The gift of connection

When you're feeling lost, reach out.

You may find the missing pieces in those you're linked to, in those you've shared a bit of your life with, like a vibration echoing back to you through time but changed by the people it passed through on its way back to you.

When it returns, it may be exactly what you needed.

That missing piece may come from the most unexpected of places, but you won't find it unless you reach out, unless you turn your attention away from yourself, open up, and choose to be a little vulnerable.

Connect, with no ulterior motive.

Connect, with curiosity.

Connect, purely to seek connection, to chat, to have an informal conversation and openly exchange words without any expectation of where it will go.

Connect as if you were giving and receiving a gift.

Because that's what true connection is: a gift.

When you lose a bit of yourself, do what feels counterintuitive and give. Give the gift of connection. Connect to reconnect with yourself.

Lunar Transformation Donations

Beginning on the New Moon of December 13th, 2012 and going through until the Full Moon of December 28th, 2012, I'm donating $100 every day to a different non-profit organization whose mission contributes to the welfare of humanity and to the preservation of our planet, without which the beauty of the moon would go unwitnessed.

$1,600 Donated

Photo: Current Phase of Lunar Transformation

Lunar Transformation Donations

December 13th, 2012
$100 donated to BlinkNow.org (Kopila Valley Home and School)
"To create a self-sustainable living community for destitute children that provides their most basic needs and also contributes to post-war recovery and peace in the nation of Nepal."

December 14th, 2012
$100 donated to Charity: Water
"90% of the 30,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions are children under five years old. Many of these diseases are preventable. The WHO reports that over 3.6% of the global disease burden can be prevented simply by improving water supply, sanitation, and hygiene."

December 15th, 2012
$100 donated to Alternative House
"The mission of Alternative House is to facilitate the creation of a society in which violence against women will no longer exist."

December 16th, 2012
$100 donated to The Philippine Community Fund
"Our goal is to permanently improve the quality of life for the poorest of the poor Filipino families who deserve a better chance."

December 17th, 2012
$100 donated to Skyla Knight Benefit Fund
"Skyla was diagnoised with Stage 4 Neuroblastoma at the age of 15 months, she has been in treatments since then and she just turned 3 years old. She is now starting MIBG therapy."

December 18th, 2012
$100 donated to Adventure for Good
"Using Adventure for Good in the favelas of Brazil to build the first-ever climbing wall for a marginalized community. Youth in these underprivileged communities are faced with an array of difficulties and negative influences like drugs, violence and gang life. Climbing can offer these youth a positive alternative to their daily struggles and the construction of a modern climbing wall will provide them with this opportunity."

December 19th, 2012
$100 donated to Nepal FREED
"Make[ing] education more accessible for the children of Nepal [...], maintaining a learning environment where traditional Nepalese cultural values can flourish [... and], aid[ing] the local health post in widening the scope of its care."

December 20th, 2012
$100 donated to the Appalachian Mountain Club
"Promoting the protection, enjoyment, and understanding of the mountains, forests, waters, and trails of the Appalachian region."

December 21st, 2012
$100 donated to the The Umbrella Foundation
"Seeking to relieve the impact of poverty and war on the children of Nepal through projects which promote education, vocational training, and community enrichment, so that they may grow up to become responsible, contributing citizens of Nepal."

December 22nd, 2012
$100 donated to the The Street Culture Project
"Mentoring and supporting under-serviced youth. Using social entrepreneurialism and positive adult role models, we connect with youth to help them work through changing their lives."

December 23rd, 2012
$100 donated to the World Wildlife Fund
"building a future in which people live in harmony with nature"

December 24th, 2012
$100 donated to Anna Kham's Orphanage
"giving orphaned children a home"

December 25th, 2012
$100 donated to Pencils of Promise
"supporting a world with greater educational opportunity for all"

December 26th, 2012
$100 donated to the Tarahumara Children's Hospital Fund
"helping insure the health and well being of the Tarahumara"

December 27th, 2012
$100 donated to Food for Life
"bringing about peace and prosperity in the world through the liberal distribution of pure plant-based meals prepared with loving intention; serving more than 1.5 million plant-based meals daily"

December 28th, 2012
$100 donated to Haiti Outreach
"To collaborate with the people of Haiti to build and maintain community-initiated projects that advance their development."

Charities to Donate to in the Future
Prishan Foundation
Shark Trust
Occupy Sandy


How all of this started

My initial intention was to donate $1,000 to Maggie Doyne's Kopila Valley Home for orphaned children and Kopila Valley Primary School in Nepal. I learned about Maggie and her work more than a year ago and I've been wanting to help support what she's doing ever since.

When my friend Matt Maderio put together a fundraiser for his 25th birthday to raise $25,000 so that the Kopila Valley Primary School could purchase a school bus and shorten the multi-hour foot commute that so many students were taking to class each day, I was inspired yet again.

As I prepared to make the $1,000 donation, I unexpectedly found myself asking why I was donating to just this one organization. Why not to some other organization? I realized that it was Maggie's story that inspired me, her passion and her commitment to making a difference in the lives of others.

