Episode 66 // Beware of Flashy Marketing

In this episode, I share some tips on how to sift through all the media and marketing that we consume.

I talk about how social media can't share the whole story, the importance of being educated on the latest research, and how to spot red flags in marketing.

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Show Notes:

[00:00:00] Welcome to season four of the willing equine podcast, the podcast, where we chat about all things, horses and being the best horse people we can be for our horses. My name is Adele Shaw. I'm a certified behavior consultant, and my passion is for creating positive relationships between horses and people.

[00:00:28] Today I want to talk about marketing in the horse world. And specifically we're gonna be talking about how to recognize marketing, how to kind of sift through it and have a clearer view of what is actually going on. This is not an episode about teaching you how to market. This is an episode teaching the consumers, the clients, the potential clientele, the potential students, the potential. Just, yeah, all of you guys that may or may not eventually, you know, either currently or in the future are looking for a horse trainer or a behaviorist or a riding instructor or a colt starter or whatever, just all of the different indu parts of the horse industry. Maybe this could even dive into like hoof care and nutrition. All of that. I would like to take a moment in this episode to help educate people on, you guys, my listeners on being able to recognize marketing and recognize what is reality versus what we're seeing. It's like that whole thing on social media, we see the Instagram versus reality and it's kind of like a chuckle or like, oh yeah, that's so true. Whatever. It applies here too. This, it applies to horse training and it applies to marketing. It applies to what you are seeing on a daily basis in social media and everywhere else. So. One thing. I think we're all pretty aware of is that a lot of social media is staged. It, it really just is. And whether or not it's intentional, it, it just kind of comes with the territory as somebody who's on the other side of the social media, as far as like I'm a content creator. I share a lot of what I do training wise. I am also somebody that is trying to build up my clientele and promote my business. And so I do marketing. I mean, it is, it is not a dirty word. It is what it is it's a, it's part of having a business. It's part of growing your business. It's part of finding your ideal client. It is just part of life. It is reality, and it's not a dirty word. It's not something, you know, sleazy. It's not bad. However it can become that. And that's what I want to talk about today. That's what I wanna help educate you guys on and share with you from my side of the story. And also somebody who has been a student or bought programs or purchased courses or gone to clinics or conferences or whatever it is there is. There's just a lot to know about it from my side of it, but also I've been in your shoes too, because I've definitely, I work with different coaches. I work with, you know, whether that's a business coach or a riding instructor or a another horse trainer, like another professional, like a colleague, I go to clinics, I purchase courses. I do all the things that, that most of my listeners are going to be doing. So I've been on both sides of it. And I wanna talk about.

[00:03:29] When we are consuming, what is basically advertising on social media, we are getting just a look at it. We're just getting a glimpse in time. And even if the influencer, the content creator, the business, the trainer, whatever is trying to do their best to provide as much clarity and transparency as possible, it is still I glimpse in time. I just bend over backwards, trying to provide clarity and being authentic in what I present and trying to be very transparent about everything I do. I cannot however, provide full context and full information and the full story and take you guys on a day by, you know, minute by minute journey with me with this horse. I can't, it's just not possible. I cannot. And also just from a practical standpoint, like I, I don't even want to really, I mean, that's just a lot of work, the amount of hours and time that go into providing all of that background, all of that context, even at the level that I'm able to do right now is very, very time consuming. And. You know, I have a team that helps me and it's a growing team and I know other professionals that do, but a lot of people are on their own doing this. A lot of horse professionals, equine professionals, pros in the industry are on their own doing this. So not only are they out there doing the actual training, they're also doing their own marketing, their own, selling their own creating of, you know, the pamphlets that they give to clients they're teaching and organizing and hosting their own clinics. They're out there mucking their own stalls. They are doing so much. And there's a lot we could talk about in that, you know, regard as well. I think that there's a lot to be learned about business for the horse, you know, industry and creating teams and helping, you know, but that's a whole different topic anyway. So what I wanted to say is, is that even the most transparent and authentic and honest people with their marketing and with what they're selling and doing and sharing on social media, it is still just a glimpse in time. It is still limited. It is still going to be bare bones as far as the entire information. And the reality too, is that a lot of consumers, a lot of potential clients, a lot of people who are sifting through the social media, don't even put the time into actually going through all of the information. So even though I put it all out there, I can sit there and give you an entire background history on this horse and tell you all of the things that we did and didn't do, and why this led me to do this and why I'm doing that and blah, blah, blah. I can do all that, but that doesn't mean somebody's gonna sit there and read it all. So they are still just, and this is, you know, we recently, they they've been doing a lot of research. Alright, they've been doing research on this forever. As far as I'm aware what we're being told right now, as far as social media content creation is that our, the people who are viewing our content that are viewing our marketing are viewing just everything we're putting out there. We've got less than seven seconds. Usually they move on by then. So I've got less than seven seconds to share with you the information that I'm trying to get across. And that is definitely not enough time to give you full context. So again, this is just going back to saying there are limitations to what I can do, and this is really important context for what's coming next in this episode, what I wanna talk to you guys about.

