When People Want Free Advice

Our team gets a lot of questions about marketing. While this makes us very excited (please ask us about marketing), we also end up getting asked for our consultant services for free. Wanting to ‘pick our brains’ or the question ‘can I get your opinion on this?’ takes up time. Whether the person realizes it or not, it’s asking for free advice. This should really be set up as a paid consultation!

Now, we like to help and we don’t want to be mean.

We’re happy to spare you a few minutes when we can to give you answers to basic questions. However, this often isn’t what you’re really looking for. As marketing experts, we love sharing our advice and spreading knowledge about our field. That’s why we host programs and workshops to share our skills with entrepreneurs. That’s also why we publish blogs twice a month! However, when it comes to times when you want to really ‘pick our brains,’ you’ll want to set up consultant services with us. We can’t give unlimited free advice.

Here’s why: the answers you’re looking for may take time and effort, so that becomes a part of our work day. As a small team, we operate as ‘all hands on deck’ and we don’t have the flexibility to put our client work aside for our friends in business. So while we do enjoy educating others about our field… this is how we make our living, so please understand that we’re going to set up a consulting session if that’s what you’re looking for.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t want to hear your questions. We do. In a few minutes, we’re usually able to reply with a few quick ideas of how you can get started. However, there’s a point of involvement where we need to spend more time or get hands-on. That will include billing you for our time. Time is money! This fits especially for our team, since we all work on client projects. So, we hope you understand that while we love to help, we can’t give it away for free.

Many questions get sent to our business and even individual team members through emails, social media, texts, and more.

We work hard to answer all of them! We appreciate the support and the respect of our industry knowledge. However, we do need to draw a line and set up consultant time if your questions will need more of our time. If you’re in business yourself, you’ll understand how full your hands can get even just carrying out your daily client work. So, please understand that working time needs to be paid for.

If you send us a question in this way, we’ll try to link you to a blog that will help or give you a few quick ideas. Otherwise, please schedule some consulting time with us. Get in touch and we’ll be happy to schedule it with you!