George Kao (authentic business coach) explains when and how to offer free or discounted services to friends, family, colleagues, and superfans. He frames the advice around three tiers—scalable digital products, limited-capacity group programs, and one-to-one services—and gives practical rules: be liberal with giving scalable courses when requested; do not give free spots in limited group programs except selectively (e.g., promotional partners or short trial access); be strict with one-to-one sessions (generally no free sessions except 1–2 for immediate family who ask, and up to 3 for well-connected colleagues). He also recommends a "tapering strategy" (offer a small fixed number of free session-hours per week to strategic collaborators) and advises using any genuinely free business time for paid marketing or vetted collaborations.
Questions this video answers
February 14, 2020.
One or two sessions.
Up to three sessions.
Two to four weeks.
Two to three hours per week.
Chapters
I'm George Kao, authentic business coach and I want to talk about a topic that I think a lot of us heart centered people can get into trouble with, which is we have something that we believe in, a modality, a service, a product, and then we see friends and family who could benefit from it. Do we automatically just instinctually give it to our friends and family for free? So what do you think? I'd love for you to comment below and let me know what you think. Do you, when friends and family have a need that we can provide, do we just offer our service for free? How much free time are we giving to our friends and family? Things that we usually charge for in our business. So here's my recommendation. I think there are three levels that you need to consider. The first level is one to one services. The second level is group programs where you can have a limited number of people. And the third level is your scalable online products and courses that as many people can buy as you'd like. Well, let's start with that. Okay, let's say that you have a scalable digital course like an online course, as many people buy it as you like, it doesn't cost you any more time or energy. Then you can more liberally give it away to friends and family and colleagues. But even then you need to be aware that if you usually sell something, you know, you need to remind your network about the value of it. It's not that you're just giving it away willy nilly to people, it's that you're giving it away. If people ask you for it that are your friends or your family, okay, if they ask you specifically for access to one of your courses and it's a friend or a family, maybe then you just give it away. So sure, I'd love your feedback and in fact, tell me when you might be able to get to it because I'd love your feedback on it. Okay? So just remember the value of it. When it comes to your group programs where you have a limited number of people that can join, because every additional person who joins requires your attention. They have questions you need to respond to or comments you need to look at, then I would not recommend giving it away for free to anybody. Again, let me say that again, if you have a group program that has a limited number of people that can join, I don't recommend giving it away to anybody. Not even to your mother or father, okay? The people who brought you into this world, not even to them, because it is a limited number of people and every Single spot in that program is, you know, is, is part of your income. And by the way, if your family and friends want to support you as a small business owner, shouldn't they especially be paying you because they want your business to thrive? It doesn't. You know, when I go to a friend's restaurant, I don't go, all right, hey, yeah, I'm expecting free, free dinner. No, it's a friend's restaurant. They were hardworking small business owner. I especially want to pay them. In fact, I tip them more than I would tip some other random restaurant. So why don't you treat yourself with that kind of respect too, right? Your friends and family just say, sorry, I can't. I have a limited number of people that can join this program. And each person that you know, you know that person's joining fee is an important part of my income. And I'm a small business. It's not like I have a surplus of money and time. Okay, so. But however, there is a situation where you might want to give discounted spots in your group program to certain people who, you know, want to help promote your group program. Then you give them a discounted spot maybe for a limited time, because maybe they don't want to. They're not going to engage forever. They just want to engage for two to four weeks to check it out, right? Then you can give a discount or. Sorry, let me, let me rephrase it. If it's a colleague who really wants to promote your program, you can give a free limited time, two to four week spot in your program. If it's somebody else, like, let's say you meet a friend in a group program that you are part of that you pay for. Like I have clients in my membership programs. If they meet each other and they really like how they contribute to the group, then they might give them discounted access to their limited group program because they know that they're going to bring good group energy, good culture, a good vibe that helps your whole group program. And lastly, what about one to one services? A lot of you have been waiting for this part of the video. If it's your one to one services, let's be really careful and think about this. You have a very limited amount of time and energy every week. How many sessions can you actually give every week to clients? When I've asked that question to my own clients, it's anywhere between, let's say, you know, five to 15 sessions a week. It's usually somewhere in that range. Some people can only do five sessions a week because of their energy level or because they have other things they have to attend to. Some people can give up to 15, but every session matters, every slot matters to your income and to your ability to make a transformation in a client's life. Okay? You have to value it that way. So you can't just go give your free session, one on one sessions to even your mother and father. Okay? Now when it comes to your mom and dad, your grandparents, you might offer them a limited number to say, sure, I'd be happy to do one or two sessions for you for free because it really does. It's