How to Turn Free Advice Into Profits

If you're going to offer something for free, you need to have a plan for how it turns into a paid engagement. And that needs to be clear to all involved from the beginning. So. Yep. And I love the way that you do it. Somebody asks to meet with you.

Hey, everybody. Roland Frazier and Ryan Deiss here with another episode of the business launch podcast. Welcome, Ryan. I love, love, love that background that you got going there.

I too, am enjoying it. I appreciate you letting me stay at your casa. Been a good week.

I was at a meeting recently and was listening to. It was a mastermind for one of our masterminds, and one of the gentlemen was asking me, he said, listen, he said, I have been. I've got a person who I've been coaching for the last, you know, for the last several weeks. It's a weekly coaching thing, and I'm helping them out with their marketing. And I have. I have been, you know, doing this for a little bit and I'm trying to figure out. I'm not charging. I'm trying to figure out how do I turn this into either equity in the business or paid or something like that. Excuse me. And. And I asked him, I said, okay, so basically right now you're meeting with this person. You're doing it once a week, and you're helping them with marketing. I'm helping them with marketing. Okay, and. And you're not being paid for it? No. So, okay, and how long have you been doing this? So about a year. Okay, so you've had 50 some meetings with this person? Yeah. Okay, how much impact has what you've done had on their business? He said, well, none, because, you know, I can't get them to do it. I said, okay, so basically you've met with them about 50 times over a year. You haven't been paid anything for it, and they haven't taken any of the advice that you've given, but they're thinking about doing it and you're encouraging them to do it every time. Yeah. And so what do you talk about at the meetings? We talk about, you know, how these things need to be done. Okay, so you've had 50 meetings with this person over a year about marketing, things that they haven't done, and each new meeting is talking about how they haven't done the thing that they should do. Yeah. I said, you need to tell them I love you and mean it, but I'm not doing you a good service by continuing to meet with you. So this is going to be our last meeting. And if you would Like I would be happy to get together with you and talk about the things that you need to do and hold you accountable for doing them. And to do that, you need to. And then you choose. I told him, I said, you choose. You need to pay me this or you need to give me part of the company. But no matter what, you need to have skin in the game because right now we will continue this cycle and neither of us will be happy. I will waste my time. And honestly, you're wasting your time and nothing's coming from it. So this is our last meeting and this is how we're gonna go. And he's like, wow. First off, he said, he said, wow, you're a whole lot more intense in person than you are on video.

I was like, it, this is what.

You need to do, right? It's, it's, it's so easy, I think, to waste your time and other people's because you were not strong enough to demand that they take action on the things that you're talking about. And it, to me, it goes to all advice, you know, it goes to should, you know, should I still see this person? You know, I don't know. You said they beat you every week and that you hate them and it's the worst relationship you've ever had. Why are you even asking me this? You know, I'm going to give you one time advice, you know, should you keep seeing them? No, I shouldn't. Okay, great. What are you going to do about it? I'm going to not see them anymore. Great. Next week. Man, they're so mean to me. You know, Come on. It's like, and I don't mean to belittle Stockholm syndrome and you know, battered person syndrome and all that kind of stuff, because that's real and different. But in certainly this relationship that we were talking about, it's a challenge. And so I'd love to just say like when, Pete, when we're thinking about how can we be more effective and this happens. I get asked that question a lot. And I know you do too. In the context of some of the things that we do are consulting, primarily consulting for equity. And we'll have a, you know, a two to four hour meeting for a reasonably significant fee. Not because we want to make a bunch of money consulting, but because we need people to self qualify. Excuse me. We need people to self qualify and we need them to have skin in the cave. I'm gonna sneeze again. But, but very often people are afraid to, they're afraid to ask I guess. Right. Like, like he's somebody who's in, who is in our consulting for equity program and he's like talking about this person and, and very often it's, well, how do I change a relationship where I haven't charged anything to one where I do? And so I just think it'd be interesting to talk about that a little bit and get your perspective.

Well, I think, you know, it's worth pointing out that the, both the perceived and actual value of that relationship is zero.

