Stop Calling Yourself A Rider. You’re A Horsewoman.

There’s a word we use constantly in this industry. We put it on our websites, our lesson packages, our clinic flyers, our intake forms. 

We use it so automatically that most of us have stopped noticing it entirely.

Rider.

And it’s costing us more than we realize.

I’ve been around horses for 44 years. I’ve been called a rider my entire life. And I understand why, it’s functional, it’s familiar, it describes a person doing a physical activity with a horse. But here’s what I’ve learned working with women who love this lifestyle: the word rider describes what someone does. The word horsewoman describes who someone is. That distinction is everything.

And as equine business owners, the language we use with our clients shapes the identity they step into, or don’t.

The Identity Gap Nobody Is Talking About

Here’s what I see again and again: women who have been around horses their entire lives, who board horses, who spend thousands of dollars a year on their animals, who show up to the barn every single week, and still don’t fully own the identity of horsewoman.

They hedge. They qualify. 

“I’m just a trail rider.” 

“I’m not a real competitor.” 

“I’m still learning.” 

They’ve been in this world for decades and they’re still introducing themselves apologetically.

This isn’t a confidence problem. It’s an identity problem. And the equine industry, unintentionally, reinforces it every time we reduce these women to what they do in the saddle instead of who they are in this lifestyle.

A rider takes lessons. A horsewoman lives a life. A rider improves her position. A horsewoman deepens her relationship. A rider shows up for her horse. A horsewoman shows up as herself, and her horse feels every bit of the difference.

When we shift the language we use in our businesses, in our marketing, our programs, our client conversations, we give the women we serve permission to claim something bigger than a skill set. We give them permission to claim an identity.

What This Means for Your Business

Identity-based marketing isn’t a new concept, but it’s wildly underused in the equine industry. We sell skills, outcomes, and results. We rarely sell identity. And yet identity is exactly what our clients are buying.

The woman who books a clinic isn’t just trying to improve her lead changes. She’s trying to feel like the horsewoman she knows she can be. 

The woman who signs up for your training program isn’t just chasing a ribbon. She’s chasing a version of herself that is confident, capable, and fully in her element at the barn.

When your marketing speaks to that, when it says you are a horsewoman instead of you are someone who rides, you stop selling a service and start selling a transformation. That’s when clients stop shopping around and start feeling like they’ve found their people.

Ask yourself: does your website, your intake process, your programming language reflect the identity of the woman you most want to serve? Or does it reduce her to a skill level and a discipline?

The Shift That Changes Everything

In my own business, this realization changed everything about how I work with women. 

When I stopped asking “how long have you been riding” and started asking “tell me about your horse life”, the entire conversation shifted. 

Women opened up. They shared things they’d never said out loud. They stopped performing competence and started talking about what they actually needed.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: the women who come to us aren’t struggling with their horses. They’re struggling with themselves. 

The disconnection they feel in the saddle is a reflection of the disconnection they feel from their own identity as a horsewoman. And no amount of technical instruction closes that gap.

What closes it is someone looking at them and saying: You are a horsewoman. You have always been a horsewoman. Now let’s get you back to her.

That’s the work I built Cowgirl Ignite around, a 90-day private coaching program for horsewomen that works from the inside out to help women reclaim not just their confidence in the saddle, but their full identity as a horsewoman. The results show up in the arena. But they start long before that.

The equine industry is full of brilliant trainers, coaches, barn owners, and professionals who care deeply about the women they serve. The opportunity in front of us is to go one level deeper, to stop meeting our clients only at their skill gap and start meeting them at their identity.

Stop calling them riders. Start seeing them as the horsewomen they already are. When you do, everything changes. For them. And for your business.

---

Alicia VanderGriend

Cowgirl Life Co.

Alicia VanderGriend is a certified wellness coach, marine biologist, and former project manager with 25+ years of experience leading complex, high-stakes work. She is the founder of Cowgirl Life Co., a coaching brand built for horsewomen who are ready to feel more confident, strong, and calm in the saddle and in every part of life.

Drawing on decades of personal practice and professional training, Alicia combines movement, mindset, and sustainable habit systems into a practical approach designed specifically for the horsewoman's life.

Her work meets women where they are, whether they're returning to riding after a long break, navigating a major life transition, or simply ready to show up differently around their horses. She lives and rides her three mustangs in the Pacific Northwest. 

Follow at @cowgirllifeco on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. 

Take a free quiz, What Your Horse Already Knows About You, at www.aliciavandergriend.com/cowgirlignite-spark-quiz.

This article is from the May 2026 issue of Equine Business Magazine