 This is a, I'm enjoying this line of questioning, but there's another thing that's popped up for me, which is I'd love to get your thoughts on. So one of the things I do is I train entrepreneurs. And as I've been reading your work and thinking more about what the gifting economy means and like, are there business models that I've never thought of that could be just as effective? Do you have any advice for ways to think about doing business as entrepreneurs that are, you know, examples of the story of interbeingness more than the story of separation? Yeah, you know, I've actually, I've been contemplating writing an article on this business and the gift. Cause it actually is a viable business model. I use that business model. Like I have a sub-stack and you know, a lot of people on sub-stack, not everybody cause a lot of people get this actually, but a lot of people, like the classic business model is you put some stuff on for free and then other stuff behind a paywall. And the idea is if you want, you know, this good stuff, well, I'm going to keep it unless you pay me for it. Like that, it's kind of an adversarial relationship. And I don't do that. I just put it all on for free. And I say, if you would like to support me, then, you know, get a paid subscription or donate it on my website. But I don't compel people to do that. I trust what I have noticed in myself, which is if somebody gives me a gift, I want to give them something in return. Like I subscribed to some very popular people on sub-stack like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Tatey, they've got tens of thousands of paid subscribers or more. They don't need my money, but I want to give them money. Like when Radiohead released an album like this, I think it was in Rainbows or whatever, back in 2007, they were like, okay, you know, all this electronic music downloads, we're just going to put it out there for voluntary payment. Yeah. And it's not like Radiohead needed the money, but I'm like, yeah, I want to give you guys some money because this album rocks, you know? This is great. So I've noticed this in myself. Like I want to give to those who have blessed me. So I do this for online courses. In fact, there's an online course that I have called Living in the Gift that goes really deep into, because there's so much psychology and so much wounding comes up when you try to offer things by gift and then people take advantage of you, you know? And then you realize, oh, maybe I wasn't fully in generosity and trust to begin with. So there's like, it's a whole journey. And so that's why when people try it, sometimes it doesn't work because maybe they're still putting some manipulative energy into the ask. So what I'm saying is that, yes, it is a viable business model, but it's not trivial. And it can work for content creators of all kinds, musicians, it can work for software, it can work for film, it can work for pretty much any digital product. Non-digital products, that's a bit more complicated because the cost of production is non-zero. For me, like the cost of producing the first copy of an essay, I mean, that's days or even weeks of labor. The second copy costs me nothing. And the third copy, the marginal cost of production is zero. Therefore, there's no natural price point. And the only reason that people can charge for such things is that they maintain artificial scarcity. Digital rights management, copyright, you know, paywalls, artificial scarcity. And like, there's no scarcity in the world already. Why create more of it? So I really think that this is the business model of the future. Was there anything you didn't expect when you first implemented that? Anything you were surprised by? You know, I didn't enter into it with full consciousness. So pretty much everything that has happened has been, if not a surprise, like a discovery. You know, it started when I wrote the Ascent of Humanity and I was just putting it online as I wrote it, you know, and then revising it and putting it online. And finally, it was ready to publish as a book. And this website that I had built myself, you know, from, this was back in the early 2000s, you know, from like, you know, from like the style sheet on up, I just built it myself. I'm like, oh man, now I gotta take it down, you know? Cause otherwise, no one will buy the book. I'm like, no, I just, I don't care. It's too beautiful and I don't want to make people pay. And besides, I don't really believe in intellectual property to begin with. Like that's another thing. Anyway, so I put it online. I kept it online, you know? And like maybe people will buy the book anyway. And that's kind of what led me to do more and more things in that way. And part of it also was, I'm putting this out for people to read, not to like make it hard for them to access it. I want them to read it and it's sacred to me. And where did it even come from? Where do these ideas come from? Did I actually make them or did I receive them? They're part of a cultural and intellectual context. They come from many, many conversations and many, many books. And from my own capacity to think, which was given to me by my mother, by my father, by the world that made air and water and sunshine. Like in a certain sense, my life itself is a gift. My ability to do work is a gift. My ability to think, my ability to write. Like everything that went into my creation came from somewhere else. So it is by nature a gift. And so that's another reason why I want to maintain it as a gift and a trust that the return gift will come. And it has, yeah. It's a viable business model. Yeah, thank you for sharing. I find myself, I want to move in that direction and I on some level intellectually understand the reciprocity of all things. And I have a great ability to charge a nice fee for my coaching and that's like such a juicy thing also. Yeah, I'm not saying like that you shouldn't do that. Yeah. It's again, like trusting what really feels right. Like there's a lot of good reasons to charge money. It making a payment is a kind of an initiation. Yes. It's an entry ritual. It signals to the unconscious that I'm doing this for real. So it could very well be that if you didn't charge people wouldn't take your coaching seriously. Yeah, well I didn't pay for, I can just take it or leave it and maybe I'll come late to my session, I'm not gonna do the homework, but if they're making a payment they're affirming to their unconscious mind that this is important. I hold this valuable. So definitely like the reason to do gift economics isn't so that you qualify as a good and virtuous person. Yeah, I think where I'm coming from is something I hear a lot in the coaching industry of like, it's coaching is great for people that have the resources to pay for it. And I find myself wanting to supply it to people that don't have the money at the time in a lot of senses. And maybe you do that sometimes too. Yeah. Yeah.