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The art of building fair exchange: a lesson for life and business

13680787_846307968837648_7116545828082400886_n Getting OR Giving? In business as in life, the most solid relationships are built on a mutual exchange that has to be fair, as Impact Hub Belgrade Co-Founder Gaia Montelatici explains.

 

The conversations with some of our members in the past few weeks reiterated the very mission of Impact Hub Belgrade. In a situation where more traditional business demonstrate their flaws and unsustainable “extracting” models and economies are stagnant, we want to change relations and ways of doing business. The aim is to encourage more people to tap into their passion and find meaning in their lives through entrepreneurship.
The whole idea has been to do this with members at Impact Hub Belgrade that we admire and getting to know our members hubbers makes me develop an even bigger appreciation for them and their work! Yes, I admire them and this makes me feel very lucky because it means that I am actually doing what I have been intending to do.

This brings me back to reflect on a simple but crucial idea: the trust we build is what makes us grow personally and professionally.

 

And I had a déjà-vu as I was thinking and writing about this, when I read Fabio’s (and your ears keep ringing, from last week’s blog post Crossroads: what do Entrepreneurship and Rock have in common) article on “Building your Tribe”, published on his website Life in Music.It is exactly what Fabio describes through the experience of the artist Amanda Palmer that best explains why I feel so happy in the interactions I just described above.

Life and business are about relationships based on fair exchanges.

 

And fair exchanges require genuine trust, recognition and appreciation of what we are offering and receiving from each other.
This concept is called in many ways and Amanda’s “pay what you want for my digital music is very much like what in Impact Hub Belgrade we call “Fair Pay”.And Brett Scott like Amanda encourages piratery and says “those of you who are short on cash to download the pirate version” of his book “The Heretic’ s Guide to Global Finance — hacking the future of money” but still have the responsibility to donate as little as the can and/or share the link with at least three other readers in the same situation.

The author Brett Scott shares a pirated version of his book
So, instead of blabbering further, this time I will let you enjoy Fabio’s blog post and Amanda’s TED talk — The art of asking.

These are the concepts I particularly enjoyed:
“Couchsurf and crowdsurf– they are the same thing: you are falling into the audience and you are trusting each other…”
“I become the hat [the one used for collecting money offers] — but I have to physically stand there and take the help from the people”
“Through the very act of asking people, I connected with them and when you connect with people, people want to help you”

What are the concepts that you found more interesting? What are your thoughts on this matter?

This content has been created by Gaia Montelatici, for Impact Hub Belgrade.

 

 

Published in PYLE NEWS