KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• People will often try to get you to work for free by saying that it will be a great case study for you. If they’re coming to you and they don’t want to pay you, you need to consider how willing they’re going to be to take your advice? If they don’t take your advice, it will make a difference to your case study.
• If someone gets in touch asking you to work for free, be polite and thank them for the opportunity.
• You may find that people will also ask you to work for free, as long as you can take a cut of the profits that you make them. Whilst this could work, you need to decide whether or not it is worth your time without a guaranteed income. If money isn’t an issue, you may decide that you want to give it a go.
• You need to remember that you have bills to pay and that should be your priority.
• If someone asks you to go for a coffee, be wary that they may be asking to meet up with you to pick your brain or get free consultancy. When I first started out, I would meet everyone that wanted to meet up with me because I needed to network and grow my business – and that’s okay.
• If you value your worth, others will start to value it too.
• When someone asks you if you want to go for a coffee, directing them to somewhere where they can find the advice you would give can help save you some time. Not only will the resources already be available for them, but it will show who really values your advice and who doesn’t.
• Sometimes there are times where it’s okay to work for free, whether it’s for a friend or an instance where you feel you will be gaining benefit that is not financial. In most cases, this will be exposure.
• If there is someone you want to work with, why not get in touch with them to offer them something for free? Make sure it’s value isn’t too great in terms of your time and resources.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

At the end of the day, if someone is paying you, they’re more likely to take your advice, ultimately resulting in more success.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• An Introduction to Working for Free – 04:38
• Ways People Try to Get You to Work For Free #1 – 08:20
• Ways People Try to Get You to Work For Free #2 – 10:40
• Ways People Try to Get You to Work For Free #3 – 15:30
• When I Will Work For Free - 27:50

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE

• Episode 34 How I Started My Business
• 5 Places to Use As Opportunities To Build Your List
• How to Produce A Webinar (Blueprint)
• Creating A Good Sales Page

Transcript below

Speaker 1: (00:33)

Whew. I finally have got an intro piece of music. What do you think? It took me ages and I decided obviously to do it myself with the help of Phil who edits my podcast for me and we've put that together. So I'd love to know what you think. I've never started the podcast with a woo. Maybe I should, I always get a bit bored of doing the same old hello and welcome to the podcast. So maybe that's a new way to start it. Anyway, I apologise if I scare you they slightly, um, I'll wake you up if it's early in the morning. So yeah, let me know what you think of the intro. I'm just glad we've got one now because I was feeling a little bit lost, which is really odd actually because I don't hear the intro. Obviously when I'm recording, I record my little bit at the beginning and I just come straight into this, so actually should have made no difference to me, but I knew from your end it would have made a difference, which is why it feels like I needed to say something.

Speaker 1: (01:30)

But anyway, intro's in. You'll have to know, listen to the end because obviously I've got a new outro as well. In fact, I've recorded two different ones because one thing I discovered or one thing I thought about when I was doing the podcast is I'm not very good at asking people to go and subscribe or give me reviews and I know that when I listened to other podcasts, they have really long outros or really long intros where they're asking people to do these things. So I have done a couple of, well I've got two different outros. They're still very short and succinct. I think one just say, go and give me a review.. asking nicely obviously, and then one just says go and check out the website just to kind of finish off the podcast. But actually it would be ace if you were happy to go and give me a review. I'd love that. That'd be so cool. I've had some awesome reviews, such lovely ones and I'm going to start reading them out on the podcast and obviously we want to give you guys a shoutout. So if you are happy to then I would love it if you could possibly go and give me a lovely five star review. That would be amazing. Thank you.

(02:35)

Okay, today's episode's going to be an interesting one. The other day I was having a call with a possible coaching client and she was telling me about her business now because this just happened to be in social media and she basically was doing what I've been doing for the past five years and she was trying to build a business and she just started out and we were having conversation about clients and getting clients and getting paid work, good paid work.

