4 Ways To Make Running Your Equestrian Business Easier In 2026 - And The Trends You Can’t Ignore

By now, most equestrian business owners will be familiar with AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and similar platforms. What’s changing as we move into 2026 is not awareness of AI, but how it can be woven into everyday business operations.

1. Let AI do the heavy lifting in your business

AI is no longer just something to “experiment with” when time allows. It can take on many of the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that eat into your working day, freeing you up to focus on horses, clients and strategic decisions.

At a basic level, generative AI tools can support planning and time management, summarise long email threads, draft client communications, and help create marketing content such as social media captions, blogs, images or short videos. Research and writing tools like Perplexity AI and Claude can help you explore new ideas or regulations quickly, without hours of manual searching.

Where AI is becoming particularly valuable for equestrian businesses is in practical application, not just content creation. Industry-specific tools are emerging that support yard management, transport logistics, enforcing quarantine, assessing the movement and soundness of horses, and can assist with rider training and development. You might like to check out Steed, Hoofstep, Equimetrics, Trojan Track, Sleip, Stride, RiderSum, Equius AI and Stable Guard Technologies as a starting point, to implement AI into your equestrian business.

We are also seeing a shift from generic AI to agentic AI – systems that don’t just answer questions, but can take action on your behalf. This might mean an AI assistant that schedules appointments, follows up enquiries, updates records or flags issues before they become problems. For equestrian businesses, where time is often fragmented between the yard, events and office work, this move from curiosity to practical utility is significant.

More retail businesses are predicted to use their own AI agents in 2026, helping shoppers to find the purchase that is right for them, and it will be interesting to see how this filters into equestrian retailers this year.

Where can AI tools make it easier to run your business this year? With admin tasks or with practical hands on equine tasks?

2. Build More Connection with your customers

Happy customers and clients do your marketing for you, make your life easier and save you time and money. In 2026 consumers are looking for more connection, and signs that it is safe to work with a business. Transparency around back end processes like date usage, and financial details builds longer term relationships with customers who return.

As consumers, we are overwhelmed with ways to spend our money, and businesses offering a more personalised experience will do well in 2026. As buyers, we want something different, and to feel special - how can you tweak your customer experiences to build connection and get remembered for all the right reasons?

A simple birthday email, this could be addressed to a client, or their horse, or a ‘Happy Gotcha Day’ card in the post goes a long way to build client connection.

3. Consistency

Marketing and consumer behaviour trends can feel fast moving, and there’s a ton of people splashed across your social media feed everyday telling you that their system is the only way to grow your business this year. It is vital to be learning new skills, and improving and refining your marketing and sales strategy as an equestrian business, but this does need to be balanced with ‘shiny object syndrome’.

Marketing is a bit like a scientific experiment. You need a clear objective, you test out a method, you assess if it worked, you tweak and refine the process until it yields the desired results. You can’t test out a marketing strategy if you are jumping from one shiny idea to the next, so think like a scientist.

What marketing do you have in place that works, and can simply be refined? Where can your marketing (or any other business activity) be more consistent? We want consistent results in business, but as business owners, we don’t always take consistent action.

4. Self belief as a business owner

Just as technology is predicted to shape the business landscape in 2026, trusting yourself, and your gut instinct is going to be really important as a business tool. Equestrian business leaders need to be reactive, decisive and able to plan ahead, they need to lead their business and team forward and that starts with trusting yourself.

How would you rate your ability to trust yourself at the moment? What could you do to strengthen this further? Many business owners simply don’t give themselves the time and space to think, and tap into their intuition - if you don’t already schedule some business meetings with yourself- and listen to the answers your mind provides - you might well be surprised at how resourceful you are!

Here’s to a successful 2026 for you and your equestrian business.

Nicola Kinnard-Comedie (Msc, BHSAI Int. SM)

is the owner and founder of NKC Equestrian Training, delivering horse care training to horse owners and business and mindset coaching to equine practitioners.

Nicola is a qualified riding instructor and has over 20 years industry experience, and now uses her coaching skills to assist equine practitioners. Nicola decided to combine her experience of equestrian science, sales and marketing, and teach this to others. Nicola works with veterinary physiotherapists, massage therapists, osteopaths and other equestrians across the world to help them build their dream business. Nicola's work focuses on harnessing the power of your mindset, together with cutting edge marketing strategies to support equestrian business owners to realise the business of their dreams.

You can find out more about Nicola here: www.nkcequestrian.com

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This article is from the January issue of Equine Business Magazine