Enthusiasm pays

Introducing Flying Gecko’s Jenna Sanders whose obvious enthusiasm for paddle sports and the people giving back to their clubs and communities has been rewarded with a very full diary.

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Jan 21, 2023

In this and the following posts we’ll see what we can learn from Jenna about building a strong client base and the benefits – and challenges - of saying “no”.

Jenna loves life outdoors and being in the mountains, but is “very much a paddler”. When she was at university she first got into freelancing doing odd bits of guiding here and there. From there she found work at various water sports centres until she was working full time as a coach and then working her way up to managing the centre. In 2019 she left to set up Flying Gecko.

“It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life financially, but also in terms of my personal life. That said, doing it in 2019 wasn’t the best of timing!”

Year 1 was all about getting going. Year 2 was all about Covid. Year 3 was “absolutely manic. I was worked off my feet and exhausted.” This year is a good time to catch up with Jenna as she takes stock. “I may be starting to work out exactly what it is my business does and how I make it work for me personally as well as financially.”

Her work now is almost exclusively around helping experienced paddlers, leaders and coaches develop their qualifications. As well as a high level of personal qualification, she’s proud to be a part of British Canoeing's National Trainer team, helping to train the leaders and coaches in various paddle sport communities.

“I absolutely love it. There’s kind of an intellectual challenge to it. You’ve got to be on top of all the psychology and sports science and the reasons behind why we do what we do. And then you’ve got to be able to get it all across to people who are primarily outdoorsy and not necessarily that keen on the academic side of things. I find it really interesting and a good challenge.”

Jenna is definitely at the high end of the sector, but that doesn’t mean she is distanced from the people she works with. What comes across is her genuine engagement with and enthusiasm for the sport. We can’t imagine you’d ever find her just working her way through a course syllabus focussing on ticking the boxes as she goes. What her clients seem to value is the way she understands where they are coming from and what they want and tailors the way she delivers coaching accordingly. For her part:

“the outdoors is full of really, really lovely people. 99.9% of the people who come on my courses are just genuinely lovely human beings who want to get out there and either give back to their clubs and communities or make a life and career out of the outdoors.”

Looking at the paddle sports sector itself, Jenna is seeing an encouraging trend towards professionalism and increased qualifications and generally doing things the right way. Clearly recent incidents, notably the deaths of four paddleboarders in Haverfordwest and the report into what went wrong, have focussed people’s minds. In Jenna’s eyes, this has led to everyone, including quite informal groups rethinking their attitudes to make sure they know what they are doing.

The challenges for the sector, like many areas of outdoor life, revolve around levels of earnings. Even at the top of your game you are likely to be earning much less than other professions with similar years-long qualification periods. Consider your average freelancer, someone taking a group of kids out canoeing for example. They are getting paid “quite frankly very little to do something where their decision-making could impact the lives of those children” *.

Closely related to this is the way, in the UK at least, is the regard in which qualified adventure guides are held.

“I think there is sometimes a lack of respect for the work put into getting qualifications and this is linked to the money thing. I’ve even had a snarky comment from an accountant about how expensive I was. I had to refrain from asking how much he would charge me just for an hour of work and from mentioning that nobody dies if he messes up”

There is, of course, a difference between someone who picks up a Stand Up Paddleboard and thinks they can take other people out and those who are genuine professionals. The question is how does the recreational enthusiast tell the difference? How do they know who is worth paying more for? Jenna is a huge advocate for British Canoeing and knows that a lot of effort has been put into making sure their qualifications are robust and that the assessment processes are quality assured and standardised. That said,

“There are other qualification bodies out there and it is hard for someone to know if someone running a trip is really qualified to lead it. Maybe it’s something that the industry as a whole needs to promote really clearly to the general public.”

In the next post [coming soon - subscribe below and we’ll send you an email when it’s live!] we’ll be looking at how work comes to Jenna, her advice to people getting into the sector and the questions she has for others in the community.

The Business of Adventure

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