[00:06:53] So there are really honest and just genuine professionals out there that are doing their best, and that are trying to provide you with the most honest and transparent information possible. They're trying to be really authentic. They want to help you out. They're providing tons of free content. They're just pushing it out there. And just as much as you could absorb, if you sat through my Instagram, if you went through my entire Instagram account for however many years, I've been running, it's been a very long time. There is so much free content on there and. You could kind of get a, you could get a really, really good idea of exactly what it is I do on a daily basis. However, it's still not enough because there's just so many hours in the day. Right. I would, if somebody wrote a journal, time stamping, everything that I did on a daily basis and how it was done and everything I said and all of that, I mean, that's just a lot, right? So that's obviously not something you're going to do. Nobody's gonna sit there and absorb that content, even through longer format format, stuff like blogs and podcasts and all that, it's just too much information. Everybody's got their own lives to live. I don't expect you guys to do that. I don't do that. I certainly don't do that. I don't have time to sit there and sift through that much information. So my job, and this is where marketing comes in is to grab all of that information and provide it in a way that is easy for you guys to understand what it is I'm trying to share with you it's, I've sifted through it all. I've I've, you know, I've put in the practice, I've put in the hours, I've worked through this and then I'm gonna try and boil it all down to a couple of sentences or seven seconds and provide you that information again, not full context. Of course, there's gonna be a lot of, you know, caveats and variables that are at play here. That information, that advice is not going to apply to every horse and in every situation. And it's not going to be all there is to say about it. So I'm not trying to give you a full training manual in seven seconds. It's just not possible. So that is kind of the, that is the basis for, you know, a lot of the information that I'm putting out there. I have, there's limitations. I've only got a certain length of time that I've got people's attention. I'm also trying to convey the most important information, even if it does have a lot of variables at play and all that. I just know that going into it. And I think , as you are consuming content, And marketing and all of that, you need to keep that in mind as the person that is consuming. You need to remember that what you're reading and what you're seeing has way more to it than what you're seeing. There's there just always is, there's just years and years and hours and hours and hours of information that go into the backstory of that content, go into the variables of that content. Go into the education process of that content.

[00:09:46] Social media is not intended to be a training manual. It is not. To be a end all be all, as far as providing you all the information you need, and it's not meant to cover all of the different possible variations of that information that you were consuming. So as somebody who I, I scroll through TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and all that, I try and keep that all in mind as I'm reading through this and. I think, you know, from the consumer side of it, the person who's viewing all of that content. And sometimes it's not even always about social media. So I'm like, I'm talking about Instagram. Like Instagram's coming to my mind cuz that's where I do a lot of my marketing is through Instagram. A lot of my social media content creation is through Instagram. I also have like my podcast that you guys are listening to. And I have my blog and I have YouTube and that's much longer format. Obviously you guys are not listening to podcast for seven seconds. I hope not that wouldn't be very effective. But it's still short, right? One podcast, like I'm gonna talk on this podcast episode for like around 30 minutes or so. This is surface level information, as far as like we could spend hours and hours and hours and you need to go you could go to professionals where they, this is what they study. This is what they do on a daily basis. This is their profession. I mean, they go to school for it. Like you're getting surface level information and I would never expect this 30 minute podcast to be the end, all be all for this information. And, you know, and that's that's okay because not. Things that we need to know to the nth degree, to the whatever, but I would hope you wouldn't go out and become a professional, you know, start a business in marketing based on my 30 minute podcast episode. Right. So that's kind of where I'm getting at is talking about how we need to be careful thinking that just by viewing some seven seconds or even 30 minutes of content, we now know how to do it or what to.

