Once again, there’s no lesson wrap up this week because
Thursday just didn’t work out schedule-wise.
We’ll reschedule, though.
Last night, at our Young Professionals’ organization’s Board
of Directors retreat, I found myself making small talk with the people I’ve
been serving on the board with, but haven’t really gotten to know yet. The subject of my frequent Facebook posts
about horses came up, and some of them had curious questions about my sport, my
pony, and my barn. Eventing is not a
popular sport (not in the sense of say, football) anywhere, but it certainly
isn’t in central Indiana. Usually, there
are questions like, “Wait, are you teaching lessons or taking them?” “Why are
you still taking lessons?” “Why is your barn so far away?”, things that you’d
never understand unless you were familiar with the industry.
Earlier in the meeting, we’d been talking about what our “elevator
speech” was for CYP, and it struck me as I was describing eventing that I’ve
developed my own elevator speech about it as a result of being asked about it
so many times. Typically, I say, “It’s a
sort of equine triathlon that has its roots in the old cavalry testing in the
military. They’d use it to determine how
capable a horse and rider were of handling military service. Today, it’s an Olympic event.” Then, if they seem interested or ask more questions,
I go into more detail, but for most non-horsey people, that’s enough.
What’s your elevator speech about your equine pursuits? (An elevator speech, in business terms, is
the speech you’d give if the CEO of the company you wanted to work for stepped
into an elevator with you, and you only had the time it took to get to your
floor to sell yourself to him.) Even
those of you in more horse-friendly areas have to have one – there are always
questions. I’ve also got one about Welsh
Cobs, which goes something like, “They were ponies bred to keep up with
warhorses in stride, and also to be hardy enough to survive on very little
during times of war. Now they’re typically
used as driving or Dressage mounts for women, but we’re aiming to change that.”
So if you had to sell me the idea of what you do with your
horse, no matter what that is, in an elevator ride, what would that be?
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