But Maggie's isn't the only organization that's making a big difference in the world. There are many other organizations doing good for humanity and for the planet and for causes that I'm equally as committed to helping.

So instead of just donating one large sum of money to one organization, I've decided that I will make several smaller donations to various organizations that are doing positive things and working toward causes that I believe in.

Maggie Doyne and Matt Maderio helped inspire this idea, so Maggie's orphanage and school will be the first to receive $100. I will update the list at the top of this page every day for the next sixteen days as I choose organizations and make donations. The photo of the moon will also change to reflect the current phase.

If you know a reputable non-profit organization that is doing good, please share the organization's name in the comments below.

Why am I doing this?

This is not a race. It's not a competition. I'm not looking for any attention. I'm writing about what I'm doing here so that I can share my journey, but I'm donating because I feel a planetary social responsibility.

I'm doing this because I want to give back and because I recognize that I will always have more than I need, because no matter how much I give today there will always be more waiting for me somewhere down the road.

Everything you give without expectation the universe returns to you without hesitation.

The intention behind the donation is what matters, not how much is being given. It's the act of giving without the expectation of reward that's important. Any amount is worth giving when it's given without strings attached.

I'm not rich, but I am privileged.

As of this writing, I have a $960 US dollars in my bank account. I have about twice that in savings. I'm not rich by American standards. In fact, I'm poor by American standards. But I don't feel poor. I feel privileged.

I am lucky. I am a privileged member of Earth's society, a member of the top fifteen-percent of humans who can afford to eat three meals a day. I feel a sense of responsibility to contribute to the welfare of our human family and the preservation of our home.

Photo: Fulfillment, Consumption, Enough

Why the lunar transformation?

This was all very spontaneous. It happened over the course of a few minutes. I went from being prepared to make a $1,000 donation to a single organization to deciding that I was going to make several smaller donations spread out over several days.

When I looked at my calendar and noticed that it was a New Moon, I thought that making a donation for each day of the moon's transformation into a Full Moon would be a fun way of doing it.


Photo: Lunar PhasesMoon photos by lrargerich

Permission Pricing for Digital Work

“Know your value,” everyone told me, “don’t undervalue yourself.” I was creating my first digital product and I began hesitating when it came time to choose a price. But the advice I received from friends led me to realize there was more to my hesitation: something was amiss with the status quo.

Using my perception of value to control the pricing process just felt wrong.

What good was 'knowing my value' if my audience perceived the value of my work differently? If I thought my work was worth X but you felt my work was worth Y, then how could I create an offer that made sense for the both of us?

'Knowing your value', I realized, is a broken method for pricing digital goods. The intangible nature of digital work makes it easy to impose prices based on the creators' perception of value, but that's an outdated system that ignores the Internet's potential to create global equality.

Rather than arbitrarily choosing a price, I put together a survey describing the offer that I was creating and asked everyone on my email list to share their opinion. Who better to ask about the value of my work than those who had given me permission to send it to them?

I included in the survey a range of subscription options (based on what I would personally pay) and then asked everyone to share what resonated with them. Here were the results:

Reader Pricing Survey Results

Using these results, I then calculated an average price and used that to set the monthly subscription for my Journal, which I'm quietly launching with the publication of this essay.

Will this average price make sense for everyone? No, probably not -- the price will be too high for some, and too low for others. But will the price be fair? Yes.

In allowing your collective voice to set the price, I'm able to guarantee that your opinion overrides my own, even if that means using a higher price than I'm comfortable with (I was in fact going to use a lower price before I conducted the survey).

Asking permission before pricing my work gave you, my audience, a platform to participate in the pricing process and ensured that your opinion played an vital role in the valuation of my work.

What is Permission Pricing?

Permission pricing uses the privilege of an audience to understand what that audience would pay for our work. It recognizes that equality cannot be achieved through imposing our individual sense of value on others, and it uses the power of gift-giving to create a sustainable mechanism for increasing both awareness and perception of value.

There's a good chance you're already familiar with permission pricing: When you ask a friend how much he'll give you for something that you want to sell, you're employing permission pricing. You're offering your respect by understanding the other persons' perception of value and then doing business accordingly.

A similar concept you may be familiar with is that of permission marketing, which recognizes that treating people with respect and getting their permission before marketing to them is the best way to earn their trust and attention.

But if we build an audience with permission marketing and then turn around and sell to them without employing 'permission pricing', we're effectively communicating that we will do business, but only with those who agree with our perception of value.

That method of pricing degrades the trust we build through permission marketing. It's like asking for permission to speak with someone and then ignoring them when they give it to us.

Not everyone in our audience will want to buy from us and that's OK. Some people only come for our gifts and they will stay for our gifts as long as they remain genuine.

Using gift-giving, we can increase the perceived value of our work while also increasing the awareness around it. This method isn't as lucrative as imposing our own prices, but it is a method based on equality and it ensures a truer valuation of our work.