[00:11:35] And so, yes, this is a podcast episode. This is my podcast I use to share information to provide that to my listeners, to ex just to give them more tools to add tools to your toolkit, but it also is a form of marketing too. And I use it to share my thoughts and share my opinions and share what it is I do and don't do. And I try and be as authentic and, and genuine. And transparent as possible. However, I am still limited based on the amount of time I have and, you know, just all the info, their information in also, we need to look at the individual consumer, you know, I'm gonna tailor if I'm looking at somebody face to face and I'm in a consult with them, I am going to be tailoring that information specifically to them and their horse and I'm going to walk them through that process. Going to be very detailed and specific to them. And I'm going to convey that information in a way that is useful for that particular client. Whereas when I'm doing a podcast, I just have to do a general broadcast of information. So it's not as tailored. It's not as specific. And I have limitations because of that.

[00:12:45] So, this is when we're talking about marketing from the perspective of the content creator, the marketing creator being as you know, trying to be sharing as much as possible and giving as much context as possible and being as transparent about the process as possible. But we still need to remember, again, all of the things I said, it's limited there. There's so much more information to be had. You're getting a snapshot in time. You're getting a limited amount of information even with all of that good intent behind it.

[00:13:20] Now let's dive into a little bit more shady marketing, or I shouldn't even call it shady so much. It may not be intentional, but we can talk about marketing or social media content creation that has. It is being viewed through a certain lens and is being marketed in a certain way to give you intentionally a certain impression about something without a lot of context, without a lot of transparency. And this is really, really common in the horse training world and also in the dog training world in many other worlds where we get on social media and we see this, you know, a, a beautiful horse and the riding through the beach, and it's beautiful and gorgeous. And look at the harmony. Look at the connection. Look at the bonding. They must have it together. I will go buy their course and that's fine if that's genuinely what's happening. But what I find is happening quite often, and we see this so much, is that because of beautiful pictures and because of staging it to be a certain way and making people feel a certain way intentionally about it, they are selling something that is not necessarily authentic to what is happening. That is not necessarily truly transparent. And also then we could talk about wording choice too. I can't tell you how many posts or captions or blogs or whatever, or I'm just watching a video and listening to the people talk, and they're using a bunch of words that sound really good that make us feel really good about what's happening. You know, they're using words like connection and bonding and you know, they're using words like authentic and co-regulating and just like all these words, which I have used these words before. I'm not saying those words are bad. But when we are hearing one thing, but what's actually happening is something very different. And we see, you know, I I'll see them standing in the middle of the arena with the horse, and they're talking about providing guidance to this horse and helping them rest and helping them find peace and on and on. But then I'm watching the horse's body language and that horse is either shut down in a extreme amount of exhausted. Sometimes they're soaked in sweat. They've just been running around the round pen, or maybe they've been chased around with a, a, a flag or a bag or the saddle was tied to them, or they got broke under saddle in, in 30 minutes or a couple of days. This is when. We are being sold, something that is not authentic. And, and maybe the person that is even saying that believes what they're saying, I'm gonna imagine they would, but we need to be really careful. And we need to be objective about what we are seeing versus what we are hearing. And so a lot of times when I'll tell people to do is turn off the audio. Stop listening to the person and see what you see and even go into watching this video before you hear the audio, what do you see? What do you see? What is the horse communicating to you? And if you don't know what the horse is communicating, this is where education comes in. And this is where I really feel that horse a people are really empowered through the process of education. And we have a lot of resources. Well, I should say there's some resources and it's a growing quickly. We have understanding now of facial expressions that relate to pain and stress. And then we also have research that is showing more about horse behavioral expression of stress and conflict and worry and concern. And we also have more studies on equine behavior and social dynamics and how the horse brain works and the, how they see the world and how they interpret different things. And, you know, things like categorical perception and just their, the the idea that they use. Well, I should, this is the incorrect one, but the idea that the negative reinforcement is the only thing that is natural to them and is the most natural form of communication to them. That's outdated, or the dominant theory is way outdated. So we have this updated new information that we need to be educating ourselves on, and we need to be just kind of arming ourselves with right. We're like putting on this armor or like okay. As a advocate for my horse as somebody who has been put here to care for, and provide for and advocate for my horse, because that's my role in this relationship in this human world, I need to be really educated so that when I'm viewing the content that professionals and content creators are putting out people who are selling things that you would potentially like to buy of training programs, colt starting programs, courses, riding lessons, whatever you need to have a