Hi there,

The internet seems divided into two camps:

1. Never ever do free work!!!

2. Free work is the best thing since sliced bread

Which camp is right? Let’s dive in.

Today, in 10 minutes or less, you’ll learn:

• 🎯 When free work is a smart investment vs. a costly mistake

• 💰 How successful portfolio careerists used free projects to get their first clients and even build 7-figure businesses

• 🛡️ A strategic framework for setting boundaries and maximizing returns

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🤔 Should you do free work?

“Should I do free work for this potential client?”

This is one of the most common questions I’ve gotten in our cohort.

The person asking usually has 10-15 years of experience, is exploring some version of fractional work, consulting projects, or advising - and just got off a call with a client who liked their offer but just couldn’t pay.

For my own work, I have completely flipped my answer.

A few years ago, I used to be firmly in the camp of “free work devalues your skills!”

When I was doing career coaching, I met well-meaning coaches get burned out from coaching “for free” on repeat. At its worst, free work felt like a tragic waste of time.

But the longer I’ve been working, the more portfolio careerists and entrepreneurs I meet who started out by doing a free project (or two) for a friend or ex-colleague. And as a result, they garnered testimonials. Reputation. Referrals to clients.

I also noticed how free work accelerated my own progress too.

Hindsight is really 20/20.

Here’s my personal journey with free work, how other professionals deal with it, and how to leverage it strategically in your portfolio career:

🤷‍♂️ My love-hate relationship with “free work”

In 2019, I started career coaching by providing free discovery calls, which led to garnering positive reviews on Hireclub. I wasn’t formally trained as a coach (ICF or otherwise), so this was an excellent way for me to test the waters for demand.

While I still do free discovery calls, one thing I learned is that folks who booked repeat discovery calls - over and over - rarely signed up for my services. I grew wary of this.

Around the same time, I met several other coaches who struggled with a low conversion rate due a smattering of reasons. The clients didn’t have their finances in order, weren’t serious enough, were just exploring, etc.

These insights left a deep impression on me. I saw what I wanted to avoid.

🟡 Lesson #1: Free work sometimes attracts clients with no intention to pay. Be wary of who you’re attracting.

—

However, I was surprised by one event. I had a paid client who was struggling with her mental health at her workplace. We tried to help her navigate this in a couple sessions, but I didn’t feel confident we could help her achieve her desired results.

So I refunded her and suggested exploring a mental health professional.

Turns out, this client later wrote a strong positive review about my services in a career-related FB group - which referred potential clients to me even 2-3 years later.

💚 Lesson #2: Free work for the right clients can lead them to share your services with others, generating word-of-mouth referrals. 

—

Later, I paused coaching in 2023 due to launching B2B product consulting and advising services.

I didn’t do free B2B projects given I already had industry experience to leverage, but being actively involved in a startup ecosystem means you are freely giving value all the time:

• Having a 60-minute brainstorming call with a founder

• Speaking at a conference or company’s office

• Hosting a workshop for an accelerator

• Writing content for tech publications

Doing this made me realize the 3rd lesson:

💚 Lesson #3: I prefer to charge two prices for my value - free and premium

—

Ultimately, it wasn’t until recently that I’ve internalized that doing free work is one of the best forms of distribution on the planet!

Counterintuitively, I’ve attracted really amazing clients via doing free work.

And you can always charge a premium price for a premium service, which more than covers the cost of this free work you do.

Of course, you need to balance this with the challenge of doing the right free work (demonstrates your expertise) and for the person or group (strong willingness to pay for value).

Now let’s take a look at how others approach this:

🙌 What other professionals have done

In our community, we’ve hosted a number of fireside chats with experts (🎯) and our cohort alumni (🎓) who did free work earlier in their journey:

• 🎯 Audrey, founder of Mapo Studios, a 7-figure product design studio, started with zero design experience as a PM, working at Canva. To get started, she did free design projects for startup founder friends to build credibility and testimonials for her design work.

• 🎓 Ines, a content strategist for 7-figure creators (Ali Abdaal, Veritasium, Zaid Khan), started out by sharing free content breakdowns with her potential clients before starting a paid engagement - which demonstrated her expertise.

• 🎓 Makar, a fractional CTO, began by providing free audits or health checks for traditional commercial service firms to show how off his capabilities.

• 🎓 Janani, an engineering program manager at Apple, started offering free coaching sessions for project managers to build trust before launching paid workshops and bootcamps.

As you can tell, free work helped these professionals with things like transitioning into a new function and building fresh credibility.

Finally, let’s switch gears to when and how to use free work:

🎯 When to leverage “free work”

✅ You're entering a new domain or skill area. Like Audrey pivoting from PM to design, or when you're applying existing expertise in a new industry. Free projects can help you build domain credibility fast.

✅ You have zero testimonials or case studies. No one wants to be your first paying client. But people will let you prove yourself for free, especially if they know and trust you personally.

✅ You want to validate your service quality. Test whether your service actually delivers results before charging premium rates. Better to discover gaps in a free project than with a paying client.

✅ The client is willing to share their network. Working with one well-connected person can open doors to multiple paid opportunities - because referrals!

❌ When NOT to do free work:

• You already have paying clients and strong testimonials (usually)

• The person isn’t a fit for getting value out of your services

• The person has a pattern of asking for free help repeatedly

• They can clearly afford to pay but choose not to

• You're feeling desperate or undervaluing yourself

Even if you have paying clients, free work can be useful as distribution - to spread awareness of your expertise.

Free work can be powerful when done well, but you need to be strategic about it.

⚡ How to do “free work” strategically

• Ask for testimonials - If the client is happy, then I’ll end the engagement by asking “Would you be open to giving us a shoutout or testimonial?” If they say yes, I send them a list of questions they can answer on video or through Testimonial.to.

• Build case studies - Document the results you achieve, even from free projects. "Helped drive +20% MoM growth” or “Launched a new product line” becomes awesome social proof for future paid clients.

• Validate your service quality - Often, you don’t know if your service is that good yet at the beginning. That’s why now is the perfect time to get real-world feedback on your service quality - before you start charging gobs of money for it 😉 

• Choose clients strategically - Sometimes it makes sense to do counterintuitive things like work with a startup with no budget vs an enterprise with tons of cash because the former is willing to introduce you to all their founder friends.

💡 The bottom line

I used to hate the idea of free work, but now I’ve done a 180.

When done strategically, free work helps you build credibility and becomes your best distribution channel.

When done carelessly, it can be a colossal waste of energy and time.

The pros who I see succeed with free work leverage it to:

• Switch to new domains

• Build trust and reputation

• Validate their service quality

• Garner client referrals

And as a result, they jumpstarted their portfolio careers.

What's your experience with free work? Hit reply and let me know - I read every response.

P.S. If you're ready to build a part-time consulting business, join our final Launchpad cohort by September 9. Enroll now.

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