~by Haley Lynn Gray~
One of the smartest and most frightening things you can do is give away what you know for free.
The fear is obvious: if I tell them how to do it, why would they pay me?
The answer is that people don’t pay for information. They pay for the work to be done, and for judgement about their particular situation. Those are entirely different things, and the first one is available everywhere anyway.
The painter
Suppose a painter explains, in detail, how to paint a house. The best paints, the preparation, the techniques, how to get a finish that looks professional.
Some people will take that and paint their own houses. Those people were never going to hire a painter. They were always going to do it themselves, and they’d have found the information somewhere.
Everyone else learns something more useful: this is harder than it looks.
I understand perfectly well how to paint a room. If I do it myself it will not look as good as if a skilled painter does it. Knowing the method and being able to execute it are different capacities, and reading a good explanation makes that gap obvious rather than hiding it.
And when I do hire someone, I’ll hire the painter who took the time to explain it. They’ve demonstrated competence in a way no advertisement can.
Why it works
Three things happen when you explain your work properly.
You demonstrate competence, which is otherwise impossible. Anyone can claim to be good. Explaining something clearly, including the parts that are genuinely difficult, is evidence — and it’s the only evidence available before someone has worked with you.
You make the difficulty visible. Most people underestimate skilled work because they only see the finished result. Show the decisions involved and the value becomes apparent. This is also, incidentally, the best argument for your price.
And you filter. People who read your explanation and think “this is more involved than I realised, I want someone who knows what they’re doing” are better clients than people who arrive with no idea what they’re buying. The second group haggles, questions everything, and is surprised by the invoice.
In my home care business, I want families to understand what running an agency actually involves — that finding and matching the right caregiver isn’t ordering from a menu, that it takes real skill, that some clients have particular needs and personalities that have to be accounted for.
Families who understand that become good clients. Families who think they’re buying a commodity become difficult ones.
What you’re actually selling
I can tell you all day what it’s like to run a business. Guidelines, tips, principles. For some people that’s enough to get started, and good.
It won’t be enough to keep them going, because the hard part isn’t knowledge.
Marketing plans are individual. Operations are individual. The processes a business follows are unique to that business. Arriving at the right answer for a specific company requires problem-solving applied to that company’s actual situation — which is a different skill entirely from knowing things.
The ideas I offer aren’t secret. A determined owner could assemble them from searching. What they’re paying for is experience applied to their case, and the time they don’t spend assembling it.
The more I share, the more people trust that I know what I’m talking about — and the more of them hire me.
The honest limits
This isn’t unlimited, and pretending otherwise gets people into trouble.
Give away the general. How things work, what the options are, common mistakes, how to think about a decision.
Charge for the specific. Looking at their numbers, reviewing their situation, telling them what they should do. The moment it becomes personalised, it’s work.
The line between them is clear in practice and it’s where people get taken advantage of. “Can I just pick your brain” is a request for the second thing described as the first, and it’s reasonable to say that a proper answer would need a proper look.
And your time is always chargeable, regardless of what’s discussed in it.
The practical version
Answer the questions people actually ask you, in public, properly. Not a teaser that stops before the useful part — the real answer, including the bits that make it look difficult.
The people who take it and do it themselves were never buying from you. The people who read it and think “I’d rather have someone who knows this” are exactly who you wanted.
Be generous. It works considerably better than being careful.
More on building credibility in public and establishing value before price.
About the author
Haley Lynn Gray is the founder of Leadership Girl, of In2itive Biz Solutions, and of the Women’s Entrepreneur Network — a community of more than 77,000 women in business.
She writes here about what happens when running a business starts demanding that you lead one. More about Haley →
