No you can't pick my brain.
Discover how to get paid to give advice and stop doing work for free. While it can be uncomfortable - and some people might even judge you - most people will respect you for knowing the value of your own time. #PayMe
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About the show:
✨ Freedom Lifestyle is an online community and podcast series that empowers the movement towards flexible work. Sam Laliberte interviews remote workers, digital nomads and self-employed people who've pursued a lifestyle that allows them to work from anywhere. Sam discovers their version of the Freedom Lifestyle, learn how they got there and reflect on the impact its had. ✨
No you can't pick my brain.
Discover how to get paid to give advice and stop doing work for free. While it can be uncomfortable - and some people might even judge you - most people will respect you for knowing the value of your own time. #PayMe
Additional Links:
About the show:
✨ Freedom Lifestyle is an online community and podcast series that empowers the movement towards flexible work. Sam Laliberte interviews remote workers, digital nomads and self-employed people who've pursued a lifestyle that allows them to work from anywhere. Sam discovers their version of the Freedom Lifestyle, learn how they got there and reflect on the impact its had. ✨
the more we talk about this value and the more we help normalize it, the sooner collectively, we will all start being asked, what's your rate to hop on a call and this will be the new normal you're listening to episode 49 of the freedom lifestyle podcast series. This one is going to be a mini solo episode from yours. Truly your host Sam. And this was inspired by a little Instagram story rant. I did a couple of weeks ago. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen it, but you also know that's not really my style to just go on the gram and vent how I was feeling, but I was feeling sassy that day. And I essentially talked a little bit about when people reach out and ask to pick your brain or get you to hop on a call and provide free advice without offering anything in return. I actually had a ton of people DM me back that day saying this is amazing. They needed to hear this. We need to normalize this more. And it really got me thinking that this is an opportunity for really share my journey of going from. Always giving out my time for free. And giving anybody who needs something, my advice and supporting everybody, because that's what naturally felt right. To then knowing that, okay, this is unsustainable. And I actually have a lot of value. I'm providing an, I keep getting great feedback on my advice to turning the, this knowledge and this value into revenue streams and paid products. I'll be honest. It's been a Rocky journey when I launched my$20 for 20 minute product a couple months ago. Oh, it was super nervous about how it would be perceived. And it was validated because a couple people were actually offended that I wanted to charge them for my time. However, I had dozens of people over a two month period book, these calls with me and say that they actually loved that. I now had this because they finally felt comfortable reaching out and asking for my time and didn't feel like they were just asking for a free handout. They felt like it was fair. I was now open for business. So in this episode, I'll tell you a little bit more about that journey and how I started monetizing my advice with an effort to help normalize it for all of us too. I will share with you kind of a framework and a checklist that I look for when I decide whether I should do something for free, because don't get me wrong. I do free stuff all the time. And third I'll wrap up this episode with some ideas, for different products and revenue streams. You could explore that involves. Getting paid to give your advice so that you can stop working for free hashtag pay me is the theme for today's episode. before we hop into this episode, though, let's hear nod from one of our very own freedom seekers.
Min Sukree:I freedom seekers. My name is Minsu CRI, I've struggled with mental illness years and had always felt alone. I want you to find that and knowing that you're still loved and that you're not alone in your struggles. I launched a brand new podcast this year called Sage by my wardrobe, a place where mental health, positive and fashion come together, my desk. And I want to empower you to be your best self, both inside and out.
