The Business of Coaching with Horses

How to Reach More Clients, Feed Your Horses, and Change the World

Schelli Whitehouse

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781683509936
• eBook ISBN: 9781683509943
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

The Business of Coaching with Horses is the definitive business guide for equine-assisted professionals to reach more clients so they can feed their horses and change the world!

Horse coaching and therapy benefits are unique and sometimes 'mysterious'. In The Business of Coaching with Horses, Equine Alchemy Certified Coach and Facilitator Schelli Whitehouse illustrates exactly what it takes to experience balance, abundance, and a sustainable equine-assisted coaching practice. Schelli's own life journey and work with horses has become an integrated celebration of purpose and prosperity as she works to see equine-assisted coaching and therapy become a valuable 'go-to' modality for personal and professional transformation—as popular as yoga and Starbucks!

Through colorful personal stories, client case studies, and advice from industry experts, The Business of Coaching with Horses guides equine-assisted practitioners through 7 essential skills for building a thriving business with horsepower. Complete with an online companion workbook, Schelli helps readers establish and build upon their own foundation of personal core principles and unique expertise in order to provide value, structure, and transformation for their ideal clients. Part business branding, part money mindset mastery, and part service design, The Business of Coaching with Horses is a loving kick-in-the-pants and a journey to the heart of success for any Horse and Soul Business.

Chapter One

The Birth of an Equine Inspired Entrepreneur

You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

—Swami Vivekananda

My Story

If there were a twelve-step program for personal development junkies, I’d be a card-carrying member.

For a long time, I was a closet spiritual junkie, hiding under the covers and reading the courageous words of so many others. I kept my habit mostly hidden because I could never identify the result that I was sure was going to occur within myself after completing each new program, training, or “do-it-yourself” transformation manual. I never seemed to get to that place where I could put down the book or walk out of the classroom and proclaim to the world, “Look at me! I am enlightened: I’m whole, happy, healthy, pain-free, and I can make a million dollars in 90 days—watch me!”

After the initial high of the “ahas” that I gleaned from each new training, the disappointment of the “new me” still not being able to sustain my lofty goals began to gnaw away at my psyche. I didn’t understand why these techniques, philosophies, and writing exercises didn’t stick for me. Oh, it all made perfect sense intellectually, but I wasn’t living it. Why wasn’t I getting where I wanted to go?

From an outsider’s perspective, my life was perfect. The stuff was all there. I had a nice house, a wonderful husband, a girl, a boy, a dog, a cat, a fish, and a horse (we had a bird but the cat ate him). We had awesome friends and family. We loved to travel, cook, entertain, and spend too much on the holidays. I was living the American Dream, and I was still not satisfied. Yet, I felt hollow inside and was racked with guilt because of it.

What Was Wrong with Me?

The world sometimes feels like an insane asylum. You can decide whether you want to be an inmate or pick up your visitor’s badge.

—Deepak Chopra

Part of my depression was a symptom of not knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was very busy taking care of my family. In 27 years of marriage, the longest we have ever lived in one house is five years. Due to my husband’s career, we moved six times between 2000 and 2007. At that time, my primary function was to pack a house, sell a house, buy a house, unpack a house, research schools, get the kids settled in, and then, just as I would begin to feel like part of a community and find a niche for myself, the cycle would begin again. I was good at it, but I was also exhausted and resentful and beginning to wonder, “What’s the point?”

During the summer of 2007 we moved from Colorado, where we all loved living, back to Raleigh, North Carolina where we had left in 2000. Once again, I started going through the motions of taking care of stuff and feeling invisible, with no identity of my own. Like the photographer’s blank piece of photo paper, I felt I needed to be soaked in the proper developer solution before I could see the details of the image of who I really was. Those images are developed in a darkroom. No one sees them except the person developing the images. In my mind, I developed hundreds of images of myself. I would look into the mirror and stare into the eyes of a woman I didn’t know, a reflection of myself, begging her to help me be somebody I wasn’t already.

Figured It Out!

A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways: by a change from light to darkness, or from darkness to light. And he will recognize that the same thing happens to the Soul.

—Plato

Around this time, the movie The Secret hit the mainstream. I was already familiar with most of the presenters featured. I watched that film with tears running down my face, thinking, Schelli, you know all of this stuff, yet why aren’t you happy, healthy, wealthy, whole, and complete?

As hokey and one-dimensional as the movie was, I am grateful for its timing in my life. I’m not sure what it was about that little film, versus the many books I had read over the years, but it prompted me to start paying attention to what I wanted to have happen for myself, and not only to the needs of everyone else.

Jack Canfield was in the movie, and I bought The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be! That book became my bible, it helped me save my marriage and maybe even my life. That’s quite a testimonial, I know. But, this is why I believe it was different: the book is experiential. There are 64 principles of success in his book, and most of them require action! The most significant success principle for me at the time was a “life purpose” exercise that helped me to reveal and articulate my own core values and reconnect with choices that made me feel happy and fulfilled. I began to get curious again about possibilities in my life.

In the process of completing the ‘life purpose’ exercise, it revealed that my work needed to have something to do with horses and something to do with personal development. Right, I thought. What am I supposed to do with that? At the time, I had never heard of life coaching and the only professions I was aware of with horses were riding instructors, horse trainers, and handicap therapy, none of which I had any desire to pursue. I threw the book across the room.

The Way of the Horse

A higher source of wisdom taps wellsprings of inspiration and energy, connecting you more deeply to your soul’s purpose. To engage with this powerful archetype, you must be willing to ask for help and embody the wisdom and power of the horse.

