12: Creating Your Entrepreneurial Success Mindset with Melisa Pearce

Kimberly Beer  0:00  

Hey, Business Animals. We have an amazing episode for you today. Both Cara and I so enjoyed this interview we learned a lot from our interviewee today who is Melisa Pearce of Touched By a Horse. And we want you to listen for three things that we feel like we took away from this episode. But I’m going to tell you, you’re going to find more than three things in this interview for you to grab on to. And so whatever grabs you, by all means, take it and use it in your business. But these are the three things that we feel were the most important. So our big three for this episode are number one, don’t hold on to things. And I think both Cara and I identified with this because we are native worryers right here.

Cara Taylor Swift  0:41  

Oh, my goodness, Yes, we are. And Melisa has such amazing things to say about it.

Kimberly Beer  0:45  

Yeah. So not holding on to the worry and on to the anxiety that a lot of times gets a hold of us as entrepreneurs well as humans walking around on the planet. So she has some really good advice about that, and about how to kind of let go of that and be successful. The second thing we want you to look for is when she talks about focusing on the things that are going to make a difference as all entrepreneurs, a lot of times we have a lot of things on our plate, and we can get unfocused very easily. Or we can get focused on something that does not move our business forward, or maybe isn’t as important.

I know I do. Do you do that? Cara? 

Cara Taylor Swift  1:28  

Well, I think sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in, you’ve got this big long list, and you’ll start knocking out some things that are easy. But some of those things are you know, you have to look at the things that need to be done today. And push aside. You know what can be pushed aside until another day sometimes. So I love the way she talks about this.

Kimberly Beer  1:44  

Yeah, and overwhelm is another thing that she talks about in this section that’ll help you and I don’t know, an entrepreneur that hasn’t had a run in with overwhelm at some point in time in their business. And then finally, the third thing that we talk with Melisa about that I think is super valuable for people is how they can create a better relationship with money. I think she has a great amount of wisdom to offer in this area. And I have seen her work magic with helping people understand money and have a better relationship with it and the flow of money coming in and out of their lives as well as how value and money get sometimes tied up together in a not so positive way, and how to maybe shift that attention. Anything else you want to add Cara before we get on to the interview? 

Cara Taylor Swift  2:32  

No, let’s

Cara Taylor Swift  2:32  

let people dive in and discover the knowledge on their own now

Kimberly Beer  2:35  

awesome, everybody enjoy.

Jaz  2:39  

Welcome to The Business Animal podcast. settle up for a gala to the top of the animal industry, where you’ll learn how to tame your wild business beast with tips, techniques, and tools that will take overwhelm to obedience school and have you wagging your tail with joy. And now your hosts Kim Beer and Cara Taylor Swift

Kimberly Beer  3:01  

Hey there business animals It’s Kim with Be More Business 

Cara Taylor Swift  3:04  

and Cara Taylor Swift with Fast Horse Photography 

Kimberly Beer  3:07  

and today we are bringing a master of human and horse healing into our environment with Melisa Pearce and I want to introduce you first a her so let me tell you a little bit about her. Melisa is a teacher author, psycho therapist and pioneer in the field of horse human healing. Over the last three decades she has coached and helped 1000s experience the healing power of horses Melisa founded the Touched by a Horse Certification Program, a two year intensive program that trains and certifies equine Gestalt assists. She is also the author of multiple books and articles on this topic at the core of her approach lies her deep understanding of the transformative power of one of the most important contributions of humanistic psychology Gestalt therapy as a guest artist Melissa has guided 1000s of clients through their unfinished business to a level of self awareness that allows room for personal responsibility and a life of self compassion. Melisa is also an accomplished horsewoman she has shown raised and handled horses for over 30 years giving her a deep understanding of horses in their natures. She has won two World Championships in the American Paint Horse Association has bred over 200 foals owns multiple ranches and is now a gypsy horse person has some beautiful Gypsy horses that as a photographer I absolutely love. I actually met Melisa at the equine affair in Ohio in 2006. We were booth neighbors, and we had a lovely experience there getting to know each other I was a photographer was fairly new in my career, and Melisa was there with a very talented artist named Jan Taylor and they have a deck that Melisa wrote that I highly recommend that everyone who loves horses have it’s called Whispers from a Horse’s Heart 52 Cards for Daily Inspiration and you Get that on Melisa’s website. And I tell you you really want at home this and have it on your desk. And the

Cara Taylor Swift  5:05  

artwork is just stunning.