certain level of education on horses, about horses, to be able to view this objectively and set aside the nice words and actually see what it is you're seeing, and to be able to understand. And then, then you can go back and turn on the audio and listen to what it is they're saying, and it may or may not match up. So sometimes I'll listen to, I will have the audio off and I'll just watch the horse. And I'm like, okay, that's interesting. And I'll turn the audio back on. And sometimes I'm going, oh my gosh, I, we interpreted that way differently. Or I did than the the person creating the content and then sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised and I'm like, oh yeah. Okay. Spot on. Or I might learn something new that day. And sometimes I have to double check it with research. I have to double check with my resources, whether that's books or articles or research papers, I need to double check it. And I know this is really tough because we wanna be able to trust the professionals that are out there. We wanna be able go sign up for the course of the person that has a ton of followers on social media and seems to be doing really good and has amazing reviews. Of course, we should be able to trust them. We should be able to just jump into it and maybe you can, but still the, what I would caution you to do is just that educate yourself a little bit before you go in. You're not ha you don't need to be a professional to be able to call out or recognize when the words are not matching the actions when things are not matching up when they're not aligning, you don't need to be a professional to be able to do that. You just need to have some level of education. You just need to spend that time learning just enough to start to recognize the red flags. And that's really kind of a good thing to jump off on here with the talking about red flags and trainers. And some other areas that we could start to recognize red flags. So one would be when the words are not matching what we're seeing in the horse behaviorally. So if the horse is showing signs of stress or pain or whatever, and then the professional is saying, look, they're being dominant, et cetera. Okay. Words are not matching up with what's happening. That would also bring us to another red flag, outdated, you know, belief systems. When we have updated research, very definitively in that area, that's a pretty clear cut one, that the dominance theory doesn't exist and there's not an alpha mare or lead mare necessarily. And we, the, the social dynamic of the herd fluctuates and is dynamic and it's very complex. And then somebody is sitting in there trying to sell you something or, you know, whether that selling is actually like a course or just trying to convince you of a training approach and that's what clinics are, or seminars or symposiums or demonstrations. They are trying to show you something and convince you of it and how amazing it is. It just that's what it is. And if their words are not matching up with that, and also. You're talking about things that are far outdated. I understand if it's like a little bit outdated, like, you know, like, oh, Hey, did you see this newest research paper that was published yesterday? That's a little bit different than something that's been outdated for a very, very long time. So that's another red flag. Another red flag would be when the professional doesn't have a lot of education when it comes to horses on things like nutrition and physical health and hoof care and all that, they don't need to be hoof care professionals, unless we're specifically talking about hoof care professional, obviously, but I'm talking about trainers cuz that's kind of my industry. Or my area of the industry. So when we're talking about trainers, if the trainer doesn't at least have a good to pretty good, like higher level education, understanding of proper hoof care, proper dental care, proper, you know, body work and physical health. Proper saddle fit. Like that's part of my job description. My part of my job description as a trainer is not just how to train horses, but how to recognize when there are things that are not setting us up for success. So we could look at this as an ABC antecedent behavior consequence, and part of the behavior analysis and all of that is, and it's part of the antecedents. If I have not set my antecedents correctly, which include distant antecedents, which include, you know how the horse is feeling, you know, how their feet work, how their legs are working, how are their teeth well taken care of? Have they had proper nutrition? Are they being fed rocket fuel or, you know, like just have they had their companions? Are they out outside have enough turnout? That that's part of the training. That is part of the antecedents, and if I don't have a proper education in those areas, to be able to provide that to my horse, then I'm not doing my job as a trainer. So that's a red flag as well is we need to be making sure that the professionals that we are hiring and that we are Learning from and buying from are at least having a decent understanding, a decent education in those areas because training is not effective when that has not been set up. And if they are gonna go into the arena with a horse that hasn't had dental work in the last couple of years and start to, you know, quote, train and fix this behavior problem that is probably coming from the teeth without addressing the teeth. Then I, I would, I would stop and I would be like, oh, I don't know if I wanna learn from this person. And I'm again, I'm not saying they need to be perfect. I mean, there's definitely been lessons I've learned where I'm like, oh shoot. I did not know that. And I, that would've really helped us out. If I had known that I apparently need to learn a lot more in this area. So definitely mistakes happen. I'm talking about consistently, consistently this person's like, yeah. Yeah, he's fine. He's not in pain. That's a red flag. Okay. Let's see. What are some other red flags that we need to be watching out for? Other red flags are going to be short timelines with fancy you know, marketing strategies where it's just like this big before and effort after, and it's super flashy and in your face.

