The Expert Advantage: How Learning to Bike at 39 Taught Me About Professional Consulting

"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear", Tao Te Ching.

No matter how tempted you may get, some work is better done by a professional who specializes in this field. You may get a friend or an employee to help. You may even have the tools and watch enough webinars (or YouTube). But oftentimes, you need to leave things to a specialist. Hire a professional. Get yourself a consultant. Not the $1M Big 6 consulting firm that will build you a very fancy deck that is not actionable. But a small, scrappy firm that will work with you every step of the way to make you successful.

Let me tell you a story - a true story.

I was 39 years old. It was a Monday afternoon in July. I just dropped off my baby girl (7 months old) with my husband.

I was at my son's summer bike camp. And no, I was not there to pick him up.

I was there for a private lesson with a TEENAGE instructor to finally learn to ride a bike. I was terrified.

"How did I get that far without learning to ride a bike?", you may ask.

Background

I don't know why I didn't learn as a child. Perhaps it was because my parents feared for my safety: I was a sickly child and accident-prone. Perhaps they were busy with other priorities, including moving across the world, but that didn't happen until I was 11. I am just not sure.

Riding a bike was not a priority as a teen in Canada. Although all my friends knew how to ride a bike, none of us immigrant children owned one of our own. We walked or we took the bus. No big deal.

Eventually, I learned to drive and got my mom's hand-me-down car (until I crashed it, but that's a story for another time). I didn't need a bike. I either had my own car (until I didn't) or could catch a ride.

The truth was that I was scared. I was very sheltered as a child - I was afraid of going fast and getting out of control. I don't like those tickles in your belly that you get when you go fast. I stay away from roller coasters.

Why didn't I learn to ride a bike as an adult?

Attempt # 1: Hire a Friend

I tried. First with husband number 1. Then with husband number 2.

From both of these experiences, I can attest that learning a new skill from a spouse is a BAD idea.

1. Part of it was ego: I want a marriage of equals and swallowing my pride to learn from them did not come naturally,
2. Part of it was fear: even though I trusted both of them implicitly, I felt like I was tipping over every time they steered, and letting go was out of the question,
3. But the bigger part of it was that I was an adult and I learn differently than kids. I learn with my brain first, not with my body. The kids learn with their body first, then with their brain. You show them and they can do it; whereas I needed to understand how it is done. Very specifically. How do you balance? With which part of your body? And the adult teachers in my life, who have been riding for decades couldn't break it down.

Attempt # 2: Get Tools and Try DIY

For the next step on my bike-riding learning journey, I decided on a DIY approach. That's right, I bought adult training wheels for my bike.

Let me tell you. Adult training wheels are not like children's training wheels - mainly because they weigh 70 lbs. I'm not even kidding.

Can you picture a woman in her 30s, in a bike helmet, attired in knee and elbow pads, manoeuvering an unwieldy 70lbs+ bike on a park path (and falling ungracefully) while you are enjoying your ride?

I can also report that this attempt was also unsuccessful.

I was ready to give up on ever riding a bike.

Attempt #3: Hire an Unlikely Professional

Then I enrolled my son in a summer bike camp when he was 6. On day 2, he was off his training wheels. By the end of week 2, he finished Level 1. By the end of week 3, he finished level 2 and was riding independently. By the end of the summer, he was a pro.

I was envious of his progress. Could I learn from their method too?

Unfortunately, I could not start that summer as I was pregnant, so I waited a year.

This brings us back to that same July afternoon. My 7-year-old son and I were taking lessons from the same bike camp at the same time. Both our teachers were 14 years old. How embarrassing for me. But I was determined.

We started with glides. Then eventually I learned to pick up my feet. To touch the pedals. To put my feet on the pedals. To pedal while being supported. To pedal a little while not being supported. To go straight. To turn left. Turning right was not happening. I quipped about not being an ambi-turner. My teacher was not familiar with Zoolander ??♀?. I fell. My husband and kids brought me ice. I got up again. I learned to turn left. I biked on my own.

I am by no means a great bike rider. I can go a km or two, max. But I am so proud of what I accomplished by going with a bike teacher who even at 14 specialized in teaching people (not just kids) how to ride a bike. Now I can tell my kids that

1. I faced my fear,
2. I never stopped learning, and
3. I overcame my inhibitions and learned a skill that was completely foreign to me.

Fast forward 3 years to when my daughter turned 4 and we enrolled her in the same camp. Her teacher was MY teacher from when she was a baby. What are the odds?

Why did this Approach Work?

1. I finally committed to learning. When you invest in something financially, chances are you are more committed to the process and the outcome. I had the time scheduled in my calendar - there were no excuses. A teacher waited for me every afternoon for an hour over the course of two weeks.
2. I went to a reputable bike camp. Teaching people how to ride a bike was their specialty. They had the equipment, the training, and the methodology. This was THE only thing they did every day, 8 hours a day. My teacher could break the process down for me when I needed it and met me where I was.
3. Referrals. I saw my son succeed at that camp, and so I took the plunge and tried it for myself.

Why Am I Telling You This?

If you are looking to design or revamp your loyalty program, you may be tempted to hire someone or get the tech and try to do it yourself.

I have seen that movie and believe me, you do not want to go down that route.

This is how you end up with a few problems, such as:

• Whom to hire? The skills to design a loyalty program are different from those that are necessary to run a loyalty program.
• Undifferentiated program. Creating a program just like your competitor is not going to solve your problems; it will just create new ones.
• Without a proper financial forecast and liability accounting, you will be stuck in an endless battle with your CFO to cut costs and prove the value of your program.

This is why hiring someone (e.g. Radicle Loyalty ) who works on loyalty all day, every day makes a lot more financial, business, and logical sense.

#consulting #entrepreneur #loyalty #loyaltyprogram