Biking to Success

Somewhere around 20 years ago, I started having a desire to make a cross-state bicycle ride in Wisconsin.  Honestly, I don't know where the idea came from.  I did a fair amount of bike riding as a teenager, but for the most part bicycling was limited in my early adult years to a few short rides with my family.  But in the winter of 2000, I decided that the coming summer was going to be the time when I would make this dream a reality.

That spring, I started riding regularly.  A short ride, around 10 miles each morning plus a weekend ride from 30-50 miles.  I worked up my endurance over the summer and capped it off with a back-to-back ride of 60 miles each day on a weekend (Sheboygan to Green Bay on Saturday and Green Bay back to Sheboygan on Sunday).  Then on August 4, 2001, I dipped my rear wheel into Lake Michigan at Pleasant Prairie in the southeast corner of Wisconsin and started my seven day trek which finished in Ashland on August 10 with a dip of my front wheel into Lake Superior.  It was a solo trip with my wife in a "support vehicle", and I thoroughly enjoyed all the towns, farmlands, forests and river country that make up this great state.

The other outcome is that I became hooked on biking and since then have logged at least 2,000 bicycle miles each summer.  Pure and simple... I love biking!

What does this have to do with business success?  Well my cross-state ride is sort of a metaphor for three lessons that are critical to success in any venture or business:

1. Success starts with a goal.  Although I can't exactly describe the source of my goal to bike across Wisconsin, nonetheless it was there.  I had the desire, the dream.  It was a clear goal, even to the extent I wanted it to be a north-to-south ride, not the shorter east-to-west alternative.  It was a Big Goal!  I had not done this before, and knew that I couldn't just hop on the bike one day and achieve it without some preparation.
2. A strategy gives direction to the venture.  This ride would never have taken place without planning.  I needed a plan to get into the physical shape needed to ride seven consecutive days.  I needed to map out the route.  I needed a communication plan with my wife in her support function.  Diet; food and water had to be considered.
3. Actions and commitment create the progress.  Most of all, even with the clear goal, I needed to do one more thing, and that was to commit to doing it.  It required that I get up each morning and ride.  It required that I ride on weekends.  It required that I give notice to my then-employer for that week of vacation to do the ride.  It just required that I start.  A goal and a strategy don't mean much without the action that gets results.

Guess what?  In the end, the ride was easy!  At the end I could have easily ridden much farther.  The planning and the preparation made it a fairly simple venture.  And that's the way it is in our businesses, too.  A goal, a strategy, and committed, disciplined action steps gets us to where we want to go, and it turns out to be fairly easy.

Let's go for a ride!