A common phrase I hear when travelling is people not caring about money. While usually said with good intentions, most people mean something else when they say it because they do not fully understand money. What people mean is that they do not put much value to having the brand-new phone, branded clothes, cars, they fly low budget airlines etc. Which are all good qualities in my eyes.

Where I frown a little, is that money is just an exchange token that can be exchanged for almost anything other than health and immortality. Unless a person has no desires in life, they do care about money. They might spend it wiser than others, but I assure you that if someone offered something they did desire, their human nature would take over.

In any kind of relationship, be it networking, business, or intimate, being aware of what your partner desires and what they do not value can be crucial. It allows you to assess risks, and to be strategic about what value you offer. For example, if an investor cares about publicity, then paying a freelancer to do a guest post on a popular news outlet about their investment in your business can be a cost-effective way to provide value back. Alternatively, if your relationship partner really values certain experiences, then you have to make sure that these needs are met or else when they get an offer from someone that can, all the other things that you did or did not do wouldn’t matter.

This kind of thinking may seem very transactional and of course it is never as simple as that. But the purpose of this post isn’t to make you logically calculate people’s desires. It is to show that human’s desires can be very irrational. If you can’t make a reasonable guess of true desires on a person who you heavily rely on, then either keep searching from a distance or leave it. It will save you a lot of headaches in the future.