In the midst of the many daily emails that I receive came notification to one of my LinkedIn groups. One of the links was to a post from a young man offering his services for FREE. The language of the post was lengthy and caught my attention. I respectfully reached out to the young man, expressing concern over his offer of FREE services. I sent him a direct email, tactfully sharing my summarized thoughts. The problem with FREE is that it devalues the REAL work by seasoned professionals who need to perform the same work for monetization. Each act of free services adds to the mentality that business owners should not have to pay fair market prices for the services they need to grow their business. (It turns out this baby faced man boy is really hoping for employment from these “free takers” without telling them, which in my book is an integrity issue all together…)
Each instance is like the Japanese proverb, “small specs of dust amass a mountain.” In other words, each free work takes away from the dollars that must be earned by our family, friends and neighbors to keep their homes and lives. It also creates an imbalanced colored view in the minds business owners that they should be able to sell their services without ever having to pay for anyone else’s. I call this the “network marketer mentality”, wherein anyone whose been in the direct selling arena with success or not believes their business is unique and better than traditional business because their company gives them everything they need, when in actuality it just usually makes them look greedy in the eyes of everyone looking at them. But I digress. The REAL cost of free is that society starts to feel entitled to FREE for anything and everything. Each free work given away subtracts from maintaining a healthy economy.
Then there is a personal relational cost. In all my years consulting business and a presenter to business owners, I have never ever seen any “free” work valued by the people who receive it. As a matter a fact it seems to work to the opposite effect. Which ever side receives the free (or discounted) service begins to devalue the work received more than it deserves. The person starts to become an instant expert in the servants profession, unfairly judging the work with usually negative viewpoint. Eventually, this disrespect becomes evident via the tone in which they speak (email or text) to them and finally in ultimate disloyalty. The person who got free services never comes back to the person to offer paid work. They often invest in another company without telling the gratis service provider. Thus, the person who thought they were helping a company out in a time of fiscal challenge eventually feels used and abused by their friendly colleague. Like salt on a wound the user looses all social equity in the eyes of the genuine servant.