[00:23:39] And it's like, yeah, look at this. And usually, and I'm not saying that the before and after can't be amazing, but what we need to recognize as a red flag is when the first video, especially if it involves the trainer. Is the horse being explosive or dangerous or all over the place, or is just being triggered and just thrown through blown through their threshold roof. Right. They're just over the top losing it. When we see stuff like that, that catches our attention. See, this is good marketing as far as from a marketing strategy it's great because you got your flashy before that captures that attention in the first couple of seconds. And then people will sit through the rest of it, cuz they wanna see the after. So that's good marketing strategy, but is not good horse trainer strategy. And that is questionable as far as ethics go. Especially if the trainer intentionally triggered that behavior in the horse triggered that response in the horse. To get the marketing, just to get the flashy. And, you know, I, we could talk about that some more, maybe ethically, I, you know, . It kind of depends. What I'm concerned about though is when they go couple hours later or 30 days later or not even, well, it depends on what it is. But when there's a huge before and after in a short amount of time, and especially if the trainer intentionally triggered the before and then puts them through this really stressful training program to fix it. And it's this big flashy situation that grabs people's attention and it looks amazing and it just is like attention grabbing. I know it looks good on social media. I know it makes for good entertainment, but it is a red flag and that is such a hard thing because then you get trainers that don't want to put the horse's welfare don't wanna compromise it and they want to do the whole thing ethically as much as possible. And they want to keep it as low stress as possible. Create those good associations and builds it up slowly and not rush the horse and all that. Unfortunately, that ends up resulting and us not having quote, entertaining training videos or marketing videos. It has boring videos. Good training is boring. It's just straight up, flat out boring. Good training is boring. I'm just gonna say it over and over again. Good training is boring. It's not boring to actually do if you like training. Like for me, I could, I just love training. I love setting my horse up for success. I love seeing the progress. I love, you know, creating that strategy and the shaping plan. And like, there's just nothing more exciting to me that, I mean, this is why I'm in this industry. I love doing it. I love that. And I love dealing with really extreme behaviors, too, really dangerous behaviors and approaching it in the same way. It should still be boring. I have worked with horses that will come through you or come at you through a fence. Like they're going to take you out. They are extremely aggressive. And it is boring. Because I go and find the point at which the horse is not angry with me and is not feeling scared and terrified. And like they need to defend themselves and they are not feeling like they are being threatened, their lives are being threatened. I go find that point and we build from there and it is boring. So it's not going to make a good social media video. It's gonna be a terrible social media video, unless it just so happens that the owner caught the, you know, quote bad behavior ahead of time. And then I have an after video that would be exciting, but it's not usually that doesn't usually happen. And unfortunately I'm really bad too getting before and after videos. And I could potentially, we could talk about maybe there's a place and a time to get a before so that you can asess exactly what's going on and get an accurate starting point. There's something to be said for that. And maybe that ends up working. For a great entertaining social media video, but it is not going to be every single time. It is not going to be something that is done in a couple of days or hours in the, or in the same session. This happens a lot in the dog, social media world, where the, the trainer will come in and, and actually we've seen the horse training world too, where the horse, you know, I see this on YouTube sometimes with certain trainers there, where they come in and the horse is like gonna attack them. And then, you know, an hour later, the horse is quote, fixed. Red flag, red flag, red flag, red flag. It it's just, that's suppression. And anyway, I'd have to know these specific situation. Exactly. What's going on. I'm not gonna make a blanket statement, but please do be careful. Please do be cautious when you're observing that kind of content and allow be cautious in allowing that to influence your impression or idea of what training should look like. You shouldn't have that big before that like crazy before where you, and then just push the horse through it. Like you're just blowing through it and being like, deal with it. And then it's a, a miraculous recovery or miraculous fixing process within, you know, this short amount of time. And if you can't do that, then you're a bad trainer or just not as good as them. And that training should look that way. That is not true. It is not true at all. And I would really, really encourage you not to take that approach.

