Sore Derrière

I picked up road bicycling six years ago and I am by no means a serious biker -- I spend on average about 2 to 4 hours per week on a bike. Last Saturday, I helped a friend choose a bike that fits him and his needs. That’s when I realized that over the past several years, I have advised and accompanied over twenty people to a bike shop to help them decide which bike to buy. This begs the question: Why do these people rely more on the advice of an average biker friend rather than listen to an experienced biker or even do their own research?

It seems people nowadays want real and authentic advice. An expert biker will tend to overestimate their needs and intimidate them into purchasing the lightest and most expensive bike. On the other side, performing their own research is tedious and confusing when biking is not a competency they have. As a side note, I did advice my friend to get padded shorts, so it is not my fault he has a sore derrière.

CNN ran an interesting article yesterday about how blogs have been shaping the travel industry. Apparently, blogs are taken more seriously than the mainstream media. They are authentic and read more like advice and less like a promotion. (refer to CNN’s article)

The same seems to apply to the business word. Many businesses are shying away from big-ticket consulting services that pretend to know the client’s business more than the owners do. Middle-market business owners and managers are reluctant to pay for what they already know (only packaged in a fancy PowerPoint document). Also, experts do not seem to listen to their client needs and end up providing expensive solution that do not fit immediate needs. Just like an expert biker would recommend a $5,000 carbon fiber bike to a novice. On the flip side, businesses find it hard sometimes to fix their own problems either because they usually lack the knowledge or the time to implement. Just like a novice biker would struggle making a decision based on academic research. These businesses did not forget the last time they had a sore-derrière because they listened to their own voice.

The best advice comes from an authentic business advisor, who has experience running businesses (not a fresh MBA graduate) and who is not trying to sell a canned solution. The middle-market today is in desperate need for that kind of affordable and measurable results-driven advice (Refer to F1 Strategy’s website for Business Cases).