Barter Your Way to Multidimensional Impact
[Music]
leave the campground
nicer than you found it something my dad
used to say a lot when i was growing up
the funny thing is we didn’t camp as a
family so it took me a little while to
figure out what he was getting at
it’s a pretty simple concept really try
to create a positive
impact on the world around you yet the
ways to achieve that
aren’t always simple but i will trade
you
an impactful idea for a few minutes of
your time
now by implementing barter into your
life
you can achieve multi-dimensional impact
and that’s the idea impact for you
impact for your community and impact for
the planet
so trading one thing for another in the
absence of cash
is not a new concept uh in fact we have
evidence of this going back to 6000 bc
among the ancient egyptians
but then commerce became more complex
and we developed currency
and currency allowed us to address some
of the friction points of legacy barter
but here we are 8 000 years later
and there are billions of people around
the world that don’t have easy access
to currency or banking systems
many of those people live in developing
economies
but many of them also live in developed
economies such as immigrant populations
that don’t have government
identification
so they don’t have access to banks or
credit cards
so there’s a broad swath of the
population that would benefit
from a way to acquire goods and services
without cash
but many of them are out of sight and so
they’re out of mind for
most of us but then something happened
in 2020 that changed the equation
the four horsemen of the apocalypse
galloped across the sky
leaving a swath of death and destruction
actually they were on airplanes and
there were definitely more than four of
them
the coronavirus pandemic hit and that
changed everything
we are living in a time of massive
economic upheaval
tens of millions of people are out of
work entire industries
like travel and movie theaters are
cratering
and now we are all living in the
proverbial
but for much of the world they were
already living in the and
struggling we just didn’t know it
or we didn’t pay attention to it from
foreign slums
to whatever town you’re from this is
dallas texas
where i grew up i never saw this as a
child
but it was there the whole time but we
all
know people that are going through tough
times
think of the gofundme campaigns that
you’ve seen people are having difficulty
paying for
a child’s tuition an emergency medical
procedure cash bail
now back out of that level of
difficulty and
think about things that we’re all going
through regularly
so you parents in the audience with
younger kids
think about all the times you have to
buy new clothes and sporting equipment
for your kids
seemingly as soon as you had just
purchased the last batch of stuff
now as the father of a 16 year old son
who’s grown from a zygote to over six
feet tall i can tell you drives me nuts
so you see we actually run the gamut
here from
things that are financially annoying to
ruin us
but times of economic upheaval bring
these problems
to the surface in a very aggressive way
so how to acquire goods and services
without cash some
simple examples um i’ll go hunt for food
if you guard the camp makes sense easy
transaction
everybody wins but what about bartering
at scale
well governments barter at absolutely
massive scales but we think of that
as the levers of diplomacy
businesses barter at scale there are
b2b barter exchanges around the world
that are transacting billions of dollars
in goods and services
annually an example might be an
accounting firm
trading services with a marketing firm
and the tougher times get and the more
businesses want to preserve their cash
the more activity there is on these
exchanges
so why not among consumers
is it because consumers who would need
the barter or people that
are on the fringe of society
no this might surprise you it surprised
me
in 2016 forbes published an article that
stated
63 percent of americans could not absorb
500 emergency expense without going into
debt
or taking money from some other more
important need
consider this in 2016
when things were supposedly going quite
well
two out of three americans couldn’t
absorb a 500
hit car breaks down
fridge goes on the fritz dog gets sick
and you’re in debt to cover that expense
imagine what percentage of americans
that would be today
if it was 63 percent back then i’m
pretty sure
100 of those people would barter for
goods and services
if they had an efficient way to do it
now even with that said we are still
collecting and accumulating more goods
than ever
so much so that we have celebrities like
marie condo and the minimalists
pushing us to get rid of our crap to
make our lives better
so we are basically a race of hoarders
uh and that leaves us with so much
stuff that we’re left with few choices
we can either throw it away which is bad
for our planet because we are clogging
up our landfills
we can sell it on services like ebay and
the like
or we can spend more money on our stuff
by getting it
its own little apartment with some of
its friends in the form of self storage
in fact 20 of americans pay for self
storage
we have more self storage facilities in
the united states
then we have mcdonald’s starbucks
and subway locations combined
i’m no better that’s mine now
i will say in my defense that since the
beginning of the pandemic
i’ve cleared out most of that stuff
through donating it
and bartering it for other things that i
needed more
so back to barter it is inherently
communal is there somebody in my
community
that needs this good or the service i
can provide
more than that good or that service
sitting idle
and if there is is there something i
could get in exchange
that would be a value to me well perhaps
not
if you need to pay your car bill or your
utility bill
but for so many other things in your
life the answer is a resounding yes
so why aren’t we seeing consumer barter
at scale
well it usually boils down to something
