Which would YOU rather have…
The Golden Eggs? Or the goose that lays them?Let’s recap Aesop’s famous fable… and put in contemporary small business terms. (Network marketers and party plan sellers are all small business owners, regardless of the size of the companies they represent.)
A farmer had several geese that laid eggs regularly. Nothing special about that. But one day, when he went out to gather the eggs, he noticed that one of the geese had laid an egg that was pure gold!
Scarcely able to believe his eyes, he hurried into the farm house to show his wife. She, too, was impressed by this extraordinary feat. Thanks to the egg — and the goose that laid it — they were able to pay their phone and power bills on time that month. Awesome.
Next morning, he snuck out early to see if his luck was holding. Lo and behold, it was! There, gleaming in the dawn light, was another solid gold egg! He was ecstatic.
This continued on, month after month.
Then, one day, the farmer’s son — an economics and business major at a prestigious university — arrived home for the summer vacation. The first thing he did (after giving all his washing to his mother) was to ask his father where all the extra money he’d been gratefully receiving had come from. (Like all undergraduates, of course, he was extremely busy. Far too busy to write home occasionally.)
His father, chest puffed out proudly, led him out to the farmyard.
There, inside an electrified fence, with armed security guards and video cameras, stood a magnificent miniature palace — almost as impressive as the one now occupied by the farmer and his wife.
The farmer explained his good fortune to his son, and his hopes that his good fortune would continue well into the future.
The son thought deeply for a time then took his father aside for a serious discussion.
“Father” said the son, seriously, “you know that I’m an economics and business major at a prestigious university. There are some things you should understand and act upon, because life is fickle and luck can change on a whim of the fates.”
The farmer listened carefully, with growing alarm. After all, he had scrimped and saved for many years to pay his son’s tuition and keep, and he had great faith in his son.“First of all,” said the young man, “it’s a biological fact that every egg that goose will ever lay is already contained inside the goose.”
The farmer nodded, impressed by this hithertofore unknown fact.
“Rather than delay the delivery of those eggs and run the risk that the goose may die, or be stolen, or that the price of gold may fall, or inflation nibble away at its value year after year, my strong recommendation is that you should chop off the goose’s head and extract all the eggs immediately. Then you can invest the gold at a handsome rate of interest that will increase its value from year to year, especially with the effects of compound interest.”
Astonished, the farmer thought deeply.
“My son” he said to himself “is a smart fellow — an economics and business major. He knows about these things. After all, he has studied all about them for years at one of our nation’s finest universities, under some of the most famous theoreticians and academics in the land.”
Finally, he decided to do as his son suggested.
Heavy of heart, he took his axe and his beloved goose and separated its head from its body. Subduing his emotions, he fixed his thoughts on the treasure trove of golden eggs he was about to retrieve from its innards.
His joy, suffice to say, was less than consuming when he discovered the truth.
And, to this day, he has enjoyed not one solitary golden egg.
* * * * *
The moral to this sorry tale is simple enough. The hapless, ill-advised farmer terminated the relationship that produced the desired result. In his ignorance, laziness, fear-of-loss, stupidity and greed, he focused on the result at the expense of the relationship that created it.
Too late, he had learned the simple truth that, when we put the result ahead of the relationship that produces it in our priorities, we put the cart before the horse — then wonder why we go out backwards!
In small business, we have a HUGE competitive advantage over BIG Business. We have the GOOSE. They merely have some golden eggs. If we can but nurture the goose, it will begin to lay golden eggs endlessly for us, whilstever we focus on its needs and wants, not the eggs. By its very nature, BIG Business can never, ever, enjoy such an advantage.
That Goose is the personal relationships we have with our customers — something that’s utterly impossible in BIG Business, where customers deal only with employees, not the owners. And the two most urgent priorities of those employees are, first, their next pay packet and, second, their job security. Customers are bothersome pests who interrupt the peace and serenity of the em,ployees’ fiefdoms or distract them from their extended social lives.
For some inexplicable reason, it never seems to occur to most employees that there’s a direct, cause-and-effect connection between the customer, their pay packets and their job security.
The best BIG business can do is to attempt to synthesize what small business has in real life, flesh and blood, using data processing and communications technology. But it’s only ever a pale imitation. (If you receive a sales letter from your bank, insurance company or some other BIG business, despite the fact that it spells your name correctly at least six times in the text, do you honestly believe that anyone in that business even knows you exist, let alone cares about you?)
Too often, in our rush to imitate BIG Business, we make the same mistake of beheading the goose to get at the golden eggs, only to lose the lot.
Or, as perhaps occurs more frequently, we don’t take such obviously destructive, self-defeating action. Instead, we either poison the goose, little by little, or we run a blunt hacksaw blade across its throat each time we come face to face with it.
Either way, the outcome’s the same — just delayed.
Don’t ever forfeit your greatest competitive advantage — your personal relationships with your customers, your internal and your external people — in the terminally stupid quest to imitate the sterile, relationship-deprived void that is BIG Business.
To do so is a commercial deathwish for your business. It WILL come true.Value relationships for themselves, not just for the results they can produce. Then you’ll be astounded by the results that will flow to you in response to your integrity and selflessness.
Rare qualities in the 21st century — but priceless.
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