Kimberly Beer  5:07  

It is and and everything is amazing with it. So welcome, Melisa. 

Melisa Pearce  5:12  

Thanks, Kim.

Thanks, Cara. Thanks for having me on.

Cara Taylor Swift  5:15  

We’re so happy to have you here. I learned about you from Kim. And then I had the opportunity to read your book, What the Heck is Gestalt? And it was a newer thing for me to learn about. But one of the things that I fell in love with when I was going through your book was how you connected horses with your psychotherapy practice. And I would love to hear you talk just a little bit about that it just really touched me was probably one of my most favorite parts of your book.

Melisa Pearce  5:38  

Oh, thank you, Cara. I had already become a psychotherapist. And Gestalt was my modality of therapy. And my daughter really had a hard time with the heat of Phoenix. So we bought a 30 acre place up in the pines of Flagstaff, Arizona, where it was much much cooler was two hours away from our other ranch. So we’d go up there for the summer times. And a lot of my clients didn’t appreciate the Phoenix scorching heat either. So they would come up and do either one session with me or they might stay for a few days and do several sessions, whatever worked for their treatment. So they’re on the horse ranch, they weren’t there at that time to work with the horses, but when they had a break, and sometimes I might work with somebody from say, 10am to noon, then I’d go down to the barn saddle up and go for a trail ride for a few hours, come back and meet with them again, from three to five. That time in between, they could go fishing, go hiking in the Coconino forest sleep in a hammock, I had lots of art supplies around all of that. And the only rule around the horses was we don’t hand feed them so they don’t start to nip and don’t go on the same side of the fence as a horse. But if they come up to you at the fence, that’s great. And then I’d ride off with my kids, you know, and right up in the forest. So what I found was that the clients who I had kind of left there on their own would tell me a story about one of the horses and how deeply it moved them that this horse came off of tall green grass over to the fence and stood with them. Sometimes for a long time, like up to an hour and the changes that they experienced looking in the horse’s eyes and having the horse stand there and any kind of interaction I have to say these are muggles my clients were not horse people. They were not horsemen. They were people that might have had a dog or a cat. They were muggles. So I was fascinated. And I started asking because I thought maybe it was one horse, you know, like, they all have different personalities. And maybe it was one. But they would say Oh, it was the really big red one. And they’d say, Oh, that’s retel. The next time it was a little dark black one. Oh, that’s Bueno. I was seeing that they were all doing it. So I started observing the behavior. And Cara, I was thrilled to see two things. One, that it was always a different horse, it was like they looked at each other and said, this one’s mine, I’ve got this one. And they would go over and hold space in this very loving presence with a person. And oftentimes I left the client fairly raw at noon, when they came back to see me at four, they were in a different state, a different emotional state, a different physiological state, much more open. So I recognized that those horses are doing some powerful healing on their own. And from there, I started saying, well, let’s get to work on this and make it happen.

