Working for Free: The Good, The Bad, The Truth
Good Life Project
Jonathan Fields / Acast
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2015
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After years of paying to wear your favorite shoes, you're getting paid to be seen in them.
After years of speaking for free and paying to travel, you're now getting paid to speak.
After years of buying your favorite meals, jewels and gear, you're getting paid to eat, wear and use them.
After years of writing for free, you're getting paid to contribute.
How did this happen? How do you go from working for "free" or even paying for the "privilege" to getting paid to do the exact same thing?
It's all about a little thing called “brand hand." It's the defining element in your ability to make the leap from paying to learn to being paid to build your own brand.
And it's what we're diving into in today's Good Life Project Riff.
Along the way, we'll bust some huge myths about what's really happening when you're working for "free." We'll come to the realization that it's never really about free versus paid, but rather cash versus non-cash compensation.
We'll dive into how and when "free" is not only okay, but smart, when it should be off the table and how to leverage this experience to make the leap from non-cash compensation to cold, hard money.
If you'd like to read the full text of this week's Riff, you can find it here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey guys, it's Jonathan. Thank you so much for joining me for another Good Life Project |
| 0:09.1 | Rift. Today's Rift is entitled The Myth of Working for Free. So after years of pain |
| 0:17.3 | to wear your favorite shoes, they're now paying you to be seen in them. After years of |
| 0:22.2 | speaking for free and pain to travel, they're now paying you to speak. After years of ordering |
| 0:28.6 | your favorite drink, they're now paying you to drink it after years of buying your favorite |
| 0:33.8 | jewels. They're paying you to wear them. After years of writing for free, they're now |
| 0:39.6 | paying you to contribute. I'm fascinated by this transition. I call it the brand hand |
| 0:46.5 | moment. It's that point where the value of your brand and contribution becomes so self-evident |
| 0:53.0 | or clearly expressed that it gives you enough power and leverage to start getting paid |
| 0:58.2 | cold hard cash for the very thing that you were paying cold hard cash to do the day before. |
| 1:05.2 | I've often wondered what is it that happens in that moment. So sometimes you can peg this |
| 1:12.0 | shift to a specific happening. You write a book that becomes a massive bestseller. You |
| 1:16.8 | win some kind of industry award or accolade that annoins your arrival into the land of |
| 1:21.5 | brand hand. Or you give a talk or post a video that explodes online. You build a company, |
| 1:27.1 | a venture or an event that defines a moment and becomes a phenomenon. I call this booming |
| 1:33.6 | your way into brand hand and sometimes it can be that. But other times it's a much slower, |
| 1:41.2 | more grueling and gradual evolutionary process. Every day you build a bit more social currency, |
| 1:48.3 | brand equity and over time, months or even years, your brand evolves to a point where instead |
| 1:55.3 | of paying to wear or consume or contribute your now being paid to do the very same thing. |
| 2:01.6 | Truth though, this is the way it happens for most people. Going from paying to be paid is a |
| 2:08.0 | blend of perceived value and demand. So let's take the world of speaking as an interesting example. |
| 2:14.8 | You start out believing that you have something to say and truth is you may or may not. And even |
... |
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