Marco’s and Our Story
Here at Habit Companion, we love telling good stories, and every client’s journey tells a story filled with hard work, feelings of fear and self-doubt, and a lot of ups and downs. With each client we take on, they become a part of our journey. Just as we become a part of theirs, together our stories join to write a new chapter. Many of those new chapters start in January.
Hopeful and Delusional January
January has a certain magic to it. It’s the month where everything feels possible. New year, new goals, new you. This is the year you’ll get in shape, start that business, land the dream job, and somehow win the lottery too. All at once. With ease.
That kind of hope is fun. And maybe a little bit delusional.
In January 2024, our team at Habit Companion wasn’t delusional anymore. The dreams we’d had the year before of hundreds of clients knocking down our door hadn’t come true. We’d been ghosted, humbled, and forced to pivot.
But in the process, we learned what people really needed when it came to accountability and support. We took what we learned and started fresh, posting in forums and communities, inviting anyone who wanted to make a change but needed a little support along the way to try us out for free for a month.
That’s when Marco found us.
Meet Marco
Marco worked in the information and communication technology space, and he knew he needed to pass the BICSI RCDD exam to move forward in his career, but he faced three big problems:
- He’d never taken a professional test before.
- The exam pass rate was only 20%.
- He hated studying.
Still, he bit the bullet. He bought the study book, cracked it open… and struggled.
Even with the best intentions, Marco found it hard to stay focused. Whenever he made good progress, he’d lose consistency. After three years, he’d only studied the first ten chapters. And now, a new version of the study book was coming—meaning if he didn’t pass soon, he’d have to start all over.
Marco was fed up. He wasn’t about to drop another few hundred dollars on a book he hated.
When he found us, he was ready for a change.
Beginnings
When Marco booked his first call with us, it was clear he was a bit unsure of what to expect. Still, he was willing to give us a shot. On that first call, he opened up about his life: the stress, the priorities pulling him in different directions, and the dreams he was chasing.
Marco shared that he’d become the sole provider of his house, caring for his wife who’d recently recovered from an illness and a new puppy that needed attention, all while working for a company where he learned a lot but was a bit overworked.
Just like most clients, Marco’s beginning period involved us trying to learn how we could better support him. We tossed around some ideas to make studying more enjoyable like studying at a cafe, listening to music, eating snacks, or having a study buddy. The study buddy worked out once or twice, but unfortunately, Marco’s friends were just not committed to spending hours studying together.
One day, Marco randomly sent us his daily study notes. A lightbulb went on! We took his notes and created study questions for him. During the end of his next accountability call, we asked if we could ask him questions to test his knowledge. At first, he was taken by surprise by what we’d done, but from the tone of his voice, we could tell he was impressed, so we encouraged him to send us more notes.
The study questions became a part of his call routine, and when the last day of his free month of testing our service arrived, Marco made the bold choice of signing up for a year.
We were ecstatic!
The Ups and Downs
Things weren’t all roses and sunshine afterwards. While he’d finished his first ten chapters, he still had many more chapters he hadn’t reviewed. Through sleepy evenings and weekend mornings, he studied. Together, we set a goal for him to finish his first set of notes by mid-April, but he didn’t finish them then.
He completed them two weeks before.
He felt so motivated that he put his money where it mattered and signed up to take the test
A Holistic Approach
As time went on, we continued to learn more about Marco and learn about his other goals. He wanted to lose weight and get more fit while improving his overall life, and we began to support him in those goals as well, while keeping our focus on passing the exam.
Later that year, his wife got a new job, and before we knew it, they’d made the decision to move.
We added that goal to his program and helped him prioritize all the tasks that go along with moving: finding a home, buying a home, preparing his old home to be shown, selling his home, and doing the actual stressful moving process (although we couldn’t actually be there to help him move, we sent good vibes!).
Even though he had less time, he continued to study. His priorities had shifted, but we all remained committed. Almost every day, we followed up with his tasks, kept him accountable, and continued to ask study questions.