Yes.

Both ways. In fact, it's probably negative because a lot of time was wasted. And so, and yeah, so if you're in the business of providing any kind of service, any kind of advice, you've got to be very, very, very careful about giving it away for free in a manner that isn't strategic, that isn't intentional. Because I do believe, and I know you and I maybe disagree a little bit, you know, on this, but I do believe that there is a place for offering some kind of free advice and free services, especially in the beginning when you're getting started. We just started working with, with a guy who's got an agency because he reached out and offered to do some free work, did a great job. So we're like hired. Never, never ever, ever in a million years would have hired this person because I didn't really know who he was, didn't have a great resume, but had done some free work ahead of time. Like, here's some stuff I did for you. If you like it, I can do some more. And if you continue to like it, I would love for you to hire me. But there's a difference. It was clear to all involved from the beginning that I'm willing to do this for free because I want to prove myself to you so that we can eventually have a business relationship together. And I think a lot of people who are in the advice giving space haven't yet figured out how to put up, communicate boundaries effectively enough. And a lot of these relationships kind of just go into this perpetual advice giving. And I think a lot of times, if we're being honest, we do it because it's a way to play work. It's a way to feign activity, but it's low risk. They can't really get that mad at you if it doesn't work because they didn't pay you for it. And so you get to play like you're in business and you get to play like you're doing work, but really you're not. So you can like, if you're going to offer something for free. You need to have a plan for how it turns out into a paid engagement. And that needs to be clear to all involved from the beginning. So, yeah. Yep. And I love the way that you do it. Somebody asks to meet with you, the next words that come out of your mouth need to be, yep, let me tell you how I do that. Yep. Let me tell you how that works. And then you communicate a plan of action. You communicate, you know, a prescription of how that's going to work. And that could, like, for you. I know it's. Yep, Let me tell you how that works. You pay me $25,000. We meet for a half day. Yep. That's what you say. Now, not everybody has the track record, the gusto, the hubris. Hubris isn't the right word, but you know what I mean? To pull that off. They just can't yet. Doesn't mean they can't eventually, but maybe they can't yet or they don't believe they can. That's fine.

Yep.

Let me tell you how that works. It's $5,000. Yep. Let me tell you how that works. You're going to buy me the most expensive coffee at Starbucks because I like for there to be some skin in the game. Yep. Let me tell you how that works. I will happily meet with you for free for this much time, but at the end of it, I'm going to ask you this question. Do you want some help implementing the stuff we talked about with the hopes that you'll say yes and that we'll get to work together and have a real business relationship? I think as long as you have a plan in place. Yep. Let me tell you how that works. You're fine. If you have no plan, you're going to wind up in this toxic spiral, bad relationship.

Yeah. And I think that that's it. What I do is really that I say the way I do that is there is power in those particular words. Because it sounds like you have a standard business practice. Right. And these are our standard terms. That's one of the, you know, that's a negotiating strategy that attorneys have, is like you, here's our agreement. It's one page long, and our standard terms are eight pages long. And they have all the real stuff in it. You know, but there are standard terms. Everybody agrees to standard terms. Oh, okay. I can't negotiate that. And they're printed. You know, there's no blanks. It's just they're. They're there. But. But I do Think that people find, people want certainty. And if there is a program in place, it's when you and I are in the process of doing this for our scale and exit business right now, right? If there is a program in place, then people are more inclined to accept the program as it's presented than if you're like, I don't know, what do you think we should do? You know, well, let's get together, you know, once a week and see if my marketing improves, and then maybe we can work together. That's not as good as. Okay, look, the way I do that is that I'll have a meeting with you, and there's no charge for that meeting because it's an investment by me. I'm going to actually. And Jay Abraham says this, which I actually really like. I will buy you an hour of my time to sit with you and do this. So I'm going to. I'm going to go ahead. I'm $5,000 an hour. I'm $300 an hour. I'm $8 an hour, whatever you are comfortable, I'm going to spend the money to buy my hour for you. And then during that time, we're going to go over where you are right now, where you want to be, and we'll talk about a process. Not how to do it, but a process that can get you a plan to get from one place to the other that then you can implement. And my goal, and I say this, and this is something that I heard from Kent Clothier, who's a friend of mine, that he was having a hard time with turning those into equity deals. And he said, you know, at the end, you always get people that ask you if you want to be, you know, if they want to do a deal with you. He says, I don't get that.

