Experience By Mileage – Part II: When Years Become Repetition
In November 2017, I ended an article titled Experience By Mileage – Part I with four words:
“Part II coming soon!”
Apparently, “soon” meant almost nine years.
Maybe that is fitting.
The original article was about time, experience, and the assumption we often make that the two naturally move together. I argued then that simply spending years in a profession, business, industry, or even life itself does not automatically make us experienced.
Time gives us the opportunity to acquire experience. What we do with that opportunity is something else entirely.
Last week, an ordinary encounter over an overgrown lawn brought that thought back to me.
And perhaps finally gave me Part II.
My regular lawn contractor had missed the mowing schedule. I could not reach him, the grass in my front yard was getting noticeably high, and each time I pulled into the driveway, I became a little more irritated looking at it.
There was a young man who used to mow my lawn years ago. I later moved to another contractor who offered me a better arrangement, but I knew he still cut one of my neighbor’s lawns.
So I texted him and asked if he could cut mine that day.
His initial estimate, including an overgrowth charge, was $75. After seeing the lawn, he sent me a picture and revised the price to $85.
I thought that was too much.
I offered $50 and explained that my regular contractor had simply missed the cut, which was why I needed someone urgently.
His response was firm. I had contacted him for last-minute service, he reminded me. He did not debate or negotiate his prices. His price was $85, and if that was too much, I was free to find someone willing to do it for $50.
Fair enough.
I asked what his normal charge was. He told me regular biweekly service would be $60.
Since he was already there cutting my neighbor’s lawn, I offered to stretch to $60 for this one cut.
Again, he declined.
This time, what caught my attention was less the rejection than the tone. He told me I was “still trying to debate” his price and should find someone else.
I responded that there was no problem. Customers negotiate prices all the time, I told him.
His final response stayed with me. He said he was not one of those people who negotiate prices. He was sure I did not negotiate my mortgage or things like that. He reminded me that he ran a business, “just like insurance companies.”
And then came the sentence:
“My price is my price.”
The conversation was over.
But for me, the thinking had just begun.
This Wasn’t Really About $85
He had every right to charge $85. I had every right to decline.
The grass was overgrown. Perhaps it required more time, cleanup, or simply made the job less attractive to him. A business owner is under no obligation to accept every customer’s counteroffer.
So this is not about why he should have taken my $60.
What interested me was the thinking behind the exchange, particularly because of how emphatically he invoked the fact that he was running a business.
Because running a business is precisely why I thought there should have been more thinking, not less.
The encounter reminded me of something I wrote almost nine years ago:
The passage of time does not automatically produce experience.
Now I would add something else:
Neither does repetition.
Twenty Years of Experience, or One Year Twenty Times?
Imagine that this young man continues mowing lawns for another twenty years.
By then, he could truthfully say, “I’ve been in business for twenty years.”
But a different question would interest me more:
What has twenty years in business taught him?
There is a difference between repeatedly performing an activity and developing the judgment that should come from it.
You can mow ten thousand lawns and serve ten thousand customers. But if every encounter merely confirms what you already believe, without causing you to examine decisions, question assumptions, adjust your approach, or improve your judgment – what exactly has accumulated?
Years? Certainly.
Transactions? Absolutely.
Experience? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Some people have twenty years of experience. Others have one year of experience twenty times. Years measure duration. Experience measures learning.
That applies far beyond lawn care. Some people become markedly wiser with mileage. Others simply become older versions of the person who started the journey.
Pricing Discipline Is Not Pricing Rigidity
There is nothing inherently wrong with saying, “My price is my price.”
A business must understand its economics. There should be a point below which taking a job does not make sense. That is pricing discipline.
But pricing discipline is not necessarily pricing rigidity.
An experienced operator might have said:
“Mr. Olu, normally this would be $85 because the lawn is overgrown. Since I’m already here doing your neighbor’s lawn, I can do $70 this time.”
Or:
“I can’t do the full service for $60, but I can mow it for that and leave the edging.”
Or he might still have said no.
The point is not that a business owner must negotiate. The point is that negotiation is not synonymous with surrender.
