a great fear of free phonecalls
Picture from flickr by Khe
There’s something I really hate as an entrepreneur and as women who runs a business – phonecalls. Not just the chatty cool conversations you have with people you have already met and like and stuff, but the ones with people you have never even seen in person. Outbound or inbound it doesn’t matter – if it’s not arranged in a mail or something I hate them.
The other day I had a guy calling me up on the phone, telling me that he wanted to arrange a social media marketing speech at the executive network he was employed in. That’s something that makes me really happy normally because I love speaking and I am darn passionate about what I do – so thumbs up.
BUT as the conversation progressed, I found out that
1. it was in the other end of the country and
2. they didn’t want to pay me to actually do the speech.
Hm. They would pay for travelling cost. Hm hm. I decided to tell the guy nicely that I like to get payed for what I do, and since I have a lot of clients paying for speeches, I would really think I was freeloading on them, because they actually pay me to work. The problem was that this was for a business that charged somewhere between 10.000 kr and 16.000 kr for a yearly membersship, and they had no intention of paying me. It wasn’t an NGO, it wasn’t a good cause or an excellent conference, this was hard work.
Today something like the same happened again, which I also politely declined and told the women on the phone that I didn’t work for free.
I don’t work for free. I think the free phoners are rude people who has no respect for me or my work.
Don’t call me if you want me to do stuff for free. hmpf.
Related posts: