When To Give Your Skills Away For Free
When should you give your talents away for free, and when doing so is simply, stupid.
When should you give your smarts, skills and savvy away for free - and when is that strategy just plain stupid?
That's a question I've addressed in the past, on the blog, in my many conversations online, and in the job-seeking career-switching emails I receive.
Let me start here: sometimes doing things for free is a damn smart thing to do.
Case in point: Evan Nisselson's career networking story at page 206 of Build Your Dream Network. If you haven't read it, do.
Then there are the other times...when doing things for free is bloody stupid (as doing so is not going to get you any closer to the destination your professional ambitions are pulling you).
And before you beat yourself up for once again, undervaluing yourself, know this: we've all done it.
Done the work for someone else in the hopes it will lead to something...
I don't know about you, but I get really resentful when that happens. Resentful that the other person didn't acknowledge the magnitude of what they were asking me to take on and ferociously annoyed with myself for saying yes.
But let's stick to the smart examples of when to do things for for free, especially when you are:
- Switching careers
- Seeking a job that may not exist
- Rapidly building new relationships at work or to get work/clients/customers
Examples of smartly doing or giving away work for free, include:
- writing a weekly newsletter
- speech writing for a colleague
- volunteering at a conference or event*
- moderating the chat function during an online webinar
- providing free downloadable content (ie. checklists, guides, preview chapter of a book)
*Jennifer Johnson - another Build Your Dream Network interviewee - left a luncheon with 80 new business prospects because she volunteered to help with the registration able. Yup, handing out name tags. Proof the right "grunt work" can payoff big time.
But before saying yes, a few factors I suggest you consider before "giving it away":
- Is this an audience you even want to be in front of or associated with?
- Does the opportunity allow you to raise your visibility, or for an existing audience to see you in a new light?
- Does it challenge you? Will you learn or deepen a new skill set?
Need more?
Listen to When To Do The Work For Free (12 minutes of Build Your Dream Network insights)