What it Means to be Aligned in Your Business with Kate Neligan

What it Means to be Aligned in Your Business with Kate Neligan

Kate Neligan is an equine partner coach who helps equestrians find increased self awareness and live more intentional lives. She runs a coaching business called Conscious Rockstar that started as life coaching without horses. 

She brought horses in as her business partners after a chance encounter at a ranch. She heard about the work that horses were doing with addicts in recovery. At the time she had no idea that horses could partner with us as teachers and healers. She signed up for a session and was blown away at the transformation she saw in two hours. After that she knew she had to get involved.

Coaching, healing and teaching are Kate’s calling and she was thrilled to be able to do that work with horses. Today she supports women who are going through transition. That usually looks like a relationship or career change. Anytime they need deeper self love and self acceptance, Kate and the horses are there to help them find it. Kate also offers mindfulness, leadership development, and team building for corporations.

Kate’s clients typically find her from referrals. She does have an outreach plan that she uses for visibility too. She focuses on four marketing strategies that she’s seen make the most difference in her business. 

They are:

1. Facebook
2. MeetUp
3. Email Marketing
4. Referrals

Across all the platforms she focuses on building relationships and letting people know that she’s there to support them. 

Horses as Business Partners

Kate sees her horse partners as a big part of her business. Her mare, Phoenix, is her CEO and Kate runs everything by her. She sits with Phoenix while she writes, incorporating what comes up during the session into her content. 

Kate has some training in animal communication and she uses that in her business decisions. She thinks through her business decisions in their presence. If they seem engaged and interested, that’s a good sign. If they are ignoring her or doing something else, that’s less encouraging. From there she tunes into her own intuition and asks, “is this actually a good idea to do this?” It’s all about congruency and horses love congruency. They love leadership. If her ideas support that, she usually gets a yes from a Phoenix. 

Kate also tunes into her horses when it comes to manifesting. She takes Pheonix on a trail walk and tells her, “We need new clients, what are we going to do? Can you call in clients? At the same time, Kate imagines broadcasting a signal out from her heart, telling the world to send her clients that need her. 

A huge believer in deep healing work coaching work, Kate says people find her at just the right time. She instructs people to tell the universe what they need, and manifest with the horses. Ask them for clients and people will show up out of the woodwork.

Horsey Update

When we recorded this Episode, Kate was right in the middle of purchasing Phoenix. She had gotten close to purchasing a few other horses and things fell apart, so she was hesitant to give us too many details.

Instead, she shared with us how she goes about finding the right fit in a horse. She has manifested horses to own, and horses just to work with, but she says it’s all about networking and building relationships with them.

One day Kate was driving to the ranch and her intuition told her to call one of her friends. She called the friend and the friend instantly told Kate that she’d just gotten a new horse and asked if Kate wanted to work with him. He turned out to be one of Kate’s heart horses and a wonderful partner in her work 

Kate is drawn to horses that want to do the work with humans, love human emotions, are engaging and interested, and of course, safe. When looking for her personal horse, she wants something that can be her coaching partner, and her riding buddy. Kate’s greatest love is riding. It’s her meditation and way of staying grounded. 

The Best Social Platform

When it comes to marketing her services online, Kate’s seen the most success on Facebook. She has a large spiritual community from her master’s in spiritual psychology. When she shares from her heart about the horses and her life, people love the authenticity of her content. 

Her friends and followers often tell her the horses make her glow and they sign up to work with her because they want to glow too. They get fired up by her connection to the horses. They can see the loves she has for them and it inspires them to work towards the same.

Kate’s Facebook Group members know her ethos. They know how she thinks and feels. She isn’t specially trying to get engagement, she knows there are things she could do better, but she thinks of her group as a group of friends.

She keeps the group super positive. Judgment is just not allowed in her group and it doesn’t happen. She won’t waste her energy fighting with someone who doesn’t think horses can communicate. That’s not her ideal client. The way she works is very spiritual and very much about the horse first. She’s created a really high vibe space full of her ideal clients and it’s a truly wonderful place to hang out in. 

The Authenticity of Horses

Kate says horses have humbled her. She coached without them for a while and she would position herself as an expert and give her clients advice. She’s learned that people are drawn to the herd over her expertise.

She shows off the herd on her social media as much as possible. Everyone loves the mini donkey, he’s a total star. Kate loves giving him a platform because just seeing his picture brings people joy. Kate creates her content in the moment. If she’s there and feeling moved and inspired she shares the moment and those posts always do well. 

The herd tells Kate when her content is out of alignment. She tried to do a video on trust, and the horses were not having it. The big draft that typically steals the show when the camera comes out walks away twice. He looked right at her, clearly letting her know that she was not in the energy to create a video. 

Now she knows to always check in with her energy before she creates. Her message is so much more powerful when she is inspired and in alignment when she shares it. People can feel her energy through the post or video and they respond to it accordingly.

Listen to your intuition and listen to the horses, because they will tell you what you should be doing in your business. 

Personal Development in Business

As business owners, we have to be leaders. We make huge decisions every day and when we learn to listen to our intuitive voices from doing personal growth work, we become much better leaders in our businesses. 

Kate based most of her decisions on ego back in her corporate days. Always searching for the next title, raise or promotion. She was a VP by age 31, but so unhappy as a human being. Her  personal growth work has been reprogramming her brain around success. Success does not equal status or money. Success equals love. 

This journey has led her to redefine what she offers based on whether this is in alignment with her. It has to bring her, her horses AND her clients joy for Kate to say yes to something in her business. 

Horses are incredibly skilled at setting boundaries and Kate has been learning from them to set boundaries within her business. She is starting to outsource the parts she doesn’t love, so she can stay in alignment all the time. 

This Stuff is Scary

Kate is working on getting her book out into the world right now, and she’s come up against some fear. What she’s learning is that every time you reach a new level, you’ll find yourself a little sacred.

The presence of fear is let’s you know that you’re up leveling your business. It’s really easy to stay comfortable and just keep doing the stuff that works, but that will never help you reach your dreams.

You have to be willing to fail, and get back up and learn from your failure and try again. That’s the true personal development journey in entrepreneurship. Just because something fails the first time doesn’t mean it’s a complete failure. Are you giving it enough time? Are you giving it enough love instead of moving on too quickly? That’s where that intuitive voice comes in. Your body will tell you if you saw something through to the end or if you stopped at mile 24 on the marathon.

Know that the presence of fear is a great thing and there’s nothing wrong with failure. It’s just a great learning experience. And making mistakes is part of being an entrepreneur. They will uplevel our determination and spirit in knowing ourselves and knowing our business.

Kate’s mare who passed away three years ago is always the one who pushes her through her fear. Right now her desire to write the book is enough for her to face that fear. Her past horse’s voice is she’s constantly in her ear pushing her to get it done.

For Kate, being a voice for the horse gets her out of bed and over her fears. Her love for them guides her and keeps her on track. It’s not about how big of a business she can lead. It’s about how many people she can share the wonderful magic of her horse’s with.