Before the Business Comes the Foundation

There is a lot of excitement around building an Equine Assisted Learning business.

What should I charge?
How do I market myself?
Where do I find clients?
How do I approach schools or organizations?
What should my website say?
How do I turn this into a successful business?

Those are all important questions.

But they aren't the first questions.

Before we build the business, we need to understand the work.

Because you can have the prettiest website, the best social media, a beautiful facility and an amazing marketing plan, but if you don't truly understand what you're doing, why you're doing it and what the horse is bringing to the experience, the foundation simply isn't there.

We Need to Know Our WHY Before We Sell Our WHAT

Equine Assisted Learning isn't simply putting people and horses together and hoping something meaningful happens.

There needs to be intention behind it.

Why are we choosing this particular exercise?

What is the objective?

What skill are participants developing?

Why is the horse part of this experience?

What is the horse communicating?

What are we watching for?

When do we step in?

When do we stay quiet?

How do we take what happened with the horse and connect it back to someone's everyday life?

And perhaps most importantly, are we allowing the horse to actually be the teacher?

These are the fundamentals.

They aren't nearly as exciting as designing your logo or announcing your new business, but they're what make everything else possible.

Understanding the Horse Has to Come First

If we're going to say that the horse is the teacher, then we need to understand the teacher.

That means learning how horses communicate instead of putting our human interpretations onto their behaviour.

It means understanding pressure and release, boundaries, body language, movement, energy and choice.

It means recognizing the difference between what we observe and what we assume.

It means understanding why horses can be such powerful partners in teaching life skills in the first place.

And it means respecting the horse as a participant in the process, not simply a tool we use to create an experience for humans.

The better we understand the horse, the less we need to manufacture the learning.

Then We Need to Understand Facilitation

Knowing horses isn't enough either.

Being a great horse person doesn't automatically make someone a great facilitator, just as being great with people doesn't automatically mean someone understands horses.

We need both.

Good facilitation isn't about having all the answers or giving people a motivational speech after an activity.

It's about knowing how to create an experience where participants can discover the learning for themselves.

It's knowing how to ask the right question instead of giving the answer.

It's understanding when to step in and when to let something unfold.

It's recognizing a teachable moment.

It's being able to bring the objective back into the conversation without telling someone what their experience meant.

And it takes practice.

Lots of it.

The Curriculum Isn't Just a Collection of Activities

This is another piece that can easily get lost when we're excited to get started.

A strong curriculum has a reason behind it.

Programs aren't just fun horse activities that can be pulled out randomly because they look interesting.

Skills build upon skills.

Learning builds upon learning.

There should be an understanding of why one experience comes before another and what participants need to learn before they're ready for the next challenge.

That's why the fundamentals matter so much.

When you understand the why behind what you're doing, you're no longer simply following instructions.

You begin to understand the process.

And that is when confidence starts to grow.

THEN We Build the Business

Of course the business matters.

We want our facilitators to understand marketing, pricing, insurance, partnerships, client acquisition, programming and how to build something sustainable.

Because if you want to help people through this work, eventually you need people walking through your doors.

But there is a reason we believe the foundation comes first.

You need to know what you're selling before you learn how to sell it.

You need to understand your value before you can explain that value to someone else.

You need to be able to confidently sit across from a school, corporation, recovery organization, parent or community partner and explain not only what you do, but why it works the way it does.

That's a very different conversation than simply saying, "We work with horses."

Build It in the Right Order

It's easy to look at someone who has been doing this for years and want to jump straight to where they are now.

But you don't see the hundreds of hours of learning, practicing, watching horses, facilitating, making mistakes, asking questions and doing it again that came before it.

Your logo can change.

Your website can change.

Your pricing can change.

Your marketing will definitely change.

But the knowledge underneath your work is what everything else stands on.

So before worrying about building the perfect business, build the facilitator.

Learn the horses.

Learn the curriculum.

Learn how to facilitate.

Understand the objectives.

Understand the science.

Understand the why behind the what.

Practice until the pieces begin to connect.

Then build the business around something you truly understand.

Because a great business can bring people through the door.

But the quality of the work you do once they get there is what gives that business a reason to exist.