How to STOP Fortifying Your Blind Spots – Why Free Isn’t Free

I recently had a coaching call with a business coaching client of mine and she is struggling with something I see all the time and have experienced myself.

“How can I get people to stop treating me like a free help line for fitness?”

I thought this was a great topic for a blog post because this affects everyone involved. Both the asker and the askee.

First, how does it affect the person asking for the advice?

I will start out by saying it negatively affects the person asking far more than the person being asked.

How? Why?

The reason is because you are never going to get a successful plan laid out for you.

You are going to get bits and pieces of information which can confuse and complicate the situation further.

What? This confusion happens because we have blind spots. And by definition, a blind spot is something you can’t see. So when we pick through free tips, we only serve to fortify those blind spots.

We pick out the free information we think will solve our problems; but if that was really our problem, we would have reached our goals by now, right?

Here’s the deal.

If you want to be successful in fitness, you have to be consistent.

You have to follow a PLAN that is rooted in health.

If you want to look a certain way (i.e. have lean muscles, low body fat, and maximize your naturally occurring genetics), randomly going to a class here and there, doing things like squat challenges, and picking through other free advice you see on the internet isn’t going to cut it.

Randomly tossing questions/comments on social media profiles like, “hey tell me what I need to do for my legs,” and “what can I do to get rid of my love handles,” isn’t going to get you there either.

And please stop and think before you drop into someone’s inbox to ask a professional for advice they charge for.

Think about your profession.

What do you do for a living?

Now imagine someone trying to get your expertise and advice by dropping into your inbox or commenting on your social media and expecting you to give them your services for free.

It seems pretty silly, huh?

If you think negotiating your salary when you first get a job is tough imagine doing that every single day. That’s what coaches and other service providers do.

We get paid for our expertise and it’s up to us to negotiate our pay every day of the year. When you ask for something free or a “deal”, you are not negotiating with a faceless corporation. 

But I thought coaches loved to help people?

And we do!

ABSOLUTELY! But there isn’t anyone paying us to sit around and answer questions randomly dropped into our various social media messaging systems or inboxes.

If you really want to succeed in anything, you are going to have to put some skin in the game. Commit to a program. Follow through on your commitment.

But if you aren’t committed to paying us for our time, you can guess how committed we are to making sure you succeed. You really do get what you pay for.

So what’s up with that title?

As soon as my business coaching client asked me about people wanting things for free or at a discount, I immediately thought back to a book I recently read:

“What is offered for free or at a bargain price often comes with a psychological price tag. Complicated feelings of obligation, compromises with quality, the insecurity those compromises bring, and on and on.”

If you didn’t have a chance to read my The Real Cost of Free blog post on why I DO give out free training downloads, take a couple minutes to see why coaches offer anything free in the first place.

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