What Can Horses Teach Us About Business?

Television's famous talking horse, Mr. Ed, delighted audiences with his wit, wisdom and "horse sense." But as Arianna Strozzi and her coaching clients can testify, a horse doesn't have to talk to help humans come to term with their flaws and foibles.

Strozzi is a life coach who discovered that people can gain powerful insights about their own lives through interactions with horses. Horses, it turns out, don't take any nonsense from humans. A horse knows when you're being authentic and when you're lying to yourself. It responds accordingly, by showing interest and support or perhaps by turning its back on you.

That's because horses react to people based on the emotional signals they give off. "When you're in your head using your intellect and your mental faculties, you're not that interesting to a horse," Strozzi says. The horse likely will act as though you aren't there. On the other hand, "If you're thinking about something important to you, that you have passion for or care for, then you become interesting to a horse," she adds. With that kind of input, people can make decisions about the direction they want their life to go.

Strozzi has been using the magic of horses to help people from all walks of life since 1990. She coined the term Equine Guided Education and created the Equine Guided Education Association, which provides education, research and information to professionals and the public. She's also written the book, Horse Sense for the Leader Within: Are You Leading Your Life, or Is It Leading You?

"We can get to the core issue in minutes with the horse present that would take six months in traditional coaching," Strozzi says. "People will be motivated to change their behavior for the horse in a way they wouldn't do for themselves. The horse is 1,000 pounds of visual imagery showing you where [you are]."

Two Dreams Merge
A growing number of people are carving out careers in equine guided education. Lynn Baskfield and Ann Romberg, who started Wisdom Horse Coaching in Minneapolis six years ago, are among them. Romberg spent 25 years in the corporate world before leaving an IT role to become a life coach. One day, she says, "I was sitting with a group of coaches. It sort of popped out of my mouth--I love horses and I love coaching, and wouldn't it be great to combine the two?" And an entrepreneurial seed was planted.

When Romberg learned from a mutual acquaintance that another woman--Baskfield--shared her dream, she invited her to lunch. That lunch led to a quick and solid partnership.

Baskfield was a lifelong entrepreneur and personal coach who also guided outdoor retreats to a 12,000-acre horse ranch in Montana. "What I saw is that, after people left after a week of being with horses and nature, they left transformed." For example, she says, they'd handle a relationship they hadn't known how to handle or start a business they'd been contemplating.

After some training in equine guided education, she realized she could use horses to help her existing clients without leaving Minnesota. She started taking clients to the farm where she boarded her own horse to prove to herself that what she had learned "was actually as powerful as I experienced it to be," she says. And as she got clearer about the kind of business she wanted to start, a friend introduced her to Romberg.

The partners complement one another, Baskfield says. "Ann is good at creating relationships through e-mail and putting vision into form through making agendas. I like to go out and talk to people and create possibility and design the workshops with them." Initially, they felt as though they should both be able to do everything. They eventually realized that was the wrong approach. "You like doing what you do, and I like doing what I do," Baskfield told Romberg. "Let's just celebrate that and really look at how it expands us."

Presently, there are three prongs to the business: corporate leadership and team-building; working with individuals in transition, usually midlife professionals; and professional development to train other equine guided coaches and facilitators.

Examples of Horse Sense
The pair have plenty of examples of horses tuning into and reacting to an individual's energy. "When the horses figure out you're listening to them--they're really thrilled to be listened to," Romberg says.

They recall one workshop that included a corporate couple. The husband had the horse moving in a circle around a long line (called "lunging"), talking about where he wanted his company to go. There were about 20 people sitting in the arena watching, and every time the horse passed this man's wife, the horse would stop.

"What we found out in the processing of this activity," Baskfield says, "is that the wife's father had recently died; she was deeply grieving. She was an officer in the company and she was feeling completely overwhelmed. What was being indicated by the horse was that this man had to stop and attend to his wife's grief." Faced with that revelation, the couple reconfigured the responsibility in the company until the wife was ready to resume her role.

