Britton Collum of 4014 Consulting discusses how cowboy culture’s emphasis on toughness hinders emotional maturity. In Part one of a two part series with Collum, also discusses what led to his career change as a life coach and how his experience with horses played a role.
Collum has spent decades working in the commercial equine industry having served at premier breeding facilities such as the Lazy E Ranch in Guthrie, Oklahoma. However, through the peaks and valleys of life he found a greater to help men in the equine and cowboy communities grow in their emotional intelligence. When Collum’s father passed away unexpectedly in 2008 and he was faced with what felt like an overwhelming responsibility as the “man of the family” to care for his two sisters and along with his own family.
“I had two daughters of my own, one of which was just a few months old,” Collum said. “I adopted this mantra that I’m the male left in the family, so it’s my responsibility to take care of everybody. What I didn’t realize was that it put me on a track to depression.”
Collum struggled through years of embodying clichés like “time heals all wounds” and Western culture mantras like working harder to solve your problems. Yet, pushing aside his emotions instead of facing them was causing more harm than good. Those life struggles bled into his personal life. That is until he decided to take his emotional intelligence seriously. He spent five months in intense therapy and it became the catalyst for a renewed life and eventually a new career path.
“I spent five months doing some really intense work and came out of that realizing a lot of things, one of which was we suck at processing emotions just as a society,” Collum said. “But I think it’s exacerbated in the Western culture.”
Collum came out of that experience with a nonnegotiable for his life as a commitment of self-growth. He dedicated his life to learning to help those in the equine community through similar situations as he’s been through. Today, he runs 4014 Consulting where he serves as a certified life coach specifically utilizing the horse to help people understand their hurts, habits or hang-ups.
“People say by the age of about 6, we become what the most influential person in our life says about us. If we are young people raised in the cowboy culture, then the primary mantra the description of a tough man — this is a cowboy. We adopt that theology that prevents us from processing emotion,” Collum said. “We [in cowboy culture] have given a lot of justification for that to be acceptable — that the only way that you can really be a cowboy is that you have to disassociate. People are going to reproduce what they’re exposed to, and all its highlighting is the mass majority of the culture is emotionally immature.”
Yet, while Collum says the tough persona of what it means to be a cowboy, and the stigmatization of mental health discussion in the cowboy community there is also a built in pathway to addressing mental health in the community, and that is through the horse.
“All of humanity is wired for connection,” he says. “What we know to be true even today because of all the increased interest and statistics around equine therapy, I think there’s a direct correlation to people trying to get their needs met relationally with horses, rather than with people.”
Connection through horses and those in the Western community with similar backgrounds is how both Collum and others have began changing the perception of mental health discussion in the community.
Justin Reichert and Nicole Grady of the Outside Circle Show launched a mental health panel in 2023 in Elko, Nevada, where they’ve paved a trail for authentic cowboy connection, by addressing the mental health crisis in the cowboy community.
“I believe that a lot of times, we pervert the notion that we can somehow elevate livestock and animal husbandry industry above humanity,” Collum said.
Collum emphasizes the importance of addressing isolation in the ranching community, and that those like the Outside Circle are paving the way for mental health discussions in the industry to become accepted and common. A key point Collum insists upon is that our own wellbeing as humans is equally as important as the dedication we give to our horses and animals.
Through his own work Collum realized that connecting with others through common values and lifestyle with horses has helped people recognize and validate their emotional barriers and triggers. Collum uses horse interactions to encourage vulnerability and authenticity in conversations with people, much in the same way the Outside Circle gathers like-minded people who live the cowboy and buckaroo lifestyles.
“What I didn’t realize at the time was that I had been prepped to learn to have conversations with people through horses my entire career. When you get into cowboy culture I can start to drive conversations and ask them how does that relate to a horse? Tell me how you would interact with that scenario with a horse? I can get people to get more vulnerable and authentic in their responses if I can take them over into a direction of animal husbandry. And that translates to everyday relationships.”
In Part Two of this series Collum discusses what a counseling or life-coaching session can look like for the cowboy. Visit Part Two here.