Sometimes it means changing price, scope, or terms. Sometimes it means exploring whether there is a longer relationship behind the immediate transaction. And sometimes the correct answer is still no.
Experience is partly about knowing the difference.
“My price is my price” can be a legitimate conclusion. But ideally, it is a conclusion reached after business reasoning, not a substitute for business reasoning.
Was It an $85 Lawn, or a Former Customer?
I was not a stranger. I was a former customer.
Years earlier, another provider had offered me a better deal and won my business. Now that provider had disappointed me, and I had returned to the person I used before.
From a business perspective, that is not merely an overgrown lawn. It may also be a customer reacquisition opportunity.
He had already told me regular biweekly service was $60. Over a year, that relationship could potentially be worth well over a thousand dollars.
Would I necessarily have switched back? No. Would taking $60 that afternoon have guaranteed future business? Of course not.
But an experienced business mind at least recognizes that the economic question may be bigger than, “Can I get $85 for this cut?”
Running a business involves more than setting a price. It means recognizing when the transaction in front of you may represent something larger than today’s invoice.
Knowing your worth matters.
Knowing your market matters too.
Then the Next Day Happened
The following day, I found someone else to cut the lawn.
His price?
$50.
He did a good job.
And afterward, I voluntarily gave him more money as a tip.
I smiled when I thought about the irony.
One person was determined not to move from $85 and made zero dollars from the transaction.
Another agreed to $50, delivered the service well, and ultimately received more than the agreed price.
That does not prove that $50 was the “correct” price or that the first contractor made the wrong financial decision.
What interested me was the difference between extracting price and creating value.
A healthy business needs both discipline and value creation. You cannot build a sustainable business by constantly underpricing yourself. But neither can you build one merely by winning every argument about price.
Sometimes protecting $25 today may cost much more tomorrow.
Other times, walking away is exactly right.
Experience is what helps us tell those occasions apart.
What Actually Turns an Event Into Experience?
This is where I returned to the argument from 2017.
An event does not become experience simply because it happened to us.
If this young man left my neighborhood thinking only, “That customer tried to debate my price. I stood my ground,” perhaps nothing was learned.
But what if he later asked:
Could I have handled that differently?
Did I protect my margin, or simply lose an opportunity?
What should I repeat next time, and what should I change?
Now the encounter becomes useful.
Because reflection converts activity into learning, and applied learning converts time into experience.
And the same standard has to apply to me.
If I walked away thinking only, “That lawn guy has a terrible attitude,” then I too would have wasted the encounter.
Perhaps his price was reasonable even if I did not want to pay it. Perhaps good negotiation requires understanding the other person’s constraints. Perhaps preserving a relationship can matter even when no deal is reached.
Every encounter contains information if we are willing to examine it.
That is the part of experience we sometimes overlook.
It demands something from us.
Mileage Alone Still Doesn’t Tell the Story
In Part I, I used the analogy of two identical cars purchased on the same day.
Years later, one might have traveled almost 100,000 miles while the other had barely reached 10,000.
They were the same age.
They did not have the same mileage.
Nine years later, I think there is another layer to that analogy.
Mileage itself is not enough either.
Not all movement is progress, and not all years become experience.
A car can travel enormous distances while repeatedly circling the same track.
Human experience requires more:
Exposure. Reflection. Adaptation. Correction. Application. Judgment.
And the willingness to discover that something we were certain about five years ago—or even yesterday—may need refinement today.
Time gives us the road.
Life gives us the mileage.
But wisdom depends on what we learn along the way.
Twenty years from now, many of us will be able to say that we have spent twenty additional years in business, leadership, technology, marriage, ministry, management, entrepreneurship, or simply life.
The more important question will be:
Did those twenty years merely pass through us, or did they change us?
Because experience is not merely what happens to us.
Experience is what changes in us because of what happened.
Perhaps that is what I was trying to say when I promised Part II back in 2017.
It just took me nine years, and an overgrown lawn, to acquire the mileage to finish the thought.
— Olu Efunwoye, PhD