Car (Curlin). (These two, 1-2 in the GI American Pharoah Stakes, proceeded to run 1-4 at the Breeders' Cup.)

“There's a lot of action now,” Dorman acknowledges. “When we sold the company, it had a very big tax bill. And, right or wrong, the horse business is a great way to optimize your tax situation. Instead of doing it over three or five years, it made sense to do it in one or two. We bought a bunch of runners, hoping to improve their pages. But we also bought broodmares that we knew we could sell weanlings out of, so that we could get cashflow going in one year. At the end of the day, I'm a cash guy. Cash-on-cash return is important. Obviously it doesn't always work out, but you just have to deal with the highs and lows the same.”

Dorman admits that it was difficult diverting from an initial commitment to his native state, albeit a few appropriate mares remain there. “We're hardcore Maryland, born and raised,” he says. “Originally I was going to build out everything there. But once I started ramping up, and got more experience, I realized how often these broodmares need the clinic–and that 30 minutes could decide everything. You can't buy four or five $800,000 mares and then run out of time because the clinic isn't close enough. Or you can, but it's not my kind of business plan. It was a great property, I loved it up there, but it didn't make sense.”

By that stage, Dorman had already hit it off with Sikura and benefited from his counsel, reliably as sage as it is direct, as he scouted and passed up various Kentucky farms. Finally he found one, off Mt. Horeb Pike, that satisfied every specification.

“Unfortunately Ed Hudon had passed away, but he'd done a great job with Sierra Farm,” Dorman explains. “And it was turnkey: 200-plus acres, barns, staff, everything. Compared to what I would've had to do in Maryland, it was a no-brainer.”

Dorman had been introduced to Sikura by one of their mutual trainers over dinner. He remembers explaining what he was trying to do and Sikura just giving him a look.

“You don't have any stallion shares,” he said. “You'll go broke on stud fees.”

“I don't like to go broke on anything,” Dorman replied. “But how the hell do I get in? I'm from Maryland, up against all these Kentucky folks that have been around for generations. New money is always treated different.”

But Dorman, within that category, was himself different. “I knew that when the self-made folks come in and want immediate change, that never ends well,” he reflects now. “So I've tried to take a longer-term approach.”

Sikura said he'd look into what he had: maybe he could sell Dorman a share or two. Later that same night, he texted the names of two stallions and what the number would be.

“I stayed up all night, built out a new spreadsheet, figured out a couple of assumptions,” Dorman recalls. “Some people answered calls in the middle of the night and at the end I'm like, 'This makes sense.' And then the tax consequences made it easier, too. So next morning I walked in the cafeteria, saw John, stuck out my hand and said, 'It's a deal.' And he's like, 'What are you talking about?' 'I'll buy those shares.' And ever since we've had a great relationship. John has an incredible eye and I have a moderate checkbook. It's a good combination.”

As the program has matured, Dorman has also forged ties with Lane's End and Gainesway. Relationships, and doing his own due diligence, remain as key now as they have been throughout his business career. “I was always my own CFO,” he says. “When we brought in private equity, I did the deal. And I always drove sales.”

All that said, the fundamental spur to the business he established was strictly personal. In 1996, one of Dorman's sisters was murdered by a man who had been released from a psychiatric hospital without the safety net of community care. In the hope of sparing other families such trauma, Dorman started developing an electronic health record for behavioral and mental health.

“So, yes, we were mission-based,” he says. “I told my two remaining sisters, and my parents who were alive at the time, that we would not be saying anything for 10 years. But after that time we were like, 'Maybe there's value to the story.' That's when we started talking about it. But it's tough. We lost a baby sister that night. I was working for a little tech company at the time, Lockheed Martin, so knew a little bit about technology, and was just amazed that there was no follow-up after he was discharged. I have a nephew who doesn't have his mom. I saw what he went through, what my parents went through. There's a lot of things that are avoidable thanks to technology. So I thought maybe we can have some good come out of this.”

