The Currency of Thieves
How do you pay a man who has everything?
I’m training for a 100km bike race. It’s my first, and it won’t be much of a race: my goal is to raise money for a local hospice, and finish a 100km ride for the first time.
The ride will take place on beautiful St. Joseph Island, a cyclist’s paradise. One lap of the Island is 70km, and the race course will be one lap, and then a bisecting straight shot over the “mountain” in the middle. It’s exciting, and I’m not ready for it yet.
To train for the race, I enlisted the help of my friend Ray (founder of UpCoach.org). He, in turn, called another friend, a retired local doctor. This guy is a REAL athlete: he’s been ranked among the top in the world for rowing, and he regularly travels to France to ride sections of the Tour de France on his bike. He once rowed across the Atlantic with half a dozen other guys. Yeah: Dr. Steve is a REAL athlete.
I met Ray and Dr. Steve a kilometer from my house. They had to bike 10k just to reach me, and pulled up two minutes after our meeting time. Ray was already panting when they arrived. “I can’t keep that up for 3 hours!” he laughed at Dr. Steve, who shrugged and said, “I hate to be late.” Then we clicked into our pedals and set off.
If you’re not a cyclist, you might wonder why people on bikes ride so closely together. A group of riders (a “peloton”) will pack together so closely their wheels almost touch. This is because the greatest challenge on a bike isn’t a hill, but the wind. Even small breezes require huge increases in work to maintain speed. When you’re traveling over 20km/h to start with, every little knot of breeze makes the work much harder. So cyclists group together behind a lead cyclist to stay out of the wind. The front rider creates a slipstream for the second rider for awhile, and then drops back to let someone else take the lead. At least, that’s what usually happens.
Since the rider in front is doing far more work than the second rider, who is doing slightly more work than the third rider, it’s pretty easy to roll along in third position. And that’s what I did, for three straight hours: I let Dr. Steve “pull” us in a loop around the Island. We both left at the same time and ended in the same place, but he did FAR more work than I. To be specific, Dr. Steve put out between 230W and 250W for three hours straight, while I had to put out around 150W to 180W over the same time. It wasn’t easy for me, but it was much easier thanks to his hard work at the front.
After 60k, we dropped Ray at home and continued on toward Dr. Steve’s house. He’s now retired, and comfortably doing whatever he wants. He makes maple syrup in the spring, skis cross-country in the winter and rides in the spring and summer. Sometimes he goes to France to ride. He hosts bonfires that sometimes turn into intellectual debates. He reads good books and tells good jokes. He doesn’t need money, and neither do I.
The currency of those in the Tinker and Thief phases isn’t money. It’s Help First.
Opportunities to help a Tinker or Thief can be hard to find. After all, they don’t need money. But money can’t buy a trip around the Island or three hours of sacrifice at the head of a small peloton. Or it could mean helping their kid (which I plan to do with Dr. Steve, who has a son doing CrossFit far away.) If you want to thank a Tinker, or help a Thief, you have to be on the constant lookout for opportunities. That means actively seeking ways to Help First all the time. It takes practice.
Partnership in the Tinker and Thief Phases takes more than looking for a “win-win”. It means looking for just a single “win”–only for the other guy, instead of yourself. Dr. Steve doesn’t know me well. He doesn’t expect for me to return the favor. He had the opportunity to serve, and he took it. That was his payment. That’s the real mark of success.
