“If you’re good at something, never do it for free”
You’ve probably seen the legendary scene from The Dark Knight, where the Joker (played by Heath Ledger) walks into a room full of mafia bosses and offers to help solve their problems with Batman.
A Russian mafioso asks “What do you propose?”
And the Joker says…
“It’s simple. We kill the Batman.”
Everyone laughs in disbelief.
And another mafia lord asks, “If it’s so simple, why haven’t you done it already?”
So the Joker responds with his legendary line…
“If you’re good at something, never do it for free.”
Truly a scene for the ages.
I can’t think of a role that any other actor played more masterfully than Heath Ledger playing the Joker.
Equally masterfully, maybe. But not more.
Because that’s as good as it gets. Acting at its best. Pure perfection.
Anyway, if you go to the YouTube clip of this scene and scroll down to the comments, the top-rated comment is:
“Best career advice I ever received.”
And I have to agree.
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately in my own career.
Because recently, I did two free 90-minute consulting calls with a guy who was a VERY well-paid expert in his industry…
But he wanted to get out of his current line of work and create his own online course business.
So he reached out to me wanting some advice on marketing online courses, and I obliged.
We hopped on a free consulting call where I “spilled the beans” on everything I know…
But since there were still some points to discuss at the end of the first call, I offered to schedule ANOTHER free consultation to go over the remaining strategy.
And at the end of the second call, he says…
“I really appreciate all your help. I realize I just took up 3 hours of your time… Can I pay you for these calls?”
And I said, “It’s not necessary.”
But he persisted and said “No, really. How much do you charge for calls like these? I want to pay you.”
So I replied “$250 an hour is my standard rate. But if you insist on paying, I’ll only charge you for an hour, so $250 total is fine.”
And he replied, “Sounds good, I’ll pay it.”
But after thinking about it more, I told him not to worry about it.
Since it wasn’t part of our original agreement, I wouldn’t feel comfortable charging him for the calls, as that wasn’t the expectation he had going into it.
After getting off of the call though, my girlfriend made a great point…
“You really DO need to start charging for these consultations from now on,” she said.
“Even when you call the doctor to get a short 10-minute consultation, they charge you for it. And usually the advice they give you is, ‘Well, I don’t know what’s wrong, and it could be any number of things. So we’ll have to run some tests.’ “
She continued…
“Yet you’re spending HOURS of your time offering all this valuable marketing advice for free. Don’t you see how silly that is?”
I thought back to the Joker’s legendary line. And I had to admit… my girlfriend and the Joker both had a point.
The thing is, I actually ENJOY doing free consultations and helping people out.
Since I’m a super nerd when it comes to marketing, copywriting, and entrepreneurship, I can talk about this stuff all day. It’s actually FUN to me.
But, as my girlfriend will (grudgingly) admit, my time is becoming increasingly limited. And free consultations just aren’t scalable.
So when I told her this morning that someone had just reached out to me on LinkedIn saying, “Hi Beau, I saw your profile and was interested to chat with you about developing a course”…
She told me, “Don’t you DARE offer another free consultation. Tell this person that if they want your advice, they need to pay.”
Lol.
Fair enough.
Anyway, this is a big shift I’ll be making in my business.
I’m glad to share my knowledge via my free content and the daily articles I publish…
But when it comes to doing time-consuming things that aren’t scalable, like offering intensive 1-on-1 consulting sessions for free, I’m gonna have to start cutting back on them. And eventually eliminating them altogether.
So what’s the takeaway for you?
Well, it’s obvious, my dear reader.
Learn from the Joker.
And if offering free consulting calls is a core part of your lead generation strategy now, that’s fine…
But you eventually want to start charging for them.
Because the top people in every industry don’t just give their precious time away for free. And that’s a fact.
But that’s just me. You do whatever you wanna do 😉
-Beau D. Schultz
P.S. If you want to watch (or re-watch) the clip I’m talking about, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FalHdi2DkEg
P.P.S. If you enjoyed this post and want to get more copywriting, marketing, and entrepreneurship tips just like this… sign up to my email list to get DAILY gold nuggets delivered straight to your inbox: http://beaudschultz.com/
