Episode 81: Should You Offer a Free Call?
In this episode, Nick and Kai discuss if you should offer a free strategy call as a consultant and where an intake call should fall in your client intake process.
Summary
Nick and Kai both argue against free ‘pick your brain’ calls: without a fee, prospects don’t prepare, ghost appointments, and ignore the advice. The episode covers their own intake processes, including paid call pricing, pre-call questionnaires, and the rule that preparation time should match call length.
Highlights
- Kai charges $200–$300 for a 30-minute call and $500 for 60 minutes. He offered a free call to someone from ‘internet circles,’ booked it 1.5 months out, and that person ghosted on the day, choosing a conflicting meeting instead.
- Nick spent 90 minutes preparing for an in-person meeting, including going through the person’s social media properties, then got a cancellation 12 minutes beforehand. He archived the email, said nothing, and never heard from that person again.
- Kai requires prospects to return a questionnaire at least three days before any call or the call gets rescheduled. The completed questionnaire is the agenda for the call itself.
- Both hosts say preparation time should match call length. Kai took this from college friends in student activism who said spend as long writing a meeting agenda as the meeting is scheduled to run.
- Nick auto-deletes any email containing the phrase ‘pick your brain.’ He requires a specific agenda and a specific outcome before any call happens.
- Kai ran free call campaigns to his email list and those worked, because subscribers already knew his work. Offering free calls to the general public fails because strangers have no basis for judging what the call is worth.
- Nick follows up three months after every call via Sanebox, sends the action items from the call, and checks whether the person followed through.
Read the transcript
Kai, I’d like to pick your brain. Please. Okay, so I’m going to just talk about myself for half an hour on a Skype call. And do you know what you’re going to do on that in that Skype call? Most likely fall asleep. Yeah, but to me, it’s going to look like you’re going to go, mm-hmm. I agree. Tell me more. Yeah, tell me more about that. You and I are very good at active listening, but the consequence of being very good at active listening is you can also be very good at faking active listening. Because you know, but it’s required to make somebody feel heard, right? Like, active listening is exactly 50% about the other person. I’ve never once in my life faked active listening.
Every single person listening to this episode, I care deeply about you and have paid attention to every single conversation we’ve had.
Kai is bullshitting you. So, and I’m here to just be honest. Like, I have aggressively faked active listening on calls with people, possibly you. And um it’s it’s a thing that happens. It’s just like you’re there’s nothing good or bad about that. You’re just a Confused and absent-minded entrepreneur, like everybody else, and somebody’s trying to get your attention, and they don’t know how to do it, and they do it by talking about themselves, right? And that’s basically what this question is. Somebody asked a question, Ty.
Should you offer a free strategy call? And unpacking this question a bit. There’s a couple of different modalities we could see for intaking prospects or intaking people who want to work with you. Hey, I have a free 30-minute strategy call available. Email here, click the calendarly link, book a time, and we’ll chat about your business. I think that it can work in some cases, but I’m 99% against it because it invites people without there being any filter. I think The concept of having an initial call with a prospect before you decide to work with them is incredibly valuable. And in my coaching program and in my work, I coach people on, having a client qualification process. Have that thirty minute call, but have a very structured process. You’re leading it, you’re directing it, you’re asking the questions, not the prospect contacting you. But when you simply offer a free thirty minute call, a pick my brain call, All it ends up is somebody shows up, they ask some questions, and then it’s done rather than you understanding specifically what they need. to accomplish the outcomes they’re looking for to grow their business.
Yeah, I’m going to be very fleetingly charitable in this situation and say if you have a strategy call or pick your brain call You should come in having done your homework with the other person, understand what it is their business is, have a few suggestions at the ready that you may or may not actually offer to the person. And then at the end of the call, you should be like Here are a few things I think you should do. How else can I help you?
Exactly.
Very much so. And that’s a good general format to be doing this. That said, fuck them. Never do them. I never do them. I do them for people that I know really, really well. or people that have found my secret link to book a strategy call for $450 and paid me that I forgot to take down years ago. And that’s pretty much the end of the list. If you are very close to me as a colleague, I’ll get on a call with you to be like, okay, well, now I can dramatically read the A-B testing manual at you because it’s clear that you need something from me and that that something is very specific. But if you’re just coming at me, to the vast majority of these people want to know what the mindset shift involves, and they’re panicking about positioning, and I just Do not and will not and cannot have the time for it. I can’t have the energy for it. It’s why I, you know, I liked coaching when I did it because it helped me manage other people in a very specific way. and be accountable and set right expectations around everything that they’re doing. But I can’t do it at scale, and I can’t do it for strangers. I’m really, really bad at that sort of stuff. I can’t even do it at a conference. Act like I’m doing it and then be like, I’m so sorry that you’re scared, but you know, I did okay and it’s fine. And then I just go and drink a shot of Malorde, like I can’t even. I can’t even.