I get.

They're like, okay, thanks. And then they go away. And so this is also critical. Like, the strategy of the way I do that is. And then you tell them the way you do, that I'll meet with you for this period of time and then. Which shouldn't be more than a day, by the way. And then we'll identify where you are, because a lot of people don't know where they are and where you want to be. Okay, great. That tells me where I want to be. And then a process, not how to, but a process for how to get from here to there. And then you say after that, and my evil plan in doing this is that I'm going to razzle dazzle, frazzle, you so much with what we do during that meeting that you're going to decide that you absolutely, positively have to work with me on this. And then when we do, and then you can say for me it's. And then we'll talk about potentially being me being part of your company. But it could be. And then when we're done with that, we'll decide. I'll razzle. My intent is to. Intention is to razzle, dazzle, frazzle you so much that you'll say, I want to contract with you as a consultant to handle that plan for me. Now you've said, what's the desired outcome for you of the meeting? That expectation is set. They know what you want from the meeting, and they're clear that they only get a finite period of time to get it. They get to see the value in advance.

And.

And that's a really good formula. And so that was what I told this gentleman to do, is I said, so tell them that, you know, and if you have been already giving. It's time to cut them off. Yeah, this is. Look, if you don't know after 12, after 12 months, 50 times meeting with me that I can help your business, then I have not done my job. It's not on you at all. I haven't done my job. Because if you don't believe at this point that I can help you and that I'm worth whatever it is that you're charging, then you have failed to deliver value. And so you need to figure out how can I reassess and better deliver value?

Is that the other person is going to be excited, by the way, about there being an actual plan for that relationship. Because I cannot imagine that they're just getting tons of value from these weekly conversations that they, that they do nothing with and only feel guilty when they show up the next week and find out that, like, oh, yeah, I didn't do it again. It's like, oh, man. Like, they're my sense of relief.

My guess is, and I didn't drill down, but my guess is that it's not. It's not as bad as that. That it's probably, you know, so what are you doing? You know? Well, right now, you know, I'm doing this, this and this. Okay. You know, one of the things you could do is this, you know. Yeah, that would be. That would be cool. Okay, well, gosh, it was good having lunch with you. Let's meet next week. And you meet next week. Like, you know, so how's it going? Yeah, well, I've Tried this and this. And I was like, oh, okay. Did you try the other thing? No, I didn't do that. Okay, I think that could be good. But another thing you could do, you know, I think it's just. It's just a ongoing disorganized mess of a conversation. And so having clarity as to what you want. You and I did this and are doing this tonight over wine, too, is we have a meeting the next day. And we said we need to go into that meeting with the specific plan that we're going to talk with the person about. It's like, hey, this thing we're doing isn't working. Here's why. And here's what we are going to need to have change in order for this to make sense for both of us, because I don't think it's working for you guys either. And here's our suggestion. 1, 2, 3, 4. Right. If you don't have that specificity to go in with, then you're probably never going to come to an agreement and you're never going to move from I'm just giving you random advice over coffee 50 times to you are a contracted client, and now we've got a deal. And you won't have identified the plan that will get them the benefits that they desire. Yeah.

And nobody wins. And nobody wins, and everybody is. Is just playing work and playing business. And it is a mutually destructive, toxic relationship. So get yourself out of it.

Don't.

Again, if you want to give away advice and work and stuff like that for free, that's fine. But do with a plan. And if you find that you've been working with somebody for free for this much time, you are doing them more harm than good. You can tell yourself all day long what a great, wonderful, generous person you are, but you are wasting their time and allowing them to play business when they need to get to fricking work.

It will also really have some shock factor when you go and say, listen, I just want you to know before we sit down, this is going to be our last meeting. Yep. But the hell.

