I am a Finnish aspiring female entrepreneur, who has always been feeling a strong connection to nature and, especially, to animals. In the past years, I have been experiencing, reading and realizing how truly healing and beneficial their association is. I am interested in helping people, and alternative ways to do things have always fascinated me.
My host has been an entrepreneur since 1991. With a degree in psychology, my HE works with online quality management system, does student-counselling in senior high school and consultancy in leadership development.
I first heard about my Host Entrepreneur a few years ago while working on another farm in Sweden. I actually got a hint from them about the programme as they were hosting a NE at the time. I got interested in the opportunity and saw it as a perfect chance to explore my business idea of promoting mindfulness and wellbeing through interactions with horses and cows—animals that had brought me immense healing and joy.
My business idea is to invite people to associate and interact with the farm animals in a beautiful countryside milieu, offering guided and always unique sessions with the animals for individuals and small groups. Another aspect is to develop ‘organization day’, where the employees of a company could come to relax, but also develop their social, leadership and other skills that the unique setting with the animals would offer.
During my stay, I took care cows and horses at the farm, developing and maintaining a trusting relationship with them, getting to know their individual characters and reflecting how to incorporate their unique abilities into my business, considering the different aspects I wanted to include. I plan how to offer shorter experiences with them, as well as educational and recreational organization days for the use of my host in the farm environment. We also tested my ideas with volunteers, so I could get feedback and adjust and develop them accordingly.
Guided by my HE, I deepened my understanding of psychological models like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and applied these insights to develop animal-assisted activities. Working directly with the animals allowed me to reflect, adapt, and apply my learning in session planning, enhancing both my facilitation skills and my connection with the animals. I improved my ability to remain heart-centred and adapt my ideas and state of being as needed—valuable skills for both animal work and entrepreneurship.
I gained practical insights into the challenges of turning ideas into profitable ventures, and I developed resilience, learning to embrace creative thinking when plans shifted. A highlight was seeing the joy brought by cow-cuddling sessions, which reinforced my dream of presenting cows as sentient beings capable of healing.
This experience has helped me grow as a facilitator and entrepreneur, revealing my strengths and areas for improvement and I am grateful to my HE for his insights.
Verses from “Our Sacred Connection” by Jacquelin Smith, an animal communication author, describe my experience in the program:
“Teach us God to listen to our spirit
To be kind to every living being
To walk in harmony and joy each day
To let the love in our hearts lead the way.”