Sick of agonizing over whether to say yes to something that doesn’t pay? Michelle cuts through the noise and shows you the real question to ask: what job is this opportunity actually doing for your business?
Sick of agonizing over whether to say yes to something that doesn’t pay? Michelle cuts through the noise and shows you the real question to ask: what job is this opportunity actually doing for your business? She breaks down the difference between genuine marketing, useful market research, and work that should absolutely be paid. By the end, you’ll know exactly when a free gig is a smart move - and when it’s just draining your time for nothing.
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Check out the full episode at TheMichelleWarner.com
Hi, I'm Michelle Warner, and I'm a business designer and strategist. And in the 15 plus years I've been doing this work, I've noticed the same trend everywhere. Business owners are falling into the trap of centering strategies first, when they need to be centering sequence.
Because the reality is, the steps you take in your business, and the order in which you take them, is more important than how well you implement any single strategy. So on this show, my goal is to fix that by helping you find and trust your own sequence of actions, rather than blindly following someone else's strategy. Welcome to Sequence Over Strategy.
Navigating a Crowded Market
This season, we have been focusing on the It Matters More theme, because so many of you tell me how you're experiencing a more crowded market. What do I mean by crowded market? I mean more competition, buyers who may be questioning their budgets, buyers who are experiencing limited budgets.
And when those markets are crowded and noisy, aka, you know again, more people are doing what you're doing, and you have more competition, getting the details right matters more. Or in really plain English, you can't get away with as much. And so today's It Matters More topic is one that I absolutely love, because it comes up over and over and over again.
And understanding the decisions that you're making under these conditions, and when this comes up, well, it matters more. You want to get it right, because typically when people get this one wrong, they're saying no to opportunities that would actually make a lot of sense and could move them forward in a really big way. So what's the topic?
The topic is, little tongue in cheek, is it marketing or is it a product? Or more directly, should I do this thing for free? And oh boy, this is a loaded topic, but it is a fun one.
And like I said, it comes up over and over and over again. So let's get into it. I cannot count how many times I have gotten a question or heard someone make a statement like, hey, I was asked to speak, but they can't pay me.
Should I do it for visibility? Or the opposite, I was asked to speak and they couldn't pay me, so I immediately said no. Something like, I will not work for free.
I value myself and my work is too much, too important to do any work for free. I will even get people in an exasperated tone saying, can you believe they asked me to show up for free? Or, and this is one of my favorites, insert the sarcasm here, I don't respect a business owner who will offer their services for free.
Okay, come on. There's always nuance in this, guys. Let's not make statements that are that directive.
But I will let you off the hook, because if you have ever said any of those things out loud or even wondered them, a couple of things. It's perfectly normal. No shame in the game here.
I don't know that I've met an entrepreneur, including myself, who hasn't at least thought one of these things before. However, as is often the case around here, you, if you are thinking, if you are saying some of these things out loud, you're asking and thinking the wrong thing in the wrong order, right? Surprise, right?
A surprise statement to make on sequence over strategy that we're thinking through something in the wrong order. But free or not free, it's just not nearly enough information to judge someone or an opportunity on. In our world of the five whys, if you remember our five whys framework of getting to a root cause, free or not free, should I do this for free or not free?
That's not the root cause, right? We have to ask better questions in a better order in order to answer the question of should we do it for free or not? Because these types of statements about I don't do anything for free, I'm worth more than that, they're not going to cut it.
And you might be missing opportunities if that is the level at which you're responding. So we need to be asking and framing things in a completely different way. But before we get into that correct framing, I'm just going to give us a moment of grace for our mindsets, our self-worth and our identities as entrepreneurs.
Because I have noticed that a lot of these free or not free or can you believe they're not paying me? A lot of these conversations start from a place of making sure you are valuing yourself by not feeling obligated or, dare I say, feeling like it's the only path to getting paid work, right? A lot of times this presses on our value buttons or our people-pleasing buttons, right?
We're asked to do something and so we say yes because we feel bad if we don't do it. And then we reach a limit. And then it feels like a boundary violation.
And so we get mad and say some big declarative statement of I'm never doing anything for free again. Those can happen. And I have noticed that a lot of the conversation around this free or not free is, again, framed around kind of those self-value statements when maybe you're caught in a perfectionist loop or maybe when you're caught in some of these people-pleasing loops.
And so we make really definitive statements and you're even advised to make really definitive decisions that you will never do anything for free as a way to protect your boundaries. Listen, I'm a big fan of that, right? However, these are not the situations I'm talking about.
