---
title: Do You Take Equity Or Trade
description: "No, to both. ### **Equity** The moment I hold a position in your operation, my read stops being independent. I would be reading an operation I have a stake in, and the constraint I name would be the one that…"
url: "https://jeffreysummers.com/docs/do-you-take-equity-or-trade/"
updated: "2026-09-11"
category: FAQs
---

# Do You Take Equity Or Trade

No, to both.

### **Equity**

The moment I hold a position in your operation, my read stops being independent. I would be reading an operation I have a stake in, and the constraint I name would be the one that protects the stake. You cannot buy an honest read from someone who needs the answer to come out a particular way, and my entire value to you is that I have nothing riding on which constraint turns out to be binding.

There is a second problem. Equity replaces the fee with a claim on your future, which is the same structural move I spend my published work prosecuting when other people make it — an arrangement where the counsel collects whether or not the operator compounded anything. [I will not work for franchisors](https://jeffreysummers.com/why-i-wont-work-for-franchisors/) for that exact reason. I am not going to refuse it there and run it here.

### **Trade**

No, and not because your product has no value. Because trade quietly converts the engagement into something neither of us can hold to a standard. A fee priced against the value of the change effort you require has a number, a scope and a result attached. Trade has a favor attached, and favors do not survive the moment I tell you something you do not want to hear.

### **What Is Already Free**

If the obstacle is capital rather than willingness, understand what costs you nothing: the [entire framework](https://kb.jeffreysummers.com/), every Dictionary term, every Book-and-Fieldbook pair, [The Operator's Assessment](https://jeffreysummers.com/the-operators-assessment/), and the first conversation. That is not a consolation prize — it is the same content, and plenty of operators have run it themselves without ever paying me anything. [Everything I have written is free](https://jeffreysummers.com/everything-ive-written-is-free/).

If the number on a [product page](https://shop.jeffreysummers.com/) is the obstacle, say so on the call. Scope is adjustable. The basis of the fee is not.

---

### Discover more from Jeffrey Summers

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.