A New Strategy
By August, things had calmed down and Marco had a bit more time. During a strategy call, we suggested he reprioritize and study more. He agreed—at least in the moment.
But with Montreal’s short summer, who could blame him for choosing sunshine and friends over solo study days? He’d just moved, started new work projects, and still had house tasks to finish before winter.
Still, our job was to help him stay connected to his goal. For a few weeks, he was half-in, half-out—but he kept showing up to accountability calls, and that meant at least a little daily progress.
Every couple of weeks, during strategy calls, we’d gently nudge him to refocus. Eventually, we suggested a shift: try practice tests. At first, he wasn’t ready. But a few calls later, when the inconsistency remained, we brought it up again.
While we understood the desire to learn the material inside and out, the type of studying he was demanding from himself required long, laborious hours—hours he was currently not able to commit. Why not give the practice test a chance? He decided to give it a try this time.
After a few weeks, we started to get him from focusing on the number of pages he was completing to the number of questions he was getting right, but he still wasn’t ready to pay for a practice test. It wasn’t until a little into October when he was freaking out about the time constraints. Faced with having to complete the test and feeling utterly unprepared, he told us he just wanted to take the test and see how he did just to get it over with.
While it was an inspiring idea, we really wanted him to consider whether or not this was the right move. He hadn’t taken a practice test that had covered the entire book yet. We still didn’t know what he didn’t know. So we suggested that he pay for a practice test and go through it from start to finish a few times, and once he got enough of those questions right, he could take the real test. That day he bought the gold standard test. We were pumped!
As October rolled in along with the holidays, priorities shifted again. Together, while Marco and our team each spent time with our families, we helped to keep Marco’s study habit alive.
Return of Hopeful and Delusional January
In January, Marco started to study harder and felt hopeful again. So hopeful, he scheduled his exam date for March. With a practice test purchased, some chapters already well studied, a strategy we approved, and a test date marked on the calendar, we had faith in Marco.
Maybe… more faith than he had in himself.
Unfortunately, right before he was about to up his studying game, Marco had to be hospitalized for a week. Thankfully, he made it through fine, but when he came out, we started to push him harder.
We focused more on study questions during his accountability calls and increased the calls by five more minutes to get in a few more questions. We helped him prioritize time to take the test and got excited every time he scored higher. He would send us problems that he missed, and we would create similar problems to ask him. We even worked overtime to make sure he was studying on the weekends.
For the last couple of weeks before the test, Marco lived and breathed that practice test, and when the day of the test finally arrived, he was scoring over 90% each run-through.
When he finally went in to take his test on that fateful Thursday, we all wished him luck. We had been working hard for the last year doing our best to support him. If he failed, we would be crushed too.
Sure, he had a couple more chances to try before May, and that was part of his overall strategy as well. Unfortunately, he told us he wouldn’t know the results of the test until a few weeks later because they would need to grade it. But he was wrong. We found out that day…
Sometimes, you work at something really hard, you do all the right things, and you still come up short…
But that wasn’t the case for Marco!
He passed! 🎉
Life Continues
After a little more than a year of not giving up, Marco passed, and in between, the rest of his life happened.
He had his first vacation in years. He supported his wife in her new job. He moved. He captained a sports team. He was injured. He finished his winter preparations. He celebrated the holidays. He got a new job. He got a new career title. He got another raise for taking the test. And now he’s even got a baby on the way.
In one year, his whole life changed for the better, and we got to witness and be a part of it, contributing our own little piece to his story.
Cheers to More Goals and Dreams
While Marco has finally finished his exam that he had been struggling to pass for over four years, he’s developed new goals, centered around his health, his growing family, and his career. Although we think he’s reached a time where he should celebrate his hard-earned success and get used to his new job, we’re ready to support him in his ever-changing goals.
We’re excited for the future and what’s to come. Cheering from the sidelines for every win that he makes, keeping him accountable, and being that reminder in the background of what he wants to achieve and what he’s capable of, we at Habit Companion are proud to be a part of his story.