How do I politely decline offering people free advice?

Corey Winter 0:01
Welcome to 10 minutes to being boss, a bite sized show for creative business owners where we give you actionable insights, tools and tactics. I'm Corey winter, and here's your host Emily Thompson.

Emily Thompson 0:14
Okay, I'm really excited about today's question because it came from a business he friends lash collaborator, and it's a question that I've gotten many, many, many, many, many, many times before in the past. And answering it in this way is kind of meta. And you'll see why, but I'm super excited about it. So Cory, what did this friend of mine, ask of me?

Corey Winter 0:37
Okay, so this is kind of a long question, and I'm gonna get tongue twisted, but we're gonna get through it. So they asked, as I've grown my following by sharing content that positions myself as an expert, I have a lot of people asking for my time and put in suggestions. How do I politely decline the conversation while not alienating someone who is a fan, I find that I'm dedicating 30 minutes or more per day helping people in this way. I already put a lot of time into my content each week, and I don't always have time to dedicate to helping people beyond that, especially as I continue to grow. So beyond just ignoring them, how would you suggest I handled this? before we answer this question, can we just address the irony? That is this question?

Emily Thompson 1:17
We totally can. And I will say my friend recognize the irony of this question and noted that he was asking of me the exact problem that he was asking me to solve. And what's even better about this is that I'm answering it in the exact way that I want to tell him to solve his problem.

Corey Winter 1:38
You want to hear it, that hurts my brain? But yes,

Emily Thompson 1:42
right. So this is when you start creating content. This is when you start recording podcast, writing blog posts, putting special pages on your website, whatever it may be. So that whenever people are asking you questions, you can not spend 30 minutes or whatever answering them, you just send them a link to that piece of content that you've already created. So whenever you are first starting out this is it's just fact. And it's actually a really great sign that you are getting traction. However, there does always come a point in you building your expertise, when you sort of the time that you have available for helping people for free is overcome, thankfully, by the amount of time that you have to spend on paying clients. And so what you need to do during especially during that, you know, doing everything for free phase is start identifying the questions that are coming up more and more often, the sort of things that you need to be creating content around so that when those questions continue to come up, you can send them a link to that thing that you wrote. So instead of spending 30 minutes answering them, you can simply reply with what a great question, I have the answer here, period. And what that does, is it not only saves you a ton of time and not having to answer all of these questions all the time. But it also further illustrates that you are an expert, because then you're reading their mind, you've already answered the question that they have. And so they see you as more of an expert in that way than if you were even spending your time answering them for free. So creating content is the most important answer to this question. And it really goes to save you a ton of time and position you as more and more of an expert. However, you're not always going to get questions that you've had before. So you may not have content for every question that you're getting. In those situations, always make note of those and maybe take those as content suggestions actually go create the content. So you can even imagine so if someone asks you a question about something that you haven't created content before, and it's right up your alley, like it makes sense. It's super aligned with who it is that you're serving, and what it is that you're doing. instead of answering that email in that moment, go write that blog post about it right then in there and go do the thing and then send them a link and then you have that in the future. Or actually you spend 30 minutes answering the question and then go and turn that into a blog post or podcast or something later. Also, if you find yourself needing to just answer the question, instead of spending 30 minutes or whatever, actually typing out all of the things one of the things that I love to do is to create an audio or video response, quickly explaining the thing. It can take significantly less time sometimes you can explain a 30 minute email and about a two minute audio message. And that's actually how I'm going to be replying to this friend who sent this question instead of, you know, writing the email. This can take me 30 minutes to write transcribing all of this into an email. I'm just gonna send him a quick audio like hey, here are my four At best tips, take it or leave it, enjoy. And then I've gone and created a podcast on this topic so that I can share it with people in the future to another thing that I super suggest that anyone wanting to sort of sharpen the

Corey Winter 5:18
sword of their expertise sharpen the lightsaber, because happy Star Wars Day, everybody.

Emily Thompson 5:25
That's right. You did get it in there.

Corey Winter 5:30
I was trying so hard to work into Star Wars reference somewhere.

Emily Thompson 5:35
Right? chorizo wanted me to do a topic or a question about the force for this May the fourth episode 11. Good job, boy. Two points. The force is strong with me. Right? Whenever you are sharpening your teeth and your expertise, I don't even know what I'm trying to say here. Whenever you're really trying to

Corey Winter 5:55
sharpening this Oh, maybe? I don't know. That's a healthy habit.

Emily Thompson 5:59
Right? When you're getting in there with your expertise. One of the things that I did in my very early days that I found lots of value in was doing what I called three in 30. coaching sessions. So if I was consistently getting emails from people saying, Hey, I have this question, I have this question. All these things. One always reply, or you can always reply what, especially if this is something that you do coaching around, or that you service your clients in, or whatever it may be, even you can email them back and say, This is such a great question. And this is one of the things that I do or I work with clients on in my coaching or in my services, or whatever it may be. Here is more information about how it is that we can work together, there is nothing wrong at all with sort of pushing the question aside and making how it is that you work with people front and center. So I will say that too. Another thing that you can do is if someone just asked you general questions, say I love answering questions like this, and I have dedicated time, you know, once a month, once a quarter or whatever, where I host a webinar, or what I used to do was these three and three and 30 coaching sessions, where I would hop on the phone, I usually would do anywhere from three to six on any given day or week, once a month, or once a quarter where I'd get on with these people. And I would give them 30 minutes to ask me three questions. And so it was like a very short, concise sort of mini coaching session. And my conversion rates on turning those people into clients later was so high, it wasn't always an immediate conversion. But those people stuck with me for years in some cases, and many of them turned into clients. So you can see it almost it was always pitch free. I never pitched during those 330 coaching calls. But it always ended up in a conversation that led to us working together in the future, or it oftentimes did more often than not. So you can also create this sort of dedicated time every month or every quarter or whatever, where you're just taking free questions, and answering them for people. And you can do it in a setting that is really sort of time effective for you to do it. So you're not just answering emails every day or every week from various questions coming from various people, you can really make it a part of how it is that you do business. And you can make it a marketing tactic. You can also position as like sort of community service in a way you doing these. Ask me anything or whatever you want to do. You can do weekly Instagram Live shows where you're hopping on Instagram and just sort of taking people's questions. And you can send people who are sending you randomly timed questions to these special events that you do every month or every quarter. And those are all the ways that you can sort of mitigate this because it is it is a product of your growing success that you have people coming to you asking for additional support. And you at this point need to think about how you can systemize that and make it so that you can you can get more from it. Maybe that is again using those questions to turn into content. But also so you can serve as people in a broader aspect whether it be an Ask me anything or these 330 coaching calls or whatever it may be, so that you are able to both nurture your fans and have plenty of time to service your clients.

Corey Winter 9:25
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