Don’t Work For Exposure

I often hear in my coaching sessions with newbie entrepreneurs that they accepted to work for exposure or, in a more sophisticated way, in a risk sharing partnership. Let me debunk that myth right now.

1. Exposure never paid any bills
2. The only exposure you will get is that you are the sucker willing to work for exposure
3. Risk Sharing is one way tentative corporations have found not to take any risk and transfer it to you. They are the big guys, not you. My quickest answer to that is to ask how much their lawyers take in risk sharing… Yeah, didn’t think so!

Never forget they are the ones who need your services. And if a sucker is willing to do it for free, you need to learn to walk away. Yes it’s hard. But working for nothing doesn’t help. It makes you busy and you might loose a bigger opportunity. Hang in there. Working at Mc Donalds for a few weeks will at least bring you minimum wage, no? We’ve all been there…

Now, how do you price your work? No, I don’t have any universal answer like ’42’ for you. But here are a few pointers:

1. Research your competition
2. Try to calculate the value you bring
3. Start from a decent annual salary for you. Say 50,000$. There are 2,000 work hours in a year. Divide 50K by 2K = 25$/Hr. Multiply that by 2 and you have a rough pricing that makes sense. When you become more and more senior, your price tag will increase naturally.

I hope this helps. Always be prepared to walk away. You’d be surprise how often they call back. Believe in yourself and never sell yourself short.

And don’t forget to share your experience in the comments and send this to someone who needs it.