Why bartering is bad

Especially for startups, service bartering is tempting. Bartering services defeats the purpose of entrepreneurship. Sure, you have revenue goals and a mission to accomplish. Your revenue serves as funding to manifest your mission, your dreams and the freedom you desire.

Money is an effect of the actions you take as an entrepreneur. Bartering puts the kibosh on that idea, which leads us to the second point…. Bartering is seductive because it seems flattering.

After all, someone needs your services. And those services are worth every penny. And, throughout the process, you're traveling from place to place and lugging heavy tables. This takes energy that you can be using more efficiently to make more tables. After all this hassle, you may be ready to quit the whole table business and instead fulfill your dreams of becoming a wine merchant. Let's take another hypothetical situation: What happens when you want something small, like some tomatoes , and the tomato vendor asks you for a table in return?

You'd probably argue that a table is worth a lot more than a few tomatoes. Unfortunately, the vendor can't do much with a single table leg, and you don't want hundreds of tomatoes that will spoil before you can eat them all. When you just have a few very valuable items, you'll have trouble making exchanges for several less valuable ones.

Or, if you trade perishable goods, time becomes more of a factor -- you must trade them quickly or watch your assets rot into worthlessness. Because of this, you might be pressured into taking unfair deals. Another problem barterers run into is deciding on an equal trade. You've probably heard the expression, "It's like comparing apples to oranges.

It helps to have a plan in place for this and to have some safeguards against overextending your services beyond what you can support. So the big question is: When is it okay to barter your services, and when should you pass on any trade offers? This is a really bad idea. Bartering should never be done solely on the basis of your budget or on an emergency ad hoc basis. It makes better business sense to barter for essential business services rather than to barter for services that are luxuries or that are primarily personal expenses.

That certainly would be a bad thing. But should you barter your dog grooming services right now? Bartering services is best reserved for when you were going to make a purchase anyway.

So instead of bartering your dog grooming services for an emergency plumber, you could establish an agreement with your shampoo supplier. They're all about transparency: shoppers can see where their produce has come from, how much of the price goes to the producer, the store costs, staff wages and profit. Open weekdays and Saturday 8.

A growing political silence around the environment, from the jettisoning of green policies to the watering-down of climate targets. But business leaders and other opinion formers are determined to make a noise about it.

Is bartering better? I'd like to distance myself from the conventional financial system and get by with less. Is it worth bartering my way through life? Reuse this content.