3 Ways To Say No To People Who Want To Pick Your Brains For Free (Part 1)

As your business grows, so do the requests from people. The problem you can have as a service-based business owner is that you genuinely want to help, and sometimes that can mean you give away way too much of your free time.

At first, it might be giving away lots of free sessions of one type or another. Over time, because of your generosity, you can become the go-to-person for free support and guidance – as one of my business coach friends would put it – free consultancy.

Consider this: If you’re being asked a lot about the same things, you might find it’s a good area for you to focus on in your business. You’re obviously already becoming known for it!

In this 3-part mini series, we are going to explore 3 ways of how this might be showing up for you in what people are saying to you and how you can deal with it.

Scenario 1: “Can you just share a few gems of wisdom with me on… or If I send this over to you, would you just look at it for me.”

Here’s what to say:

“I’m more than happy to share a couple of gems of wisdom, but if you want to get real gems then let’s talk about how we can work together. You’ll only get a teeny tiny bit of my support by doing it this way. We can get transformational results when we work together 1:1.”

Or for the ”Can you just look at this one” message you could say…

“Sure, just send it over. From what you’re telling me, it shouldn’t take too long to work through. I’ll invoice you for an hour of time. If we need more, I’ll let you know before taking it any further. What’s the best email address to send the invoice to?”

Next week, we’re going to be talking about people who want 20-minutes of your time, for free.

What do you say to people when people want to pick your brains for free? We’d love to know.

♦ To meet Ruby McGuire, Business & Mindset Queen| Master Coach | Mentor |Trainer | Speaker | Author – MCIPD, AMC, NLP Coach & Practitioner, EFT Practitioner, Time Line Therapist and Mind Your Mind Practitioner, see here 

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