Like a lot of things on LinkedIn, the DM I got from a former colleague made me angry. I had left the company where we worked together two years before the message landed in my inbox and hadn’t spoken to him once in all that time. But surprise, surprise: He needed something from me.
He had been laid off, and wanted me to edit his resume. This guy was asking me to review this very dense five-page (!) document and offer feedback. You’ll notice in the screenshot below that he made no offer to pay me. We were not friends and I had not heard a peep out of him since I’d left our mutual employer.
I’m very proud of the response 2021 Kate gave him. “I’m sorry to hear this,” I wrote. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the bandwidth for another project right now. That said, there are plenty of professionals who specialize in resume writing and will do this kind of work for $100 - $200.” His response?
“Eh. Just wanted your opinion. Thanks anyway.”
My opinion? About words? The thing I get paid to do? Yeah, no.
Knowing this guy and his writing, it probably would have taken me two or three hours to edit that resume. At my 2021 rates, that would have been $300-$500 dollars. And this is not a person I would give a $300-$500 gift to.
As women, we provide way too much free labor. At home, we do far more of the unpaid domestic labor (even when we work outside the home, earning as much as our husbands). Our children’s schools wouldn’t function without the moms who volunteer. And, at work we are more likely to “volunteer” for nonpromotable tasks that aren’t part of our job description. (I’ve used quotes around the word volunteer because I don’t think this is a completely coercion-free phenomenon.)
I can’t fix all of those problems (though I’m trying to do my part). What I can do is show you how to stop saying yes to requests to have your brain picked — requests that amount to free consulting or gratis coaching.
In the Before Times, these requests often arrived as a thinly veiled invitation to catch up over a cup of coffee (as if your time isn’t worth more than the price of a skinny cappuccino and a blueberry muffin). Today, they might also arrive in the form of a Slack message, a comment on a newsletter, or a DM on social media.
AnnMarie Grohs, who owns BOHO Studios, a fitness business with three locations, gets requests for help from all over the U.S. and Canada. On occasion, she explains, she’s happy to offer free advice free, but she’s very selective about doing so. “If I don’t know the person or have a past relationship with them, I am very unlikely to say yes.” But there are times when it makes sense to meet with someone without charging them.
Grohs evaluates each situation individually. “Could I eventually benefit from this? Is there a potential collaboration down the line?” she asks herself. “Does this person’s business complement mine instead of competing with mine?”
But just because she says yes to you once, doesn’t mean she’ll say yes to you forever. If you give people an inch, she’s noticed, they’ll often ask for a mile. “The conversation can quickly go from ‘Do you like what you’re doing?’ to ‘Will you send me your instructor training manual?’” says Grohs. “No f—ing way. That’s proprietary information. It was tons of work to create. We still use it. We modify it. I can’t just give away my secrets.”
“Imposter syndrome is a real thing. But now I’ve got 10 years more knowledge and experience than they do. I have to remind myself of that sometimes.” —AnnMarie Grohs
Grohs is what organizational psychologists call a “connector.” She’s often happy to make introductions for people who are new to her city, looking for work, or thinking about switching careers, but she’s keenly aware that this is a slippery slope. Not long ago, a friend asked Grohs to talk to someone who was starting a fitness business. The business was in another city (thus, not a competitor), so Grohs gave the friend of a friend an hour of time to answer some general questions. “Four months later, she had more questions. Then two months passed and the questions got more specific: HR, payroll, training,” Grohs says. “Now she wants to expand and wants my ‘advice’ on that. I told her it would cost $3,300.”
Charging for her time like this is new for Grohs. When she first started her business, she didn’t feel like she could ask to be compensated for these conversations. “Why would I charge someone if I’m still learning?” she’d ask herself. “Imposter syndrome is a real thing. But now I’ve got 10 years more knowledge and experience than they do. I have to remind myself of that sometimes.”
is the founder of Design Mom and AltSummit and author of Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion. She’s also a Mormon mother of six who lives in a small town in Normandy, France, where she and her husband are renovating a 400-year-old house. People have lots of questions for her and Blair says answering those questions has always been a big part of what she thinks of as her job. But as her influence has grown, so has her inbox.“Of course, I’d love to answer all the questions,” says Blair. “I’d love to personally advise every person who is thinking about an international move. I’d love to help all the people trying to design their family room/bedroom/kitchen/bathroom. I’d love to offer my best advice for each person undergoing a political/religious identity crisis. I’d love to ease each parent’s worries about finding the right school and getting into a good college. I’d love to help travelers figure out their best Normandy itinerary. But I simply can’t.” Unless she’s getting paid for it.
So Blair introduced her “Office Hours” about a year and a half ago. Every so often, she opens up her calendar, offering a batch of 30-minute meetings at three different price points: $50, $75 and $100. On the back end, she’s using Calendly and PayPal to make it work. She asks people to pay what they can afford. “The idea is that if you can afford to, you’ll choose a $75 or $100 meeting, and leave the $50 spots for others,” she explains. And if you’ve already had a $50 meeting and you want to schedule another one, Blair hopes you’ll choose a $75 or $100 slot for that next meeting. (As I type, Blair’s offering 30-minute meetings at a sale price of $65.)