Sam Laliberte:do you want to get a free ad for your business on season four of the freedom lifestyle podcast while I've totally got you in an effort to support more small businesses during COVID-19 I'm offering a new free podcast ad stimulus. Program simply go to what's. Your free.com/free ad and upload a 22nd audio ad for your business. You may just hear it on next week's episode. Let's start off this episode with setting the tone for why this is super relevant. The economy is changing quickly at unprecedented levels. COVID-19 is forcing all of us to innovate and pivot, including myself. And I bet you as a freedom seeker, who's been listening to the show for a while who knows a thing or two about launching businesses are working online and finding freedom has also been Having more requests than usual lately from friends who have ideas they're toying with and are finally feeling that now is the time to move forward on ideas. It's amazing. It's so great. And to be honest, when I first heard a few years ago about how. You know, it's kind of fo paw and taboo to ask to pick someone's brain. I didn't get it. I was like, honestly, isn't it kind of a compliment that someone looks at you this way and respects what you have to say and wants to spend time with you and hear what you can share with them and help them on their journey. I didn't understand, but over the years I've seen that this can be a slippery slope. It's an opportunity cost. Every time you give your time to someone else. It's time that you're not giving to one of your dreams. And over the years, as I guess I became more valuable, these requests started to increase and it can become unsustainable as you go farther in your career and you develop more skills and have more professional experiences and launch more projects publicly, your friends will want to know how you did that. And people in your network will seek advice from you. And so you really want to think about how can I be strategic when I give out my time. So as part of this COVID-19 innovation period, I had to figure out how to make more income streams, because some of my contracts that I had were drying up and things were changing and things were less stable. And part of it was, I really believed in myself I was getting such great feedback. Anytime I would consult with somebody that I knew that this was valuable and I knew that I could monetize this. So of course I started small and I started with what felt comfortable within a sense. I came up with$20 for 20 minute calls where you could now book a time on my calendar for a 20 minute video call. And when you scheduled it, you'd be prompted to give your credit card. It would be like having an assistant and do all the work for me. I was just going to show up on the call. He wouldn't have to worry about. Any of the awkwardness about collecting money, it would have been taken care of super simple. That was the vision. Definitely. I was nervous, even though I felt like$20 was pretty reasonable. I still didn't know how people would perceive this and what they would think. And unfortunately, this concern was validated. I had some people in my life who were frankly offended that I was now asking them to pay 20 bucks for a call with me. However, I had dozens of people book a call on the first few months and many said on the call that they were so happy. I did this because they finally felt comfortable reaching out and asking for my help. They didn't feel like they were just asking for a favor and a free handout. And then I was open for business. So I've really been having to focus on the positive feedback that I had, the transformation I helped support during these calls. Many of these people who booked calls booked second and third calls. And so many of them left me amazing LinkedIn reviews and testimonials from the sessions. And I need to focus on those. And I want you to hear that because if you're thinking of launching something like this, too, of course, you're going to have haters. You're going to have people who judge you. But you have to remember that those people were never going to pay you anyway. So let's focus on the right people who are going to respect you for it. Hashtag pay me. If you're somebody who does this, that you reach out to someone, and you've been guilty of asking if you can pick someone's brain, you're not a bad person. There's nothing wrong with this, but what you need to know is what you're actually asking for and the value there. Okay. When you are asking to pick someone's brain, you are asking to cut the line. think about it in the sense of you have a goal, you have a destination. And you know that in order to arrive at this destination, there are a bunch of steps you have to take. There's a lot of unknowns. You have to collect a lot of information. You have to do a lot of work. You got to research, you've got to implement. There's a lot of trial and error. And rather than go through those motions and invest that time, you want to find someone who's been there and you want to essentially ask them to summarize. Potentially those months or even years of work and learning into a 30 minute call with you. So you don't have to do it. You are asking to cut the line and there is value in that. If I told you that you could either get to your dream in five years by doing the work, or you could pay X amount to get there tomorrow. Most people are gonna pay to cut that line. If you can get things quicker, then you can be on to the even bigger goal after that. understand that there's value in that whether you are on the seller or on the buyer side of this equation, the more we talk about this value and the more we help normalize it, the sooner collectively, we will all start being asked, what's your rate to hop on a call and this will be the new normal.