part of my time that I, that I use, that I spend with clients. And when I'm not doing that, I need to recover my energy because it's a really, it's intensive that I work with clients. So, so you might, for your mother, father, grandparents, you might give them one or two sessions if they ask. And this is really key. Don't just give away your sessions to family members because, you know, you think they might enjoy it. No, no, no. Do it only when they ask you, because if you give it to them without them asking you, they, they will, it kind of devalues your service in their mind. Yes, you give them the experience of it, but if they're not asking you, they're probably not even that receptive. Okay? So please don't give away your one to one sessions except to your mother, father, grandparents who ask you, maybe to your siblings, maybe, but everybody else, your cousins, right, your friends, right, your colleagues, everyone should be paying you like you're a restaurant owner, they're coming to your business, they should be supporting your restaurant, not eating free food. Okay? So, okay, and then what about colleagues? What about people who could promote your one on one service in those situations? If it's somebody with a big network who you think, yeah, this person could actually truly bring me clients, then you could in that case gift them up to three sessions if they really are interested so that they can experience your work. But again, that's with somebody who has a big network that you know can bring you new clients. Or it could be somebody who has already been very supportive of you and you want to, you want to help them out and they are asking you. Again, with all of these situations, you don't just give away your service, your sessions, or your products if people aren't asking you, because then you're devaluing. And in fact, you're not only devaluing. If you give away something, you might actually be putting a burden on that person think about this, you think your service is so great or your product so great, and you give it away to somebody, you're actually giving them a burden because now they feel like they have to use it in order not to disappoint you. So don't give anyone a burden. But if they ask you, okay, if it's a friend, a colleague who asks you, right, Or a fan who asks you, and as long as it's not your one on one service, you know, if it's a product that you know doesn't take you much time, then you can give it away thoughtfully. If it's a service, you, you are extremely strict about whether you give it away for free. Okay, now there is one more exception, one more situation I want to tell you about, which is what if you have a lot of time in your business, you really should be spending your time. Well, and, and if you go to my blog, I have articles on joyful productivity and you should read those articles on how you should spend time in your business, okay? You shouldn't be spend time all day long watching my videos or anybody else's videos, okay? You should be spend time in your business creating content, reaching out for collaborations, doing paid distribution of your content, doing market research, conversations with your fans, that kind of stuff. If you have, if you've done, if you're doing all that already, the seven disciplines of authentic business, Google that. The seven disciplines of authentic business, Google it and read my article on it. That's what you should be spending your time doing. If you have free time in your business, you really shouldn't have free time in your business. But if you do, that's what you should be doing. But if you say that, okay, George, I have carved out 10 hours a week, okay, 10 hours a week to serve paying clients. But I only have two hours a week right now that I'm filling. So I have eight hours free a week, Right? Well, some of those eight hours a week should probably be spent towards doing paid ads for your content or doing collaborations or doing, yeah, basically those two things. If you have free time, you shouldn't have free time in your business. You should be doing paid ads for your content or if you don't have money for paid ads, you should be reaching out and vetting collaborations for your business. Okay, but let's say you say, okay, I'm spending time doing that, but what if you still have a few hours left a week that you'd like to be serving paying clients that you don't, that you're not then. I call this the tapering strategy. You can offer maybe two hours a week of free sessions strategically, to collaborators, to colleagues, to superfans who could refer business to you. And you can give those like two hours or three hours of free sessions a week. That's it. But again, those are selective to potential referral sources. Not just because, oh, you feel badly about someone, you never have to feel badly about someone else's situation. Someone says, oh, I need your help and I can't afford your services. Okay, well, then you might have some volunteer time that you set aside in your life that you can help them. And that volunteer time, once it's used up, you need to rest or you need to work on your business or you need to play or something like that. Right? So you might have some volunteer time set aside, but after that, you need to refer that person onto other services, other resources, or give them your digital course that you don't mind giving away because it doesn't cost you any other time to give that away to someone who eagerly, eagerly wants it. Okay? And it's going to make use of it. I hope this wasn't, I hope this was clear enough to give you some mindset on how you should value your services and products and not just to give them away, even if you want to help people. Alright, this is different than free content. Free content you give away, of course, and you want to distribute that free content. But when services and products are different, they are paid. So I look forward to your comments below and I'm going to take 30 seconds to look at whether there are any Facebook comments on my live video. Video. And this will give you a chance to comment below while I, while I look for these. All right, I want to thank you for joining me live. Karine and Holly, Carissa, Paul and Sharon, thank you so much for joining me. And I look forward to seeing if you have any comments or questions below. All right, take care. Remember, value your services. Be careful about what you're giving away for free. Take care.
