Camille D. Jamerson explains why you should charge for mentorship instead of giving free advice over coffee. She recommends $50 to $150 per hour, suggests creating reusable content like blogs and videos to reduce time spent answering the same questions, and shares a "brain dump" exercise to calculate what your knowledge is actually worth.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, welcome back to Mogul Moments. I'm your host, CDJ. Thanks so much for tuning in again. In this episode, we're going to talk about something that a lot of you have probably heard about. A lot of you have probably used, and some of you are probably doing this and thinking nothing of it. It's called brain picking. Yes, brain picking. Have you ever, like, called someone or asked a mentor or someone that you admire, "Hey, can I meet you for coffee and pick your brain?" Or has someone ever done that to you? Yeah, that's what I thought. It's happened to me a kazillion times, and whenever I can, I try to oblige that. Why? Because my initial thought was that people did that for me. They mentored me, they helped me, they shared their inside track or their secrets with me, and I want to do the same for other people. But here's the thing. I had gotten so many of those requests that I spent more time meeting folks for coffee than I did actually working some months. And of course they say, "Oh, I only want 30 minutes," and it ends up being 2 hours, you know, and given the time that you drive there and drive to the next thing, you've spent 3 hours with the person for the price of a caramel macchiato. No. Stop doing that. Just, just stop. And here's why. What I did one day was I sat down and I kind of wrote out everything that's in my brain, like literally all my experiences, all my wisdom, all my failures, my relationships, my business contacts, the projects that I've worked on, the people that I've worked for, the collaborative events and things that I pulled up. I mean, I just tried to do a brain dump of everything that's in there, not in detail, but just generally speaking of everything that was in there. And when I started looking at that, what I realized is that that's worth a whole lot more than a latte, right? And I devalued everything that was in my brain and start— and was just giving it away, just giving it away for free. And then I realized that, you know what, that's not wisdom. So I started looking up what other people were doing regarding that, and I came across Marie Forleo. Some of you have probably heard of her, and she said in one of her broadcasts was that what she does now is people call her or want to pick her brain, she asks them to pick a date and a method of payment. How about that? And I don't think that you should charge some extraordinary amount, but I do think you should place some value on your time. And the other thing that you can do is you can have free content already out there, whether it's in blogs, whether it's in videos like this, that you can point people to when they ask you, "Hey, I just wanna pick your brain about—" So many people are asking me for my time and I don't know how to say yes or no or blah blah blah. You know what? I did a video all about that. It's called brain picking. Here you go. Go to the video. You can see everything that I think about that. So that way you're giving them the information. It's content that's already out there, and it's a one and done. You've already done it. You're not spending any more time saying what you've already said. So with that, I want you to think about how much time you spend brain picking. And, um, to other people, and I want you to value that more. So if there is someone whose brain you want to pick, buy them more than a cup of coffee, literally. I mean, I don't care if it's a gift card, I don't care if it's a book, whatever it is that they like, go over and above to show your appreciation for what they've given you, because it wasn't free to them. Um, and then the next thing that I'll recommend is that go through your own mind. Think about all of the experience that you've had and think about what's in your brain and how valuable that is. And then place a value on it to a certain degree. I mean, hey, somebody wants to sit for you an hour, charge them $50, $100, $150, whatever it is. Place a value on it and then people will take what you give them more seriously. They will take your time more seriously. They will take your wisdom more seriously. And hopefully they will do some of the things that you shared with them, 'cause nothing is worse than to spend 2 or 3 hours having coffee with someone, share your wisdom with them, and then they do none of it. Anyway, the very last thing that I'll say, um, concerning this is that if you are a mentor, you wanna make certain that you're giving, um, wisdom, you're giving sound advice, but make certain that you're not giving away all your secrets for free. Sorry, just don't, because that's valuable. That's valuable. And if they, whomever that is that needs it, values it and needs it, they'll be willing to pay for it because you paid for it. Whether you realize it or not, you paid for it. You paid for it in your time, you paid for it in your attention, you paid for it with the hard knocks, you know, you paid for it with your failures, you paid for it, so they need to give back, um, and, and in exchange for not having to go through what you went through, there needs to be a value attached to it. So, I said all that to say, value brain picking, value what's in your head, have people pick a date and a method of payment if they want to brain pick with you, and have content available that shares some of your key things that people, that you can point people to should they need your wisdom, should they need your advice, should they need your time. Thanks for tuning in to this week's Mogul Moments. I'm your host, CDJ. Again, I would love if you would follow me on social media, so I'll put my social media tags, they're probably in the description, but I'll make sure that they're in the video as well. Please follow me, share this video with somebody that you know needs it, especially somebody that's been brain-picked a lot and wasting their time, or giving their time away, I should say. But not just this video, the whole season, this whole season of foundational truths that we've been sharing would be really valuable to somebody that you know. Make sure you get it to them. I'd love to have them aboard Mogul Moments as well. We're almost at the end of season 1, so stay tuned. Another episode will be up soon. Bye!