So we’ve talked about why offering free strategy sessions or free strategy calls is bad. And to sum that up before we move into other alternatives or other options It’s a waste of your time. It’s often not that guided or doesn’t have a structure to it. It doesn’t clearly provide value to you or the other party. And at the end of it, most people don’t have a clear call to action or a clear next step. Okay, we did this free strategy call coming out of it. I see these Three problems. I’m going to put together a proposal. Before we do that, tell me about your budget. We never transition over to a client qualification process. And so Unless there’s anything you’d like to add to the reasons not to, we could flip over to how to do it better.
Yeah, yeah. I think Buried within my rant against this is a probably more helpful and actionable list Of the reasons that they go wrong, right? Because I look at this and I just view a thing that’s gone wrong a lot for me and doesn’t really work for me. And And so if you shed light on that, hopefully you’ll be able to find some way to improve it. What was the question free strategy calls? God. Try and make them paid. I think one of the problems is that people undervalue the advice and they think that your time is not worth anything.
So I sell one-off calls for, I sell a 30-minute call, at least right now, for I think. $200 to $300 in a 60-minute call for $500. And I had somebody that I knew through internet circles reach out to me and say, Hey, I can’t afford a one-hour call right now. Would you be willing to, you know, hop on it as a good buddy thing? And I said, Yeah, absolutely, of course. And we scheduled it a month and a half out because my calendar was busy. I think this was right when we were flying over to Asia for your birthday. And He ghosted me. The call came around. I sent a message, and I was like, hey, are you ready? He’s like, oh, I double booked. I picking the other meeting. And like, No fault to that person, like slight fault to that person, but no major fault to that person. I don’t know what that other meeting was. Maybe it was, oh my god, emergency thing, I need to take this. But To your point, if it’s free, people do not assign value to it. If you charge for it, people do assign value to it. And we enter that paradox of pricing where The more you charge for it, the more somebody values it. Oh my God.
And the more likely it is they’re actually going to take the advice, right? If I charge for it. It’s not even just a matter of showing up on time, right? It’s being able to. Actually, listen. Not just have the words hit you and fall off of you because you already have your own fucking agenda. You are going to take my advice if you pay me $500. Yes.
And so framework or structural things I put around that for my paid calls, or even occasionally when I do a free call of somebody, is I want to put speed bumps in place to make sure that they’re serious about it. So step one is, okay, great. Book a time. Okay, great. Now that you’ve booked a time, and if they’re booking a call, I typically have people book a week to two weeks out so they’re able to prepare for the call. Here’s a questionnaire you need to fill out. Return this questionnaire to me at least three days before our call so I could review it and prepare my questions. Where else we need to reschedule the call. That questionnaire then becomes the punch list for how we go through the call. You listed your problems, you listed the outcomes you’re looking for, you listed exactly how I could help. Let’s talk about that. And now I have a better understanding of where you need to be. It’s a similar process for when I do offer a free call to a prospect. Okay, great. Here are the seven questions for my client qualification process I’m going to ask. These are set in stone. This is what I need to move through to understand if you’re the right fit for me. By having the structure in place, I guarantee I’m going to come out of that call with all the information I need. And on top of that, make sure the person who’s engaging me for that call is able to adequately prepare themselves.
Yeah, yeah, and I think that’s a like constructive way to go about it. It also shows that probably if you’re going to have a successful call, I think this is a reasonable rule of thumb. You should spend as long as the call preparing. If it is a one-hour call, you should be spending one hour preparing for it.
In college, I had two close friends who were involved in student and youth activism, and they said the secret To running a successful meeting is to spend at least as long writing the agenda as you have scheduled for the meeting. And I said, That sounds interesting, let me try it. And so, once I graduated and entered the day job world, I was like, let me apply this practice. I showed up to typical meetings. They were terrible. There was no agenda. There was no structure at all. I said, Okay, it’s a thirty-minute meeting. I’m going to spend thirty minutes preparing for this meeting. My meetings went very, very well. And I’ve carried this over to my business. And I could tell you, it works incredibly well to make sure you’re providing value.
