The truth is that we find so much identity in our names. It's the first way we identify ourselves when we meet someone new. It's the primary way we distinguish ourselves from one another. In my profession, it's not unusual for a student to introduce himself to me and immediately tell me what his name means. "My name is Jian. It means strong." All of us want to believe that we're memorable enough for our teachers to remember who we are and what our names are - that we're memorable enough to be known by the character we're named for. We want to believe we're more than another number in a mass of students.

So I'm on a mission. 75 names in a week. "I can do it. I can fight my way through this", I tell myself. "Because my name means warrior."

The tricky thing about value is that it is not necessarily defined by money. Value is a perception, not an amount! For those of you learning English for business, think of value as the connection of price and emotions. Imagine you were to buy a hotdog for $0.99 from a street vendor, we will call him Jim, and the hotdog tasted like any other hot dog. Then you go across the street and buy a hotdog for $0.99 from a woman named Jennifer, but her hotdog is bigger and tastier, and it has a special sauce on it!!!

For the same amount of money, you had 2 different experiences. The difference that you felt as you ate the 2 hotdogs was the "value". Everyone has a different perception of what they like and dis-like. That is why some people think a $20 bottle of wine is a great deal (value) and others think it is too much money.

Here is an excerpt of Seth's blog post:

I had a college professor who did engineering consulting. A brand new office tower in Boston had a serious problem--there was a brown stain coming through the drywall, (all of the drywall) no matter how much stain killer they used. In a forty story building, if you have to rip out all the drywall, this is a multi-million dollar disaster. They had exhausted all possibilities and were a day away from tearing out everything and taking a loss. They hired Henry in a last-ditch effort to solve the problem. He looked at the walls and said, "I think I can work out a solution, but it will cost you $45,000 if I succeed." They instantly signed on, because if he succeeded, the project would be saved.

Henry asked for a pencil and paper and wrote the name of a common hardware store chemical and handed it to them. "Here, this will work." And then he billed them $45,000. That's quite an hourly wage. It's also quite a bargain.

Tell me how you view value in the comments section below.