Giving Free Sessions

Hello, good evening. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Happy Tuesday, everyone. Tonight I'm going to be talking about free sessions and, you know, the whole conversation around free sessions. My experience with free sessions, especially in coaching, it was the advice that was given by the coaching school that I got trained and certified at. And the advice went like this. If you want to get clients, if you want to grow a coaching business, then just go out and be one amongst the people and offer everyone your free sessions. Offer them at family parties, offer them at networking events, offer them at work, offer them to strangers on the street, offer them, if you're in line at Starbucks, start up a conversation with someone and try to give them a free session. And hello, Shab. Nice to see you. Welcome. And like, let's. Let's just celebrate that their job was to get everyone in those courses who are training to be coaches to practice coaching. Okay? That was their job. Their job was to make sure that everyone who went through this training held onto what they learned and. And became really good, robust coaches. And that only happens through doing right. They did not give business advice. People were asking for business advice, not getting business advice. Okay? So, so. And like, if that's another whole other conversation about coaching programs not following through with. With business help, it's one of the reasons I have a business, because there's lots of need for this. So. So let's talk about giving free sessions, okay? And I want to start off with a metaphor here. Okay? So stick with me. So if you're a new coach or you're a new service provider and you're trying to get clients by giving away free sessions, and you're constantly offering and. Hello, Jason from Tanzania. I hope your trip is going well. Oh, my gosh. So we have North America and Africa covered. Let's see if we can get someone from Europe and South America and Asia and Australia. If we. If anyone is watching and you're from one of those continents, please tune in. That would be so much fun. So where was I? What was I saying? Oh, yeah. So you have. You're trying to get clients and you're doing so by giving away these free sessions. Okay? And you're basically starting a conversation anywhere. You know, you're in line at Starbucks waiting for your morning coffee, and there's a person behind you, and. And you get to chatting and you start, yes, cover the globe. Thank you. And you start talking to them about their life, and you say, you know, I'm actually coach. You know, I'd love to give you a free session. Whatever. The thing that makes me think of is, like, if someone were to have just gotten, you know, their certificate or whatever for being a doctor and they specialized in feet, they're a podiatrist, it would be kind of like them going around and just asking everyone to see their feet. It would be a little uncomfortable, a little weird. Okay. Also a little desperate. And when you're starting a business, those are three things you do not want. You don't want to make people uncomfortable, you don't want to come across as weird, and you also don't want to come across as desperate. Right. Because no one really wants to jump onto a sinking ship. And so let's talk about what it actually communicates when you're giving your services away for free. Okay? So number one, when you go around and just offer your services for free for everyone, you train everyone that your services are free. If you're just constantly giving away a free session here and a free session there, hoping it's going to turn into a business, it's going to be a very difficult jump for you when you do decide you want to charge. Okay. Because you're training everyone that's free or that it's super cheap and that they can have it whenever they want. Okay, There's a dating analogy here that I'm not gonna hammer home, but I'm sure you can, like, connect the dots. Okay? So we don't want to train people that your work is for free because it's your work. Okay? If you're. If you're starting a coaching business, if you're starting a consulting business, the last thing you want people to think is that this is just something you do for fun. All right? When you train them on that, they, you know, use your sessions for free. They refer people to you who can't actually afford you other freebie chasers. And there are a few other things I'm going to go down the list. Okay. But we don't want to train our people that our work is for free. All right? So number two, and I mentioned this a little bit, is when you choose, when you finally feel ready to charge for your services, it's that much harder to make that jump because you have just attracted a whole pool of people who aren't willing to spend money on your work, and they opted in for the free stuff. And now you're asking them to pay money. So it's going to feel energetically weird for you to up it on them. And it's also probably not going to land with them because they're just a bunch of freebie chasers. You know, I'm sure they're lovely people. I'm sure they're good human beings, but they, they came in for the free thing. So charging. Charging is going to feel like you are changing the rules on them on your end. Thank you. It's gonna feel like you're changing the rules on them. It's gonna feel energetically weird, you know, because you went from offering something for free. It's gonna feel like that bait and switch, you know, like, here's a little free sample. Oh, now, now you have to pay me money, right? Like, why not just charge from the beginning? Right. Um, so that's number two. Number three is, you know, the types of clients. I've kind of mentioned this, kind of referred to it, the types of clients you're attracting. So they're freebie chasers. Here's the thing about freebie chasers. They. They haven't invested anything into the work with you. They haven't invested money, they haven't invested some