I want to be very, very clear before we get into this. You should always be paid your worth and you should never feel like you have to keep working for free until you've perfected something or until someone in some way deems you ready to go. Because guess what?
You're never going to be perfect, right? So we can take that expectation off the table. And so this conversation that we're having today is not about those circumstances.
That's already baked in. I value your worth as an entrepreneur. I value the work that you do.
But I have found that this not-free conversation is actually not tied to that value, right? We've lost the nuance of some of the circumstance because when we say you should always be paid your worth, it's just become such a mantra and gosh, a lot of times, like I said, you miss opportunities. So in this situation and in this episode, I'm going to invite you to set that aside.
Just trust me that I'm already valuing your self-worth here and I'm never going to set you up to do something for free because you're people-pleasing or because you feel like maybe your solution isn't yet perfect and so you have to do it or because you have to be nice to somebody. No, all those reasons are gone. You are worth your value, right?
This is not about self-worth and it's not about being paid what you're worth. This is about being a smart strategic business owner who asks the right questions in the right order in order to maximize your profit and your revenue. I'm going to repeat that.
Asking the questions we're going to ask in this episode today is not about whether you are worth making money or whether your content is worth it. That's already baked in. I trust that it is.
Understanding the Job an Opportunity Does
This instead is about being a smart strategic business owner who's asking the right questions in the right order in order to uncover the correct opportunities to maximize your profit and make the money that you are worth. And so what is the right question that you want to ask in these situations? It's not, are they paying me or not?
It's not that black and white. When you're asked to do something for free or when you're contemplating or when you're thinking about your marketing funnel, it's, what job do I expect this opportunity to do for me? What job does this opportunity fit in my business?
What job is it doing? What role will it play? Not in the organizer's business, right?
If somebody is organizing a summit and they ask you to do something, we're not worrying about what role that's going to play in their business. We're worrying about what role is it going to play in my business. We're being selfish here.
And there are typically three possible answers to what role is this playing in my business. The first one is uncommon, and that is that it is market research. And we're going to go through some examples, but that is one typical job that these opportunities might be doing.
They're completing some market research for you. The second one is that they play a role and they fill a hole in your marketing funnel. So they are a marketing thing.
And the third job they may be doing is they may be a product. They may be revenue generating. So those are the three jobs that you would typically want to happen in your business when one of these opportunities comes up.
It is typical that there is either a market research job to be done, that there is a marketing job to be done, or that there is a money generating product job to be done. And that may seem simple and obvious, and it is. Like most of the stuff we talk about on here, a lot of it is simple and obvious, but maybe not in the heat of things, right?
And so we want to take the time and really talk through these things because it can be surprisingly hard at times to answer the question of what job an opportunity might be able to do for your business. And again, at other times, we just never even bother to ask it. We just look at an opportunity, someone calls up and says, could you speak at this thing?
And you just think yes and no. You don't actually think through, hey, okay, what does that opportunity look like? What job could it do?
So we want to instead make sure we're asking this critical question and really think through these possible answers and what they look like because that is going to allow you to make a positive decision about whether you should be able to be paid or not. Not even whether you should be able to be, but whether you should be paid or not for the thing. So let's talk through the possible answers, what my definitions of them are, and then we're going to go through some examples.
So possible answer number one, it is market research. As I said, this is relatively uncommon, but it can also be wildly useful. If you are new to business, if you are rolling out a new product, right?
You might look at an opportunity to get some really quick market feedback. It can be hard and it can be expensive and it can be timely to complete market research. So if you are rolling out something new in your business and somebody shows up at your doorstop with an opportunity to, you know, speak to your target audience in some way, gosh, what a fantastic way to get some quick feedback.
So the job that opportunity is doing is it is getting you market research and it's getting it for you quickly and potentially in person or at least face-to-face and potentially in bulk if you're talking to more than one person at a time. All those things are costly to gather on your own. So if an opportunity comes up at a time where you need some market research, this is going to be a really great and frankly profitable reason to say yes to doing something for free because sure, maybe you're not going to get paid for it, but you're also not going to spend any resources in terms of time, energy, or actual money in collecting that market research in other ways.
This can potentially be the most efficient way to collect a lot of market research at once and if that comes up at the right time in your business, what a gift, right? It's a huge, huge gift. So one thing that these opportunities can be is market research and I would hate for someone to say no to something when they need market research just because they're not being paid because again, the other side of getting that market research, what are the other options?