Cara Taylor Swift  8:37  

That is incredible. And I just love how it came from the basis of observation and your clients feedback before anything else. I just love that so much. And then from that you formalized. You started a certification program. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Melisa Pearce  8:52  

That was probably 1989 that I was talking about a moment ago in Flagstaff, Arizona. And I did begin to formalize it, I say it a little differently than you just said it I feel like it came from the horses to draw me in from the horses through my clients, you know, to draw me and so like being chosen or something, and the next summer when I was there, I experimented with inviting clients to come down and do Gestalt work next to the pasture where the horses were. So I bring some chairs down there and we would sit there with the horse on one side of the fence and the client and myself on another and I began to notice lots and lots and lots of behaviors from the clients the way the horses took in the clients energy, the way they released it, the way they were expressing themselves just a lot of different things. And from there over the years, I created a lot more contact between the client and the horses etc. in 2008. I started the certification program because I had a number of people who had been my assistants or my clients who would approach me and say I want to learn to Do what you do. Where can I go? What book can I read? How could I learn to do what? And to be honest, I had multi competency, I had a lot of different strengths from different sources like we do as we get older, you’re pulling in all your strengths in education from a lot of different sources. And I had put them all together. And that’s what I was doing. So there was no answer for them. And I thought about it. And I thought about the fact that I was ready to formalize it and to trademark it, and to put a method together, that I could begin teaching. So I did that in 2008. And we have over 225 graduates of the program worldwide.

Cara Taylor Swift  10:43  

That’s amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Now, Kim, I know you had a couple questions as well,

Kimberly Beer  10:48  

I do. I do. Because Melisa, our program is centered towards helping animal based entrepreneurs. So people who are entrepreneurs, they’re in the process of growing a business. And I always have seen you as a mentor for myself, and a guiding light of who I want to be as an entrepreneur, because I think you do it extremely well. You’re in the business of producing entrepreneurs. And aside from that, one of the reasons that I think that the certification program is so strong, is because it does have a strong entrepreneurial educational basis to it. So you share a lot and that wisdom that you have around entrepreneurial ism, it doesn’t just come from the certification program or from your psychotherapy practice, you have had a successful entrepreneurial journey both in and outside of the horse world, in the Gestalt world. And I know that in that process that, that you teach in you, yourself, practice Gestalt, to help keep your mind focused and stay on track with your business, even when things are really hard. And you face some huge challenges in your life as an entrepreneur and as a human and having to run a business and satisfy people. And what I want to do for the rest of our time together is I would like to gather wisdom from you for our audience about how they can access some things for themselves to help transform their mindset, and then maintain that transformation using just simple practices.

Melisa Pearce  12:17  

Yeah, thank you, Kim. And I appreciate everything you said, and I think I’m a serial entrepreneur, right? I’ve done everything from coffee shops and print shops to private practice and all of that, and I love I’m passionate about business. And I’m very passionate about being an entrepreneur only had two actual jobs which by the way, job stands for journey of the broke. And I’ve only had two jobs in my life one at a bank, I was too young to appreciate the job. And I kept asking for the robber window, which was the window that had the secret pack because I thought at least it would liven up the teller experience. And the manager probably thought I was gonna have a boyfriend, rob the bank or something. And the other was a waitress because my family felt like everyone should wait tables once in their life. So you’re forever nice to people that are in that insanely difficult job. So I’m glad I have both of those experiences. But I really understood at an early age that I wanted to build my own dream, I didn’t want to be someone helping someone else build their dream. And while it’s extremely important that we have employees, I have employees, I value them I bring them into my mission so they feel attached to what we’re doing. So they can be a part of the dream. But for me, I knew from the time I was probably 20 years old, there is no way I wanted to put my passion, my life force, my action, my zest, my whatever my learning curve towards anything other than moving my personal dream forward. So for all of you who are entrepreneurs out there, Congratulations and good for you. And just keep thinking of it that way to me, I helped my students I think shift from looking at it as a cold black and white business plan transferred into your passion and more into a craft

project.