Using Gift-Giving to Increase Awareness and Perception of Value

Gift-giving is the act of offering something of real value without strings attached. The more true gifts we give away, the greater the number of people we will attract who will appreciate the value of our work.

When we attract people who appreciate the value of our work, they will talk to others about the gifts we're giving and upon receiving those gifts, they will want to give something back. This simultaneously increases the awareness around our work and adds to our perceived value.

There's one reason this works: Everyone who receives a true gift wants to give something back.

But the key here is to give away true gifts. What's a 'true gift'? True gifts are just as valuable -- if not more valuable -- than the products we sell.

An easy way to tell if we're giving away true gifts is to consider our free work. Could we sell it? If not, then there's a good chance it's not a true gift. It's probably wrapping paper, a cheap attention-getter that serves no purpose but to increase the statistical probability that we'll make a sale or attract more traffic.

If the gifts we're giving are nothing more than wrapping paper, our audience will eventually notice and we'll lose their trust. We want to be giving away true gifts, not bogus gifts. True gifts get people talking to other people about the quality and remarkableness of our work and they add to the perception of our value.

The Industrial Death of Permission Pricing

The concept of permission pricing certainly isn't new. In fact, it was once far more common than it is today. Its unfortunate absence in business can be attributed to the factory-based methods of the industrial revolution and the culture that has emerged from it.

As products became cheaper to manufacture and the cost of production dropped dramatically, the need to involve customers in the business process dried up. Instead of using human relationships to create a shared understanding of value, businesses began imposing and adjusting prices based entirely on earnings.

Products were now made in factories -- not entirely by humans -- and the human element quickly disappeared from business. Everything became about the numbers. Doing business wasn't about providing quality and value or developing relationships with people. It was about production and sales and making money.

If sales were low, business owners dropped prices (or ran a 'sale') to increase the numbers. If sale-volumes were high, they produced a new product (or simply renamed an existing one) to keep people interested while they experimented with raising prices until sales slowed again.

With the digital revolution, it became easier than ever for this culture to change. With digital products that could self-replicate and technology that allowed for connecting directly with customers, businesses had an opportunity to create and price products based on the shared collective.

Unfortunately the old methods of doing business were too entrenched. Now customers were literally just a number on the screen, a traffic statistic or a conversion rate in a report.

If nobody was buying a digital product at whatever price was set, all they needed was more traffic; all they needed was more numbers. Even if the product had almost no value, the human element of curiosity combined with the unfortunate ignorance that accompanies any big transition, statistically guaranteed that sales would eventually come.

But all hope wasn't lost.

A Digital Rebirth of Human-based Transactions

There were a few business leaders who recognized the importance of customer involvement and used the Internet to create popular companies: eBay created a platform that allowed people to voice their opinion by placing a bid on products. Amazon employed mechanisms that allowed people to share their opinion through product reviews.

CraigsList circumvented the equalizing nature of the Internet by creating a platform that allowed buyers and sellers to connect offline, thereby using their geographic location to build trust and a create sense of equality.

In a world where the human element of business had been corrupted with greed, deception, and a relentless desire to make more money, these businesses made people feel human again. They gave people a voice and generated a sense of equality, empowering people and giving them respect.

The true potential of the Internet lies in its ability to create equality and facilitate human-based transactions. Thankfully, we're already beginning to see a shift in business towards utilizing this potential, despite its absence in the prevailing culture.

Market trends like nichification refocus businesses on people. Instead of pumping out products and hoping that someone buys them, businesses are now learning to understand what their audience wants and then delivering value directly to them.

The opportunity to capitalize on the humanizing nature of the Internet is huge and the people at the forefront of this movement are the individuals who seek to involve their audiences in the decision-making process. They are the ones who continue to experiment and push the edges of what it means to do business.

This is Our Digital Revolution

To step towards a sustainable future, our archaic methods of doing business need to evolve. We need to recognize the significance of this digital revolution -- our revolution -- and work towards creating a culture of equality where the work we do matters.

"It's hard when your mother-in-law doesn't buy into what you're doing and it's hard when the economy is going through a transition, to understand this - but this is our revolution.

This is the industrial revolution of our time; we are living through the death of the factory, and it is being replaced by something else. And the people who are on the cutting edge of that are the people who are inventing the next thing and talking about it with clarity.

So when this revolution slows down, we're going to look back and we're going to say, 'so, what did you do?'. And I guess what I would say to the listener is, 'do something that matters'.

This is too important for you to do some little scam, or some little affiliate deal, or some little way to make money tomorrow.

This is the time to do work that matters, to do something bigger than you think you're capable of, and do it in a way that makes a difference." - Seth Godin

The way we choose to do business today will influence the way business is done for generations to come. We need to embrace the fact that we're now living and working in a global society. When it comes to things like pricing our work, we need to recognize that it's no longer just about us, it's about our readers and our customers.

When we price our digital work, we don't need to impose our perception of value and expect other people to agree; there are better ways of approaching pricing. Ask your audience what they will pay. Ask them for their opinion and seek to understand their perspective. Converse. Listen. Ask permission.