[00:28:39] So, but yeah, this goes back to the marketing thing. That is a great marketing strategy from a purely business numbers, getting clients, getting your name out there, marketing strategy. That is a beautiful strategy because it's flashy. It's big, it's bold. It solves people's problems. It shows your, what you can do. It appeals to people who have the same problem with their animal. Like it's great, but it is not good for the animal. It's not good for the horse. It's not good for the dog. And ultimately it's probably not good for you either because putting yourself in that situation is probably gonna get you hurt because that's a, that's not good. That's the whole nother topic, but this is, it's just so important to remember when we are watching things on social media. When we are reading blog posts, when we are listening to podcasts, when we are watching YouTube videos, Instagram videos, TikTok videos, there is a certain level of marketing that is attributed to that. If there's a brand associated or a business associated with that podcast, even if there's not a business associated with it, there still is some level of marketing. Maybe marketing isn't even entirely the word I'm looking for. There is some sort of, not really agenda. I don't even know if people are intentionally doing it, but something is being expressed. There is an opinion being shared. There is some way that they are wanting to influence you, hence the word influencer. So we need to be really careful when observing this marketing or absorbing or consuming this marketing, this influencing, and remember that it is such a snapshot in time. It is such a limited amount of information. It is never going to be the whole picture, no matter how transparent the influencer slash business owner slash horse trainer slash whatever is no matter how authentic and genuine and much they wanna help. It is still restricted amount of information. It still is not the full picture to still going to be bits and pieces.

[00:30:54] When you buy from the people like, like let's say for myself, I'll use myself as an example on my social media, on Instagram, my goal, really with my influencing there is to promote the idea and the belief system that I have, this is just what it is. I'm gonna be honest about it, that horses and people can have a mutually respectful and reinforcing relationship that is based on cooperation and consent from both participants. And that is just much more horse focused and the horse's wellbeing can be prioritized. And then that can be a very beautiful or an extremely beautiful relationship that you can have with your horse. And it can be just that a relationship rather than a one sided relationship or conversation where we're using the horse to our benefit. I have a mission with what I'm sharing on social media. That's just, that's part of my business. That's part of what I'm trying to share, what I'm trying to grow, the, the thoughts and the belief system that I would like to share with others. You don't have to buy it. You don't have to care. You don't have to agree. That's fine. You can move on you don't. I mean, it's not like you don't have to do anything. However, for people who are interested. I have, you know, to support my business. And this is what business is, businesses are. I have like my courses and my coaching and my academy and all of that. And I can tell you with a hundred percent that money is not really something that is very of interest to me. I. I do what I do to be able to support my horses and to support spreading the message. And so, yes, I sell and yes, I market and it's to be able to continue to do what I love and to support the relationships that I have, that I love with my horses and to be able to continue to impact the lives of the horses and the people around me for the better. That's my purpose here. And that's what I find really reinforcing the money just happens to be a part of that. So. When I share on social media, I'm sharing snapshots of time. I'm gonna show a training clip. And it's going to be of me clicker training, a horse to get in the trailer. Let's say, I'm gonna show you either the beginning, the middle and the end or the beginning and the end, or even just the end. And talk about it a little bit. You're not gonna get the whole backstory of the horse, unless you've probably, unless you've been following me for a very, very long time. And you've read every single post. You might get some of the backstory on the horse, but you're not gonna get the whole backstory on that particular post because there's a character limit. And because not, everybody's gonna sit there and. And yeah, and it, sometimes it's not really all that important. You're also not going to get a complete backstory or I should say, you're not going to get a complete list of variables that might play into the situation where I might choose a different way of doing this for this horse or that horse or this situation or that situation. There's gonna be many different roads to Rome, even within the clicker training, positive reinforcement realm. And there's going to be a lot of other context stuff that you're not going to know either from that whole situation, maybe. That video's actually from a long time ago can, but you're just now seeing it because reels is a thing and it keeps popping my old reels back up into the feed, I guess. And I get like comments and likes all of a sudden on reels that are way old. And maybe in the last couple of months, since that reel was published, I have a different approach now because I learned something new. And that's the other thing too. There's a lot that I'm learning. All the time. So if you sat through all of my social media went back for years, you would see stuff that I probably don't like I may do now. Like there's nothing wrong with it. I just maybe I've updated it. Right. Okay. So there's just so much going on that you're not seeing. And then maybe other things you're not seeing, or like maybe I was tired and hungry that day, or maybe that happened to be a really good day, but the day before was terrible. And maybe the day after that was just like, Ugh, not so good. We need to try again, but I'm gonna share the highlight cuz that's, I'm, I'm excited about that. I'm proud of it. I'm gonna share it. And I do try and talk about the bad days and stuff too, but I mean, honestly, there's only so much I can share. Anyway, so we, so you're seeing that on social media and the whole idea is to get you to go. That's really interesting. My horse also has problems with trailer loading. Maybe this could help. I will reach out to her. And, or I'll check out her stuff. Okay. So then from there, you're going to my website, whatever. Great. And then eventually, maybe you are signing up for either a consult or you sign up for my course. In the consult I can tailor the information much more. Specifically to you and your horse, but it's still only a limited amount of information compared to what would be a bigger more well rounded picture, which would be going like through my course, and then going into the academy and then getting like the full, like, you'd have all like, much more of the context and much more background and all the different variables because you're stepping into this world and you're absorbing and consuming all of the information surrounding it, all of the bits and pieces that go towards supporting what it is I'm teaching. Because like, yes, I just showed you clicker training for trailer loading. But what I didn't show you was how to introduce the clicker, what food reinforcers I'm using, why I'm standing in that position, but not another, why am I choosing this tool versus another? Why is this particular horse doing it this way? And not that way? Led up to that moment, there is so much that leads up to that moment that I'm showing you on social media that you're not getting from just consuming that post. The same thing applies for all other trainers too. And whether they train like I do or not, it doesn't matter. There is so much more information to be had that you are not getting, and this plays, and I'm just gonna use this to wrap up this episode. This impacts it in two ways. This is why you should care about that, that, that, that content has limited information.

