You Have to Give to Get

A few years ago, I built a playlist for my sister called The Soundtrack of Your Life. It wasn’t a neat Spotify list of greatest hits. It was more like a small museum: obscure recordings, half-forgotten songs, old jingles, TV theme tunes, sonic fragments from childhood. The kind of things you don’t find easily.

That’s how I ended up emailing strangers on the internet. Collectors. Archivists. People who hoarded tiny pieces of audio history on dusty hard drives. I wrote polite messages, explained the project, and asked if they’d be willing to share a particular file.

The replies surprised me. More than once, the answer was some version of: “I only share if you offer me something I don’t already have.” Not money. Not credit. Something of value. If I wanted something, I had to bring something.

It caught me off guard. A part of me had assumed that asking nicely would be enough. Instead, I’d stumbled into an old rule dressed up in modern clothing: reciprocity. You have to give to get. We all know this in theory. Networking articles repeat it. Leadership books dress it up as “social capital.” Coaches turn it into diagrams. But knowing something abstractly and feeling it land in your inbox are very different experiences.

Around the same time, another idea was circling in my head: that “free” often equals “less value.” Back then, I was selling training programs and sometimes bundled in extra resources at no cost. Oddly, those were the things clients were most suspicious of. They trusted what they paid for. They questioned what they didn’t. I heard colleagues say the same: if it’s free, people assume it’s rubbish, or a trick.

When something costs nothing, a quiet voice asks: why? What’s the catch? What are you really trying to sell me? Free, paradoxically, can reduce trust.

So I carried those two ideas side by side for years. Giving unlocks value. Free can dilute it. They sat there, unresolved.

Then I set up a community called the Asia Trainer Forum. One of the ways people could join was by accessing a growing collection of workshop icebreakers and warm-up activities. Instead of giving the list away, I borrowed a rule from those file-sharing collectors: if you send me one good icebreaker, I’ll give you the full list.

That was it. A simple exchange and it worked better than I expected. The list grew quickly, but more importantly, the quality improved. People didn’t send junk. They sent things they were proud of using. I found that the tone shifted too: to one of participation.

I have reflected that, when people collect, they often collect as identity. They think, "I have resources. I own knowledge. I’ve got the folder." It’s subtle, but it’s about possession.

Reciprocity changes that. The identity becomes: "I contribute. I add something. I make this better." Ownership turns into stewardship.

And responsibility follows. When you give something, you care what happens next. When you pay a small cost, even a symbolic one, you show up differently. It’s no longer free. It’s valued.

That little rule from a few anonymous collectors taught me more about human motivation than most business books. Not because it was clever, but because it was honest.

Value flows best when it moves in both directions. Not as a transaction, but as a relationship.