We are deluged in offers for free stuff every day. Even if the dollar cost of such items is zero, are they worth our time and attention? Even if they are, will we value them less because we got them for free? These are questions I've been asking myself as I offer something for free in celebration of two years as a coach.
The end of June saw a special milestone for me--the second anniversary of my embarkation on my coaching career. A good time to look back and consider the journey. Only I’ve been so busy I haven’t had much time to do a lot of that. I’ll get to it later, I’m sure.
But I did want to celebrate and thank all the folks who have supported me on the career shift, so I decided to offer some free coaching on Facebook. Today I’ll be doing a random drawing (actually I’m probably going to roll a d20) from among the entrants to determine who wins. I’m pretty excited about it, because it’s always fun to work with a new client and I love helping people. Even for free. Especially for free.
However, I’ve also discovered you have to be careful with Free.
In this day and age, with the ubiquity of internet access, cell phones, and tablets, we’re bombarded by offers for free stuff every day. So much free stuff that if we tried to grab all of it, we’d have little time for anything else. Right away it becomes less than “free” because it is taking up some of our most precious commodity.
Then you’ve got to consider what sort of strings are attached, if any. Maybe I’m too cynical but I tend to think of most free stuff being offered as “free” as those weekend invites to exotic vacation destinations where all you have to do is “sit through a brief opportunity to hear about our time-share!” I’m very wary of that kind of thing; I do nothing of the sort when I’m offering free stuff. I’ll make my money elsewhere.
When I’m providing free coaching, I try my very best to, as a friend of mine calls it, “give with both hands.” That is to say, not withhold anything in the process of giving. I also recall very clearly some advice from my coaching mentor who was extremely generous in the help he gave me when I was getting started. I was worried the free help he was giving me was beginning to border on me taking advantage of his generosity. He said to me:
“Scott, there are two kinds of clients I work with for free. Some are the folks I know are never going to be able to afford what I do. They need the help and can’t afford to pay for it. But helping them is its own reward and I love doing it regardless. The other kind are people who I know are going to be wildly successful. Someday they will need more help and will have plenty of money to pay for it. You’re one of those people.”
I was honored to hear his words and have always kept that concept close to my heart. I like to give as much as I can and just know, while someday it may benefit me monetarily, it’s making me feel fantastic right now. I’ve worked with more than a dozen free clients over the last couple years. Some later became paying clients and some have not. It’s all good.
There’s another aspect of Free I learned about along the way, and it’s something I am quick to tell others: Just because you get something for free, make sure you still appreciate its real value. I’ve had one or two free clients who didn’t seem to take the coaching very seriously. They would miss appointments or not follow through on their weekly goals in ways I doubt they would have if they were paying for the coaching.
What does any of this have to do with our RPG hobby? It’s always been an arena littered with free stuff everywhere you look. People put out all kinds of free stuff, both as professionals and as amatuer passion projects, all the time. And of course most of the GMs I know do it for free. It’s rife with giveaways and creative commons sharing.
How much of this free stuff are you consuming? I don’t think of myself as using a whole lot of it, but then it’s easy to forget all of those times where I think to myself, “Hey I need a character sheet for this game I’m running. Lemme see what I can find on Google Images...” And of course one of my favorite game systems in recent years, Old School Hack, was created entirely for free.
Considering how few RPG products I’m buying most months, I’m usually getting a ton of value from the ones I pay for. I’d like to think I’m valuing those free systems and settings as much as the ones I’m paying for, but it’s a pretty tall order. In a lot of ways it’s hard for me to wrap my brain around the concept of “value” when it comes to RPGs because, even with the most expensive ones, I’m usually playing them for enough hours that the cost per hour of fun seems fairly trivial.
And yet, when I go to recommend some of the games I love, like OSH or Risus, to somebody new, I almost always throw in there, “And it’s FREE too.” Clearly I must think that’s important on some level. Maybe I’m just suggesting to them, with the product being free, there is no reason not to give it a try. There are no strings attached.