The other options are you don't get it at all, which is relatively common, and then maybe you're rolling something out that would have really benefited and done much better, been more profitable had you had the market research, right? Or you're going to go out and you're going to talk to a lot of people or conduct a lot of surveys or do a lot of boots on the ground work to collect that research, and it's going to take you double, triple, quadruple, even more, 10x the time than had you have just said yes to an opportunity. So that's number one.
If you need a market research job done in your business, a lot of times it makes sense to say yes to some sort of opportunity even if they're asking you to do it for free. Second scenario is very common, whereas market research needs to be timed at the right time and is relatively uncommon. Second one is pretty uncommon and definitely misunderstood, and that is whether this opportunity falls within your marketing funnel.
My friends, marketing is expensive. It is not uncommon for me to see businesses spending 10% to 25% of their expenses and or time in business development and lead generation. That's a lot for the record.
That's a lot. And it is so expensive in that actual money and energy and time. And so if and when an opportunity crosses your desk that will lighten that load, say yes immediately, even if you're not paid, right?
Because in this case, you're not giving away your time for free. You are saving your time and probably quite a bit of literal money by being more efficient and productive in your marketing efforts. This is screaming relationship marketing, by the way, and we'll talk about that when we get through the examples, right?
When people are first introduced to relationship marketing and I say, hey, we want to go borrow audiences. We want to put you in front of an audience. Can you speak somewhere?
Can you teach? They're immediately like, well, I should get paid for that, right? And I say, probably not.
Because of getting paid for it puts any kind of gate between you and accepting that opportunity. You're actually costing yourself money because the effort you're going to have to go through to find those leads in some other way is most likely much more expensive in either time, energy or money and probably all of those things. So if you can get the same or more leads from doing this thing for free, you're not doing it for free, right?
It's actually profitable for you because you're not spending doing something else. So two of the potential answers we've talked about. It is market research.
It is part of a marketing funnel. Those are two jobs that you need done in your business that if an opportunity crosses your desk and they ask for it to be free and you kind of cringe at it, if you need one of those two jobs done and this opportunity is a good match for it, obviously it needs to be a good match. If this opportunity is a good match to do that job for you, please, please do it for free.
You will save so much time, energy, money by not expending it in other directions trying to get that job done in a different way. This tends to be a really efficient way to get that job done. And then we get to the third, which is the exception and also where people struggle a little bit.
And this is if you have an opportunity that crosses your desk that is not a good match for market research and it is not a good match for your marketing funnel, right? You're asked to speak to an audience that isn't quite your perfect audience or it's not your perfect audience at all. Then it's a product.
Full stop. And people struggle with this concept a little bit or it's a little bit of a brain retrain that we have to go through, right? It is a product.
And you need to be paid when it's a product. Because what's the point of a product? The job of a product, the point of a product is that it's at the end of your funnel.
It's a moneymaker, right? So when an opportunity comes up that is not market research and it is not marketing, then it's a product. And products you need to be paid for.
So when you're going to hold the line, when you're going to say, I need to be paid, it is when you take a look at the opportunity and you say, there's no real market research for me here and there's no real marketing benefit here or maybe the marketing benefit is needle in a haystack style and we'll talk about that in a second. Then I need you to make it a product and I need you to get paid. And this is where some of you who might be people pleasers are going to struggle.
Because you know it's a temptation and we've been talking about this, right? On the podcast. What is going to be a temptation is to talk yourself into the fact that it's a marketing product.
If something comes across your desk that is not to the right audience but you want to be able to say yes and you feel bad and our people pleasing is there, it is common, because I see this all the time, it is common for you to talk yourself into the fact that oh maybe I'll meet one person there and maybe they'll buy something from me so therefore it's a product or so therefore it's marketing. No. I need you to hold the boundary lines on this pretty tightly.
And this is where the strong mindset comes in of making sure that you're being paid your worth. It's not so much, is it free or is it not free? It's in holding the line between, hey this opportunity that's coming across my desk, it really is a great marketing opportunity or it needs to be a product because I see that slipping all the time.
When an opportunity comes across the desk that is actually a product aka you need to be paid for it because the audience is not a good enough fit for you from a marketing perspective, there's a huge temptation to sit there and talk to yourself and say well what if one person in that audience actually is, what if there's a needle in a haystack situation? Then maybe I should say yes to this because I might meet that person and it might turn into work. Uh-uh.
