Why I Stopped Charging and Invoicing Clients
Receive Abundantly More by Offering Your Work for FREE in the Gift Economy
I am not a commodity to be traded on an open market.
I am a gift.
And it’s about time I come to grips with the full scope of who I am, the strengths I possess and the spark that I bring to the world.
I hope I can inspire you to do the same, because I believe the same truths about every one of you.
You are beautiful.
Despite what feedback you’ve received from the world.
Some of you have been told…
- You are worthy of a minimum wage job.
- You are worthy of being laid off.
- You are worthy of having to work 80 hours, multiple jobs to make ends meet.
- You are worthy of living off government dependence.
- You are worthy of a struggle to earn income with your small business.
- You are worthy of stress and a difficult life of survival.
In fact, what the world is really trying to tell you is that…
You are not worthy.
You are not worthy.
You are not worthy.
You are not valuable.
You are not beautiful.
You are not a gift.
Today, my entire purpose is to tell you that what you’ve been told, or have been feeling about yourself, is wrong. In fact, all of this nonsense about lack of worth, unworthiness, is a lie.
And if you are working a minimum wage job (or low wages for that matter), or you were laid off, or you are working multiple jobs and long hours, or you are dependent on government assistance, or you are just struggling to get your business cash-flow stable, there is nothing wrong with you. None of this changes the gift that you are.
How do we end the cycle of struggle?
How can we start valuing every life on this planet as a gift?
How can we draw out and activate the gifts within ourselves?
How can we ensure that every single life is getting its needs met?
The answers begin with a shift. Let’s call this shift abundance.
Letting Go and Falling Into Abundance
Leaps of faith are not foreign to me. As an entrepreneur I know you’ve experienced them or at least dreamt about them too.
In the past, my leaps of faith were all about trusting myself. Leaning into what I believed I could do or accomplish.
Those leaps are important. They strengthen us. They mold us. Often, they transform us, especially when we fall flat on our faces, and are forced to look at the world and ourselves differently with new perspective and life experience.
There is another type of leap though that is even scarier… but more exciting at the same time.
It’s a leap into the great spirit of the universe, where we can humbly say that it is not our own power by which we fly, but through the enormously greater power of something beyond ourselves.
Can we trust that this greater energy force, comprised of all of the interconnected beautiful life, motion, quanta, and all that is, will be there to not only catch us, but propel us into flight?
Check out these definitions for the word abundance:
large amount: a more than plentiful quantity of something
affluence: a lifestyle with more than adequate material provisions
fullness: a fullness of spirit that overflows
What is our greatest fear about ourselves?
That we are not enough. Right? We are not enough.
- We are not strong enough.
- We are not beautiful enough.
- We are not worthy enough.
- We are not valuable enough.
- We are not enough.
Resistance meets us in this place, and will drive it like a nail into our coffins.
One of the most powerful lessons I’ve learned has been that whatever resistance is selling me, the truth exists in the opposite. The truth is walking through resistance into acceptance of the reality of what we are, and what is right in front of us.
- We are enough.
- We are abundantly strong.
- We are abundantly beautiful
- We are abundantly worthy.
- We are abundantly valuable.
- We are abundant.
So the leap of faith I am describing is letting go of the lies about ourselves not being enough, and entering into the truth that we are an abundantly gifted life force, that inhabits an abundant and plentiful universe. This leap requires a shift in mindset and a shift in how we live and love moment to moment.
How to Price and Value Your Gift
When we operate, live and love out of this place of abundance and beauty, but yet live in a broken world that quite frankly, was built on the backs of slavery. (and please don’t misunderstand me — I don’t mean to diminish the atrocities of horrific slavery that exists in the world, or has existed in the past) There is an element of master and slave principles at work within any kind of hierarchical structure where not every voice is heard, and not every life is valued equally. This is where our current economic system is rooted.
An obvious example of this at work in the economic system we live in today is the CEO earning 100x (sometimes more) than the employee in “common labor” force earning minimum wage. Why is it OK for one person to live in extravagant luxury, while another worries about whether he has enough fuel in the car to get to work, or enough food in the house to pack a lunch, or can’t stop thinking about how he will respond to the bank’s notices about impending foreclosure? We can justify and explain this away any way our minds will allow us to be comfortable with, but the harsh reality is that this is an injustice, and is not a naturally easy pill to swallow.
We are all beautiful and gifted people.
When we come to grips with the fact that the universe has enough to abundantly supply every life with basic needs, and even fulfill many desires within each of us, then we can only be left with one question…
WHY? Why are so many basic needs going unmet?
I, for one, reject this story. It’s not OK.
Which brings me to my own personal commitments…
- I vow to look at every life in this universe as beautiful and gifted.
- I vow to look at every life in this universe as valuable and worthy of having their needs met.
- I vow to do everything in my power to use my gifts, strengths, skills and talents to serve the needs of others.
- I vow to love my neighbor as myself.
- I vow to be a voice against power, greed, control, bullying and slavery.
As I look over my personal commitments, and evaluate my gifts as an entrepreneur, activator, and incubator, there is really only one appropriate response.
I will no longer view my life’s work as a transaction and commodity. Attaching an American dollar cash value to my gift cheapens it, and entangles it with the structures and systems that discourage trust, relationship, openness, community, vulnerability, and love.
I have no choice but to see it and value it as what it really is… a gift.
It didn’t come from me.
It came from something greater than me… something beyond myself.
