Teona Rodriguez
Founder & Lead Strategist – Round Pen Marketing
Marketing strategist. Equine industry insider. Blue Ridge Mountain dweller. And yes, she still uses a pen and paper.
See It in Action.
Watch Teona talk about building horseOlogy from the ground up – the website, the strategy, and what a real marketing partnership looks like.
From the Road to the Round Pen.
Teona has been building brands since 1992 – blazing a marketing trail through West Palm Beach, Birmingham, Houston, and eventually landing exactly where she was supposed to be: the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
The business has been around since 2015 – though it looked different then. The early years were rooted in real estate and mortgage lending – good money, reasonable hours, work that made sense on paper. Then came Jena Antonucci Racing. Then came horseOlogy. And everything changed.
Somewhere in the middle of early mornings on the backside of the track, watching horses come off their works in the fog and learning that the cones on the turf are called dogs – this became more than a career pivot. It became a life.
She knew then that this was where she was supposed to be. Not just professionally – personally. The kind of clarity that doesn’t come from a business plan. It comes from a feeling you stop arguing with.
Today Teona travels regularly to Ocala, Saratoga Springs, Lexington, and thoroughbred sales nationwide, working alongside the clients she’s built long-term partnerships with.
She made a deliberate decision to focus on what she loves, equine and agricultural businesses and she has never looked back.
When she’s not working, Teona is on her land near the Blue Ridge Parkway, planting her garden, getting her hands dirty, and sharing the harvest with the local wildlife whether she intends to or not.
Strategy, Execution, and Everything In Between.
Teona brings over three decades of marketing experience to every client relationship – and she’s still learning something new every day. Her work spans website design and development, email marketing, content strategy, social media management, and full-service marketing partnerships. She handles the strategy, the execution, and the relationship, often all at once.
What sets her apart isn’t just the range of services. It’s the fact that she shows up emotionally invested in every client’s success. She becomes part of your team – virtually present but never distantly involved. Twelve-hour days aren’t unusual. Being the first to know when something breaks and the last to leave until it’s fixed – that’s just how she works.
And she still writes everything down by hand first. Some things are worth doing the old-fashioned way.
Life Outside the Office — If There Really Is Such a Thing.
When Teona isn’t working, you’ll likely find her somewhere on the road — at Keeneland, at Saratoga, or somewhere between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the nearest racetrack with her Airstream hitched to the truck. And if there’s a lake, river, or creek nearby? That’s exactly where she’ll be on a dark day.
Family is everything.
And then there’s Amira — the Doberman who goes everywhere Teona goes, and who most people in the thoroughbred world recognize before they recognize Teona herself. Amira is her service dog for mobility, her travel companion, and her ride or die. If you’ve seen them on the backside of a track, walking the Keeneland grounds, or greeting friends at the White Lilac consignment at OBS — you know exactly who they are.
Amira is a working dog. Her vest says “Do Not Touch.” Horse people, however, have never once read that sign. A handful of familiar faces at the track have been sneaking her love for years — and at this point, it’s just part of the routine. Some rules were clearly not written with horsemen in mind.
Teona lives with MS — and she’ll tell you herself that Amira makes everything possible. She’s not slowing down. Not even close.
Want to Work Together?
Start with a complimentary Game Plan Session — a focused, no-pressure conversation where we get to know your business and figure out exactly what you need.
Teona@RoundPenMarketing.com
828-333-3816