So I love crafts, I love you know, not that I’m great at any of them but I love glue sticks and glitter and you know doing things together and so, so crafts are just kind of a release for me and I feel the same excitement around my business I feel as if what can i enhance today? What can I upgrade today? What can I improve today? What can I make happen today? Who could I connect with today? And very, very much so in the realm of how can I help you today? Right? entrepreneurs need to have a constant and never ending improvement around how we relate to each other in terms of supporting each other. So that’s my my entrepreneur 101. Gestalt and thank you for asking this Kim Gestalt is my life. I am a Gestaltest which means I’m an embodied Gestalt practitioner I’m somebody who doesn’t only teach it or share it, but I live the life of a Gestalt artist which by the way is what horses are my tie that in if you want to know that too as a Gestalt is, it’s important that we’re in the present moment. We’re in the here and now it’s one of the main stays of Gestalt. And I find there’s an amazing capacity when you live that kind of life, you don’t just talk about it or read about it, we actually do it if something went wrong last week, it is so gone for me is so gone for me. Somebody will say, Well, you know, last week when this happened, and but Ba ba, and I go, Oh, yeah, was that last week? It I do not harbor I don’t let it pay rent in my head. I don’t hang on to things that didn’t work out if I made a pitch for a client and the client said, Nope, that’s not the right fit for me. God bless you, I hope you find the right fit, it’s gone. I’m not hanging on to it.

Kimberly Beer  16:00  

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Cara Taylor Swift  16:33  

Do you think that that is something that you have learned over time? Or do you think that’s a characteristic because that is something that I always like I can hold on to something in my brain and then worry about it at 3am. And I think that’s a common thing,

Cara Taylor Swift  16:45  

you know, for a lot of warriors in general. So that’s interesting that that’s something that you have harvested.

Melisa Pearce  16:51  

I think it’s huge to reach our success, right? Because our brain is the great trickster. And if it can, it will tear you down every chance he gets when you’re trying to do something as ambitious as a new business startup or, you know, getting your business off the ground with doubt. You know, if you had a lemonade stand when you were six years old, and it really didn’t go that well. The brain doesn’t like go with that stuff. So it is training ourselves as a Gestalt is it’s training ourselves to say that was then this is now right. The past doesn’t equal the future is when a Tony Robbins great quotes that he has around it. But for me, it’s even more than that. It’s really saying that what I have in front of me right now, like this podcast with you, Cara is the most important thing I could be doing with my time in this moment. So I’m not thinking about a meeting I have later today or what happened to my Apple Computer yesterday, which is not a pretty story. So that’s all that’s all outside of it. It’s like being right now in the here and now is the most important for focusing on your business and getting traction. What I see novice, I’m not going to say young because I have entrepreneurs that come into my program at 70. We actually have an 82 year old in the program right now. So at all ages, so rather than young, I say novice, like a novice Horse Show. So the novice entrepreneurs, what I see is they have they have very little understanding what they should be focusing on. They’re happy to do it, they eager and excited, but they focus on things that aren’t going to bring them a return. So that’s another part I think of Gestalt is to be very discerning and accurate and responsible for what’s that percentage, we need to do an action every day that actually will make a difference tomorrow, right? That should be the target of the day. You said you kind of worry at night or you rerun things at night, right? So man I see in my psychotherapy clients, anxiety is just rampant in so many people, not just entrepreneurs, but in our population. And I often say experiencing anxiety is the essence of I can’t worry fast enough, like you’re on the treadmill of worry, and you can’t get the treadmill to go fast enough. And so you really are running and and everything all the adrenaline’s up and one of the great saboteurs of an entrepreneur is worry, not just anxiety. Do you have to back that truck all the way down to worry worry, since the beginning of time has never changed anything if Adam saw he reached for that Apple and worried about it. It didn’t stop her from grabbing the apple. So worry does nothing. It’s a completely wasted energy. So if you catch yourself when you’re worrying and recognize if I’m depressed or I’m worrying, I’m focusing on the past or I’m focusing on the future. I’m not right now. I had a great teacher in that in my daughter who had a lot of surgeries. The only way she could get through those surgeries is to stay in here and now really helped me a lot understand that lesson.

Kimberly Beer  20:06  

Absolutely. And I love the not holding on to things and focusing on the things that will make a difference. So do you have any other advice that you would give entrepreneurs and maybe something that would help them connect from staying in the moment or recognize when they are getting out of the moment?