And so I let go.
My gift is yours.
My gift is free.
Getting Our Needs Met
Can you trust?
Do you trust?
Will you trust?
Those are the questions that make this leap the scariest… and the most exciting.
What if there’s nothing to catch me?
What if there IS?
If there is, then we are truly entering into an age of consciousness and connectedness that will quite literally change the world. This movement of love and concern for each other, an outpouring of gifts, and the intention of looking beyond our own needs and into the unmet needs of the universe is profound.
My family and I enter into this with the full intention and expectation that our needs will be met.
We believe with everything that we are that we’ve been carried, held up, and propelled into flight, and we have no reason to believe that this spiritual force intends to let us go now.
So, how exactly does this work? How will our needs be met without charging money or invoicing for the work that I do?
Gift Economy or gift offering business models are 100% sustainable through an exchange of gifts. When you receive an incredible gift from someone, and see the love they poured into it, you feel an onrush of appreciation, gratitude and thanks, and then what? You want to reciprocate and give back, right?
While the gift giver gave out of love from their heart, and had no specific expectations of receiving anything in return, you feel compelled and moved to also give. Love and gift giving are viral in nature, and there’s nothing weird about that at all. It’s a deep part of who we are, and its unfortunate that we’ve spent decades, centuries even suppressing an expression of love through gifts in our work and businesses.
What’s really interesting and special about a gift offering based posture, is that now you’ve given people an opportunity to give back to you from a place of generosity and abundance.
Your posture in the relationship is very different than the traditional invoicing for product or service where everything is contractual and expectations are set in stone. By offering your product or service in gift posture, now you open yourself up to potentially receive above and beyond, if the recipient of your gift is feeling especially generous. And in some cases, when the recipient of your gift does not have cash to gift back, they may choose to gift you through their own art, work, or passions that might serve one of your needs without having to involve currency.
Maybe This Will Convince You
Not convinced that the “gift economy” is right for you?
I understand. The principles and ideas at work here take time to process, marinade, and sometimes require special, rare ingredients of circumstance, life experience, and spiritual activity before it all makes sense. My story is not your story, and we all have different paths and journeys that bring us to different forks in the road at different times of our lives.
Now that the seed has been planted, however, your awareness has been raised, and as stories, ideas, cases and people pop up into your life, you might just be surprised at the level of “pull” you may experience.
I’ll admit, a year ago, when I met my friend Ron Czecholinski, I was highly skeptical about his “radical thoughts” that I wrote off as impractical. This continual push toward a “more beautiful world” (via Charles Eisenstein), a new economy and a new story just seemed so lofty and so unattainable.
Then I remembered my own words, and the words of those that inspired me to write “The TRIBE Builder’s Manifesto”. Every movement begins with ONE…
ONE Idea…
ONE Leader…
ONE Community.
ONE represents possibility… hope… and a call to action. Who am I to not respond to the greater call being placed on my heart? Who am I to be selfish enough to ignore the needs?
So, I put these “unattainable” and “lofty” ideas into action.
I sought out stories of real people making gift offering businesses work… right now, in our economy in 2014.
I met a new friend, Adrian Hoppel, a web designer in Philadelphia who is seeing a 20x increase in new business leads since converting his business to a gift offering. Adrian’s also reported higher earnings, and higher earnings per “client” than he did prior to the switch.
I began great conversations with Tom Morkes who’s most recent work was dedicated to developing a book and course on “Pay What You Want Pricing” (PWYW) business models. Tom is uncovering and reporting on many successful case studies of gift economy and PWYW pricing implementations, with an average increase in earnings across the board between 20%-60%!
I read the incredibly gifted work of Charles Eisenstein and learned so much about what Sacred Economics looks like and what possibilities and hope we truly hold for a “more beautiful world” in our generation.
I started recognizing shifts within household brand corporations like Zappos (shift to holocracy organizational structure) and Panera Bread (experimenting with Pay What You Want pricing), and have seen massive strides toward their valuing every person as a gift.
My path continues to intersect with more and more people who are either currently having tremendous success in gift economy business models, or are highly interested in the conversation and learning how to do this for themselves.
Who wouldn’t want to live out of purpose and activate their gifts?
Who wouldn’t want the world to recognize them for the value and beauty that is seemingly trapped within?
I’ll conclude by inviting you to simply open your heart to new possibilities… new hope… for a new story.
You are enough.
You are beautiful.
You are a gift.
The world is ready for you to begin offering it as such.
If you know someone in your life that could use some encouragement in the gift that they are, would you take a moment to share this article with them?
This movement is spreading like wildfire, and we need people like you to keep it alive by spreading the message of hope.
Next month, a cooperative team that I am proud to be a part of will be launching the world’s first business incubator that intends to provide coaching, support, mastermind groups, workshops, and resources for people ready to launch heart-centered, gift based businesses that are open to possibilities for collaborative enterprise and new economy. You can learn more about The Flight Formula business incubator at http://www.tribe.ly.
My Name is Jason Spencer
and I believe in the gift that we are.
Jason lives with his fiance’ Julie, and two kids, Jordan and Jorianna in the mountains of Asheville, NC. To find out more about Jason’s Internet Marketing (Web Design, SEO, and more) gift offerings, you can visit http://jasonspencer.vision. He also blogs about a new entrepreneurial movement, TRIBALPRENEURSHIP, that includes heart centered business, gift economy, and collaborative enterprise at http://www.tribe.ly
