Hit Songs and Horse Businesses - Why Creativity Matters

Here in the Nashville area, you don't have to spend much time around the music business to notice something interesting about creativity: many great songs are co-written. In fact, research on songs reaching the Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 has found that roughly 90% were written by teams of two or more credited writers.

It isn't because writers aren't capable of writing a hit song by themselves, and it isn't simply a way to divide the workload. They write together because something different can happen when creative minds work on the same project.

One person brings in an idea. The other hears something in it that the first person didn't. That triggers another idea, which changes the first one. A line that wasn't quite working suddenly goes somewhere unexpected. Someone asks, “What if we did this instead?” and three hours later they've written a song that didn't exist in a finished form in either person's mind when they walked into the room.

And perhaps just as importantly, it's fun. There is energy in the exchange. Ideas start moving. People become more playful and less protective of the first solution that occurs to them. A mediocre idea doesn't necessarily get discarded; someone else catches it and turns it slightly, and suddenly it becomes an interesting idea.

I think some of our best horse business thinking happens the same way in our group coaching and private consulting sessions.

Of course we talk about financial management, pricing, marketing, employees, clients, systems and all the other things a business owner needs to manage well. But underneath many of the best strategic decisions is the ability to imagine something that doesn't exist yet.

Every time you figure out a better way to structure a service, create a new revenue stream, use an underutilized asset, change your client mix, solve a staffing problem, build a partnership or make more money without simply adding more work, you're doing something creative. Strategy itself is creative. You're looking at the pieces you have and asking whether there might be a better way to put them together.

Why It's Tough to Access

The difficulty is that many horse professionals are trying to do their most creative business thinking under some of the worst possible conditions for it. Running a horse business consumes an extraordinary amount of mental and physical energy. There are horses, clients, employees, schedules, veterinarians, farriers, entries, travel, facilities, weather, bills and an almost endless supply of things that need a decision right now.

By the time you have an opportunity to think about the business itself, you may still be perfectly capable of making decisions. But generating possibilities is different. When we're mentally tired, it's much easier to work with what we already know. We adjust the existing model instead of questioning it. That can make the world of possibilities around your career and business look much smaller than it really is.

Sometimes You Need Another Mind in the Room

This is one of the things I find most interesting about coaching and advisory work. Its value isn't limited to having someone with expertise give you an answer. Sometimes the real value is what happens between people thinking about the same problem.

You know your business in a way an outside advisor never will. You know the horses, clients, personalities, history, market and all the details that make your situation different. An experienced outside person brings something different: distance from the problem, patterns they've seen elsewhere and freedom from some of the assumptions that have accumulated around your business.

They ask, “Why does it have to work that way?” And suddenly we're looking at a possibility neither of us started with.

That's creative collaboration. One mind gives the other something to react to. The reaction creates something new, which comes back across the table and gets changed again. The result isn't necessarily my idea or your idea. It emerged from the conversation.

Creativity Needs Something to Work With

Of course, creative business thinking can't simply be brainstorming for the sake of brainstorming. A horse business has to work in the real world. That's one of the reasons I created Equestrian Professional's Horse Business Model Canvas—and why I still use it so much. The value isn't in filling out boxes. The canvas gives us something we can move around.

Suppose we change the customer segment. What happens to the value proposition? Does that change what we can charge, how we reach clients, or the activities and resources the business needs? What happens if we eliminate an offering, combine two, or find a new way to create value from something the business already owns?

Now we're playing with the business model rather than simply documenting it.

Financial tools serve a similar purpose. Once we've come up with an interesting possibility, we can ask the numbers what they think about it. What happens to profit? How many clients would we need? What happens to labor? Does a price increase solve the problem, or is the underlying business model still fighting us?

Creativity generates possibilities. Good business tools let us test them.

Sometimes the numbers kill a perfectly delightful idea. That's useful too. We've learned something without spending the money required to learn it the hard way. Other times, the numbers reveal that something we thought was impossible is entirely possible. Those are some of my favorite moments.

Support Can Create Space for Better Thinking

Another person can't give you more hours in the day, but for an hour they can help you hold the problem. You don't have to simultaneously remember every piece, organize it, question your assumptions, generate alternatives and evaluate them. Someone else is participating in that process with you.

And if it's the right person—or the right group—the experience can be energizing rather than draining. We tend to treat serious business thinking as though it ought to feel like gluing our butt to an office chair: be disciplined, look at the numbers, make the plan, set the goals.

There is certainly a place for discipline. But some of the most valuable strategic thinking I've been part of feels creative. People get animated. Someone throws out an idea. Someone else builds on it. We test it against the numbers. We discover a problem that leads to another idea. The person who came into the conversation feeling stuck starts seeing possibilities again.

That change in energy isn't incidental to the work. It's part of the work.

Putting Creativity to Work

Horse professionals already use enormous creativity working with horses and clients. The challenge may not be becoming more creative. It may be creating the conditions in which we can access that creativity when we turn our attention to our careers and businesses. And sometimes that means doing what great songwriters have been doing for a very long time: getting other creative minds in the room—in a setting where it's safe to share your best thinking.

There is one important difference between co-writing a song and collaborating on business strategy. Songwriters share in the proceeds when a song succeeds. Business owners don't—and sharing your best ideas with a competitor can actually hurt your business. That's why I'm thoughtful about how we structure group coaching. The goal is a commercially safe room, either among non-competing professionals or people whose interests are aligned (members can bring a group together that we moderate), where everyone can contribute their best thinking and benefit from the creativity of the group.

Sometimes the best room is a private one. In my private consulting and advisory work, we can go much deeper into your particular business, financials, opportunities and decisions. Either way, the purpose isn't simply to give you advice. It's to create the conditions for better strategic thinking—and help you access ideas and possibilities that can be difficult to reach on your own.

Want Another Creative Mind in the Room?

Equestrian Professional members can join me for group coaching and access the business tools and resources that help us explore, test and turn ideas into strategies that work in the real world. Or, if you'd like to dig deeply into your individual business, you can work with me privately through consulting and advisory sessions.

Not yet a member?
Equestrian Professional offers practical tools, group coaching, and thoughtful guidance for serious horse professionals — designed to support clear thinking, steady leadership, and a business that can navigate changing conditions.