Melisa Pearce  20:27  

Yeah, I feel like, at least in my class group, what I see them do is a behavior that doesn’t help anybody. One of my staff members is in this this morning, I just got done having a conversation with her about it. And that is to look around at the 1,500,000 tasks that as an entrepreneur, we need to get done, right. When we’re a smaller entrepreneur, we don’t have the advertising department and the insurance department and people that we can delegate all this stuff off to sometimes you don’t even have one employee, you’re wearing all the hats. So the big word is overwhelm, right? That big word, overwhelm, and boy, it’s a slippery slope from overwhelm, to worry to anxiety, just see how they kind of stack this backwards flow. So I would say that if each person would write down, say, four rules in their life, that would prevent them from ever experiencing overwhelm again, and then post those four rules someplace. So when you start to feel that feeling of like, I’ll never get all this done, which is how it starts with the negative self talk, Oh, my gosh, I can’t do this. All this is overwhelming. You know, it’s repeating all that negative drive, having those four rules in place to refer to can really keep you out of that zone. So for me, because I have horses, there is something for those who have horses that might relate to this. There’s something about spending 15 minutes with a horse, just grooming them hanging out with them, petting them being with them, I come back more sourced. And even though I’m behind on things when I head to the barn, so I head to the barn, kind of like a guilty kid that doesn’t have their homework done, right. But I get down to the barn, I spend just a little bit of time with them. And all of a sudden, I come back and everything’s easier. Everything’s in the flow. So my rule is I can only experience overwhelm. If I forget, I have muscles to nuzzle. Oh, that’s one of mine, is only if I forget, I work for those horses. They source me I source them. That’s it. Right. Another one might be I will only experience overwhelm. If I forget to tell myself, this does not all have to be done today. Because really, when we go through the piles of all the stuff, some has to be done today, but not all of it. It just feels big. But no, I take it today, in this moment in this present moment, right? And whatever they have as rules, maybe they have a support person who’s really willing to help out. So they would say I could only experience overwhelm. If I forget that I have someone else I could ask to support me, right? There’s a lot of these there’s a lot you know, everybody should write their own, but then post them somewhere. Because again, the minds the great trickster, and it will tell you you’re never going to get all this done. It’s all the stuff our parents said about our bedrooms when we were 13 Let me tell you, this will never be clean. Again. Look at your room. It will never be clean.

When I moved out, it’ll be clean.

Kimberly Beer  23:44  

When you clean it, it’ll be clean.

Melisa Pearce  23:48  

It’ll be clean. I’ll move out Sunday and lobby boxed up gone.

Kimberly Beer  23:52  

Oh God, I

just had a flashback of my bedroom at 13 it was not a pretty Yeah.

Melisa Pearce  23:58  

not pretty. I don’t care how person you grow up to be as an adult and a lot of us grew up to be very organized people as adults, but at 13 a girl’s room.

Kimberly Beer  24:10  

Oh Goodness,

goodness. Well, another place I know a lot of entrepreneurs struggle that I have seen you magically transform in people I have I have witnessed the magical transformation is based around money and around value. And can you talk a little bit about kind of the Gestalt way to to think about our money energy?