Right?

Yeah. Why? You know, it's not you, it's me. I realize that I have been. That I have failed you. How? You know, I've clearly not. My goal is to help you and to help you in a way that will be beneficial to you and that also will be beneficial to me. And I haven't done that because we're sitting here for our 57th time having lunch and a cup of coffee and nothing. Neither of us has done anything so, you know, I love you, mean it. And we're not going to.

Do you think they're going to do it? Do you think they're actually going to have the conversation?

I don't know. You know, it's. It's a person who pays tens of thousands of dollars for my advice. And I would say between 30 and 40% of the people that do that actually listen and follow my advice, despite the fact that they're paying for it. Because sometimes it's hard, you know, I mean, it's hard to do the business things until you've done them enough, like that first time that you're asking for a fee for your advice, that you don't know in your heart if your advice is worth what you're asking because you have your own, you know, issues with that. That's hard for people to do. But if you're not willing to do that, then you're never going to get the things that you say that you want. So that person has come into our world so that they can get advice from me and our team on how to do this thing. They present what's going on, we give the prescription, and now will they do it? It's hard and I'll acknowledge it's hard, right?

Yeah.

But will they do it? I don't know. It'll be a good question and I'll find out soon.

The odds are better that they'll do it if they pay for it. I truly do believe that. And so if you. If you actually genuinely, sincerely want to help people, then you should encourage them to have some skin in the game.

I agree. Anything else you can think of that would help people on. This is really designed partially. This is productivity, but it's really about. I think that sometimes doing the thing that is best for somebody else might feel to you scary or even insulting or even selfish.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's not.

I think also professionals take the time to build a plan and professionals go first and so be able to say, yep, here's how that works. Because that's going to engender confidence. It's going to just speed the process along. It's going to allow you to get through the awkward like, but then how does that work and how much that costs and what would it. You skip all of that and you're just, yep, this is how we do it. And the way that you do it today that you speak with such confidence may not be the way that you do it tomorrow after you've done it a couple of times. And that's okay. But if you will start with some plan, you're taking the lead, and you're then going to be able to learn what worked and what didn't. You're going to be able to adjust accordingly. If you never have a plan, you'll never know what worked and what didn't. So make sure that you can. When somebody says, hey, can you help me with this? Hey, can I pick your brain? Hey, can I blank? You can say, yep, here's how that works. Here's how I do that. This is my process. And as long as you have that, then you're acting like a pro. And you're probably going to get the results that pros get, not the results that amateurs get. Yeah.

And I'd recommend that when you do this, and I do this myself, is that whenever you're about to have a conversation like that, create a cheat sheet. Create a little outline for yourself. Not that's a script, but just that hits the highlights so that you've got four or five points that you're going to cover and put them on your phone and refer to them. Say, okay, awesome, I want to talk to you about. Say, I've got some interesting news for you and I want to have a conversation with you. I want to be sure I don't forget anything. So I'm going to just check my notes. And then you're like, first thing, say, okay, so number one, today is going to be our last meeting. Yeah. Then you look at the second thing, you know, okay, well, here's why.

Because you know.

And then. So you're not lost and you're not thrown off and you can keep the momentum of the conversation.

No, you're right. Especially if it's going to be a difficult conversation. Script it, rehearse it, and say the hard part first. Do not hem and haw your way into that. If you do need to go and pivot one of these relationships that's gone bad, the first words out of your mouth need to just be that same thing. If you're going to, like, let somebody go, say the difficult, challenging thing first to get out of the way. Make sure that it's. Make sure that the rest is scripted, too, so that you don't get off track.

Exactly. So hopefully that was helpful. If you guys found it to be, then please share it with a friend. And.

And if you didn't argue in the comments with somebody, because it's really going to help our engagement.

We have been told yes. By Ryan, who is our producer here, that you should Be fighting with each other.

Yeah. Pick fights vigorously.

Let's.

Let's make the Internet a little more vitriolic. I think that's a good goal for this year. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So we expect to see that. We'll see you guys next time on Business Lunch.

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