The Ant & The Grasshopper
This week, I started reading Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins. He began his book by sharing a fable about the ant and the grasshopper. The ant spent every day working hard, stocking away food, building shelter, and preparing for the winter so he could survive. The ant never took a day to have fun, relax or enjoy himself. He survived the winter season, but he never relented in his preparation efforts and ultimately worked himself to death. Then there was the grasshopper, who enjoyed every second of his life. But, when the winter came, because he hadn’t prepared, he died from the harsh conditions. The lesson of this fable is pretty clear: you can’t be the person who works themself to death, and you also can’t be the person who never prepares for the future. The right answer is somewhere in between, where you work enough but also play as much as you can. And that’s the theme of Perkins’ book: to rescue you from over-saving and under-living.
This book has me thinking a lot about experiences – not only for myself, but experiences for my clients, coworkers, teammates, friends and family. When considering how to provide lasting memorable experiences, I like to refer to the following hierarchy:
People always begin an experience with an expectation. You must first meet that expectation to even have the chance of giving them a good experience. If you don’t meet their expectation, that person will walk away with a less-than-good (even bad) experience.
Consider their wants. If you are able to meet their expectation, the next level is being able to provide them with what they truly want from the experience.
You are able to level-up their experience when you not only meet their expectations, give them what they want, but you furthermore hit on their desires. A want, by the dictionary definition, is “to be deficient by the absence of some part or thing, or to feel a need.” A desire, however, is not defined by lack or scarcity – rather, it is “to express a wish to obtain; ask for; request.” Desire is often associated with a longing and a pursuit that drives your spirit to not forget until you have reached it (or would, perhaps, never be forgotten).
The final component of creating the most amazing experience for someone is giving them something they didn’t even know they wanted. When you give this to them, they are utterly blown away, and the experience will certainly imprint their memory for an everlasting period of time. Successful entrepreneurs are familiar with this concept of meeting the unrecognized needs of their customers. As Steve Jobs once remarked, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
As you climb this hierarchy of experience, you leave your customer / coworker / friend with what Perkins calls “a memory dividend.” The return on your experience is seen not only in the value of the experience in the moment, but furthermore when that customer goes to tell someone else about their experience. When they think about the experience as a memory, it brings feelings of joy again – and that’s another dividend payment.
These dividends continue to happen throughout the rest of your life. The stronger the experience, the more dividend you realize from it. Such powerful experiences provide value with a multiplying return.
Perkins’ plea to his readers is to invest in those experiences. Personally, I would add that the social component of an experience matters, too. Sure, it’s great to go into a hotel room and be delighted by a gift from the hotel waiting for you – receiving a gift is likely above and beyond your expectations of the hotel. But when a person gives you their energy and love and joy as a part of your experience, that feeling produced inside of you is usually more lasting. It is that feeling that will compel you to go tell people about your experience again and again.
We should all be giving our lives a little bit extra thought – how can we make this not only a better experience for ourselves, but also a better experience for those with whom we are about to engage?
This book has already opened my eyes to living a more fulfilling life through experiences and I am excited to learn more about the “how to” from Perkins in the upcoming chapters.
Written by Schuyler Williamson
REALTOR. Leader. Veteran. Business Owner. Investor.
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God Bless!
~ Schuyler Williamson