When I first started out my path of Internet Marketing and doing Social Media consulting for small businesses, I would often do it for free. I would be asked by a business owner what they needed to do in order to truly use social media to grow their business and what I thought they should do.
This was during college and when I really didn’t think I deserved to be paid a lot for just using my brain. Yes, I was spending a lot of money on books and courses, spending my time to learn this information and would give this information away for free.
It made complete sense to me at the time to teach people the information I paid to get, without taking any money from them. I didn’t completely understand The Law of Compensation.
I grew up doing jobs that required physical labor and this caused me to feel like I had to do physical labor to get paid. Silly me. It’s funny too because my dad was paid for his mind and not for doing physical labor, so I should have understood it.
If someone asked me what they needed to do, I would literally give them everything that they needed in order to successfully use social media.I’d then run into problems when I asked them to pay me for the information that I gave them for free during our chat.
The Value Of Something Drops As Soon As You Have It
As soon as you buy a new car and drive off the lot of the dealership, the value of that car drops. It’s considered used as soon as it’s off the lot and the same is true with consulting and information.
Once someone had the information from me, the value for it dropped and they wouldn’t want to pay me for it because they already heard what I could do for them and how I would do it.
This absolutely sucked. I worked hard to learn this information and come up with something relevant to the specific business I was helping and then the person wouldn’t pay me for more information because I had already given them enough.
“When You Don’t Pay Me, You Don’t Hear Me”
I noticed something was happening when I was giving away all of this free information too. People would do nothing with it. They would act like they were going to do something with it, but ended up just forgetting about it and not doing a damn thing.
Deep down this really pissed me off. People would simply not take action on the steps I provided for them because they thought it was already done or something.
I’ve found that if someone didn’t pay me, they really didn’t hear what I was saying. Once I started charging for the information, people would then take action on it and see results. It’s pretty interesting how that worked out.
What I’m Doing Now
I’m now requiring customers to pay me 50% up-front for projects I’m doing and require the other 50% after completion of the project. The reason I’m doing this is simply because it guarantees that the people are serious about having the work done and it also gives me money up-front. It also will have a positive effect on cash-flow for Brain Smart Success.
It’s amazing how simple this concept is. The problem was that I had a limiting belief that I believed my time and knowledge wasn’t worth the amount of money that I should have been charging. I would spend a lot of money and invest a lot of time learning this information, yet for some reason thought it was okay to give this information away.
Do you think it was all the jobs that I had where I would only be paid $10 an hour to do stuff that caused me to feel that charging $100 for an hour was wrong? I think that might be part of it. Although now I believe that my information is extremely relevant and helpful so I deserve to be compensated well for my knowledge.
If you are a potential client and want to pick my brain, you will have to pay me from now on. I’m no longer giving away my information for free. This is not just so I can be a greedy person and make money. The reason is that you will actually take action and do what I’m telling you that you need to do when you give me money.
If you are to pay for something, that means you are serious about it and will take action, and I only want to work with people who take action and invest in themselves and their businesses.
You paying me for my knowledge will also pay for my living expenses and for me to do some fun stuff too so it’s not just for you. 😉
I’ve gotta pay bills just like you do and the way I do that is by exchanging what’s inside my brain for your money. So you understand that I’m not out here to scam you, but to make a living doing something that I’m great at.
My question to you:
Are you currently giving away free consultations or free information? Is it bringing you new clients or is it making you lose out on money? Leave comments below and let me know your thoughts…