Those higher-priced slots subsidize the gratis meetings Blair also offers people who can’t pay. For every 10 meetings she books, she offers a “scholarship meeting.” She asks folks who need one to email her with “Scholarship Meeting” in the subject line and keeps a running waitlist. “We all want to lift each other up and help people out,” says Blair. “Scholarship options help you make peace with all that.”
Blair’s Office Hours are meant for casual conversation. For people who need business advice or consulting, she uses an app called Intro, which allows people looking to book 1:1 meetings with leaders who have very specific subject matter expertise. It’s like speed mentoring with celebrities. I just took a quick peek at the platform and saw the founders of ThirdLove ($300/15 min), Drybar ($450/15 min) and Reddit ($776/15 min) — plus lots of interior decorators.
I booked a 15-minute session for $99 with Blair two weeks ago and it was lovely. I asked questions for this article and test-drove the app. (It was super easy to use and the video quality was great.) We even had a few spare minutes to talk about Substack and its potential for writers.
I asked Blair when she knew it was time to start charging for these conversations. She answered with a few simple questions: How irritated are you by these requests? Would you be bugged if people were offering to pay you for your advice?
“I’m not angry at people for asking for help,” she explains. “I’m angry that I don’t have the time to just talk to people all day long and help them for free.” But she can’t, because that takes her away from other work that pays.
Grohs feels that same tension. “It’s that hard line between wanting to mentor and being respectful of my own time, which is scarce,” she explains. “If I have that kind of time to spare, I need to spend it on my own business. Or I need to charge for it.”
I’m not suggesting you start walking around cocktail parties and networking events with a contactless chip reader, ready to take credit card payments as soon as the chit chat shifts to business. A couple months ago, I did a Zoom with a former colleague starting a new business. I did no prework, answered a few questions and gave her a hard stop at 30 minutes. It was great. Earlier this week, I did a walk-and-talk with another Substack writer. I helped her and she helped me.
The trick is to know your boundaries, make them very clear and respect them — or no one else will.
Brain picking boundaries
When researching this topic, I found plenty of articles with advice for the person asking to do the brain picking, but very little addressed to people whose brains are being picked. So here’s mine.
How will future you feel? This is a trick I use to help me make all sorts of decisions, from whether to go for a run or sleep in, to deciding whether to attend an event or let someone pick my brain. Whether it’s a big thing or a little thing, I simply ask myself, “How will I feel after I do this?” So, how will you feel after you give this person an hour of your morning? Energized and motivated? Great — do it. Annoyed and resentful? Don’t do it. (Or at least don’t do it for free.)
Offer an alternative. If you’re not ready to start charging people for advice, but you regularly get these kinds of requests, create a basic Google Doc or website page of FAQs and a list of helpful resources (books, articles, podcasts) you can share in lieu of a meeting. Respond to requests with a simple message: “Right now, I don’t have the bandwidth for a 1:1, but here’s a link to some information that should help.” Or, provide asynchronous advice so you can help when it’s good for you: Ask them to send you their top three questions and answer them by recording a voice memo you can email them.
Ask for specifics. Say no to anyone who just wants “some general advice.” If they can’t be more specific than that, meeting with them will be a waste of time. You may not even be the right person to help them — and it would stink to realize that after you’ve made time for them. If they can’t be specific, ask them to come back to you when they have a better idea of exactly what they need.
Assume they intend to pay you. When you get a request from someone you don’t know well, pretend like you already have a mutual understanding that you’ll be paid for your time and start the conversation there. That’s what I did with that LinkedIn DM even though the guy never mentioned money (and offered flattery instead). There are plenty of people who are willing to pay for advice but have no idea that option exists — show them how easy it can be.
Do what works best for you. Especially if you’re not being compensated, but even if you are. Blair limits her Office Hours calls to two per day, four days a week. And she doesn’t offer them every month — it depends on what else she has going on. I preserve my focus time by only doing mentoring conversations at the end of the day at the end of the week, when my energy is lower (which means the opportunity cost is low, too). Only agree to meet at a time and place that’s convenient for you (before your workday begins at the coffee shop next to your office, for instance). Or only offer to talk while you’re doing something else: commuting, walking, or folding laundry.
Consider all your costs when setting your price. You may have to do some prep work for your call, so factor that in. And remember that you’re not just being paid for your time, you’re being compensated for your experience: what are the years (or decades) you spent earning your expertise worth?
Probably more than you think. Probably more than a skinny latte.
YES to this
This is brilliant and incredibly timely advice as I found myself advocating for the importance of editing yesterday, the umpteenth time I've had to defend the profession. At a former job where editorial input was so devalued that there is now no on-staff editor, I got asked to edit a maid of honor speech, wedding vows, a bat mitzvah invitation and funeral programs. One of those times, I got lunch from a partner who was afraid to ask me to do him a favor without giving me anything in return, but otherwise I was just spending my limited personal time offering professional services for free. At the next job I had, it took only three months for a colleague to ask me to edit her resume and keep it confidential that she was being let go. I'm now going to rethink my response if (or, more likely, when) I get another request along these lines.