We do not want needle in a haystack marketing. And by needle in a haystack I mean we're not going into a room hoping that one person is an exception in there. That room needs to be full of your clients whether it's a digital room, a virtual room, a real room, I don't care what kind of room we're talking about, we're talking room as you know metaphorically.
Whoever you're in front of, the vast majority of them need to be your potential clients in order for you to say this is a marketing opportunity and therefore I'm doing it for free. And where you need to build your muscle is if it is not a marketing opportunity you gotta be honest with yourself there. And you have to say okay this is not a marketing opportunity so this needs to be paid.
And that's our line. Our line is not I will never do anything for free. Right?
That's not a line that we wanna hold to because then you're gonna miss opportunities you know occasionally for market research and all the time for marketing if you're holding yourself to that line. So we don't wanna hold the dramatic black and white line of I will never do anything that's not paid. But once we say we're not gonna hold that line now we get into the nuances and we have to hold a line that can be a little harder to hold.
Right? And that is the line between is this a marketing activity or is this a product? And sometimes market research sneaks in there but market research tends to be pretty obvious.
But we can really struggle to hold that line between hey is this room truly full of my best leads or when it's not I need to look at it as a product and say I need to get paid. And so that's the line I want you to hold in terms of paid or not paid and I know I keep repeating it because I want it to sneak in. That is the line I want you to hold in terms of paid or not paid.
It's is it a product or is it marketing as opposed to is it paid or not paid. Paid or not paid is too high on our five whys. It's not getting to the root cause you're missing opportunities.
But is this a product or is this marketing? That's your line. Right?
Because if you say no to something when it's actually marketing well that's costing you money because now you're gonna have to find those leads in a different way. And if you say yes to something when it's not marketing but it's really a product but you say yes to it because you've talked yourself into the fact that it can be marketing. So you said yes to doing it for free.
Now you are wasting all of your time and energy talking to a group of people that are not going to be your customers in some other way. And so you're not going to get paid for that in any way shape or form. Right?
So you're just giving that time away. So that's why we need to hold that line. We need to really understand what is a marketing opportunity and what is a product.
And that my friends is where we find those differences. So let's talk through some of these examples as they show up in my own business so that you can kind of feel what this looks like if you're looking for it. Right?
Real Examples of Market Research, Marketing, and Product
So market research. What does an opportunity look like for market research and where can this make a lot of sense? Well when I'm talking to people about relationship marketing and you've probably heard me say this the messaging is really important.
When you meet people and how you meet people and how they react to you meeting them the impact that they have it's important. It's really freaking important. So you need to know that your messaging is going to land.
And so if you are playing with some new messaging if you are playing with hey what is the thing that I want to hit people in the gut with? What is the thing that I want to productively haunt them with? Right?
That's a term I always use. How am I going to productively haunt these folks so that they remember me? If you are changing that messaging it can take a really long time to figure out if that's working or not.
If you're just doing your everyday business stuff. But if somebody shows up right while you're changing your messaging or want to experiment with new messaging and says hey you know can you jump on this webinar with me and talk to my people about this? Wow.
What a great opportunity to jump on there and test your marketing. Test that new messaging. Test and see.
Do eyes light up? Does it have the impact that it needs to have? I thank my lucky stars and sometimes I'll even call in favors if I am testing some new messaging.
And I will ask a friend. I'll be like hey can I hop in and talk to your people for 15 minutes? I just kind of want to see their reaction to this.
And that's the benefit of having a strong network like we build a networking that pays. Right? People will say yes I can get in there and I can very efficiently in 45 minutes to an hour test my messaging.
And if I didn't have that outlet then I'm going to be wondering and I'm going to be sending emails and I'm going to be trying to post on social media. Retrying all these other indirect ways to figure out if the messaging is landing. When I could just take an hour out of my day pop in a room see how people react and we're done.
So testing messaging is a fantastic way to want to say yes to speaking or say yes to some opportunities even if they are not paid. Marketing. I'm going to talk about this all the time so it's probably feel relatively familiar with you.
But in relationship marketing I'm a huge proponent of borrowing audiences in order to meet people. Right? I always say that you want to meet people through going and inserting yourself into places where they've already gathered.
Rather than hoping people track you down through the use of an algorithm and find your LinkedIn profile or find your Instagram profile. I want you going and inserting yourself into the conversation where people already are. So hopefully you can see where this is going.
Right? If I'm asked to speak somewhere, or frankly, if I'm soliciting speaking because it's so important to my marketing efforts, if you have an audience that's full of my perfect leads, I am going to do that for free all day long. I would never dream of putting any kind of gate in between that, in between me and getting in front of that audience, because I know how expensive marketing is in time, energy, and in pure cash.