known as the mutual coincidence of wants
say i want your apple but you don’t want
my orange so there’s no trade
but what if we could connect multiple
parties in a trade
that would be interesting and it’s
actually already happening in some
pretty unique ways
for you sports fans out there how about
multi-team trades
how many times have you seen a trade
that involved multiple teams
and a bunch of players and thought to
yourself how the hell did they do that
let’s look at something a little
weightier than that
organ transplants it used to be
that if i needed a kidney and my wife
for instance wasn’t a match
i would have to go on a list to get a
kidney and i would wait on that list
until one became available that was a
match usually
because somebody else who’s a match had
died
and oftentimes my name would not go to
the top of that list in time
back in 2000 a group of economists in
new england
got together and developed the first
multi-party organ transplant marketplace
so now the way this happens is if i need
a kidney
and my wife isn’t a match she can pledge
one of her kidneys
into the marketplace and then i can
receive
a kidney from another living donor
this radically changed how we address
organ transplantation
in the united states and around the
world and in fact
saves tens of thousands of people’s
lives a year
and it all boils down to multi-party
barter dynamics
can this work on a consumer level well
let’s go back to me i want your apple
but you don’t want my orange
fair enough what if
we could find somebody that wants my
orange
and you want a lime and they happen to
have a lime
if we can connect these dots then we can
actually
conclude this transaction successfully
for all of us and that is a multi-party
trade
now if we do this we sidestep
the core friction point of barter which
is the mutual coincidence of wants
and then we can scale barter and we can
impact lives around the world
in ways large and small
it’s worth thinking that uh worth
mentioning that for consumer barter
unlike organ transplants or pro sports
the old phrase holds true one person’s
trash is another person’s treasure
so in bartering it’s not critically
important
that you are trading with other people
at exact cash value for these goods and
services
what’s most important is that there are
enough options in any marketplace
that you can find something that you
value more
than the thing you’re willing to give in
order to get it
also what’s known as perceived value
is always in flux the perceived value of
a good or service is always in flux
especially in times of economic upheaval
for instance normally we would have
thought of a lawyer’s time as being more
valuable than an amazon warehouse
workers
that’s in flux right now items such as
toilet paper
and hand sanitizer usually thought of as
low value items
are so valuable right now during a
pandemic
that people are literally fighting for
them in the isles of stores
it’s an extreme example but it’s real
now we have seen during this pandemic
that consumers are trying to barter for
goods and services
they are gravitating to barter they’re
bartering for food
ppe clothes services
sourdough starter whatever they can
barter
because cash is at a premium right now
and they’re using any platform available
to them whether it’s facebook groups or
next door neighborhoods
there’s just so much value locked up in
the stuff that we have
including all that stuff in our storage
units that’s a shame that we wait for
times like this
to actually put that stuff into motion
and push it back into our communities
where it’s more valuable now
when we look to developing economies as
we discussed earlier
we see a lack of access to currency but
we also see
great increases in the adoption of
smartphones
and internet access and when we have
tools like that in people’s hands
the options to positively impact those
lives are endless
let me give you an example of how barter
can help people in far-reaching ways
one of my partners that have need who
leads our impact operations
has 25 plus years in international
development
and humanitarian aid and she is making
sure that we can address
use cases like this
a nigerian goat farmer has a broken
water pump
a mechanic in the next village has a son
who needs shoes for school
a leather worker nearby needs more food
to feed his family
and by connecting all of these people in
a multi-party barter
we can radically impact the quality of
their lives in one transaction
and at scale consumer barter can then
become
a meaningful part of the economy so
barter can develop multi-dimensional
impact
it’s good for you whether you have more
than you need or need more than you have
barter will allow you to acquire goods
and services
using only the goods and services you
can provide
it’s good for your community and that
barter is inherently communal
it connects us and we need that sense of
connection in times like this more than
ever
and barter is good for the planet
because it keeps all of our crap out of
the landfills
and pushes it back into our communities
where it can be used again
instead of buying throwing stuff out
buying new stuff
and perpetuating the cycle so how to
start
it could be simple as a babysitting swap
with a neighbor of yours to free up a
weekend night for both of you
there are online barter groups popping
up all over the place
simple internet search will point you
any number of them
and with this much barter activity on
the rise you can be sure that there are
purpose-built platforms coming to market
i’m going to leave you with an audience
participation challenge
take one of these ideas or come up with
one of your own
and do a trade instead of paying cash
for a good or a service then
estimate how much you have saved on that
trade and hide that money away
then do another and another and after
six months
figure out how much money you saved
it just might be that five hundred
dollars you need for the next emergency
that comes your way
thank you and remember try to leave the
campground nicer than you found it
you