Having started in a townhouse basement, Credible Behavioral Health expanded across 38 states and took Dorman somewhere he had never envisaged. A portion of the proceeds, along with an ongoing percentage of his successor enterprise, is devoted to a mental health foundation, while Dorman's wife runs the largest mental health and rape crisis center on the eastern shore of Maryland.

Strictly in terms of the way the business thrived, however, can Dorman apply any lessons to the notoriously unpredictable world of bloodstock?

“When you're building a software company, and trying to create stability, the concept of recurring revenue is big,” he explains. “When we're buying mares, looking for quality pages, we work on the principle of getting two live foals out of three– and that if one of those two can be a really good one, better again.

“But also just thinking long-term. A lot of people are very focused on short-term trading. I understand that, if you're in sales, and you're a certain kind of farm. I think it's because we've more of a long-term vision that all of a sudden it's now getting real busy. And for both that recurring revenue, and having that vision, quality partnerships are big.”

But internal relationships are equally important. The Kentucky farm is run by an “awesome” third-generation horseman in Scott Mallory; David Ingordo has become invaluable to the team; while 15 horses in training are divided between Mike Trombetta and Cherie DeVaux.

One of the most cherished horses from the early days, developed by Schoenthal, was a $20,000 yearling that the novice Dorman insisted on buying in 2012. Sonny Inspired (Artie Schiller) won a bunch of stakes and nearly $650,000.

Sonny Inspired | Maryland Jockey Club

“Sonny's at the farm, just living the life,” Dorman says. “He's a great character, phenomenal with kids. When horses arrive on lay-up, he takes them in his paddock and tells them how they, too, can end up in retirement here. He was named for my father, whose gang nickname, growing up in Brooklyn, was Sonny.”

Arthur Dorman was plainly the source of his son's inborn determination, besides also being his route into racing.

“He was an eye doctor and served in the Merchant Marines and the U.S. Army during World War II,” Dorman recalls. “He was also a state senator for the first 37 years of my life. And in Maryland, politics and racing go hand-in-hand. He was very close with [Laurel supremo] Frank De Francis, we used to go to the track all the time and I just really enjoyed it. From right back then, in my goal book, it was like, 'When I hit this amount, I want to build out a racing stable.'”

The turning point was the 2006 GI Kentucky Oaks. “We'd lost all our money,” he recalls with a chuckle. “I had 300 bucks left. And I put it all on Lemons Forever, who was the longest shot. And there we were, standing on our chairs, screaming as she turned for home. She paid a ton and I'm like, 'How's this work?'

“I got more into reading the Form, and what struck me was the money people were paying for horses. The business model of getting people liquored up and excited, getting them betting? That's great, I respect the tracks for that. But the real business model is breeding. And when I started looking into it, I saw that it was great to have a racing stable, but what you really wanted was the broodmares. And that's a long game. You got to last the course. But it's a wonderful game if you can.”

Now a family man himself, with four teenage sons, Dorman will always have a corrective whenever the vagaries of the Thoroughbred test that staunchness. Indeed, some of his horses are named in unobtrusive honor of the sister he lost.

“She was very different than the rest of us, but she just had bad luck,” he reflects. “The rest of us are just very fortunate. We work hard, yes, but basically we're fortunate. Anyway hopefully we've made some good come out of it.”

To have prospered via such tragedy naturally gives rise to complex emotions. But strictly in terms of discovering where his business skills could thrive, Dorman admits that selling the company left a different kind of void.

“I failed miserably at being retired,” he says wryly. “Anybody will tell you that. And so I started another software company last year, this time an electronic health record in physical therapy. That's really important, too, especially to veterans.”

In the end, everything Dorman does will always have a family inspiration behind it: whether a single night of tragedy, or the broader legacy of a patriarch who had always led by example.

“My father was self-made and, unlike a lot of politicians, he was home every night,” Dorman says. “He was a doctor first and a legislator second. And very independent. That was back in the 'machine' days, but he did the right thing even when it would cost him. He was phenomenal. Didn't say a whole lot, but when he did, it meant plenty. And it was him that taught me you can do whatever you want. You just need a vision, to stay true to your word, and treat people how you want to be treated. If you can do all that, life gets easy.”