How valuable are relationships?
I don’t think anyone would say relationships are not valuable. But the fact that it’s actually quite hard to place an actual value on it creates all sorts of problems. I’ve noticed a few of these as I’ve been building RolodexAI.
So here’s the TL;DR
We don’t make the needed investments, both in terms of time and money, towards relationships because we can’t quantify their value
Below I deep dive into this by making the following argument. Historically, it was very clear how valuable relationships were. Today, we still follow our primal instincts but are unclear of their exact value. Throughout our life, we indirectly invest a lot towards building relationships, so they must be valuable, but we can’t really quantify it. And because we can’t quantify it, we are not sure about how much we should be giving up, in terms of time and money, in order to build and maintain relationships. This creates a rather tricky situation because relationships, like investments, gain from the compounding effect, and being inconsistent can prove to be costly in the long run — something most are us are headed towards.
Tribes of Yesterday vs. Today
We, humans, are social beings. We love being part of communities and building relationships with each other. It’s one of our many primal desires, a sense of belonging, and it makes sense why. Centuries ago, you had to be part of a tribe to survive. If you were alone and by yourself, you had a very slim chance of survival. Thus we all craved to a part of tribes and that desire continues today. In earlier times, the value of a tribe was very clear — if you were in one, you lived, if you were not in one, you died — plain and simple. But today, that’s certainly not the case. Which begs the question — why do we still want to be part of communities?
“That’s such a silly question, Reuben! We want to be part of communities because we get a lot of value from them”. I agree with you, but how much value is unclear. It’s probably a lot, but we can’t quantify it as clearly as life vs death. And that’s a big problem
We don’t like paying convenience fees
I heard this from Kunal Shah in one of his videos or talks. He made a simple, yet powerful argument, that most Indians don’t like paying convenience fees because they don’t know the value of their time. Food delivery startups usually charge customers a convenience fee and people (including myself) have decided not the complete the order at the sight of that “unfair” charge. We’d rather spend 20 mins to go to the restaurant and pick it up to save a few rupees. Now given the kind of audience who uses food delivery apps, I’m pretty confident that those 20 mins of their time are worth more than the petty convenience fee. So why then are these smart people making such irrational decisions? Well to start, as a student of economics, you learn, that humans are far from rational. But in this case, the deeper problem is that these people don’t know what their time is worth!
If you’re rolling your eyes, here's one for you — what is your hourly wage? Most of you will think about this question for the first time (and maybe pay that convenience fee from now. You’re welcome Swiggy)
Kunal explains that because India skipped the manufacturing era, where everyone was paid by the hour and thus knew exactly what their time was worth, we are in this interesting situation.
No one will say time is not valuable, yet in some situations, we don’t really behave as if it were so.
Unclear Trade offs
We tend to do the same when it comes to relationships. We spend years and tons of money for business schools, we spend hours in flights and cabs to attend meetings and conferences, we’ve consumed (tens of) thousands of cups of tea and coffee catching up with people — so clearly we invest a lot towards building the relationships. But at the same time, we sometimes act as if relationships are of no value at all. We do not keep in touch with old friends or colleagues, we work extra hours rather than making it home on time, etc. And as a result, we unknowingly destroy relationships, like we destroy time. And all this stems from the simple fact that we can’t figure out the right trade-offs because we can’t quantify the value of them
So to conclude, I don’t know how valuable relationships are. Like your time, it’s different for different people but unlike money, it cannot be earned (or lost) overnight. It’s more like investments that compound over time. And because we don’t know its true value, we end up making a lot of bad and irrational trade-offs when it comes to relationships.
In case you’re wondering why the hell I am thinking about this, the reason is much less satisfying. By helping people stay connected, RolodexAI offers users immense value. To build a sustainable business, RolodexAI needs resources. Users need to make a trade-off in which they part with their resources aka money in return for the value RolodexAI creates for them. To put it simply, what is the right price for a tool like RolodexAI? Sadly, I don’t have the right answer, and hence RolodexAI free (for now)
RolodexAI a tool that helps you stay connected to friends and colleagues that you don’t meet often by automating the scheduling of virtual meetings.
