Recently I gave a business coaching session to a young lady who is about to start her own business as a foot reflexologist. She is so excited to start her own business. As a single mother she has trouble with some entrepreneurial issues.
Some issues can be considered challenges and some issues are a subject to someone else's talent. After a moment of filtering the administration of her company was definitely someone else's talent. Still there was some tension. 'It sounds really great, but I do not have the money to pay that yet in the beginning.' I explained to her that the first thing she needed to find out was her budget and who would be fit to do her administration according to her budget. Doing the simple administrative things saves time and therefore the costs for having someone take care of your administration.
The tension seemed less, but still she feared that being a single mother she would not always have a budget for administrative assistance. We moved from someone else's talent to her challenge: becoming money mature. It's not about the amount of money you have, it is about budgeting. After some exercises she realized how easy it is to always save some money, even it was just 5 euro's.
But still her fear for having less financial means seemed to block her from discovering someone else's talent. Should there be no or less financial means, there is always the option to exchange the value of your service or product by means of a gift coupon. The accomplishment of the other will be exchanged against your product or service. But the exchange needs to be realistic. Once a photographer exchanged a photo reportage against a massage. Ofcourse the exchange cannot quite be considered equal in Euro's, but like she mentioned herself: 'The massage was definitely worth the photo reportage.' No doubt, the masseur has got himself a new ambassador.
Our future foot reflexologist realized that this exchange, common known as bartering, could be the solution in case of emergency and also realized the added value in this: the exchanged value is not per se money, but passing on the experience of quality.