Email 2.15 - Is Free Valuable?

? Cole Johnson ?? , every newsletter, you start a great conversation. Thank you very much for being there for me and talking back to me ??

For others - talk to me, too!?Help me help you ??

If my experience helps you succeed in your professional and personal journeys, and you want to support me, my PayPal email is yuralazaruk at gmail.com, or you can check this shop with my nice designs ??

In Today's Issue

• The Community ROI conversation with Shannon Emery
• Never do free work as a freelancer.
• Value your time while helping others.

Let's Talk

The more I give free value, the more I understand that if something is free, it's not valuable to people.

Last week, I called for testers of the Freelance Foundation course, which took a rather long time to create (think about years of my and my team's experiences plus the experiences of hundreds of freelancers and hours of conversations we've had), and I received 20 applications!

The fun thing is that out of 20 people, only 5 (you know who you are, and you are the best ????) passed more than three chapters out of a total of eight, even though there is a limit of 10 days for passing it ??

I bet if it had been a course for $499, the total number would have been much higher...

So let's talk about that!

Community ROI

This week, it's another episode of Community ROI with Shannon Emery —an experienced B2B SAAS professional with a decade of hands-on experience in the tech space, who has a strong business sense, an analytical mindset, and loves building projects from the ground up! ??

So here are 10 quotes to learn about community ROI from Shannon:

1. "A community goal is an initiative that fulfills a need to bring value or add something to the member experience, whether it be connection, knowledge, events, memes, encouragement, motivation."
2. "Community isn't just about fun initiatives; it's about understanding the business objective and aligning the work to serve both the people and the bottom line."
3. "The community's goal should center around the members' experience. How do I enhance that? How do I solve problems for them?"
4. "You're helping our members, which is a much more impactful statement than 'help the community team'—you're helping the people who are renewing, retaining, and all those good things."
5. "If you're working in community, you’re going to need to understand the business of each of the teams you're collaborating with."
6. "What is the business goal? How do we translate our fun community initiatives back into that business goal?"
7. "We don't sell to robots. We sell to humans. If it weren't for the humans, your business wouldn't exist."
8. "The CEO isn't just a nameless figure behind a curtain that you're too scared to talk to. They're humans, and you never know when you'll find common ground."
9. "Clear is kind. Be transparent, be upfront. People are understanding even if they're not thrilled."
10. "You are building community internally. It's not just about managing the external community—you're connecting people within the organization, too."

And if you'd like to know even more, listen to the full episode with Shannon here ??

Youtube

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

In this podcast, I speak with experienced community builders, CEOs, and founders about how a community impacts business growth, so please, go like this post so more people know and can learn from it! ????

Mastering Freelancing

Sometimes, I hear that freelancers are ready to do free work to get reviews, feedback, rating increases, etc.

Don't! Do! That!

If you want to do free work, you don't know what you're good at.

If you don't know what you're good at, you have to work on your offer, and for that, go read the $100M Offer by Alex Hormozi right away ??

What always worked for me is to jump on a discovery call, ask a ton of questions about the client's business, what they want to achieve, and how the perfect result looks like for them, and after that, give a proposal with three tiers (minimum, standard, and top-notch) of how much my work will work, and what tangible results they'll achieve as a result of our cooperation.

So, the first step is to understand what problem you are solving for your client, how much having this problem costs them, and how much time and money you can save them.

And even if you're not sure what you're good at, you still know your skills, and you can logically evaluate your value to a client and come up with a really good proposal so they just won't be able to say "no."

But aside from that, it's really demotivating.

When you do free work, you basically exchange your experience and time of your life for the imaginary value of someone's approval.

Still, you can definitely start with a slightly lower rate than average on the market to get your first clients and increase the rate step-by-step with every successfully finished project.

However, if you want to do a free work, I can't stop you from that ??

But there is a thing called volunteering, something that Eric Bolikowski told about in our Freelance Thrive conversation .

If you volunteer, you can test your skills and get feedback about your work, but aside from that, you'll help to build something valuable for other people and make good connections that will bring you projects in the future!

So don't do free work as a freelancer except for volunteering for some valuable projects ????

Human Connections

Pssst.. here is a little secret: folks in the community world are extremely helpful because they love helping people just for the sake of it and do not have any expectations of what to get in return ??

That's exactly why when someone asks me to jump on a coffee chat to talk about community building, podcasting, freelancing, events organizing (both online and offline), negotiations and sales, and human connections—all the things I just love sharing my experience about—I always say, "Sure, let's do it!"

And since I have at least two coffee chats a week for an average of 30 minutes each, for the last two years, I've done over 100 hours of free consultancy (and if I count my hourly rate, I would have been 15-20K richer ??).

Still, I'm giving it away just to help people succeed in what they do ?? but it always looks kinda weird to ask for feedback on how exactly I helped to understand better what I'm really good at ??

So recently, I've talked to Lean Vilas and Pelin Kazak Bagatur , learned from them about the adplist.org , and even created an account there ??

On this platform for mentors, I can still do what I do and continue helping people while also counting sessions, hours, the number of people I helped, and their feedback (it's so much easier to ask for feedback there), which will help me build social proof and drive paid clients in the future! ??

So, from now on, I'll do every professional conversation via this platform and still help people as always while also valuing my personal time and building a solid base for future opportunities! ??

Curiosity Corner

"Science is not about finding the truth at all, but about finding better ways of being wrong. A theory can never be perfect: the best it can be is better than the theory that went before."

Excerpt from "After" by Bruce Greyson

Upcoming Events

• Between Two Watercoolers Meeting 126 on Friday, September 20th @ 10 am PT (7 pm CET) - to meet new and old friends from the community world
• CMX Global 2024 - September 25th-26th @ 8am PT (7 pm CET) - me and many other amazing community experts will share some insights ??
• Community (re)Focus - October 1st @ 9am PT (6 pm CET) - me and many other amazing community experts will share some more insights ??
• Freelance Unlocked 2025 - May 14th-15th, 2025, in Berlin - if you're a freelancer in Europe - you must be there ????

Valuable Materials

• How To Ensure C-level And Community Speak The Same Language (Video and Audio ) - Community ROI conversation with Shannon Emery
• Setting Right Boundaries With Clients As A Freelancer (Video and Audio ) - Freelance Thrive conversation with Chauntelle Lewis
• How To Deal With Time Constraints As A Freelancer (Video and Audio ) - Freelance Sucks conversation with Orell Garten

In upcoming newsletters, I'll share even more tips and tricks I learned from multiple conversations with experienced community builders and freelancers, so stay tuned ??

P.S. I help build communities for startups and fast-growing companies that want to foster trusted customer relationships and grow together!

If it sounds your way, message me, and let's make it happen! ????