- Racehorse training teaches businesses the value of trust, coordination, and strategy in building strong, high-performing teams.
Team building is an essential component in creating a strong, solid work ethic that generates business achievement. Companies that invest in team-building activities see heightened participation rates, which lead to a 41% reduction in absenteeism and a 24% decrease in turnover for high-turnover companies. Small and midsized companies (SMBs), already experiencing a 12.0% turnover rate, can have a game-changer as employee retention is improved by more successful teamwork. When employees sense that they belong to their team, they are likely to stay loyal, perform well, and develop a positive workplace culture.
Besides retention, team-building impacts business performance directly. Based on research, 65% of companies cited enhanced organizational culture as a result of team-building initiatives, leading to improvement in communication, trust, and problem-solving. Involved employees are also more productive, resulting in a 17% increase in productivity and a 21% hike in profitability for companies. By breeding teamwork and friendship, businesses enhance day-to-day functioning as well as build a platform on which employees can flourish, ultimately resulting in long-term success.
So, you think horse racing is a one-man and a horse show? Think again! We are talking about a sport where building a team is tied to the speed of the horse. In fact, we can learn quite a lot from the stables, especially for new startups.
Startups are messy, and with so many businesses failing within the first three years, preparation is key to finding success. If you’ve been to a stable and you’ve seen how trainers use different techniques to prepare the horse for a race, you’ll find a lot of similarities to starting a business.
If you as multiple trainers or people who have been in the horse racing industry long time, what’s the key to success? Most of them will tell you about resilience. And it actually makes sense. Being able to adapt to certain scenarios and shifts is the only way to succeed in the industry.
Well, the same thing goes for startups, especially in modern times, with all the competition. The question is, what can train a racehorse teach us about building resilient teams?
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Patience Fuels the Long Run
Although horse races might appear to be very short and last only for a couple of minutes, training a successful horse isn’t just a sprint – it’s more of a marathon. After all, most racehorse owners have a goal to win many races, not just one, which means that patience is key to finding success in the long run.
The training itself is designed in that way. For example, a two-year-old thoroughbred starts with basic lunging, maybe 15 minutes a day, building trust before it even sees a saddle. If you rush the process, the horse can get spooked, and the entire training session is over.
The same goes for startups. You cannot shove a team into a 60-hour crunch in the first week. Burnout hits fast, especially in the tech industry, and most startup teams are not cohesive, which means that they need time to smooth out the process.
Therefore, patience means onboarding slowly, giving the team members enough time to breathe before the big hit. Remember, a horse doesn’t even see the track until it gets to two or three years old, just for a 90-second run.
Adaptability Beats a Stiff Plan
Racehorses don’t do scripts. There isn’t a by-the-book thing in the horse racing industry. Plans change, and weather conditions can deviate, which means that flexibility is very important if you want to win races.
We can see that even as bettors observe the horse racing industry. When you are about to place a bet, you are also checking other factors like weather conditions, horse-jockey bond, pace, and etc, which can affect the outcome of the race. If you are at TwinSpires claiming your bonus to place a bet, also consider how adaptable the horse is to a change of scenario.
The same goes for startups and the team members. You’ll definitely face a lot of problems, and most of them won’t even be included in your business plan, which means that you won’t know how to handle them.
But this is natural. After all, you are getting into something that you cannot control. Startups usually have new teams that are still not a cohesive unit, and the problems start from there. However, it is very important how you react and what you are doing to make all of this work.
Most successful startups had an ability to pivot to a different strategy, which also means that the team members need to be allocated. So, keep that in mind when hiring people for your new business idea.
Trust Holds the Reins
A racehorse won’t charge out of the gate for a rider it doesn’t know—trust is everything. Grooms spend hours brushing, feeding, and feeling for heat in a leg, building a bond so tight the horse runs through chaos for them.
Startups lean on this too: a team that doesn’t trust its leader—or each other—crumbles under pressure. When a deadline looms and the server’s down, you need coders who’ll text the CEO at 2 AM without hesitation. Gallup’s 2024 workplace report says teams with high trust are 50% less likely to lose talent during stress spikes.
Like a groom calming a jittery filly, leaders earn it—open chats, no blame games, real stakes shared. No trust, no traction.
Failure’s Just a Bad Race
Even top horses bomb—a $2 million yearling might finish last, but trainers don’t ditch it; they tweak the feed, rest it, try a new distance. Secretariat lost five times before the Triple Crown.
Startups get this lesson hard: 90% of pivots come after a flop. Your first pitch tanks—fine, rewrite it. The app crashes at launch—debug, redeploy. Resilience isn’t dodging failure; it’s racing again.
At the stable, a colt’s off day teaches patience; in the office, a missed deadline shows where the cracks are. Teams that shrug, learn, and reload—like Netflix ditching DVDs for streaming—outrun the ones that sulk. Dust off, get back in the gate.
Teamwork’s the Real Muscle
No horse wins alone—grooms, vets, jockeys, trainers sync up daily, a crew of 5-10 per runner. A startup’s the same: devs, marketers, founders all pull weight. A lone genius coding in a basement might spark it, but scaling needs a pack.
At a horse race, a jockey’s win leans on the farrier’s shoeing from three days prior—your team’s big client’s close hinges on the intern’s data pull last week. Studies show that successful resilient teams appear as “interdependent,” sharing wins and flops. silos kill momentum; crosstalk builds it. Like a horse leaning into its rider’s cues, a team’s got to move as one—or it’s just noise.
So, we can learn many things from the horse racing industry and apply the same strategies in our startups. After all, there is a reason why horse racing is one of the oldest sports in the world.
