It's weird that this all started by giving.

Whenever you think of business, you probably think of:

• "sales-y" people
• cringe "LinkedInfluencers"
• sleazy marketing tactics
• selfish rich dudes driving mid-life crisis cars

Or maybe you don't.

But nobody thinks being an employee is gross.

On the flip side, plenty of people have strong feelings about business owners or starting a business themselves.

There's no "middle ground" there.

Either you'd "love it" or "hate it" (or you "totally would" or "could never").

I never thought I'd want to be a business owner. I hated when my dad brought up the idea as a solution to poverty.

You know what I did want? To help people. That's it.

From my early days in the parkour community, I learned the value of service and community.

I saw how a collaborative sport could bring people together for shared learning experiences. I never got that vibe playing tennis or track in high school. We always had to care about the scoreboard.

I don't like doing that.

It takes all the fun and humanity out of it.

You're not just a number. You don't view other people as numbers, either.

You're here to help make the world better, or you probably wouldn't be reading this.

But you have to understand that business is a valid way of helping people. There's actually nothing wrong with charging people money for your time.

I know I was raised to think that everyone who gives stuff away for free was somehow "more noble" than people who didn't, but I learned later on that it's a crock of bs.

Giving stuff for free may make your stuff more accessible, but it also cheapens it.

As a mentor once told me:

And I've found myself asking myself the same thing when someone gives what appears to be $1000 worth of time and value away for $0.

You know how people say, "if it's free, you're the product"?

That's how I feel about these free 100-hour courses.

It's just plain rude, to be honest. People chasing clout by offering "free value" nobody has time to benefit from.

Out here trying to be the Patron Saint of Tech 🤣

The point being, there's a lesson you have to learn if you want to really help people at scale.

Sometimes in order to give, you have to take. But in order to take, you have to give first.

Make sense? Maybe?

Okay, let's put it another way. You can't help people who don't want to help themselves.

Sad, I know. But believe me, I've tried. And it never works out.

How do you determine who's ready to help themselves?

You need a filtering mechanism. Money is a good one. Asking them to sign up for something is another.

But you can't just let everyone get access to what you have all at once.

The people who really want to help themselves will go the extra mile, do the extra thing, jump through the extra hoop.

And it may feel mean or unfair to put obstacles in front of people, but there is no progress in life without struggle.

Seriously. There are no shortcuts. Shortcuts suck, anyway, because you can't maintain any results you get unless you become a stronger person by dealing with the struggle along the way.

It's why most lottery winners go broke in the first year. They aren't the person who would be capable of keeping that much money, or they'd already have it.

The problems your readers/customers/students will have if they aren't willing to "do the extra thing" are much worse than the obstacle you're putting in front of them.

You're actually doing them a favor by getting them to invest because it'll be harder for them to quit whatever you're offering them.

Free stuff is great. We need free stuff in this world.

Giving feels good, but the point of giving is to help people, not just to feel good about not "making people pay us".

And you can only help people you know are ready to help themselves.

You have to filter out people who just want another "collectible" they're gonna toss into their closet and forget about.

You know, like your Udemy courses you haven't touched in over a year.

So remember if you're giving away your best stuff for free, you might be helping yourself more than you're helping other people.

You might be protecting your own feelings and disguising it as "charity".

To help people, you have to understand people. And people take stuff more seriously when they pay for it.

And you want your help to be taken seriously if you want people to benefit from it.

If you want to know more about why "free stuff is not always good", here's some more reading for you.

Happy Tuesday 🌮

Cheers,

Steven