Yeah, yeah. It’s one of those things, like, I. I’m going to go back to the ghosting bit for a moment. I had somebody that wanted to meet with me while I was out in New York. And I like reworked my entire schedule to accommodate this person at the last minute because I knew that an IRL conversation would be valuable. They canceled on me at the last minute and scheduled something on Calendly. I spent an hour and a half preparing for that meeting, which is exactly what your point is. And it’s kind of why I and I went through all of their social media properties. And I tried to figure out what their motivations were and why they were going independent and what was going on and how scared they might be and whatever have you. 12 minutes beforehand, they canceled. Do you want to know what happened? I got the Calendly cancel link, and then I just archived the email and went about the rest of my work that day. Yep. I did not reply. I did nothing. Yep. And I haven’t heard from that person. And so there’s kind of two things there, which is kind of both of the original points that we were making. One of them is that, like, People are going to undervalue you, and if they cancel, fuck them. Right. They do not know what they’ve got in front of them. They really don’t.
I’d say to make it better, one thing I’ve done is for any type of free or paid call, I have an application process, fill out the six-question form so I can understand it, and then I approve you for a call. Have a questionnaire you send to people so they’re able to tell you more about their business, even in more depth, so you could prepare for the call. And all of these steps just show you have a process, you have a methodology. and you are making sure it’s providing value to them in this process, while making sure that they’re committed. These tiny speed bumps make sure that they’re willing to put in the time for the call, paid or not. If they aren’t, great, you’ve saved yourself an hour and a half of preparation.
Right, right. Yes. So what are the takeaways here? I think we’re kind of coming up to a point where you should know what you’re doing. One of them is at a certain point, you should be having an agenda. I actually, if you write the words pick your brain in an email to me, it auto-deletes because I never want my brain picked. I want a specific agenda and I want a specific outcome from that agenda.
Nick, we’ve picked your brain to help us solve the Mars problem auto archive. What the what problem is there’s no water, anyways.
I uh Other things that you can possibly learn from this, dear listener, include You should be, I mean, move away from free calls as quickly as possible. Yes.
Have a price for your call.
Free calls are a way of kind of putting in your dues. And this happens quite a bit in the design industry where you’re like. You’re gonna go to a hackathon and you’re gonna do a bunch of fun side projects and you’re gonna be known for um putting together a bunch of fun, useful tools and stuff like that. And at some point around eight or nine years into your career, you’re going to become a senior designer and Flatly not have time for that shit anymore. And that is, um, I’m a little wistful about losing that To be entirely honest, I really enjoyed the times when I could just hang with some people until 10 p. m. and hack a lot. But like, On the other hand, I like petting my dog and being focused with my career and also getting money for phone calls. So once you’ve put in your dues, you tend to put a little bit more focus on revenue generating activities and then you buy a house. Right. You know, like and and you’re still putting in work. You’re just being more intentional about that work mapping naturally to revenue generating activities.
And I think to ensure that any calls you’re on skew closer to being a revenue generating activity, put speed bumps in place, have an application process, charge money for the call, send out an agenda, have a questionnaire they complete before the call.
If you’re a stranger and you ask me to pick my brain, I’m like Great, you can sign up to schedule a one-hour call here. And then they’re like, Nick, D, this is a checkout form. I’m like, yes. You have to complete the checkout form. What happens when you go to your doctor?
Well, I pay to see my doctor.
Yeah. Excellent. Do you okay? Well, they schedule with the doctor, but then when what happens when you show up at the doctor? You are expected to pay a copay before you leave. Fill out a questionnaire about the symptoms of your questionnaire. Yeah, and you know what? Checkout form goes to it goes to a form. And if you don’t fill out the form, I cancel the call until we can both give it. This is a quote that I write. We can both give it the time and attention that this deserves. And then you realize I’m not fucking with you anymore and that you should not cancel on me. Even when you have paid me four hundred fifty dollars for a strategy call, there is still the risk that you, dear listener, would cancel on me. I don’t know How? That I just I just show up. Are why why are people?
People are people. Why are people? People. But, dear freelancer, wrapping this up, charge for your calls. Don’t offer free strategy calls. I think there’s a trip in the industry that you need to offer free calls in order to get work. You don’t necessarily, you need to share valuable content, write more, uh speak more, podcast more, guest on podcast more, do things like that that get you out there and talking with people and engaging in conversations.
I like getting interviewed by people on podcasts and then when they’re like, I have questions about A B testing, I’m like Great. Here are my five podcasts about this. Yep. If you want to pay me money, you can either get on a strategy call, God help us, it’s an hour of work, or more likely, I’ll just direct you to the A-B testing manual. Where you get to see me on a video call, but it’s a five-hour video call that you can pause and be naked for or do whatever. That would be weird.
That’s a premium tier.
It’s a premium tier. Pay me more money and it’s and then you can be you can take on I don’t know, that’s horrible.
Cut this all out, this entire episode. Just delete this episode, please. But no, I think it comes down to A, recognizing your value. B, putting up speed bumps to prevent time vampires or people who aren’t really serious or committed from time vampires in the future.
