I did a triathlon this weekend, and it was awesome. I’ve found that with all of these adventure sports, there’s a great vibe and camaraderie amongst the “competitors”.

I say competitors with inverted-commas because we aren’t really competitors. It doesn’t really matter what our time is.

We aren’t professionals. This isn’t our job. There are no stakes for us. We won’t get a sponsorship deal if we climb the rankings, or lose our place in the team if we do badly.

Even if there wasn’t a race we’d still turn up, and we’d still do the thing, whatever that thing is. We do it for the experience.

And at the triathlon I did on the weekend there was prize money, which makes absolutely no sense.

At these amateur races there are no sponsors, so the prize money comes from the entrance fees i.e. there isn’t much of it – often simply a refund of your entry fee.

And since we aren’t professionals, we clearly aren’t doing it for the money.

So what would be a better experience?

I argue that instead of giving out some money, the organiser would do much better to spend an equivalent amount of money (or often less) on creating an experience.

The people who do these things are doing them because of a story they believe about themselves and what constitutes a good life.

A super cool looking little Perspex trophy that such an athlete can put on the table at home, that reminds them of the experience they had, and about the story they believe about themselves, and signals that story to the members of their tribe who come to visit will be highly prized. They’ll remember that, but they’ll never remember the money.

Or spending the money on a great photographer who takes and sends a really good photo of the winners in each category standing on the podium with their arms raised instead of just a quick, crappy cellphone snap. That photo will hang on the wall in that weekend warrior’s house forever, and they’ll love to tell the story of the photo, the experience behind, and in-so-doing, the story of who they are.

It’s so easy to turn moments like that into experiences of virtuous pride, and money simply doesn’t do that.

But you probably aren’t organising triathlons, and you probably aren’t giving out prize money. Well not exactly…

But you do have specials, and you do give discounts, and you could be using the money you’re spending on those things to create moments that your customers would value 10x as much, and that would be spoken about to everybody in their tribe.

The stories that spread are the stories that win, and customers who get a positive emotional kick from you will come back for more.