I got a DM the other day, and the person was asking me, "How come you give away so much
content for free and how much do you know you want to give away for free versus charging
for?"
And this is probably the thousandth time I've been asked this question and I see it a lot
in the comments on my YouTube channel as well because I do give away a lot of content for
free, and it's a big struggle, I know, for people who are starting their businesses or
even people who have been running their business for a while, so I wanted to dive into my thought
process on giving it all away for free and how it's actually led to generating multiple
millions in my business.
And it's probably one of the best things I've ever done to make more money is give away
everything for free, so I'm going to dive into that today.
It's actually a really simple concept and something that, I guess, I've lived by for
a long time, which is generosity, in my opinion, always equals abundance.
I really do believe that the more you give, the more you get.
Now, am I giving away all this free content because I'm expecting something in return?
Absolutely not.
That's not my main intention.
The reason I even started on YouTube was because I wanted to save myself some time, but I also
wanted to help people.
So I had clients at the time, in my little consultancy, where I was trying to answer
all their questions at once because I didn't have the time to go to all the meetings that
they needed me to go to so I just started filming these little tutorials on my YouTube
channel and sending them to them.
So it was saving me time but more importantly, when I would make the videos, my sole intention
was so that the person on the receiving end of it, my client, would fully understand the
concepts so they could actually use it to their advantage and benefit.
So when I started making content, I didn't even have a business plan in place for it.
It was strictly just to save myself some time.
Now, obviously I've learned a lot over the last couple of years and I've made a lot of
content, and I can say that that theory of generosity equals abundance has just been
proven over and over and over again.
And the reality is also that not everyone watching these videos is able to hire me or
work with me, and I know that the more I can help you, the more that one day you'll be
able to work with me.
One day you'll be able to take all of this free content, use it to your advantage, start
to build your business, start to generate revenue, and who do you think you're going
to want to hire when you get to that place and you can actually invest in a program or
service?
I truly believe that you're probably going to want to hire me.
And it's happened so many times where people are like, "I've been watching your videos
for years and I'm so excited to finally be able to work with you and to hire you."
So I know that not everyone in the world is able to hire me and work with me so this is
my way, I guess, of giving back and also playing the long game and understanding that someday
somehow we will meet or we'll be able to work together.
So that's another part of it.
And for me too, honestly, money has never been the thing that fulfilled me.
I've been very fortunate to build a business that's been successful and I've generated
a lot of money, but it really hasn't changed me at all.
And you can ask anyone around me, it really hasn't changed me or my values.
And the thing that fulfills me the most is your aha moments, it's the times when I see
comments when you go, "Oh my gosh, now I get it after watching this video," and, "Now I
can use this after watching your video," or, "I got this result because I watched your
videos," or, "I listened to your podcast," or whatever it may be.
Shout out to The Sunny Show podcast on iTunes, Spotify, all your podcast stations.
If you want to check it out, you can find it in the link below.
But that's really why is because that makes me more fulfilled than anything.
Now, there's also a massive business benefit to giving it all away for free.
And I'm going to talk about how to know what to give away for free and what to charge for
in just a second, but the biggest reason that you want to be making content that is free
and for public consumption is because it positions you as the authority and it builds a huge
trust factor.
It positions you as a real expert as well, because if someone comes across a video of
mine, I want them to walk away and be like, she really knows her stuff.
Whether they work with me or not, they're going to walk away thinking, "Wow, she's really
the expert."
And then they're going to tell a friend, "Oh, you know who I just watched actually about
YouTube, if you want to start a YouTube channel, you should watch this girl, Sunny."
And it scales relationships.
It scales you.
It scales humans because you're going to go from my one of my videos and you're going
to say, "You got to watch this," or you're actually going to share it, which happens
a lot too.
So it increases my impact and my audience because I'm positioning myself as an authority
and I'm actually a real expert and I'm actually providing value.
So that's a huge part of it.
And I become the go-to expert and you become the go-to expert when you start talking about
the thing that you're an expert at.
I think that's the biggest thing I find with people is they're like, "I can't get any clients.
No one wants to hire me.
I can't get paid for what I do.
I don't even know how to start my business."
