Time to read: 2 minutes

Doing things for free is often not valued!

I know there’s no such thing as an absolute. But I can tell you in the business world, I have come to find this to be true so often.

Have you ever been asked or offered to provide advice or a service to a company and agreed to do so without a charge? I certainly have. And I’ve witnessed others do it around me for my entire career.

One thing that I’ve noticed that is often true (in fact, almost 100% of the time!) is when people or companies do not pay for advice or consulting, they don’t value it at all! The only way they pay attention and value the work is when they pay for it.

Certainly I’m not suggesting that you stop doing chores or helping out people who need help. People will always be in need of help and appreciate being provided a helping hand. I’ll do that my entire life!

A former boss of mine, when I was first out of college, introduced me to the power of using consultants in the workplace. I remember him telling me we will have to use this consultant to deliver messages to senior management, because frankly, senior management won’t listen to us. But when they paid him $2000 a day, they listen. Our key is to make sure that his recommendations are truly what will help us out. Our leadership are going to pay attention to him because they are paying him big money. He used to laugh and say, “if you don’t fly in here on a big silver bird drinking scotch at 30,000 feet, the senior leadership won’t listen to you” (Bill Tull). Sad but often true.

So my mantra is: It’s certainly always good to help out a friend. But if it comes to business and work and you really want them to pay attention and feel like they should: make them pay for it.