JEFFERSONTOWN, Ky. — Are you looking to improve some aspect of your life? If you meet Stacey Warner, owner of Horse Powered Leadership, she’ll say you need to spend time in the arena with her mare Boone to grab the reins of whatever you’re trying to work on, from being a better leader to growing a business. 


What You Need To Know

  • Horse Powered Leadership is a new Kentucky-based business that provides coaching to individuals and corporate teams 

  • For 10 years, owner Stacey Warner has used horses to guide clients with whatever they want to work on, from leadership to relationships

  • Warner has clients do exercises with her horse Boone using non-verbal communication

  • That non-verbal communication is key for interpreting what comes up during a session

When Crystal Adams watched a demo of the work Stacey Warner does with Boone, she decided to book a private session. 

“There are so many coaches where you go, you sit down, either in your office or virtually, and you talk, and the horse just adds an amazing dynamic. It’s a reflection of me,” Adams told Spectrum News, after she completed her private session.

For 10 years, Warner, a certified life coach amongst other credentials, has used horses to guide individual clients to corporate teams with whatever they want to work on, from leadership to relationships. 

How you do one thing is how you do everything. So how you show up in the arena, is how you show up in the boardroom, is how you show up in the family, is how you show up in your relationship,” Warner explained.

Adams wanted to work with Warner and Boone to help figure out a direction to start with in growing her health and wellness therapy business.

During a coaching session, Warner asks clients to do exercises with Boone, but they can’t talk.

“Because horses have survived millions of years based on non-verbal communication, so they are energetically in tune with one another, and so are we, but we just don’t know it. So when we walk into a room, we are actually saying a lot more than we think we are, and the horses are able to pick up on that,” Warner said.

One of the activities Warner had Adams do was create an obstacle course, using orange cones, that she had to move Boone through using non-verbal communication and a training flag. However, Adams had a hard time connecting to Boone.

“Boone would move, and I would not want Boone to move, and I didn’t realize the cues that I was giving,” Adams said.

So Warner switched the activity to address the connection between Adams and Boone.

“Stacey had me put my hands on Boone and just kind of feel and connect, and it didn’t work so well,” Adams laughed. “Then she mentioned, ‘Do the same thing, but kind of back off my energy a little bit,’ and so to me not being so forceful and controlling was very eye-opening because once I did that, I felt like I had a much stronger connection with Boone, and it was a more successful experience.”

After the exercise, she and Warner talked about it, regarding how it relates to Adams’ business. 

Adams told Spectrum News that exercise was her biggest takeaway from the one-hour session.

“I have been so in my head and logical about things and just almost forcing things forward, trying to control them too much, and I think if I am able to use that same concept of backing off a little bit and finding a better balance between myself, and my clients, and what they are looking for, I’ll be able to meet them in a better place for them and provide a better service,” Adams said.

 

Watch: Horse Powered Leadership Owner Stacey Warner talks about other key takeaways she noticed during her client Crystal Adams’ first private session.

Warner said she has done this work over the past decade in locations such as Pennsylvania, California, Texas, Arizona, and Costa Rica. Warner moved to Louisville, Ky. from California in early 2019, but recently launched her business, Horse Powered Leadership, here in Kentucky in early April this year. For more information on the work she does, visit Horse Powered Leadership’s website.