Principle 16: Separation from Paid Work
Strict separation between participation in this fellowship and any paid work practitioners do outside it. We do not use EPI participation to build personal practices, client lists, or audiences.
Commentary
Protects the fellowship from being mined for professional benefit. Without this, the meeting becomes a recruiting venue for adjacent paid offerings, and the peer-to-peer character erodes from inside.
Status notes
v3, ready for team review.
Named in source Open Questions as a friction point — “the hardest principle to live by and the most likely to generate friction with practitioners who have parallel professional lives. Worth a careful read.” Source inline note attached to this statement (drift — labels it “15”) flags the same.
Closely related to principle-7 (no bolt-ons) and principle-12 (no spokespeople, attract rather than promote). Worth especially careful team discernment in review.
Source confirmations
v5 strategy draft (raw/EPI_Expansion_Strategy_v5.docx.md) is an independent
source asserting the same content. Section “Money”: “Practitioners are free to engage paid trainings, therapists, coaches, and retreats elsewhere as they wish. Those offerings are not EPI. They do not speak for EPI. They cannot use EPI branding to promote themselves. This boundary protects the integrity of the free, peer-led practice.”
This is archival corroboration — a different voice and a different context arriving at the same statement. Worth noting for the eventual ratification pass.