What To Do When People Ask For Free Work

Someone reached out to me via email recently… she wanted me to give her website, branding & design services for free (and included a long troubled story telling me why).

This is not new to me, I get that from time to time. I wrote her back a long email saying that while I do not give my time and services away for free, that I have created MANY free things that could be of help to her in the meantime. I included my best advice, cheered her on, and also included a TON of free and cheap links to resources of my own stuff, and other peoples stuff, that might help her. I thanked her for her interest and wished her all the very best.

She wrote me back.

She asked for free help again. She did not say thank you for the resources, she just proceeded to tell me her story of why she can’t afford help, and asked me if I would do free in-person 1–1 mentorship/coaching/consulting for her then instead. Then she proceeded to lay on the guilt and justifications for this, thick.

I am not new to that either.

I once had a woman attempt to shame me after asking for a quote by telling me she worked with kids who have cancer and she cares more about people than money (to imply that I didn’t). She said that to inflict pain on me, and to shame me and make me feel unimportant. Because her inability…