How do you feel about free products? Which ones do you see value in? Are you more likely to abandon something you got for free?
The end of June saw a special milestone for me--the second anniversary of my embarkation on my coaching career. A good time to look back and consider the journey. Only I’ve been so busy I haven’t had much time to do a lot of that. I’ll get to it later, I’m sure.
But I did want to celebrate and thank all the folks who have supported me on the career shift, so I decided to offer some free coaching on Facebook. Today I’ll be doing a random drawing (actually I’m probably going to roll a d20) from among the entrants to determine who wins. I’m pretty excited about it, because it’s always fun to work with a new client and I love helping people. Even for free. Especially for free.
However, I’ve also discovered you have to be careful with Free.
In this day and age, with the ubiquity of internet access, cell phones, and tablets, we’re bombarded by offers for free stuff every day. So much free stuff that if we tried to grab all of it, we’d have little time for anything else. Right away it becomes less than “free” because it is taking up some of our most precious commodity.
Then you’ve got to consider what sort of strings are attached, if any. Maybe I’m too cynical but I tend to think of most free stuff being offered as “free” as those weekend invites to exotic vacation destinations where all you have to do is “sit through a brief opportunity to hear about our time-share!” I’m very wary of that kind of thing; I do nothing of the sort when I’m offering free stuff. I’ll make my money elsewhere.
When I’m providing free coaching, I try my very best to, as a friend of mine calls it, “give with both hands.” That is to say, not withhold anything in the process of giving. I also recall very clearly some advice from my coaching mentor who was extremely generous in the help he gave me when I was getting started. I was worried the free help he was giving me was beginning to border on me taking advantage of his generosity. He said to me:
“Scott, there are two kinds of clients I work with for free. Some are the folks I know are never going to be able to afford what I do. They need the help and can’t afford to pay for it. But helping them is its own reward and I love doing it regardless. The other kind are people who I know are going to be wildly successful. Someday they will need more help and will have plenty of money to pay for it. You’re one of those people.”
I was honored to hear his words and have always kept that concept close to my heart. I like to give as much as I can and just know, while someday it may benefit me monetarily, it’s making me feel fantastic right now. I’ve worked with more than a dozen free clients over the last couple years. Some later became paying clients and some have not. It’s all good.
There’s another aspect of Free I learned about along the way, and it’s something I am quick to tell others: Just because you get something for free, make sure you still appreciate its real value. I’ve had one or two free clients who didn’t seem to take the coaching very seriously. They would miss appointments or not follow through on their weekly goals in ways I doubt they would have if they were paying for the coaching.
What does any of this have to do with our RPG hobby? It’s always been an arena littered with free stuff everywhere you look. People put out all kinds of free stuff, both as professionals and as amatuer passion projects, all the time. And of course most of the GMs I know do it for free. It’s rife with giveaways and creative commons sharing.
How much of this free stuff are you consuming? I don’t think of myself as using a whole lot of it, but then it’s easy to forget all of those times where I think to myself, “Hey I need a character sheet for this game I’m running. Lemme see what I can find on Google Images...” And of course one of my favorite game systems in recent years, Old School Hack, was created entirely for free.
Considering how few RPG products I’m buying most months, I’m usually getting a ton of value from the ones I pay for. I’d like to think I’m valuing those free systems and settings as much as the ones I’m paying for, but it’s a pretty tall order. In a lot of ways it’s hard for me to wrap my brain around the concept of “value” when it comes to RPGs because, even with the most expensive ones, I’m usually playing them for enough hours that the cost per hour of fun seems fairly trivial.
And yet, when I go to recommend some of the games I love, like OSH or Risus, to somebody new, I almost always throw in there, “And it’s FREE too.” Clearly I must think that’s important on some level. Maybe I’m just suggesting to them, with the product being free, there is no reason not to give it a try. There are no strings attached.
How do you feel about free products? Which ones do you see value in? Are you more likely to abandon something you got for free?