—Linda Kohanov, The Way of the Horse

Shortly after I threw Jack Canfield’s 64 Principles across the room, a second book came into my life, The Tao of Equus by Linda Kohanov. I know this book may have had a significant impact on you as well. If you haven’t read it, I insist you order it immediately! As a practitioner of equine assisted learning and healing, not reading this book would be like becoming a Doctor of Philosophy and never reading the works of Plato. Impossible!

I was fascinated and moved by the stories and insights she shared with regards to humans relating to horses in a powerful, energetic way that I hadn’t known existed. I became intensely interested in what Linda Kohanov was up to in the world. I read the books she had referenced in her text and along the way discovered other equine assisted learning programs that were beginning to sprout up around the country as well as something called life coaching.

At the time, there were psychotherapeutic and physical therapy programs that incorporated horses, and there were purely facilitated learning programs, but there were no actual coach training programs with horses.

Shortly after we got settled in Raleigh, I went through the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Associations (EAGALA) certification training and though I learned a lot, I was hungry for more. I decided to make the significant investment and commitment to sign up for Linda Kohanov’s Eponaquest apprenticeship program. As fate would have it, when I got to her website I saw a new training being offered. Coach Training Through the Way of the Horse, taught by Lisa Murrell and Linda Kohanov. I couldn’t sign up fast enough!

Today, I can’t imagine learning to embody the art of coaching in any other way.

The Birth of an Equine Inspired Entrepreneur

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, an employee, a student, a homemaker, a writer, it’s time to start forgetting about all the ways the world has promised you safety and comfort.

—James Altucher

Have you ever been facilitating an experience or held sacred space for someone else and found yourself witnessing your own experience at the same time? You are still present, yet a part of you is jumping up and down for joy, celebrating your purpose! That happened for me in January of 2009. I hosted my first equine assisted workshop with friends and some friends of friends. I titled it, “The Next Highest Version of You!” During the first day of the workshop I was explaining to the group what I meant by the phrase, “The Next Highest Version of You”. I adopted it from the book, Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsh. In the book, God explains that our purpose is to continually experience the next highest version of the grandest vision you have ever had for yourself. While sharing this with the group I was having my own out-of-body experience as I witnessed myself doing the work I was passionately in love with and had only dreamed was possible. I was at that moment, living the next highest version of myself and who I was becoming.

After the many years of inhaling the wisdom of the “masters,” I was finally beginning to exhale. The work with the horses taught me to embody the wisdom in a way that was more than knowledge swirling around in my brain, it was now integrated into the next highest version of me. I felt like I was bestowed with new superpowers, and it was time to get to work saving the world!

Horse Transformation for Hire!

I opted for a freelance writing career. I was lucky enough to have the means to do it.

—Matt Ridley

Outside of some part-time network marketing experience from another lifetime, I had no formal business skills. I never went to business school and had no marketing or public relations training at all. I had no idea how to invite people to be a client. I did however, seem to have a knack for creating workshops and hosted a couple of those before I realized how much work it was going to take to make any money with this endeavor. I loved what I was doing, but I could barely afford to take care of my horse at the rate I was going.

Do you remember the Peanut’s cartoons where Lucy sets up her booth with the sign on the front that says, Psychiatric Help 5¢? Then she sits and waits for clients to come and pay her 5¢ in exchange for her wisdom (which of course, was terrible). Well, my wisdom may not have been so terrible, but my marketing strategy was, and it was equally ineffective!

Six months after my first workshop, I felt dead in the water. I began looking for marketing training and found a “Money, Marketing and Soul Coach Certification” program being taught by Kendall Summerhawk in Tucson, AZ. During that year I developed my own programs and incorporated horses into the retreat experience.

I learned the value of what I had to offer and how to help others discover their own value. I became an expert at creating program offers and designing coaching packages, all while not having a clue on how to run a business.

By all outward appearances I was a huge a success. Behind the scenes a perfect storm was gathering strength and I couldn’t outrun it, not even on horseback.

Goals Without Soul

It’s a common misconception that money is every entrepreneur’s metric for success. It’s not, and nor should it be.

—Richard Branson

I’ve re-invented myself many times throughout this lifetime. My PhD from the “School of Hard Knocks” instilled a sense of gratitude, empathy, and understanding for the struggle of others. I thought I no longer needed “healing,” therapy, or alcohol to overcome the history of my broken home, family mental illness, being on my own since age 17, a horrendous car accident, a brief marriage to a drug dealer, and numerous other “frog kissings” in search of the one true prince. I’ve survived rape, abortion, robbery at gunpoint, childbirth, cancer, and betrayal, but nothing prepared me for the devastation I experienced as I watched my whole identity disintegrate into oblivion, erased from existence. I was a walking bag of contradictions. I had worked every minute of every day to become a six-figure coach, and I thought that it was a done deal. It was done alright. No deal.

I had become obsessed with earning $100K my first year because I wanted to be a six-figure coach with “horse power.” At 12 months, I had earned just under $80K. I didn’t break $100K unti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One: The Birth of an Equine Inspired Entrepreneur
• Chapter Two: A Little Horse Sense for Humans
• Chapter Three: The “Cart Before the Horse”
• Chapter Four: Your Image
• Chapter Five: What You Do
• Chapter Six: Your Promise
• Chapter Seven: Your Beliefs
• Chapter Eight: Your Spiritual Money Mirror
• Chapter Nine: The Head, Heart, and Gut of Money
• Chapter Ten: Almost Ready!
• Chapter Eleven: Expert Advice
• Chapter Twelve: Conclusion
• Contributions and Inspirations
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Thank You