FEEquillibrium
FEEquillibrium
How I Approach Fees, Value and Fair Exchange
How I Approach Fees, Value and Fair Exchange
When somebody asks me, “What is your fee?” my answer is sometimes a little more complicated than a number followed by a currency symbol.
That is because, whenever possible, I work according to a principle I call FEEquillibrium.
The idea begins with FEE: Fair Energetic Exchange.
I first encountered the term through my friend, educator and author Lee Harrington, sometime around 2018–2019. In his book Presenting Your Passions, Lee explains that he was himself introduced to the idea through the sexuality and spirituality educator Del, who described discussions among members of Sacred Marks Sanctuary around Fair Energetic Exchange in a shamanic context. So I want to be clear about the lineage: I did not invent FEE. The documented trail by which it reached me is Sacred Marks Sanctuary, through Del, through Lee Harrington, and eventually into my own practice. Lee also credits Del and Sacred Marks Sanctuary when describing the development of the relevant chapters of his book.
What I have done is take that idea and develop my own framework around it: FEEquillibrium.
It does not necessarily mean anything mystical.
“Energy”, in this context, means anything of genuine value that a person has available to give, receive, spend, create or exchange.
Money is energy. So is time.
So are labour, skills, knowledge, handmade objects, professional services, accommodation, food, transport, equipment, introductions, opportunities, publicity, mentoring, access to something useful, or simply making somebody’s life easier.
Some forms of value are less tangible: enjoyment, gratitude, fulfilment, learning, companionship, spiritual meaning, the satisfaction of supporting work you believe in, or the pleasure of knowing that you have helped another person flourish.
Lee explicitly describes money as only one possible form of compensation, alongside barter, food, hospitality, services and many forms of non-material benefit.
None of those things are automatically interchangeable, and nothing should ever be presumed. What feels valuable or appropriate to one person may be useless, uncomfortable or inappropriate to another.
That is why we talk.
Before I begin an exchange with somebody, I prefer to invite them metaphorically “to the table”.
What do you need?
What do I need?
What are you asking me to provide?
What will providing it actually cost me; not only financially, but in time, effort, preparation, travel, recovery, emotional labour, materials or other resources?
What can you comfortably offer?
And what would leave both of us feeling that this exchange was worthwhile?
Sometimes the answer is extremely conventional: “I do this work, you pay me £X.”
Excellent. Money is useful.
Sometimes somebody has very little money but considerable time, knowledge or practical skill. Perhaps part of my fee can be exchanged for something they can do for me.
Sometimes I am working with a well-resourced organisation which can and should simply pay an appropriate professional rate.
Sometimes I decide that supporting a person, project or community is itself valuable enough to me that I am willing to work for much less than I ordinarily would, or occasionally for no financial payment at all.
That does not mean my work has no value. It means we have agreed upon a different way of recognising that value.
Lee makes a similar distinction in discussing what he calls the “compensation culture” of different organisations: a large institution, grassroots community group and individual client may have radically different resources, expectations and ways of compensating somebody fairly.
Here is where my own practice goes somewhat further.
Human beings are terrible at predicting exactly how much something will cost us — or exactly how valuable something will turn out to be.
Imagine that I agree to wash your dishes for an hour, and you agree to mow my lawn for an hour.
On paper, that looks beautifully symmetrical.
Then we actually do it.
Perhaps I discover that you have an extraordinary quantity of dishes, some of which require serious scrubbing. I bring my own gloves, bucket and cleaning supplies. Meanwhile, you discover that my lawn is tiny and finish it in twenty minutes using my lawnmower and my fuel.
Nobody has necessarily deceived anybody. We simply know something after the exchange that we did not know before it.
FEEquillibrium allows either of us to say:
“Can we come back to the table? This doesn’t feel quite balanced anymore.”
We can then talk about it.
Perhaps you mow another section of garden. Perhaps you help me with something completely different. Perhaps we agree that, actually, the original exchange still feels fine.
Crucially, returning to the table is not a demand for retrospective payment.
Neither party gets to invent a secret debt after the fact.
It is an invitation to communicate.
Formal contracts still matter. Agreements still matter. Consent still matters. FEEquillibrium is not a magical mechanism for rewriting an agreement unilaterally; it is a commitment to remain open to conversation if either person later realises that something has become significantly unbalanced.
And it works in both directions.
Perhaps I paid £50 for something and later realise that it has transformed my life and is worth vastly more to me than I expected. I am perfectly entitled to go back to the person who provided it and say:
“You know what? I think I got the better end of this exchange. May I give something back?”
This is probably the most important part.
FEEquillibrium is not adversarial negotiation.
I am not trying to get as much as possible from you while giving as little as possible in return.
And I do not want you approaching me that way either.
If I negotiate somebody into an arrangement that leaves them depleted, resentful, frightened or unable to meet their own needs, I have not achieved a good deal.
Likewise, if somebody continually receives generosity from me until my giving becomes uncomfortable or burdensome to them, that is not equilibrium either.
I want the people I work with to thrive. I am not in any of the businesses I operate in purely for the sake of financial profit. I'm more about Relationships.
I would rather finish an exchange thinking, “We both got more out of that than we put into it,” than congratulate myself for having successfully extracted the maximum possible value from another human being.
Lee describes Fair Energetic Exchange as something requiring awareness of everybody’s needs, wants and desires so that our communities and working environments can become places in which people can thrive.
That is also the heart of FEEquillibrium.
It is accounting without scorekeeping.
The question is not:
“Are we exactly even?”
The question is:
“Are we both okay?”
Does this still feel voluntary?
Does it feel fair?
Does it feel sustainable?
Do both of us feel respected?
And, ideally, have both of us come away from the exchange a little richer — in whatever forms richness happened to take?