Ben is a health and nutrition coach for entrepreneurs and thought-leaders. He's grateful for his health. He's celebrating setting up a live talk at Eve.

01:07 Challenge: I don't know if I should charge people for the talk or not.

01:20 Question: What are the pros and cons for not charging, and the pros and for charging?

01:27 Ben: Pros for not charging: I'd feel less pressure. I'm new to the community, so it would be a good way to share with people what I'm all about.

01:45 Question: What's your overhead?

01:47 Ben: $350.

01:51 Question: Could you get a few clients out of this?

01:52 Yeah.

01:59 Brad: You'd get more people to come it it's free. But the people who are more likely to come to a paid event are more likely to be willing to spend.

02:09 Brad: What if you did a free one and then a follow-up paid one, once you get all the kinks worked out?

02:14 Ben: Definitely.

02:25 Question: You said you felt like there was no pressure if you do it for free, but more pressure if you do it for paid. Is that really true?

02:30 Ben: I feel it. I think a lot of that comes from my past experience working as a chef, and working at a level that I felt on the fence of whether I had my job or not. Getting paid as a celebrity chef was insane

03:05 Question: Is that value of what you'll deliver, if they pay you or not?

03:06 Ben: No.

03:18 Question: Are you going to have a follow-up offer?

03:25 Ben: After? Yes.

03:40 Stacy: Recently I made the decision to do Circus for Entrepreneurs for free. Or refundable. Because I wanted to get comfortable with a new process for myself. But I found that there was not less pressure. I still wanted to deliver the value.

04:12 Stacy: But if you feel like there will be less pressure, and you can promote another offer, that could be a good way to do it.

04:17 Ben: There's something deeper in there for me, around pay and money. I'm also looking at being new to an area, and it seeming aggressive.

04:38 For me, a transformation happens when a transaction occurs. When people invest in themselves they expect transformation. But when they go to a free event, a lot of times there is already a feeling that it won't be valuable.

05:08 I think it's the worthiness, the belief that people want to pay for what you have to offer.

05:22 Question: How are you getting them to the event?

05:24 Ben: Online marketing and Eve.

05:32 So it's really about you bridging the belief that people want to pay.

05:41 Ben: There's another part of me that knows that what I'm going to bring is super high-value.

05:46 Do you think they're really going to receive it if they're there for free?

06:00 Like attracts like. Free events are huge red flags for me, unless I know the person.

06:30 It's more energetic than anything. You just need to believe in it.

06:43 If you really want to do it for free, then at least get something out of it. Get a boat-load of customer research out of it.

06:58 Ben: I'll get a ton of content out of it - there will be people filming it, I'll get more people on my email list, etc.

07:25 Question: You can deliver a transformation in that free event?

07:28 Ben: Oh, yeah.

07:32 Have everyone write their story for you. Then you'll have even more content and customer research.

07:57 Ben: How do I get that content from them? I'm imagining they'll be writing that in a journal, that I wouldn't receive.

08:06 In order to come to this event you have to fill out this survey. Or, at the event, here's 30 minutes and the worksheets.

08:14 Brad: You can use carbon copies.

08:33 There are ways to get the worksheets, don't get too overwhelmed by that.

08:37 Brad: I say charge.

08:39 What's the worst thing that could happen, if you bomb?

08:45 Question: How much are you thinking of charging?

08:48 Ben: Maybe like $30?

08:49 Stop! That's nothing. Just charge.

08:55 You're worth it. They're worth it. They need to feel worth it, too. You're doing them a disservice by expecting that they don't want to pay, because you're putting it out there that they're not worth it to pay that much money for the transformation that you're giving them. So you're actually disempowering them, stealing away all their value.

09:15 Ben: Which is disempowering myself, too.

09:29 I also wonder if there's a degree of trying to "get that perfect bun" with trying to get that material out there. They're not there to get the perfect material. They're there to get results. It can all be simplified. There's maybe a confidence issue? Needing to be perfect? I don't know. Does that resonate with you at all, that you're trying to make the perfect bun?

10:06 Brad: Gordon Ramsay is not going to kick the door open if you don't get it right.

10:12 You're not doing the chef thing anymore. You're working with people who don't know what the perfect bun even is.

10:25 Over the weekend I went to a 3-day, free event. Different people got different things out of it. Because there was so much material, there was a lot of good that I got out of it, there were other parts I didn't care for as much, but I can discard them.

10:55 So here's this free event, that demanded a lot of effort from the organizers. This is an argument for doing it for free: If you have a ready-made follow-up, here are the plans where I can work with you individually, and the prices. If you're ready to follow up, that might be an argument for doing it for free.

11:26 Did you buy it?

11:27 No, I didn't. Others did. I did not. I signed up for free. There were so few people that I got as much out of it as people who paid. It was good.

12:04 Let's bounce off that - for that free event there were one-time offer upgrades. That could be useful for you, Ben. So you could offer it for free, then have the next page in your funnel be, if you'd like to receive this extra benefit, one on one time with me, then there's a price.

12:29 That's how he sold it. And there were people there who paid for the added level of exposure.

13:15 There were VIP-like activities at the event, but there were also follow-up items, upgrades.

13:23 If you can pitch a follow-up at the end of your free event, that might be worth it.

Three Key Points:

What have you got to lose? Charge them.
You're worth it. They're worth it. They need to feel worth it, too.
If you really want to do it for free, then at least get something out of it. Get a boat-load of customer research out of it.