The Work for Free Conundrum
AKA You Do Not Owe Anyone Free Work
We have all been asked to work for free at some point in our lives by friends, family or random strangers. If you have not been asked yet, hold on, your time will come.
There are two main reasons people will ask you to do some work for free for them. One of them is because they are in genuine need of help and cannot afford to pay you for your services and the other possible reason (which may be hidden, even to them) is that they want to take advantage of you.
They phrase these two basic reasons in so many ways;
- We are a startup and cannot afford to pay more than this.
- We do not have a budget for this.
- We have worked with *name drops a couple of big names* and think this will be a good opportunity for you to hone your skill.
- There are so many people that would jump at this opportunity.
- It will give you experience, it is good to gain experience, you need the experience.
- Do it for the Lord (Lol).
- I need *** and I have so much to do and I don’t even know… (Friend advantage + focus on urgency working here. You focus so much on the urgency of the whole thing, that you do not talk about fees).
- Hi, could you help me take a look at this? (You end up doing the whole thing).
- Hey, can I pick your brain? Etc.
It is perfectly fine to work for free when you want to (Pro bono is an actual thing), what is not okay is letting people take advantage of you, so what to do when you are asked to work for free…
Before you respond, take a step back to evaluate the situation.
I tend to say ‘take a step back’ a lot when talking about decision making because sometimes you are too close to the situation to make a good decision and don’t realize it until much later, so you have to make a habit of properly analyzing situations, taking into account your degree of proximity to the situation as it can cloud your judgement and lead you to make bad decisions.
So, take a step back and try to analyze the situation objectively before making any moves or committing yourself to something you might regret.
For the most part people can afford to pay you, they would just prefer not to, in order to cut costs. This means that because he says he cannot afford to pay does not necessarily mean that he really cannot afford to pay.
The first question that you want to answer in this situation is; ‘Do I want to do this?’, if the answer is no, end that conversation immediately. Politely but firmly. Do not be forced to do work that you do not love, will not enjoy, and did not want to do in the first place.
The second question you want to answer is, ‘If it were someone else, would this person be willing to pay (or pay more) for this?’, if the answer to this is yes or quite possibly, you should get paid properly for it. Fini.
I had a friend who used to come to me all the time for personal and professional advice and go on to do exactly what she wanted (the exact opposite of what I told her to do). She would then come back to cry on my shoulder when it did not work out.
One day, this friend sent me a book she’d bought the week before -pretty pricey book by the way — that had exactly the same things I’d been telling her for years, going all; ‘OMG Irene! You have to read this book! It will change your life forever! Wow! So many things I did not know!’
(There were exclamation marks everywhere, I kid you not.)
Fast forward a couple of years later.
Different lady, same situation. Calling me up for ideas and advice and keeping me up late, wracking my brain for ideas for her business, only for her to go and pay someone else to tell her the exact same thing I spent sleepless nights thinking up and telling her.
What I have come to understand by this and other experiences like this is; free gym membership is not the same as an expensive gym membership bought with your own money! With the latter, you are most likely to go and work out whether you like it or not. You paid for it. Money cannot come and waste.
There is another popular situation where people tell you to work for exposure or experience. Exposure and experience are good things, ONLY, they have to be worth it. A small blog with no reach asking you to write for them for exposure makes absolutely no sense. What exposure? To their friends and family?
You tend to get these experience/exposure offers when you are in desperate need of cash or a job, the world is able to sense your desperation and that makes people try to take advantage of you.
If you are at a point where you want to write for exposure or experience, ensure that it will be worth it in the end before making that decision. ‘Start small, think big’ is valid advice and this is why you have to be sure that any work you do for free will bring actual value in future. Keyword: Actual.
Internships are a great way to gain experience and it is good to know from the start if there is a chance of turning the internship into a full-time job after a period of time. This will help the decision-making process. Your transportation costs should, at the very least, be covered during this period. Working for experience should not automatically translate to operating at a loss (more on this in a later article).
It is perfectly okay to propose a fee for your services to people (Friends and family included).
You do not eat air, you just have to find a good way to politely but firmly tell them how much you would like to receive for your services.
In the end, if you name a price and after negotiation, cannot settle on an amount that is good enough for you, you are allowed to let them know nicely that even though you would love to do the work for them, you cannot work with the amount they are proposing. Feel free to throw in an apology at the end.
Just remember, you do not owe anyone free work.