I'm like, just start talking about the thing that you're really good at and clients will
start to flock to you slowly but surely because if you keep it a secret, what you're really
good at and you don't talk about it with anyone other than your friends and your family, how
would anybody know that they could hire you or work with you?
So that's a big part of it as well.
Now the next part is what I was talking about earlier, and it's something that I have been
using in my business and I believe in in my business wholeheartedly, and it's reciprocity.
So the law of reciprocity is that if somebody does something nice for you or does a generous
act for you, you're going to feel like you need to do the same for them.
And I really do believe that that's a big piece to building a solid business today.
It is the more I can give to you and provide value to you, the more you're going to want
to work with me over anybody else.
So the law of reciprocity is a big factor as to why so many people give so much content
away for free.
And it's the long game.
Like I said, people are eventually going to be able to work with me and I would hope that
after all the free content I've given you, you would choose to work with me over anybody
else.
So I'm not looking for a quick hit of cash, I'm looking to build real relationships with
you, and giving away free content is a big piece of that.
Now, the other factor to that is that people don't trust people, especially if they don't
know what you can do.
And there's a lot of bull [inaudible 00:06:14] out there, there's a lot of fake experts out
there, there's a lot of people who talk the talk, but do they really walk the walk?
And so walking the walk and taking the action and being a tactician and being tactical and
sharing that information with you allows you to see, "Oh, she actually does the things
that she's talking about and she actually practices what she preaches.
So yeah, she's the person I trust and she's the person I want to work with."
Now my rule for how much I give away for free, it's pretty simple, and this is my thought
process on it and maybe you have a different one, but I give the what and the why in my
free content to educate and explain the steps that need to be taken to get the end result
for my clients, or for potential clients because you are consuming this for free, and then
in my paid products, you actually get my how.
So every single micro detail step that I couldn't include in a 20-minute, 30-minute, even hour-long
YouTube video, you're getting my methodology inside of my programs, which is different
than anything I could share publicly because it's so detailed and it's signature to my
brain.
It's my intellectual property.
So when I do YouTube videos, or I do podcasts, or I do any sort of content that's free, I
can't really get into this entire system and this entire methodology.
Instead, I can share micro tactics with you.
And that's going to give you wins and it's going to help you make progress, but you're
not going to see the full benefit until you're able to actually enroll in my programs.
So that's just, I think, logical of how this all works is I give the what and the why,
I'd share the micro tactics and micro concepts in my free content.
In my paid content, it's my entire system methodology and it's access to me.
So I'm not able to speak to all of you one to one, but when you're a paying client and
customer, you actually get access to me on a daily basis through our private Facebook
groups for our paying clients, as well as our weekly calls for our authority accelerator
clients where I actually talk to you one-to-one and help you build your business, so it's
that level of intimacy as well.
Now, I think the thing that you really need to understand here is that no matter where
you are in your business, generosity always wins.
The more that you give, the more that you share, the more generous you can be, the more
people want to work with you and the more people have a positive sentiment about who
you are and what you do.
Think about it this way, if you came to one of my videos and you wanted to know how to
get more views on YouTube, and I was like, "Okay, you need to get keywords and then you
need to have the description set up right," I'm just making things up right now, but I
give you a couple steps and then I'm like, "But for the full thing, you need to get my
program."
That's not really a great look.
And it makes you look selfish.
It makes you look greedy, in my opinion.
And that's why I believe in giving away the farm.
So even though I can't give away the whole methodology, when I do talk about something
specific in my videos, or I say, you're going to learn X in my YouTube video, you're going
to learn that thing.
And I'm going to tell you exactly how to do it because if I'm selfish with my knowledge,
then that's going to make people walk away with a really bad taste in their mouth and
go, "Oh, well I don't really want to work with you."
And I think the thing is too, people think if you give way too much, people aren't going
to want to work with you because why would they when they can just get the content for
free?
But it actually works in the opposite way.
When you help people so much that it creates a real win for them, they feel that law of
reciprocity and they actually want to work with you.
So that's how I think about the concept of giving away my content for free.
Comment below with your biggest takeaway because I'm actually really curious to know what your
big takeaway was from this.
And I hope this was helpful for you in answering this question and I'd be happy to answer your
comments in the comment section below as well.
But if you really want to dive into this whole process of how I create my free content and
that leads into my business, make sure you check out our boss YouTube strategy right
here.
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