What is the true value of free?
• For a budget-conscious family, free stretches the grocery budget.
• For the single mom, it can be hot food for breakfast,
• For the business owner, it may be attractive to buy more than one product.
• For the home-based entrepreneur, it can cost your business hundreds, if not thousands of dollars over the life of your business.
For years as a home business owner, I was always looking for meeting rooms, particularly the free meeting room. Because I wanted to be a leader who led by example, I thought that by showing my team that there were places to host meetings and that they didn’t have an out-of-pocket investment, I was helping them pave the way to leadership. Unfortunately, that investment turned out to be the most damaging investment in my business.
Open your mind and let’s walk this journey together and recognize how much free can cost you.
Meeting room number 1. Local coffee shop, there are essentially big boxes and local coffee shops. Free Wi-Fi and sometimes password-protected Wi-Fi, but who is sitting next to you while you enter your password. The scanner that is sitting on the backpack drawing your information and the recorder that is recording your business meeting. Since you are a regular customer, they know that you meet new customers there on a weekly basis. Your calendar is clockwork, but you’re not getting new business. Occasionally, one will sign the new contract, but will not be able to close the sale. After the first few, he begins to shift his focus, scanning books for ideas and redirection, then begins to question his decision to become an entrepreneur.
Meeting room number 2. The local restaurant has a free meeting room. You arrive early to set up your presentation only to find that it’s already in use at another meeting that’s running out of steam. By the time the staff cleans the room and freshens it up, they are 20 minutes behind in their preparation and have booked the meeting room for two hours. The guests begin to arrive and the waiter enters the room to take drink orders. He begins the presentation and they arrive with drink orders, only to start over again to take appetizer and menu orders. Within 15-20 minutes, they arrive with appetizers, then within 10-12 minutes they start arriving with food orders. During the time, there is a conversation taking place and the focus is on the server, not your presentation. 15-25 minutes after the food arrived, they come back to refill the drinks and start clearing the plates, only to come back to see if anyone wants dessert. Your 2 hour presentation that you have carefully prepared has not received all the attention it wants and less than 1/3 of the room will remember even ¼ of the presentation. The questions at the end will be skipped because they will have missed some of the critical points you focused on.
Meeting room number 3. Grocery store loft. Sunday afternoon while clients enjoy lunch. Children play in the playground while children’s music and videos play. Sure, there are multiple areas to meet, but there are signs everywhere asking you to “refrain from soliciting or distributing literature, business or other group meetings, or other conduct that may upset other patrons.” For a party planning business where recognition is essential for teams, your enthusiasm can engage the staff as they ask your group to refrain from making too much noise. For the client who wants to hire you to increase their social presence, you are inviting them to meet you at a grocery store.
Meeting room number 4. The local delicatessen. Just grab lunch and have your business meeting. With no staff interruptions, you are responsible for cleaning your dishes. Your client is paying you to help increase their business exposure, organize their time, train them for new business ideas, brainstorm ideas, and more. Then the moment the person at the next table is typing as fast as you can talk, stopping when you pause, leaning in closer when calmer. Your business is valuable and you just gave away a free hour to a stranger when your paying customer just paid you a lot of money for information that is supposed to lead to more business.
Finally, meeting room number 5. Your living room, your home office, your base. Welcome a stranger to your home. Without asking for a criminal background check, everyone has a past. Most professionals do business with legitimate entrepreneurs, however, there is always the possibility. As parents, we teach our children not to talk to strangers, but we invite strangers into our home. If your children are home, the next polite step would be for the children to say hi and quietly go play. The stranger just found out that he has children, where the playroom is and if he has a pet and the size of the pet. There are the precious family photos on the wall, your address, everything about you is exposed in the presence of someone you don’t know. The layout of your home from the moment you walk through the door unless you have a separate entrance. In business, we want to trust everyone we personally invite into our homes, but we also live in a world that is not as safe as we want to believe.
Free is a four-letter word that can literally take business away from you. When you walk into an establishment and take advantage of the free meeting room, there are expectations. Grocery purchases, they may say no purchase is required, but they will be disappointed and start to acknowledge your monthly call and tell you that the room is not available, especially if you are not making a grocery purchase. They can offer free with a minimum purchase of food.
Free can be the exchange of products for the use of a meeting room. In the end, the cost is still an out-of-pocket cost to you.
Free is great until the local baseball team shows up for pizza and ice cream.
Free is the lost business that someone else won. Your public meeting has just opened the door to another competitor who has just heard your price quote and gathering information is critical to your boss and paycheck.
Free offers you nothing in return.