this is why I want to talk about this and my journey. I have not been perfect. I have been giving away my time. For a while. And honestly, That is part of who I am. So do I still do stuff for free? Absolutely. If I'm hanging out with a friend and we're going for a walk and they naturally asked me about business and it comes up, I don't stop and pull out my square or credit card device or tell them to send me an easy transfer. Of course not. But it's about being strategic. When you do offer this in an unnatural setting, when it doesn't just happen organically in person, when you're already hanging out with somebody. next, I'm going to talk about how you can still do stuff for free while being strategic and getting something of value from it. I speak for free when it makes sense. I do brand collaboration when it makes sense. And as I mentioned, I will give advice to friends and advise on projects when it's strategic. But here's some things that I now do to make sure that there's an exchange of value. And I try to just always get comfortable with that transaction. It helps me feel good that I am being compensated in a way that might not be monetary right away, but I'm still getting value at it. Here are some ideas that you might want to think about when someone is asking you to advise on a project. This is something I get asked a lot. I'll have a friend that is thinking of launching a new venture or their company is launching a new initiative, or a project. And they say that I could provide a lot of valuable advice given my industry expertise or the work that I'm doing and the love to hop on a call where they could, sometimes they say, pick my brain, which side note can we all just stop using? That's very cringe. Sometimes they just say, can I get. your thoughts on it. one thing I'll do is I'll straight up say, okay, is there an opportunity to consult on this project on a paid basis? If our conversation goes well? So in the event that I'm able to actually provide the value that the thing I can, is there an opportunity to join as a consultant for a few months as you're launching this project? by asking that upfront, then you can use that call is like a discovery call where you're basically showing that yes, I do have value, but there's a job opportunity potentially in it. This is something I did just last week. This exact scenario happened. We had the 30 minute call. I provided advice and value rate on the call. And now I'm actually going to be consulting on the launch of that project. So I've tested it. It definitely works. In the event that, that isn't an opportunity. There's a few other things that you can do. You can simply say, well, in the case of, you know, having a podcast, I've asked people. Okay, sure. No problem. In return. I'd love for you to listen to my latest podcast episode and share it on social media. Or if they have an email list, I'll ask them to include a workshop that I might be hosting in their, their next email. Perhaps they are connected to someone that you'd love an introduction to Alaska and return and introduction to this person. It's really gonna be up to you. And it's going to be on a case by case basis, but you want to get into the habit of asking for something in return of money. Can't be exchanged. my partner, Jared, I saw him do something super bold. When we were launching our Kickstarter campaign for the LDR activity book. It's a book we wrote together for a couple of long distance relationships, and we had our kickstart campaign going. And during that period, when people would reach out to him and ask him for advice, he would say, no problem, but I want you to buy one of our books or pledge our Kickstarter campaign. So you can get super creative and just put it out there. And more often than not, people are really happy to do it. And if people are offended again, they were never going to provide you value or pay you in that sense in the first place. So just move on as quickly as possible. The next scenario that happens a lot is being invited to speak at events that are not compensated. Luckily, I've now had a few experiences where when I've been asked to speak at an event or a conference right away, they say, here's our rate. This is what we're paying the speakers. Here's our budgeted stipend. So that experience made me realize that, okay, this is something that's valuable. It is a lot of effort and I'm sharing my advice. And often it's a two. Do you need to sometimes get your, do your hair and look nice or all that, or physically go somewhere. There's a lot of effort involved with speaking at an event. So by having that experience of someone paying for it, I now feel very comfortable after I received those requests to say, Hey, do you have a budget to pay the speakers? And honestly, when it's smaller community local events, it is almost always no. what you can do in that case, because there are still a lot of value in speaking to an audience. If you're a business owner, it's free publicity, you can have a snowball effect where you book other opportunities from it. It can be fun if you enjoy public speaking and you get to add it to your public speaking experience, if you want to do more of that. this ton of value in it in itself. So you might still want to do it. But something that you can do in exchange is ask if they can include you on their website. A little bit of SEO one-on-one we know that the more other websites that link to your website. The higher, you will be ranked in Google. Okay. That's just one way of how SEO works. So something I've done in the cases where they don't have a budget to pay the speakers, as I'll say, Oh, I see you have a blog on your website. Could you feature me on your blog and link to my website? It's a really easy ask for them. And it allows you to feel like you're still making progress and something that you want to do, which I'm sure all of us want to increase our searchability on the internet. And you just feel like you're getting a little bit more to the deal. And really you're just working your muscle of always making an exchange of value when you're giving your time out for quote unquote free. The next thing that comes up for me quite a bit as a content creator with an online community is all of brands reach out and the want to do some type of collaboration, maybe the want to appear on my podcast, or they'll want to do like a mini Instagram story live interview thing. And in exchange, all they're willing to do is promote the content. And this is very tempting because a lot of these brands have large networks. So you thinking, Oh wow. My podcast is now going to be featured to 600,000 Instagram followers. Or they have a huge email list more often than not. This actually has less of a spike in my own followers and engagement that I would have hoped. And I'm always kind of surprised by that. Um, so something that I'll I'll do is if it's like a consumer brand, I'll ask