Speaker 1: (03:05)

And we talked about a few issues and one of the things that came up for me, which comes up for me a lot is the fact that people try and get us to work for free. So today I want to do a bit of a different episode, but hopefully a really helpful one where I talk about basically the ways that people ask us to do work for free or try and get away with not paying us and why you shouldn't do those things and how you can perhaps respond to them. And because I know that was one of the first things actually that when people did ask me, I find it really difficult to say no in the early days because I just didn't know how to say no. And I think generally maybe human beings, women, people, anybody saying no is actually a fairly difficult thing to do for most people I would imagine.

(03:53)

So, especially when you're confronted with somebody very confident perhaps, and they've, they're trying to pitch a good argument and you've got to find a way to say no. So that's the first half of the podcast. And then the second bit of the podcast is going to be looking at actually ways that you could do some work for free and why I would on some occasions. So I'm just trying to help you think about how you're getting your clients and when some client does come to you and they want to work with you and they're trying to get something like paying and how you can deal with those situations. Because I felt like it happened to me a lot in the early days. So I'm just trying to give you a heads up so how you can avoid these.

An Introduction to Working for Free

So before I dive into telling you some of the very creative ways that people tried to get work for free, let's just start off by saying, if you have just started doing this as a job or just started this as a business, then you are going to be in a very different position as I was when I first started than I am now. The chances of me doing work for free now are pretty much slim to none. Don't get me wrong, I will do a sort of discovery calls with people and I give them lots of value on those calls and I will help people. I like helping people, but we're not going to do sort of consultancy or we're not going to do management and social media for free. That isn't going to happen now at this point because we don't need to. And because we've worked really hard to get to a level that actually if you don't value my service enough to want to pay for me, then obviously I don't feel that you value it at all. So that's honestly how I feel about myself today. However, when I first started it was different. So if you are just starting out or you're new to it, then you might want to view this in a slightly different way.

Speaker 1: (05:38)

One of the things that I did do when I first started is I did do training for free. I did help people out for free because in the early days I wanted to get my name out there, but I wanna just say something. I was really strategic about it and I chose those people and I went to those people. I didn't wait for someone to come to me and go, do you want this opportunity? Because the chances are they wouldn't have been the type of people that I wanted to have a case study with or work with for free. So I chose charities because that's a nice thing to do and I picked, this sounds really bad, like I was only doing this to boost my own business, but I'm going to be honest, there was an element of that obviously and it wasn't like it was an entirely one sided.

Speaker 1: (06:24)

They got my expertise for free, but I was doing it as a way to raise my profile. So I was initially, when I first started my business, I was looking locally, so a lot of my business came from the local area. So what I did is there was a really big charity event that's got a lot of publicity and a lot of people coming to it and it was really well known in the town and it was run by volunteers and it had a board of volunteers. So I specifically went and volunteered my services to them and said, would you like me to work for free and help you with your marketing and help you with your social media and do these various things for you? And really luckily and kindly, they said, yes. They did. And I worked with them during the event running up to the event and I attended the event working it for the, um, for the weekend it was on and I gave them my services for free.

Speaker 1: (07:19)

And it did me a real favour because it did help boost my profile. It got me networking. Some people that I didn't know, some businesses that I didn't know and it was actually a real benefit to me. But like I said, I went and found them out and thought that would be a great opportunity. I didn't wait for someone just to come knocking on my door go and I don't want to pay you, can you do it for free? So I'm not saying don't do work for free. And in fact I'll talk about that a bit right at the end, but I'm not saying don't do it for free. I'm just saying that obviously if you're going to do that, you want to reach out and find the work that is most benefits you. But I think of probably just at the end now. But anyway, we'll carry on.

Ways People Try to Get You to Work For Free #1

Speaker 1: (08:00)

But I wanted to say that the kind of prerequisite, if you're just starting out then you're going to have to kind of balance this. But what I don't want you to do is set a precedent for yourself where you are just, you've got yourself into a bit of a trap where you're giving away free work or work that's hardly paying anything and you're getting so busy doing that that you literally don't have time for anything else to actually then make money. So let's go through these ways in which people like to try and get work for free and bless them for trying because sometimes they're pretty good at it so you have to watch out for them. So the classics that I've had is, the first one is this will be a great case study now who unless that business was something amazing or a hugely massive profile or really niche brand or something that was so unique that I was like, do you know what?

