When Should You Work For Free

Do you think there'sever a time whenit is worth it to offerfree, say, strategyor creative or insertwhatever to a companythat you reallywant to work with?Yes, 100% I'm giving youkind of broad strokes hereand you need to take theadvice and the words Isay and apply to yourspecific situation.There was a time whenwe did everythingfor free or for very littlemoney or gave everything away.But what we realize isthat's a temporary situation.It's not a situationwhere we want to stay in.If you find yourselfgiving away free workas part of yourpolicy and protocol,that's the real problem.OK, so when Ifirst did strategy,I gave it away for free.The very first time I gaveaway for free, the next timeI did not give it away for free.I charge money for it.I kept scaling up.So, yeah, every once in awhile, you have to do something,especially when you'redoing something new.You're not sure of yourselfand you just really wantto do it for a new client.So we already sold them withsome other piece of business,so I just threw itin as a value add.They enjoyed it.I got a lot of value from itbecause that became the episodethat you guys may haveseen with all these.That work was a directresult of me giving themstrategy away for free, andit was the very first timeI applied it on my own.I also want to say oneother thing some of youguys may have an olderkit that we've temporarilystopped selling, it'scalled Selling strategy.And in that conversation,I help to explain to youhow to pivot from themcoming to you for a veryspecific deliverable.I need a new website.I need a new logo, I needa motion graphics piece,or I need you to producesome video for me.How to bridge fromthat conversationinto the strategicconversation and partsof that is you haveto demonstrate to themthis is a radicallydifferent thing.So what I do thereis once they tell methey need a video for me,I say, that's fantastic.I want to talk toyou about the video.Happy to do it for you.I want to talk to you abouthow I work with clients.What I usually do is Ispend a little bit of time.We take the 30,000 foot view.And if you're willingto do this with me.I'm going to do thisfirst meeting for free.It takes about 40minutes to do if youfind this to be valuable.Let's engage on a deeper level.And then I would charge youmoney to do the thinking part.So I'm taking therisk away from them,and I had to do thisin the very beginningbecause I just felt like.I could not sellstrategy any other way.Once I did that acouple of times,I don't ever haveto do that anymore.