That’s an Amy Hoy quote.
No shit. Yeah. People just want to come in and suck your time. Time sycophants. Yeah. I like that. But prevent them, put speed bumps up to keep them out, fences up to keep them out. And. Be willing to put in the preparation time necessary. And I’ve gotten to a point where a lot of it is automated. So, if somebody pays me for a coaching call, excellent. I have the questionnaire, it’s been honed over six years of work. Ready to send to them. So it doesn’t take me an hour and a half of preparation anymore, but it’s hours and hours and hours of time to get to the point where I could say. Here’s a questionnaire when you fill it out. I get an email notification. I read that. I reply back with any questions. Then we have the call. You’re automatically reminded through Calendly. So I’ve invested a lot of time in building systems around this, but ignoring the systems. Invest time preparing for the call once you’ve adequately qualified the person who’s paid you for that call to work with you.
Yes, so we’re talking about this a lot from our perspective, but the consequence of this, I want you, if you are the recipient of If you somehow deign to get somebody on a call to pick their brain, right? If you’re a brain picker, if you’re a I don’t know, a time nosferatu, or whatever it is. And you want to do this. Is that a DD character class? Yes, it is. Thank you for asking. I want you to come off of that call having your mind fucking blown. I want you to be like, God, that was so useful. I want you to have a Six-week-long to-do list. Yes. I want you to be so grateful for it rather than be like, oh, that was cool, and then go and do nothing. I, not none of us. None of us who are experts in our field got into this field so that we could get on calls with people and have them do nothing.
I feel it’s a waste of the other person’s money if they come away from a paid call with me and they don’t have at least. One actionable thing they’re able to do in their business that’s worth the time. I would say that five.
One is not enough. One actionable thing. Oh, I’ll redesign my website. And then you do it, and like what? You know, there’s usually more than one thing wrong if you’re on a the brain pick level, you know, like and that’s not it’s not good or bad. It’s just you’re say a 200 level, and then you’ve managed to get the time of somebody who’s a 400 level, right? And this happens, we’re lucky, like it occurs, and people tend to be kind and generous with their time. But recognize that there’s a separation there and that as you get a higher level of consulting, you’re going to be more constrained on your time and also far more focused and intentional about the way your business operates.
And it applies in both directions. If you’re a 300-level consultant reaching out to a 400-level consultant, as a 300-level, you are more constrained on time, and you’re reaching out to somebody who’s even more constrained on time. having these systems, having these procedures, having these processes in place, knowing that it’s a paid call and like, okay, there is a barrier here. I’m going to be getting some value exceeding the cost. Helps you know it’s something trustworthy. If somebody was like, Yeah, I’m just doing free calls. Well, unless you have a trusting relationship built up with the person, it’s hard to know, well, what do I value this at? It’s going to cost me an hour of my time. What’s the value here? And it’s hard to judge that. I’ve run free call campaigns to my list, and I noticed that the people who engage are the people who are the most engaged, who read every single daily email I send out. And it makes sense. I’ve developed a correspondence and a relationship with those people. So, when they reach a point and I offer them a free call, they’re like, heck yeah, I love reading your articles. I’d love to jump for 15 minutes on the horn and ask you two or three questions. And it works out very, very well. But if I offer free calls just to the general public, A, I’ll get overwhelmed and swamped and not be able to deliver value. B, people who have no context to understand, well, what’s the value of a call with you? And I think that’s an important point to realize as well.
Yeah, convey the value of the call with you, right? And the outcomes of the call with you before you get on the call, right? It’s so much easier to fire off an email in five minutes and be like, after this, you should do this, this, and this, or you should be equipped to do this, this, and this. After a call with me. And so, if you’re not actually doing that, then what on earth is the purpose of the call? Another thing I like doing, if you’re doing these calls follow-up three months later, I always set a reminder to myself in Sanebox to ping a person. And I thank them for the call and then I write up the action items at the end of it and say, okay, well, I’ll check back in three months. Let them know that this is a thing that, like, we both have an expectation that either things will change in your life and you won’t do the thing, or um You will go and do the thing, and we’ll see how it went. And more likely than not, you did the thing, and it went in an unexpected and curious fashion, and then we have something else to talk about.
Exactly. No plan survives first contact with the market.
Yeah. Yeah, so I think that’s it. I hope this gave some advice and help to people on both sides. Sides of this because there’s a relationship involved, and it’s a somewhat asymmetric relationship, right? Like there’s the inexperienced person requesting the call, there’s the experienced person creating the call and hopefully charging for it, please charge for it. And then there is an expected outcome leveling up, things like that, that would eventually come from all of that. So with that in mind. I don’t know. Charge more. Charge more. Pick brains.