Business person or wannabe?

Good thing we have the internet to share all our ideas into a product, sell it to customers, and not waste time with each person to see if they are serious or not.

Tal

I think you nailed it. People put very little value on FREE and they put little value on your time if it is given away "constantly" for free. I give some time for free, but generally, I get a lot of emails that would require a whole new ebook to walk them through all the questions I get and really have to refer them to online sources for the answers.

I have been diggin your stuff alot lately Brad. Just thought I'd say that. I can honeslty say that I ran an 8 week training program last year with free members, and although I created some great friendships, and even a couple of enemies... It just doesnt work to train for free....

Honestly, I argued till i was blue in the face last year with senior warriors because I thought they were only discouraging me from it out of greed...

But they were right. Dont train for free.

People will love you for your generosity and make you into some kind of messiah, then just like the biblical messiah, they will crucify you if they dont succeed.

So get paid. You are gonna need it.

It's the same "song and dance".

They so BADLY want to get out of their financial situation,
and are motivated enough to meet to have a "chat" about
it...but when it came to taking action, they do s**t.

This happened to me multiple times in a coney island, Tim
Hortons, casual meeting, etc.

I found the reason WHY most people fail to take action
even after the initial conversation...

it's because TALKING about what they are GOING to do is
almost, if not AS satisfying as actually DOING IT.

That's why I never share with people what I'm doing any
more to make money until what I WANT to say has actually
BECOME reality, not just a thought, wish, hope, or dream.

I learned this the hard way the same as you Brad. The
excitement is always there before the conversation, but
when it goes on for too long (1 hour is TOO long), it's a
satisfying feeling of having accomplished...nothing.

I discovered this long before I READ about it. Instead, I
learned it from doing it myself multiple times before it all
made sense.

If you want the link to the article, I'm too busy to link it
up to here right now, but I would be happy to send you
the link via PM if you like so you will go "aHA! That does
make sense and it happens almost ALL the time!".

So for now on, yea...you're not the bad guy for charging
money. In fact, with what I know I refuse to teach any
one what I know unless I'm paid $3k-$5k upfront for my
time and teaching my system, and $25k on the backend
for successful application of my system.

You and I just can't afford to give our time away to losers
and non-action takers. Charging money will weed out those
ppl QUICK, and attract more of those who ARE serious.

True. And the ones willing to pay for advice are likely to act on the advice not only because they are invested. But also because they see the value in your expertise or they wouldn't pay for it in the first place.

Charging for your time will weed out most of the tire kickers. Therefore you're left with a higher percentage of doers and the likelihood of your advice being implemented increases dramatically. And you get compensated regardless of the usage rate.

All you can do is share your expertise and hope people use what they paid to learn. Tiger Woods' swing coach can't hit the ball for him, yet he gets paid whether Tiger heeds his advice or not.


I hope you told that joker that you value your time. And that if you're going to give it away it's going to be to a worthy cause (i.e. charity) rather than to someone who has the impression that they deserve to BE successful without having to work/invest to BECOMEsuccessful.

Spot on Brad. "Real business people don't complain, it's just the wannabes...". In the context that you put it in, I wholeheartedly agree. I can't tell you how many times I've been burned by trying to be the "good guy" to help someone out.

Today, I might point someone in the right direction every now and then, but no longer do any coaching for free. In fact, most of my "coaching" services have shifted over to consulting with medium to large-sized corporations. I'm simply amazed at how many companies out there don't know how to navigate the online waters.

I've noticed that people with a scarcity mindset very seldom value another person's time. I remember paying a large amount of money to a conversion specialist who was so in demand that I had to wait 6 months for just an hour of his time. Not only was it worth the wait but that one hour I spent with him transformed the way I do business.

RoD

Brad,

Would you be available for a private consulting session? You could fly to meet me and put yourself up in a hotel for a few days, perhaps entertain me at dinner too.

j/k

You've hit it on the nose Brad - it's tough to "bill like a lawyer" as I've heard it referred to, but you've just got to balance being helpful with earning for work performed. I try to never nickel and dime people, but hey, if you take an hour of my time, I can't charge anyone else for it. If I do that 8 hours a day, I only have 16 hours left to earn money.

Dang, just to think that all this time I could have been charging people for this stuff. What was I thinking? LOL

You're one guy that I'm glad I helped for free though Brad. But for the record, you did offer to pay, so you're definitely a player and not a wannabee.

Brad,

We all know well enough, after reading so many things here, that for
some it's a desire to vent or complain a little; maybe have a sympathetic
ear for a little while.

Things can build to a point where they're angry enough and sincerely feel
they want to do something about it. But just like when people buy things,
you know so many of them don't act on it or even read it.

It's just that a lot of things contribute to the issues you highlighted in your
OP.

However on the point about valuing your time; you're absolutely right about
that.

A few times I've offered to pay people for their time when I wanted to talk
to them about something usually very specific in nature. Some accepted
my offer to pay, and I paid, but most of them didn't. This is over the years.

A few years back I wanted to visit with a man I had been acquainted with
for a long time. He was wealthy and had some millions he earned from his
business. I wanted to talk to him about business and some general life
questions.

I offered to pay him for his time, but he declined my offer. Instead, he was
having a hard time with some problems on his computer and asked me to
have a look at it. So I took care of it and he was happy. And then we sat
down and talked all afternoon. He also invited me back to do routine
maintenance on his pc and more talks.

I thought that was so cool.


Ken

And you decided it now, when in a month I'm going to move to Ontario and we will be almost neighbours (+/- 98.9 km)? LOL

I think "helping" people for free, like shooting them a free ebook or something because they are struggling is cool... but when you coach, train, or consult... alot of times in their mind that makes you partially responsible for their failures. That's not cool. Thats a heavy burden. Especially when you are helping for free. All a person can do is share something that works, it's up to the individual to make it work for them.

On another note: If they succeed.... yeah it was totally all my teaching that did it!

I say charge... I didnt think that last year. I was idealistic... but now Im 41 and Im smarter and I want to leverage my time and energy better the next 20 years, and I have none to waste on anything but personal progress and pleasure.

Very good point about people taking action - the only way to make it so that you as well are not wasting your time is to charge them and hourly rate or something standardized. Nothing to be surprised about people whining about having to pay.

Any one on one advice is you taking time out of your day to help someone. It's not like this forum where people can reply or not, you feel the personal responsibility to help out since they are right in front of your face.

Great post.

Yeah I'm with you here.

There is one mentality which goes something like "if you put value out there you'll get it back even if it's not directly from the recipient" but I think when it comes to business, this just doesn't work.

Generally speaking I think you get back what you put out, but that doesn't apply in business.

If a company gives away the time of it's staff without billing - it goes bust. Simple as that.

Same with self employed people, we trade our own time for money - regardless of whether we're taking on gigs or creating & marketing our own products - so if we give away our own time, instead of trading it for income, then we go bust also.

Why should you give your time free? Even if the people you're helping do actually value the help & take action - why should you do it free?

You're right to charge for your time - if people moan about it, let them. In fact if they moan about it I wouldn't want to help them out even for a fee, as these will generally be the kind of people who believe the world owes them something.

Cheers

Kev