exchange of services. One coach said that he requested that for every hour he coached his clients, they had to go and volunteer for an hour. And this was how he made it, you know, economical for people who couldn't afford his work. I really like that. But if you're just offering your services for free, then you're. They have no skin in the game. Are they really going to do the work? And I've seen this play out, and they typically do not so oftentimes. New coaches and consultants, they want to offer these free sessions because they're like, you know what? I just need to build, like, a repertoire or a portfolio of success stories. I need these success stories so I can go out and justify charging for my work. All right? And it, it's. It's proof. They need proof that what they do is actually effective and can actually help people. And I understand, I understand wanting this. And also, the clients you attract are not going to be the clients who are going to give you that proof, okay? Because they're not going to do the work. They're not going to stay consistent with it. They're not going to be committed to it. And so you can do all you want. You can give away all the free sessions you want. But if you're waiting for those success stories to come through, the more skin in the game your clients have, the more work they're going to put in, the better the results are going to be. All right? And remember, you can't guarantee anything. You're a coach or you're a consultant. You're only doing some of the strategy, you're doing some of the mindset work. They have to go and take action on what you work on with them. Okay. It's not up to you. But really, they're far more likely to take action and see the results they want if they have some skin in the game. So if you're giving away free sessions, you, you know that you're unlikely to get this proof back. Okay? So all the referrals that you're wanting, probably going to be other freebie chasers. All the testimonials you're going to get back probably aren't going to be that great. They're going to be much better when you charge for it. Now, I want to say something positive in number four, I want to say something positive about giving away free sessions is that if, if you're not confident in running the session, in talking to someone for a half hour, an hour, however long they are, and you just need to build your confidence. Sure. Yes, yes. Go and give away all the free sessions you want. Go and give away free sessions to everyone in Starbucks. Give away free sessions to every family member. Just go out and do it. That's exactly what coaching programs are training their people on. Go and give sessions to everyone. Okay? That will build your confidence. Okay. But do it for you. Not as a business building tactic, because as a business building tactic, I can tell you it sucks balls. It is not, it is not an effective thing. Thank you, Jason. It is just not where it's at if you want to build a business. Okay, bye, Jason. Thanks for joining. If you want to build a business, there are a million different tactics. There are a bunch of different strategies that you can do. Some of them are giving away value where you're, you're paying it forward and giving people an experience of you. Others are, you know, marketing strategies. If you're struggling with this, if you don't know how to get clients and you're really struggling with how do I do it if I'm not supposed to give away free sessions or if that's not going to be the strategy that works for me. Hi, I'm Katie McManus. I'm a business strategist and coach and I work with folks just like you who are trying to get one on one clients. And so if you want to figure out what your strategy could be, then I invite you to DM me and we'll hop on a call and we'll basically plot out what direction you should go in. And then if it seems like a fit, then we can also talk about different ways to work together. Now, I want to point out I'm actually going to, like, show under. Under the. The hood. I guess we're using a car met today. Show under the hood. This is not a free session. Like, I'm not going to charge for it, but there's a difference between inviting people to a call where you're seeing if it's a fit. They know what they're showing up for. Versus, hey, just take my time. Take my time. Just you have some and you have an hour, and you have an hour, and you have an hour, and you have an hour. Right. You absolutely do still want to invite people to phone calls. You absolutely do want to invite people to have an experience of you to see if this is a fit for both of you. Right. It's a difference between giving, giving so much of yourself and setting this expectation that your time is free and saying, no, no, no. Like, I have a business and I help people with their. This very specific problem. And I'm really excited to help you with this problem. And if you have this problem, I'd love to talk to you to see if I can help. Okay. That's the difference here, by the way. What I teach is holistic selling. It's my. My methodology of selling. It's very consultative. It's based on building the relationship with the person. And I have a digital course on it coming out in a couple weeks, so stay tuned for that. But anyway, Shab and Jason and anyone else who is watching, thank you so much for joining me this evening. I'm going to keep it short because I have to take Luna for a little walk this evening. She's gotten, like, no exercise. But anyway, thank you for being here. And I hope if you are giving away free sessions, this is the kick in the butt that you need to stop doing that. Okay. Because you can grow your business so much faster using different strategies. And I don't want to see you kill your confidence when you see your clients not succeeding. And I also want you to start making money because you deserve to. Anyway, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Thank you for joining. Happy Tuesday and we'll be seeing you tomorrow. Bye.