Theresa: “The wave of the future”

The following is a story written by Theresa Reynolds, a member based Groton, CT. Theresa is an IT professional by day, and a certified yoga and meditation teacher and yoga therapist by night. She joined Simbi to provide services where her talents meet a need, and to receive what she can to learn from others.


I was so excited to have found Simbi when I did. During the year prior, I had tried starting a Facebook group with a similar idea, looking for local people that might be interested in doing a barter system type of exchange for services or talents. There were lots of “likes”, but no matter what I tried to do to stimulate interest, including polls on what they could offer and what kinds of things they wanted to swap their time, talent, or service for, it just didn’t catch on. I believe trust in a stranger was probably the strongest drawback of the site.

When I found Simbi, all of that had been thought out in detail; to include multiple ways of indicating assurance that the person you were making a deal with was trustworthy – from previous deals successfully completed, reviews and recommendations, and experience within Simbi. There are always exceptions that pop up on the rare occasion, where the person providing a product or service may not always provide what is expected or to the degree expected. So, I’ve found that being very specific as to what you are looking for and getting that agreement in advance is important before settling on a simbi price or service trade.

Overall however, I have found nearly all members of Simbi I’ve met to be upstanding community citizens, as interested in providing their best to you as you want to give to them. Further, simbi price or service trade value is almost always negotiable.

So my advice to any user, Newbi or experienced, is to be willing to offer what you can at as reasonable a simbi price as possible. No one is here to get rich. It is much more about the fair exchange of your time and talents for what you might want or need without having it cost you a large chunk of your paycheck.

I came to Simbi looking for some expertise in a couple of arts/craft areas that I had not had the extra money to pursue. In a very short amount of time, I was able to arrange deals in both watercolor and quilting instruction in exchange for simbi or my own talents/experience that were of interest to the person I was in contact with. I also found over time that I had more to offer others than I originally realized. Looking through what community members were offering triggered many great ideas on what to consider providing that I might not have come up with on my own.

When my friends ask me about Simbi, I am always excited to describe it to them. The phrase that frequently comes up is “it’s the wave of the future,” even though the idea for it is actually rooted in the past.

We have come from a society that once exchanged services or things for other services or things desired, and we have come full circle back to a society that craves the same once again. I am honored to be a part of such a community of like-minded folks, and look forward to seeing how it grows as we all move forward together into the future.

Theresa R.


Simbiotic Stories are real anecdotes told by you and other Simbi community members. Tell us about your Simbi deals and experiences with other members. If your story is published, we’ll credit your account with 150 simbi. Submit your entries by starting a conversation with us via this link.

Share

3 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to Top