them if they can throw in any free product that I can raffle off at an event I'm doing or do some type of giveaway in my Facebook group. If you're a freedom seeker in our Facebook group online, you've probably seen me promote different brands. They'll have special discounts for our community different perks. So that's another great way for you to get value out of it for your own audience, which is great for you. It gives people more of a reason. To follow you and stay part of your community because they're just getting more value from it. that's something that we'll often do with brands. Again, there's so many different types of freedom seekers listening to the show because remember the freedom lifestyle looks different for everyone. So it's impossible for me to give you perfect examples, but I want you to maybe today take a piece of paper and pen and write down some scenarios where you feel like you're often being asked to do something for free and think about some things that you would value from your business. That don't involve the exchange of money that you can get into the habit of asking for. In return in order to create that value hashtag pay me. now in the third and final part of this interview, I'm going to give you some ideas for products. You can launch an actual revenue streams that you can create that involve getting paid to give advice. You can stop working for free. The first is the website that I chose for my$20 for 20 minutes, which is now$30 for 30 minutes is you can book me.com. What's great about it is the payment is done through it. So a lot of these like Callen D type of. Calendar sharing, booking apps that I saw, they didn't have this feature, which is really what I wanted to look for. Again, I didn't want to have to worry about chasing money or creating invoices or having that awkward conversation about receiving the money. So this just takes care of it. For me, they can pay on credit card it's through Stripe and it goes into my bank account within I think, like up to 48 hours. So it's been super seamless. I highly recommend it. If you want to launch something similar to what I've done. Another option is a website called clarity. This was actually recommended to me from another freedom seeker, Diana who was on season two. It's essentially a website where you can find experts on various topics and very clearly see what the rate would be to have a paid call with them. So I have a profile on there. I'm a podcast expert. If someone is thinking of launching a podcast or has a podcast and has made me stuck on something, they now know my rate and through the system, they can pay and book and have a call. With me and I don't have to do any of the work to actually find the client. So it's passive in that sense, but of course it's not passive in the sense that you still have to physically be there on the call and give them your time. Another option is a website called current it's spelled without the E. So in the show notes for today, I'm going to include all of these links from both the podcast show notes and on my blog post. current is a website where you can actually make a profile similarly to clarity, and you can say what your expertise are and what you really do is you apply to be part of focus groups or advisory panels on topics related to your industry that are paid. I get a text alert every time I'm a fit for a potential paid. Advisory grew where you essentially have a call with different people around the world. And there's a problem they're solving. Or those are products that this company is thinking of launching related to stuff that you know about. And they're willing to pay you to have a one hour call where everyone kind of brainstorms, and talks through their ideas that they're thinking. It's super cool. Again, it's passive. The business just comes to me and the application is a pretty quick process because you've already made your online profile once. And now you can just quickly apply for various paid focus groups that you're a fit for. the final idea I'll leave you with is to turn your knowledge into a digital product. That's when it can become really passive and truly free. This can either be a paid ebook on your website or an online course, which is what I've done with launch a podcast on a budget.com. What's really great about this is I'll often have people connect me to their friends who want to launch a podcast. Hey, Sam's an expert in podcasting. She can totally help you. And now I have like a standard email. I send to them where I say, okay, well, we can hop on a one hour call. Here's my rate. Here's what these calls are great for. It's perfect. If you want one on one help or if you're stuck. with a very specific problem. Or I'll say if you're just starting out, I have this course it's self guided. Take it on demand on your own time. Get a complete a to Z template of. Producing marketing and monetizing a podcast and everything is right there in video format. And you can do that. It's awesome to have both of these options now for people who reach out to me because everyone's a different style of learner. And when people buy the course it's so passive old Sam was working a new Sam just gets to collect the money. I'm really glad that I turn that knowledge into an online product that is now available on my website from anywhere at any time. I created my online course on a website called podia. I'm extremely, extremely happy with it. If you decide to make an online course after listening to this free podcast episode, my ask is that you use my referral link. I've included it in the show notes and in the blog post, essentially it gives me a little commission for referring you to podia. So that would be amazing. there you go. That is my journey of getting paid for my advice. I'm honestly late to the game. I probably should have been doing this sooner, but we all have to start somewhere and we should all talk about it because again, the more we normalize it, the more, this will just become standard. And we'll all feel valued and really know that our time is valuable and we can provide a lot of support to people who need advice and it feels good to support other people's journeys, but we should be compensated for that. My challenge to you is to share this episode on social media and announced publicly that you deserve to get paid for your time. I know it's super scary, but the right people are gonna respect you for it. And those who don't, we're never going to pay you in the first place. Please. If you do this challenge and you accept it, tag me so I can reshare it and give you all the snaps for doing it. Next week. I have a very, very special episode for my 50th episode. What a milestone? For it, I'm bringing back previous freedom seekers from the last three seasons to share updates on where they are now in their freedom journey. I am so excited. You're going to love it until next time. Enjoy your freedom.