So if I can get in front of an audience, I will do that for free all day long because I'm actually saving money, because I don't have to do something else to find those same leads. So that's why in marketing, doing things for free and understanding what that profile looks like of the audiences you're trying to get in front of, again, all day long. And you don't want to be caught up in a free or no free conversation, because if you're insisting on being paid $200 to go speak virtually or to be a guest teacher in something or some, you know, small nominal fee, why would you put that between you?
I even have clients who, you know, $10,000 opportunities we say yes to for free. Now if the organization offers to pay, obviously we're going to accept the payment. But clients who normally are paid in the five figures to speak will say yes to some opportunities for free if they know their audience is there, because if you're in that situation, you're probably selling high five figure or six figure contracts. And so sure, I'm going to give up $10,000 in order to sign a $50,000 or $100,000 B2B deal, right? No brainer, absolute no brainer.
But then we have the product examples that creep back in, right? Because I do a lot of guest teaching, I will occasionally be asked to come and guest teach in front of a crowd that is not going to buy anything from me. One example that has happened recently: business school students. I was asked to come speak to business school students. They're not going to be my customers. They're doing a bunch of other things. So I need to be paid for that opportunity, right? I need to be paid. It's going to be a product. If you want me to talk to business school students: product.
I also had an organization who wanted me to speak to their front line managers about networking. Okay, they're also not going to buy from me. I know from the profiles, and I know from having offered networking that pays for five years, entrepreneurs are going to buy from me. Managers inside of a corporation are not. Doesn't mean that the material is not valuable to them, but they're just not buying in that way. And so if an organization calls and wants me to do like a lunch and learn on intentional networking to their employees, I need to be paid for that.
Because again, you know, let's point out the needle in the haystack argument. I could say like, oh gosh, well maybe if I go in there somebody's thinking about going out on their own or somebody has a side hustle and so they'll hire me to do something. No. I mean maybe that does happen occasionally. I can't count on it. And so if you're asking me to go into one of those audiences, I need to be paid for it because it is not a marketing job that's happening right there, right? There's no marketing that is happening. I'm just delivering a product.
And those are the differences. You call me up and you say, can you come speak to my mastermind that is full of, you know, entrepreneurs who are right in your sweet spot of what they're making and their style of business, they're service providers, blah blah blah, I'm saying yes all day long. And I'm not going to ask you to pay me for it because I know that that is a marketing opportunity. But that same person calls me up and says, okay now I have a group of middle managers and they need you to come deliver a lunch and learn. Well okay, now I'm not doing it for free because now it's a product, because that's not my audience.
And that's the line you have to hold. That is the line you have to hold. Not free or unfree. It's: is this a marketing job or is this a product job? Or again on occasion, is this a market research job?
So let's summarise. When you are asked to do something for free, again the question is not free or not free. It's not about your self worth. It's not about being paid what you're worth. It is about understanding the job that you need to be done in your business and how does this opportunity relate to those jobs that need to be done. And if the job that needs to be done is a market research or a marketing job and this is a good fit to complete that, then you should do it for free because the cost to accomplish either of those tasks in some other way is going to be higher in either time, energy or actual money than it is to deliver this thing for free, right?
So you're actually making money – maybe not literal money – but you're making money in some way by doing this activity for free because you're not going to spend money elsewhere to accomplish it in a different way. But if those circumstances are not present, if it is not a marketing or a market research job to do, if the activity you're being asked to do is not in front of your ideal clients, then it's a product and you better be paid for it. That is as clear cut as it gets.
And so again, to summarise, the line we're holding is not free or not free. Instead, the more typical line we're holding is: is this a marketing opportunity or is it not? And that might sound like an easy line to hold, but it can get a little grey when you want to say yes and you want to be a nice person. But in order to be a strategic business owner, you do need to hold that line and think through that.
So as always, thank you for being here today, and I invite you to hit me up and tell me about some of the opportunities that you've had and how you've thought through them in terms of what job they're going to do. I'm always excited to hear from you all. And if this episode helped you, I'd be so grateful if you shared it with someone else that it might help or if you left a review because that helps more entrepreneurs find it.
And in the meantime, like I said, I always love to hear from you, so head over to themichellewarner.com, jump on the newsletter, or even just drop me an email or message telling me about circumstances or a decision that you had to make between free or not free. I always want to hear them.
And with that, I will see you back here in a couple of weeks.