Melisa Pearce  24:38  

Absolutely. It is, again, a great saboteur, because we all have things that were said to us in our families, you you might have had the best parents in the world, but you still had things your parents said to you. In order to afford you right Don’t waste the food on your plate. Shut the lights off when you leave the room. Oh my God, why do you have your stereo on Along with the TV, whatever we did as kids, money doesn’t grow on trees, we can’t afford a horse. You know, there’s a lot, there’s a lot that people have going forward, I would say number one, Kim that I help people understand whatever those messages were, for however many years you lived in that household. So if you moved out when you were 19, you have 19 years of meta messages around money that are not yours, you’ve adopted them, then if you’re 40 years old, you’ve now spent the next 20 years repeating those messages you got from zero to 19, over again, right. So now you have 40 years of the non meta message, you got to form your own relationship. It’s the same as anything else in your life, you have to form your understanding and your way of doing it. I had a client who said, Well, what I learned was you have to work really, really hard to make a lot of money. And I think that’s sad that somebody would hold that as the truth. Do we work a lot of hours as entrepreneurs? Absolutely. Does it have to be hard, you know, are we toiling with a plow behind a horse and a field? No, you know, less. You’ve got a business like that. But we’re not. We’re in 2021. We’re not working hard. Hopefully, you’re working your passion, you’re living your passion. You could ask me tomorrow, how many hours I worked this week and my business, I couldn’t tell you, I don’t count them. So I look at it, I get done, what I can get done for the day I release and let go of the rest. I balance it out in my life. And it all goes so I think part of it is associating the word hard with money is not smart for an entrepreneur associate passion with money associate service with money, associate putting yourself out there for the greater good for money, associate being a force for God with money, you know, whatever positive things that you can associate, and it will begin to flow. The other is that if we focus some, some of your listeners might be hoarse people that have jumped a horse. And when you jump a horse, you take a lesson in jumping horses, the trainer’s yell at ya look beyond the jump the horse is approaching. So just imagine you’re on the back of a horse and you’re in a beautiful canter beautiful stride or canter or you’re coming up on this jump your eyes, if your eyes are on that jump, you’re on the ground, or the horse will stop or he’ll turn, sometimes just an old school horse will still go over, but it’s not good. They want you to stride up to that jump and have your eyes beyond the jump. And that’s what budgeting money can do for people. Because if you say, Alright, I have to have X number of dollars per month just to break even. So you focus on that everybody adds that dreadful number and says, Okay, I gotta make this and then they focus on it. And you know what, you’re always going to come up short, every damn time, you’re going to come up short, you got to take that number. And you have to say now, if I double that number, now I really could have what I want in life, I could breathe, I could put some in savings, I could feel good. Shoot for that shoot for twice what your business kind of nut is or your life nut is and then fill to that gap. It’s like jumping a horse you just you just will do more of what it takes. There’s so much I could teach a whole class for weeks on relationship with money, but let go of the old interjects you were told about money as my best advice this morning. Figure out your relationship with it for me. It’s a bunch of pieces of paper with dead guys on it. I am not attached. I am passionately attached to my service. I’m passionately attached to how many people can I help in the world? How many people can I get myself in front of to assist? I’m really attached to all of that. The paper with the dead guys that just comes with it.

Cara Taylor Swift  28:48  

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That’s such a great way to think about it. And I love visualizing it that way. And I think a lot of the animal based business owners out in the world I know I was this way for a while to just have a real hard time with pricing and charging. You know, I came from a family that struggled You know, when I was a child, you know, to make ends meet and my parents had a lot of money worries and so especially the early stages of my business, I would sit down with folks and I would be trying and my brain to Think out? Can they afford this? And I have no business doing that, you know. So I definitely think there’s got to be other small business owners out there in the animal world that have struggled with charging what they need to charge to be successful and to have a life, you know, outside of their business. So do you have any other advice that you can give to folks that struggle with charging?

