The concept of bartering and exchanging your services or products with another person has been around for ages. This has been spoilt and frowned upon since the introduction of commercial entities such as money, banks, tax and all those other ugly things that get in the way of making a living. So when I found the Cape Town Talent Exchange website, I jumped at the chance to screw the banks out of their fees and start getting some real value out of my skills.

A quick registration process and I was up and ready to do business. Within 15 minutes of me adding my offerings, I got an email requesting my services for a business plan for 500 talents. This I delivered yesterday and now my banks account is credited and I can exchange that for any of 100’s of different products or skills. I plan to get my garden a once over on Saturday and I will not have to even go outside to do it, a simple search, select and email gets me what I need. They even give you an instant overdraft of 5000 talents when you sign up with no surety, no forms, no FICA. This is great, the way business should be done. Apart from the issue if you are VAT registered and having to pay this portion to the government, this seems to be a great, safe and legal way to do a huge portion of your business. Let’s just hope the government stay away from this for a while.