The Cycling Metaphor: Where This All Began
Before it became a growth framework, it was a gut check.
I was out riding with a strong group. I felt solid at the start, taking turns at the front, matching the tempo, holding my own. But when the pace lifted or the hills arrived, I got shelled. Legs burning, lungs seizing, the peloton slipping away. It didn’t just happen once; it happened too often.
At first, I blamed effort. Maybe I needed to try harder, ride more often, push through the discomfort. But I was already putting in the hours. I was active. I was committed. And I wasn’t improving.
Then I saw what was really happening.
I wasn’t training. I was exercising. Riding when I felt like it. Pushing hard on good days. Skipping when life got in the way. No plan. No structure. No feedback. I wasn’t preparing to race; I was pedaling in place.
Meanwhile, the riders dropping me were on training plans. Every ride had intent—base building, hill repeats, sprint work, active recovery. Their output wasn’t based on feeling. It was grounded in data, feedback, and long-term design. They weren’t just stronger. They were smarter, more disciplined, and more prepared.
That’s when I went looking for help and found Joe Friel’s Training Triangle.
Joe Friel’s Training Triangle: A Model for Peak Performance
Friel, a renowned cycling coach, laid out a deceptively simple but powerful training model built on three performance elements:
- Aerobic Endurance – The ability to sustain long efforts
- Muscular Force – The strength to generate power
- Speed Skill – Efficiency of movement, coordination, and control
Combine any two, and you get key outcomes:
- Aerobic Endurance + Muscular Force = Muscular Endurance
- Muscular Force + Speed Skill = Sprint Power
- Aerobic Endurance + Speed Skill = Anaerobic Endurance
Together, these elements build a complete and competitive athlete.
Friel’s insight wasn’t just in naming the elements but in structuring them into a training system, where every ride developed a specific component, and every component contributed to long-term performance.
This changed my results on the bike.
Later, it changed how I thought about firm growth.
Firms That Train vs. Firms That Work Out
Professional services firms behave the same way cyclists do.
Some train with focus, discipline, and feedback.
Most work out—as I did—with activity, urgency, and chance.
You know the firms that are working out. They:
- Launch campaigns with no strategy
- Chase new services without market proof
- Spin up rebrands every 2–3 years
- Replace CMOs and CROs in cycles
- Hustle for leads while the pipeline remains weak
These firms have talent and care about clients. They’re busy, but they’re not building performance because they lack a structured system that connects strategy to culture and execution to outcomes.
What It Means to Train as a Firm
Firms that train build systems to condition their core growth muscles—Marketing, Sales, and Delivery—just like an athlete trains aerobic capacity, force, and speed.
That’s what the Prudent Pedal Growth Framework is: A performance system that helps firms build the equivalent of muscular endurance, anaerobic capacity, and sprint power in their go-to-market engine.
Here’s how it maps:
- Aerobic Endurance → Market Focus
The long, steady discipline of choosing the right markets and staying relevant over time. - Muscular Force → Brand
The strength to differentiate with authority and deliver with credibility. - Speed Skill → Capabilities
The precision to commercialize ideas, sell effectively, and scale delivery.
And just like Friel’s model, we connect these to long-term performance outcomes that lead to winning:
- Expertise (permission to play)
- Results (proof that your expertise works)
- Simpatico (alignment with your best clients)
These aren’t simple monikers. They’re the three drivers of Brand Preference and the true measure of a firm’s market performance.
Why the Training vs. Working Out Distinction Matters
The professional services market is full of smart, capable people doing meaningful work. But that’s not enough to grow in a market defined by complexity, commoditization, and accelerating client expectations.
Firms that “work out” confuse activity for progress and impact. They push hard without direction. They mistake a new logo for a new brand, a sales deck for a strategy, or a campaign for a tangible pipeline. The result is a blur of disconnected motion that is well-intended, but often misaligned with long-term goals.
Firms that train, by contrast, operate with clarity and structure. They know exactly where they’re going, how they’ll get there, and what disciplines must be built to sustain performance. They focus on the fundamentals—market focus, brand credibility, solution relevance, client fit—and condition their go-to-market engine with the same intentionality an athlete brings to race season.
That’s the real difference. Not who just works harder. But who builds systems that convert effort into durable, competitive advantage.
When a firm chooses to train, it shifts the entire conversation. Strategy becomes clearer. Execution becomes more consistent. People know what matters, and more importantly, why it matters.
The Choice Every CEO Must Make
You don’t scale a professional services firm by accident. You scale it by design.
Not with more hours or better hustle but with a model that aligns strategy, systems, and culture toward performance.
The firms that lead their markets, the ones with pricing power, enviable pipelines, strong reputations, and loyal clients, aren’t lucky. They’ve trained to achieve it. They’ve built the structures and made the tradeoffs others were unwilling to make. They’ve developed the muscles that matter: insights, client relevance, superior solutions, and cultural alignment.
And they’ve done it in the same way and with the same precision Joe Friel demanded of his riders: measure, condition, adapt, and repeat.
You don’t get to be the preferred firm by “working out.”
You earn that position by training for the win—day in, day out, rain or shine.
So ask yourself:
Is your firm training or working out?
Be prudent.