Melisa Pearce  30:21  

Yeah, I think I think you hit the nail on the head for one of the big ones. And that is if a person grew up thinking, I can’t afford the prime rib roast beef at the market, but I could afford the cheapest meat at the market, then they are the person selling the meat behind the counter. And they say, Oh, don’t spend all that for that, you know, do this. Yeah, we got to reframe it’s for them to decide, right. But I think it goes even deeper than that, Cara, it goes to a couple of places. One is worth not as my work worth it. Because most people that are entrepreneurs, they know what they’re offering in the world is worth what they’d like to charge for it, it goes deeper, it goes to am I personally worthy of receiving this money. And sometimes people have a disconnect. They say, Well, people who have a lot of money. And again, it’s what we were taught when we were kids, and whatever that was, however you would finish the sentence, if somebody asked me personally, people who have a lot of money, I would say are generous philanthropists, because that’s my experience, right? Other people will say there beotches, or they’re, you know, wasteful, or I don’t know, we have a lot of negative tags that we put on people that that have a lot of money, or they got that from divorce or won the lottery, or we have a lot of crap around that. Right? So one is to really look at how you hold your worthiness for what you’re charging. Clearly, there’s some parameters, you need to make sure you’re not charging 10 times what your competition is charging, obviously. But most people who tend to round down to the undercharge, or even come at a therapists are terrible about this. They’re always like, well, should I be kind of more like a sweet spiritual person, I’m helping somebody who’s really in trouble and needs help? How do I charge money for that, right got to get to the point where you know, your work is making a difference for them, it has that inherent value to it. And once you get to there, where you say, not only am I personally worthy, I’m trustworthy to the divine. So this low level spiritual here, not religious, but spiritual, I’m trustworthy to the divine. So the day that I started saying, I think I was in my mid 30s, the day I started saying, if I am blessed with a lot of money, there’s so much good in the world I can do it isn’t even funny when I got excited about that. Like, Oh, my gosh, if I have extra here, I could do this, I could create that I could make this happen, then you get excited about it. You got to actually do it, by the way. But then I believe that the gate opens and the divine says, Yes, I want that work in the world. I want you to be a force for good. I want you to be a force for God, I’m going to fund you. And it just comes. So I’m I’m a QuickBooks user. I know everything economically, that’s happening in my business at all times that’s responsible. But again, that was last week. Right now I’m in service. I don’t dwell on it, because it sort of appears. Does that make sense to you care? Yeah.

Cara Taylor Swift  33:23  

Thank you for that.

Melisa Pearce  33:24  

Yeah, you bet. I’ve watched Kim do a lot of this in her business. She was the quintessential under charger for years 

Kimberly Beer  33:30  

Oh, yeah.

Melisa Pearce  33:33  

The best under charger for what she did I have ever known or seen. Now I personally benefit from some of that, by the way, I will confess that, but her photography, you’ve seen it, her photography is so moving. so emotional. So stellar. So over the top with horses, if you want to see some of it, it’s on my website, that it was hard to watch her, give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away, she’s has stopped doing that now 

Kimberly Beer  34:00  

I have

I have I have a much improved relationship with money because I’m one of those people who has been transformed through your program and through your wisdom and through your teaching. And it’s true. And in my marketing business. It’s the same thing. And I grew up in a household where my mother did implant in my head, if it was worthy of being purchased, it had to be really big and difficult. And I mean, she drilled that into me repeatedly that if I were to charge the world, it had to be something huge and monumental, and I had to bust my butt for it. And so I would go over the top, oftentimes missing and failing. And then I would feel guilty and not charge people for anything. So I’ve had my own struggles with this. And so it’s been a it’s been a journey. And over the years that I have known you, Melisa, you’ve been a big catalyst in a lot of the shifts and transformations in my own business success where I can sit here and 2021 and say I feel like a successful entrepreneur and can lead other people to that success. I’m very excited about that. Now, I would like to ask you a question about how would you if somebody who has listened to this has gone I want to learn more about Gestalt? Well, first of all, we want to recommend that you purchase Melisa’s book What the Heck is Gestalt which you can get off the Touched By a Horse website. And it’s not a boring psychology book people. It by any stretch of the imagination, the thing I have always loved about Gestalt is it is assessable to anyone this book that Melisa has written is assessable. To you, it’s fun. It’s interesting, if you love horses, it’s full of horse stories,

Melisa Pearce  35:46  

and it has a lot to it. It’s funny, because if anybody’s ever bought another book on Gestalt, they know that you read the first two pages and put it down going, I don’t know, my goal. My goal was to write Dick and Jane do Gestalt, right. It’s usable and understandable and accessible. So yes, thank you, I appreciate that.

