There are a lot of companies that claim to have created the very first Build-A-Bike ®, but here is the actual story. I was there. Way back in August of 2005, a client called us with a unique team building activity request. The client was an event planning company who was organizing an annual meeting at the brand-new Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, Texas.
At the time, all of our team building activities were derivatives of our leadership training programs. We had 40 or so individual leadership and team building modules that could easily be customized to the specific needs of any client. However, this client wanted to hire us to conduct one of our custom team building workshops, but they wondered if we could do something for charity in conjunction with the classroom training.
Charity Team Building Prior to Build-A-Bike ®
The previous year, this company had done a project with Habitat for Humanity. The team had met together for one day and built an entire house for a needy family. The leaders got fantastic feedback for the charity part of the activity. However, they got a few negative comments about the activity as well. The biggest challenge was the time commitment. The Habitat for Humanity project was delivered at the end of their normal annual business meeting. As a result, the team was pretty wiped before the activity even started. In addition, the leaders has to organize transportation to and from the activity. (Most of the participants were from out of town.)
The actual event was conducted on a Saturday, as well. So, they basically turned a three-day convention into a four-day convention. The team members lost their entire weekend, too. As a result, the group gave feedback like, “We loved the event, but let’s not do it again.” So the leaders decided to look for something different.
If you think way back to a decade or two ago, if you wanted to do a team building activity, there were no escape rooms. There were no race car pit crew challenges. There were no zip line courses. In fact, ropes courses were pretty popular, but still pretty new. So, if you wanted to have a group outing, most facilitators would organize a picnic or take everyone bowling or to a ball game.
Creating an Entire Industry
I had a couple of conversations with the client trying to tailor our activities to what the group wanted. When I got the third phone call from the client, I was in Minneapolis driving to a client event at the Mall of America. Since I was speaking to the client while driving, my co-instructor for the event was in the passenger seat. After I finished the call, she gave me an idea.
She said, “When I was a sales manager at my previous job, I always had to come up with fun activities to keep the sales team entertained at our meetings. The activity that had the most laughs was when I had the group build boats out of Styrofoam and cardboard. Each team had to build a boat that would hold the body-weight of a single team member long enough that he/she would be able to cross the hotel pool. It was hilarious.” That single conversation planted the seed.
Once we moved from “volunteering our time or money to charity” to “building something for charity”, the ideas started flowing. I called the client back and asked, “What about building bicycles for kids?” They loved the idea.
However, at the time, we were still in the mindset of “training” so we designed an entire 3 hour (half-day) program that we called Build A Bike. (Just for fun, take a look at the very first Build-A-Bike ® brochure.)
The Very First Build-A-Bike ®. The Event Heard Round the World
We spent weeks creating and recreating the agenda. One of the things that we realized was that building bikes is manual labor — not fun. So we worked really hard to make sure that the activities were fun. Since no one had ever done anything like this before, there were no blueprints to follow. I remember going to Wal-Mart over and over again to acquire items to use in the event. We actually used colored paper plates as place-holders for participants in that first one. The event planner made a last-minute addition to the agenda. She wanted the teams to organize a “team cheer”. I have to admit that I was extremely apprehensive about this addition. I thought that it would come off as hokey, but the event planner insisted.
The big day came where we were to reveal the very first Build-A-Bike ® to the world. We designed the program to be a great balance between real teaching and fun activities. So we started with a warm-up that taught the group how to improve their memory. I know. This doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the agenda. However, we used it as a way to get the group to partner up with a team member that they didn’t know very well. We then had a number of these new partnerships group together to form a team. Once they were in their new team, we had them compete in a cheer contest. I was so nervous when I gave the teams the instructions. I had no idea if the group was just going to look back at me and say, “No, that doesn’t sound like fun.” I was surprised, though. The group really got into it. They had a blast!
That Very First Build-A-Bike ® Made History
That one activity that I was so apprehensive about was the linchpin that moved Build-A-Bike ® from an interesting charity event into a really fun, high energy activity that everyone loves.
From the cheer contest, we had each team solve team challenges that made them work together. The better that the teams worked together, the faster they acquired bicycle pieces. once they had all the pieces that they needed, they built a bike. The cap at the end was when we had kids from a local children’s charity stream into the room to receive the bikes. Each team took time to adjust the seat and handlebars to make the bike perfect.
After the kids came into the room, I just looked around. I saw a bunch of excited and happy kids. I also saw a few people that were a little teary-eyed. At that point in my career, I had taught thousands of classroom sessions, hundreds of keynotes, and dozens of team building activities. I was used to folks coming up to me at the end of a meeting and thanking me. However, that day, things were unbelievable different. Almost every single person in the room sought me out to shake my hand and thank me. After the event ended, no one left. I had never experienced anything like this.
We knew that we had something special!