For those of you in my Inner Circle, you may or may not know that I recently purchased a Pelton.
And it’s no secret … I LOVE IT 🙂
Purely from a marketing perspective, I would suggest you get one. The psychology of how they get engagement, follow up and create a journey for their customers is INSANE!
They are, after all, currently valued at 45 billion dollars.
I have itemised their key elements that I believe we can learn from and pull into our businesses that I will review for you in another article … but for now I mostly want to share with you what my personal lesson has been from jumping on this machine to work like hell and GO NOWHERE!
Let me be clear, your relationship with me should be one of abundance. Sometimes I think “coaches” miss that point and try to cover up their “result producing” inadequacies with too much fluffy stuff. Taglines like “finding your inner voice” and “life by design” etc etc come to mind. Conveniently (for the coach) all very intangible stuff!
Don’t get me wrong, I freaking love the fluffy stuff too, but ultimately you wouldn’t and SHOULD NOT stick around if I didn’t create more of one or all of the following in your life ….
More revenue, more new patients, more profit, more time, or higher net worth….
There is hopefully more I bring to the table in the form of personal development, experience etc etc etc… and there is additionally so many aspects of life that take priority over just “stuff”, like family, relationship etc
My job is to create an environment that aids in the improvement of results and boy does peloton aid in the “expansion of results” by leveraging a few key aspects excellently.
With that in mind … what Peloton really taught me is the following:
- Shameless copy!
It has been a tagline in my Inner Circle group right from the very beginning. Often you just need someone to simply take the “thinking” out for you and guide the way.
Sometimes a mere “cheerleader” is very much needed. Don’t underestimate that. And other times you need someone to just point you in the right direction to enable you to just “do”. Either way, both Peloton and this group do both exceptionally well!
- Pearson’s law in action
Pearson’s Law states that that which is measured and reported upon grows exponentially. And boy do Peloton allow you to measure. There are all the metrics, like watts, cadence, resistance, miles per hour, total distance etc.
While that is great, I don’t think that is very uncommon in a “cycling world”. What Peloton does exceptionally well in addition to “measuring”, is allow for easy and effortless “reporting”. Without doing anything really, you are presented with beautiful charts and tables “reporting” back to you.
- Peer Pressure Works.
You can’t deny it, peer pressure creates behavioural changes. Depending on the form of peer pressure this is not always a positive behavioural change. So the key is, THE RIGHT PEER PRESSURE, in the RIGHT CONTEXT… creates IMMENSE behavioural change and massively affects the end result.
To deny this is delusional and why I say over and over that the real reason we are seeing the results we see in our group is THE GROUP and the content AND the context created.
In a Peloton context, there is THE LEADERBOARD… Cue dramatic music. Boy, I hate that leaderboard… Well I love to hate it.
I’m naturally a competitive guy, having represented South African Schools sports in more than one discipline.
In some of the Peloton classes there’s over 30,000 people that have done the ride and ranked on a leaderboard.
The truth is, when I started, I would tell myself that I didn’t care about the leaderboard. But that’s the thing about measuring and seeing others rocking it… it kinda forces you to “push” even if you say you’re not going to.
I don’t do the live classes ever, (because I just do it when I can do it) but you’re still on the leaderboard, and it shows you how you are doing compared to the last 30,000 people who have done the ride. Once I started and I got the hang of it and I was like oh okay I can do this, I’m going to aim to be within the top 50% of the leaderboard… it’s pretty hard. At first, I was dying, so unfit.
So my lesson has been that, for the most part, (90%) of the time, seeing people “ahead” of you … drags you along. Simply showing up creates performance if you can stay in the heat.
- Know when to focus on “leaderboard”!
It’s incredible what a difference that has on your performance!
When I started Peloton I would casually watch the leaderboard. I’m not a “cyclist” by any stretch but within the first 2 rides I could quite easily finish in the top half of the leaderboard.
In time I steadily started finishing in the top 25% and then 10% but I hadn’t quite cracked the top 5%.
During a recent ride I was chasing the leaderboard and was having a good ride and was teetering around that top 5% mark. In this particular ride I needed to finish under 800 and that would effectively out me in the top 5%
I had been hovering at about 780- 800 for the majority of the ride and with 10 min to ride I was really starting to flag and holding for another ten minutes seemed a push too far.
At that point I hid the leaderboard and just rode baby!. (more on this next)
With 20 sec to go i turned the live leaderboard back on and to my surprise i was sitting at 740… with 10 sec to go.
Honestly, I was pretty chuffed with myself and with so little time to go was pretty certain that “success” was all but a certainty.
With just 5 seconds to go, it was a done deal but literally 5 sec seemed like it may last forever .
Feeling pretty chuffed with myself I simply “stopped pedaling” with 1 sec to go…..at this point still under 800.
Stopping one second early or not completing that one pedal stroke saw my place on the leaderboard plummet by around 100 places.
I stopped 1 sec short, one pedal stroke and it caused me to drop out of the top 5%.
Two business lessons to take from that story:
I say business lessons , but it’s worth noting that I once taught there is no such thing as a “business problem”. There are only personal problems that show up as business problems.
In that light … here are two lessons relevant for life in general.
1) Cut out the noise and go within!
Don’t be naive, performance really does require pressure and hanging around with top performed AUTOMATICALLY improves yours … stay connected.
BUT sometimes, you gotta take your eye off the leader board and GO WITHIN to GO HARDER or make a big jump.
Let me be clear, taking your eyes off the “leaderboard” and cutting out the noise so that you are THE ONLY limit and not others is NOT the same as pulling out of the race.
There is a key distinction worth mentioning right there.
It has been said that Comparison is the thief of joy. So what I’m really saying is that learning the art of “staying close” and connected, because you recognize the substantial benefits of doing so while at the same time not COMPARING oneself may seem like a contradiction but it can simply be defined in the following statement………
PROXIMITY = POWER .
2: Just Don’t Stop
I know that for some of you, the beginning of 2021 DOES NOT come with the usuals, verve and enthusiasm normally associated with such a time.
Here is why: this is not a normal “beginning of the year”.
In actual fact the definition of beginning middle and end has a very different context right now. The “race” is NOT the 2021 race with January being the beginning of the year/race.
You are in actual fact entered in, whether you like it or not, in the COVID business race and I hate to be the bearer of “bad” news, but you only just passed half way in my humble opinion!
Which means your right at the point where fatigue and depletion starts to set in. That’s important for context . Don’t beat yourself up for feeling “tired”.
Honestly how could you not. This is in my opinion the most difficult time to maintain both sanity, emotional well being and business well being that the planet has ever faced. The sheer level of increased “plates to spin” is quite overwhelming .
But here is what I need you to know. The next year will become less about “how well” you implement .
You see when most people are faced with “hardship”, like the whole world is currently facing, the level of execution becomes less important.
What does give those a huge advantage right now is simply THAT THEY KEEP SHOWING UP… JUST KEEP PEDALING!
DO ANYTHING, as long as it’s forward, because the truth is, most won’t! And that’s where you win!
You see the lesson I learnt from stopping one pedal stroke short and dropping 100 places was simply that…. I needed only to make the pedal stroke and I would have won. It was less about how “hard” the pedal stroke was , but rather that I found within myself, the fortitude to simply make it.
YOU CAN MAKE IT… JUST KEEP PEDALING
You’re stronger than you think.. We all are!
Love and Light
Ryan