Cara Taylor Swift  36:07  

It was a very easy, engaging, read. And if you’re a horse person, you definitely get drawn into those chapters.

Kimberly Beer  36:13  

And it will change your attitude. It will change how you how you approach things, and those simple shifts all build up over time to make a huge shift. So that’s number one that I would recommend. But let’s say somebody wants to go deeper. They want to find out about your work with horses, they want to maybe experience that or are interested in the certification program. What steps do you recommend that they take?

Melisa Pearce  36:35  

Well, I do see private clients and my time during what is my season, which is April through November. I’m pretty busy with teaching but I do work in private clients and those 220 graduates that are all across the United States, Canada and a few other countries. They all are hand trained by me certified by me and are great for being able to provide service as well. So if they contact our office office at touchedbyahorse.com and tell me where you live, what you’re looking for, I can find a graduate for you. Or if you’re wanting a session directly with me, then we tell you exactly how to go about doing that. I have one assistant who controls my calendar. I’m not allowed to control it myself right now. She controls it because I’ll overbook it and so she’ll help give you the information of what it costs and what you do and all of that the cert program. We are happy to say we take 10 to 12 students in July and we take 20 to 22 in January. It’s a two year program four six month semesters. And we are full for July and we’re already booking for January 2022. We’re proud of this program. It’s definitely the most comprehensive in the industry. And what you come out with is so much for you personally as Kim’s referenced but also certified as a coach who works alongside horses, doing this beautiful Gestalt transformational work with clients. And so if you have an interest in becoming an equine Gestalt coach, you can go to our website, which can build It’s beautiful. And you’ll see about certification as one of the buttons or contact our office office at touchedbyahorse.com will send you an old fashioned paper handbook because I believe in shiny glossy paper handbooks that cost me a lot of money. But I love for people that have something tangible to hold on to rather than everything being in the box. And so that’s there, we’re happy, happy to have a conversation with you about it or invite you to sort of an informational class. And in 2021, we have a couple of webinars classes that we’re offering. I did one in December, that was about looking back at the last year, which was a doozy for all of us and planning forward. And I’ll do that class again, probably in November, December of this year, and possibly one other one if I get the time to do it on really knowing all the different parts of you.

Kimberly Beer  39:07  

And they’re very reasonably priced, and they’re so worth it in the transformation that comes for you. And there are tools that you can use for a lifetime. I personally have been through the mental health system in this country and not had a good experience. I was a hot mess when I met Melisa was holding it together by stitches and needles and I’m not a hot mess anymore. And I attribute a lot of that to Gestalt practices. Now I’m going to tell you, I’ve had to put my two feet into the system. I mean, I’ve had to show up and do my work. It wasn’t magical, but it gave me the tools and resources to be able to do it in a way that fit into my life and I think is unique to me. And I think it creates that for everyone. If you do want to check out the certification program again touchedbyahorse.com We’ll have all of this including a link directly to be able to get The book and that inspirational card deck in the show notes on the website. Kara, do you have anything else you want to add? Before we wrap up?

Cara Taylor Swift  40:07  

I just want to say thank you to Melisa. It’s been wonderful meeting you, even if it is virtually like we’re doing and I really enjoyed your book and I appreciate all your comments just helping all of us small business owners out there definitely has inspired me. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Melisa Pearce  40:21  

Absolutely. And every entrepreneur out there you’re gonna have a few rough days, let them go let them go. The Beatles were ahead of their time. Let it be and focus on today and move forward. Just keep moving forward and you’ll do great. Thank you for having me on. Love you, Kim. Nice to meet you, Cara, for sure. Have a beautiful and blessed day.

Jaz  40:42  

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Business Animal. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you learned something today, leave us a review. To learn more. Find us at The Business animal.com we’d love to hear from you. Until next time, keep your business well trained with The Business Animal

Transcribed by https://otter.ai