Speaker 1: (08:55)

If I could say I worked with this person or worked on this brand, it would accelerate me to another level. Then thanks for the opportunity, the case study. But quite honestly I wouldn't want it. I think one of the things that I would be saying to these people is, well before I say it to them, the thing I'd be thinking is if you're coming to me and you don't want to pay me, then how willing are you going to be to take my advice? Because if you don't value my advice enough to give me money, then if I'm sat there saying, this is what you should be doing and you don't do it, or you don't want to do that particular thing where you don't do it as much as I've said or whatever, then obviously that's going to make a difference. Whereas I have found almost the more people pay me, the more they listened to me, which is kind of amazing and cool and I love that.

Speaker 1: (09:44)

But sometimes the people who you're doing a favour for you think, I've just told you all this amazing advice and you're still not listening to me. So actually what's the point? You know? And my advice doesn't have to be better than what they're thinking and it's their business at the end of the day so they can take it or leave it. But I do find that the more they pay, the more they appreciate what you're giving them. So if someone came to me and said, this'll be a great case study, my response back to them would be, thank you for the opportunity. Always thank them because we're polite and nice people, you know. Thank you for the opportunity. However, I do have a number of paid clients that I'm currently running case studies for at the moment and I can see how amazing it'd be to work with you, but unfortunately I'm not in a position where I can do that for free.

Ways People Try to Get You to Work For Free #2

Speaker 1: (10:28)

So that's the kind of language I'd be using back to them. Okay. The next one is a really interesting one and I'm going to argue myself in and out of this one is when people come to you and their business is starting out and they are super passionate about their business, obviously we all are and they say to us, I want you to do it for either really cheap or free because when this grows you're going to be in it and I'm going to pay you more. Now, I've had this said to me a lot and I've also had it said to me, can I work entirely for free but get a cut of the sale? So basically they're asking me to put my money where my mouth is because I'm sat here saying social media is amazing. My tips and tools and strategies, they're amazing. They're going to make a difference to your business and granted, if you do what I suggest in a business, it will make a difference and I will. It's suddenly double your sales overnight. Possibly. Not now or you know, will it make a difference in sales? That's really hard to say. So around this subject, the reason I would avoid this one, even though I hear what they're saying and you know what, it could be short sighted on my part. It could be, you know if this was a Virgin company as in like Richard Branson Virgin and he came to me at the beginning and I went, no, I'm all right, thanks Richard. And then suddenly it did blow up massive. Then I'm a little bit gutted I guess by that. But the problem is a couple of things. First off, if you have a team, well forget the team, you're part of your business, you have to earn money.

Speaker 1: (12:09)

But I find it easy when I was thinking about the team, I can't get one of the team to do something without paying them obviously because that's our agreement. So you're not only asking me to spend my time but someone else's time for free when I've still got to pay them, so I'm immediately out of pocket. So that just doesn't work in my head. Why would I go out of pocket in my business in order to support someone else in their business? I don't think that works for me. Secondly, the really and probably more strongly is that even though I have complete faith in what I'm saying, what I teach and how good some of the strategies I can put together are and how they can make a difference to your business, there is so many other things that can have an effect on that business and on the success of the sales that are out of my control.

Speaker 1: (13:06)

So I could do the best marketing in the world for a client or for a business. And then they could go into the shop and the person behind the counter could be horrible. And they don't want to deal with them or they could buy the product and the product be awful and then they write a bad review and that stops other people doing it or the people could just be a nightmare to deal with or the service isn't very good. Honestly, there are a million reasons why they might not be getting sales and it's not just down to the marketing. So for me that wouldn't work. I love the idea of it....