[00:37:01] The reason you should care about it is one. There could be stuff that are, that is surrounding that content. That is maybe not something you want to, that you would agree with or you understand, or that has led it to be like, just the, the content like you were being sold, one thing, but actually something else is happening and it's it doesn't, it's not clear in that post. So there's lack of clarity. There's lack of transparency, right? So you need to care about that. The fact that there's only a limited amount of information with that social media post, because there's so much information around it surrounding it that you don't know about yet, it could be good or it could be bad. So you need to be careful, just be cautious with that. The other reason you need to care is because again, there's so much other information that leads up to that, that you may not quite understand yet, or be able to apply yet or know to apply yet. So it could be setting you up for failure to just be applying what you see in that social media post. There's so much more that usually happened. Before you get to that point and just jumping it into that point. That's like trying to learn how to swim in the deep end, without floaties. Right. You're just jumping right in and hoping you swim, not sink. So we need to be careful with that from that perspective as well.

[00:38:27] So. Yeah, this whole episode, hopefully made any kind of sense whatsoever and was helpful in any way. I don't want you guys to walk away thinking that everybody's lying and you need to be distrusting of everything you see, and that's not the case. Most people out there in my experience are trying to do something in the best way. They're trying to do this in the best way possible. They genuinely believe in what they're doing. They genuinely care. And especially in the horse world, we all care about the horses. A lot of us, most of us hopefully do and are trying to do what's best based on the information they have. And what we're trying to do is help you. There are just limitations to that. And I want you to know what those limitations are. So you can be further empowered and make educated decisions and be the best advocate you can for your horse. And then the other side of that too, is again, I want you to be able to recognize, and this goes to that empowered, educated advocate for your horse. You need to be able to recognize marketing that is potentially quite harmful. And how it could be hiding a very dangerous training approach or a dangerous methodology for this, and is just really good entertainment is basically what it boils down to. It's good entertainment, but not good training. It's good for viewership. It's good for getting that attention in the first few seconds and holding that audience and selling things. You know, promoting the name, but it is not good for the horse. That's something I really want you guys to take away from this episode as being something important to watch out for, because it is going to directly impact the future of the horse industry and is also going to potentially directly impact you in your horse and your relationship you guys have together.

[00:40:13] Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, I would love if you left us a review on wherever you listen to your podcast, if you'd like to learn more head to our website. The willing equine.com where you'll find a bunch of links to our different social media platforms. We have Instagram TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, pretty much everything.

[00:40:37] We also have our blog, our training services and the T w academy where you can enroll in the foundation course that opens a few times a year. Thanks so much for listening. And I look forward to chatting with you in the next episode.