It has taken several years for Baskfield and Romberg to build up the business. "We've been growing at 20 percent to 25 percent a year in revenue," Baskfield says. According to Romberg, the first four years seemed like pushing a rock uphill. By the fifth year, the rock had reached the top, but it wasn't rolling down the other side yet.

"This year, we're noticing more phone calls coming in. We're doing less output for the amount of input we're getting," Romberg says. They have more reservations on the books for the first six months of this year compared with last year. And the pair expect revenue to increase by 20 percent this year from last year's $100,000.

That means hiring more support personnel, Romberg says. While they had a lawyer and CPA onboard early on, "just recently we've grown into hiring virtual assistants and office support for bookkeeping services."

California Challenges
Strozzi, who grew up with horses in the coastal hills of California, developed her Leadership & Horses program out of dual interest in horsemanship and somatics, which is based on the idea that mind, body and spirit are inextricably linked. She thinks horses help people achieve better self-awareness.

Initially, she inserted horses into an already existing leadership development program, as well as conducting one-day public programs. Eventually, she expanded her public programs to three days, and then five days. She's been doing five to eight of those each year, plus 12 to 18 inside other courses. She also offers two three-week certification programs each year, teaching other people how to do equine guided instruction.

Strozzi's business has been based mostly on word-of-mouth referrals. Now she's focused on becoming more technologically adept. "Being in the country, we didn't have high-speed internet until six months ago. Now I'm learning how to do tele-calls and some other internet networking," she says.

Because she owns her facility, Skyhorse Ranch in Valley Ford near Bodega Bay, Calif., she needs to raise more money than Romberg and Baskfield. The Wisdom Horse coaches pay barn rent per time spent at one of the six Minnesota facilities they use. They have a similar relationship with White Stallion Ranch in Tucson, Ariz.

By contrast, says Strozzi, "I have 13 horses; I own almost 200 acres. I have to come up with $75,000 a year just to cover my mortgage and property taxes and insurance before I even feed myself. Then I have to make about $150,000 to generate that $75,000."

Strozzi also is expanding into new areas, beginning with a two-day program she calls Earth Prayers that's focused on social change. "We have to become environmentally more responsible," Strozzi says, "and we have to find ways to talk about it." People in the program will try to determine what they have to do to become what Strozzi calls "leaders of change."

One of Strozzi's consistent clients is Whitney Hischier, assistant dean of the UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education. She took 17 people from her office up to Strozzi's ranch to enjoy the outdoors and benefit from working with the horses.

On the heels of that experience, Hischier decided that a manmade, fluorescent environment "isn't good for us." She switched her office to full-spectrum lighting, added plenty of plants and purchased big pictures of plants and outdoor things. "It's lighthearted and less artificial," she says. She believes that behavior in the office has changed as a result.

Big Things Can Be Fun
Alice Berry, an event planner, has been working with Baskfield since 2004.  She sought Baskfield's help a couple of years ago when faced with the prospect of growing the local Doggie Palooza event into a major Minneapolis attraction.

A former corporate executive, Berry enjoyed working with smaller, owner-operated businesses. She was afraid that a big, corporate sponsor would erase the element of fun. "It just feels really big and impossible," she recalls saying as she stood in a pasture with several horses.

At that point, she says, "the biggest horse I've even seen in my life" approached her. "His mouth hit my head. So I'm looking up at this magnificent blonde horse thinking, 'This is kind of scary, but he's really cool.' " Baskfield told her to talk about what she wanted sponsorship to be like. "I want it to be fun and relaxed," she said. And the horse started to neigh and make noises like he was laughing.

She continued talking to the horse (named Sparky) about her vision. "I just want to find a company that's going to understand me and the mission of this event and be so wholeheartedly on board with having fun," she said. "The horse started nudging me and playing with me. I realized that something really big could also be a lot of fun."

The incident galvanized her. "The magical thing is, I went back with one goal--and the very first company I called [Midwest Airlines] signed that day to become our key sponsor. I don't think I would have been able to do that without Sparky's help. I didn't pick him, he sort of picked me. He showed me that big things could be fun."

Read "What a Horse Can Teach Entrepreneurs" by Wisdom Horse Coaching's Lynn Baskfield and Ann Romberg.