Need Extra Income? Before People Pick Your Brain, Monetize Your Expertise

I turned meetings requesting to pick my brain into my full-time, six-figure business. You can do the same.

---

---

I hated it when I got requests to pick my brain. They felt like one-way exchanges, and when I did say yes, the requester would be grateful but rarely took action steps with the insights I offered.

In 2018, when I started sharing my money and career tips on Instagram, my inbox started flooding with even more requests to pick my brain. I told my husband, “It would be great if I could just record my responses and send the recording to people.”

He replied, “That’s what they call a podcast.” And so I started a one-season podcast, hoping it would whittle down the demand for free consulting.

Instead, the demand grew even more. I started feeling overwhelmed and guilty for wanting to turn down meetings from people who really wanted my help. I just didn’t have the bandwidth, and it was competing with my day job.

Rather than turn them down, I mustered up the courage to ask people to pay me. Many did not, but some did. My company, Crush Your Money Goals, eventually grew to a six-figure business with the same services I originally offered for free. Here are seven P’s to help you start monetizing your expertise.

1. Pick A Payment Method Before You Let Them Pick Your Brain

Commit to a specific pay method before asking people to pay you. It does not have to be a full invoicing system, and you don’t need to start a company as you can report this income as a sole proprietor when you first get started.

Peer payment apps like Zelle, Venmo or CashApp can work just fine, or you can level it up to a platform like Square or PayPal that only charges a percentage of each invoice, rather than a monthly fee. If you choose a platform that charges a processing fee, don’t forget to include that in your consideration for pricing.

Even easier for your future clients, you can sign up with a scheduling tool like Acuity or Calendly that allows them to pay your fee and schedule a time with you all at once.

2. Price The Problem, Not Your Time

This is the step where most people get stuck because there is a propensity to base the pricing off of what you would pay for the service. Pricing your time is the wrong approach. As the expert, you are unlikely to pay for this, since it’s something you don’t need help with.

Instead try pricing the monetary value of the problem you are solving by considering:

• What could people gain if they were to take your advice?
• What do they stand to lose if they don’t take your advice?
• How much time, money or energy are you helping them save?

I rationalized that most people looking to improve their resumes sought to increase their pay by at least 10%. If a client made at least $40,000 in salary, then a new resume would be worth at least $4,000.

I decided I wanted people to get 10 times the value of my service and set $400 as a target price. That may feel like a lot to charge for one meeting, but when you assess what someone would gain from the meeting, it feels fairer.

3. Publicize Your Expertise On LinkedIn

The first meetings I charged to pick my brain were for requests to help people with their resumes. As a recruiter, I didn’t realize this skill set was difficult for others because I read dozens of resumes a day.

I started posting weekly tips about writing resumes and interviewing on LinkedIn to socialize the idea with my network that I was willing to share knowledge on this topic.

Then once a month, I also included a call to action in my posts to encourage people to reach out to me via e-mail or direct message if they personally wanted help with their resumes.

I also responded to any incoming requests to pick my brain with my new scheduling link. A LinkedIn profile circumvents the need to build a website and allows you to share with your existing professional network.

4. Pilot The First Five Meetings At A Lower Price Point

If imposter syndrome is preventing you from moving forward at your target price point, it’s okay to start somewhere rather than not at all.

I didn’t quite have the courage to charge $400 for a meeting right from the beginning, and I confess I started too low at $29. But I gave myself permission to charge lower in exchange for piloting my process and testing out whether people did gain value from meeting with me. After my first five sessions, I bumped the fee up to $49 and then to $89 after another five.

Eventually, one of my clients told me he honestly felt I was severely undercharging and I doubled the price to $200. It helped me build the confidence in my ability to serve others with my knowledge and to identify trends across what people most needed help with.

5. Prepare A Pre-Meeting Questionnaire

Once I had several pilot meetings under my belt, I started to notice that the first 15 minutes of every meeting was simply to gather information before I could provide any value.

I took those five to 10 questions, added them to my meeting confirmations as a questionnaire and asked people to complete them before our meetings to help save time. This helped us jump-start the sessions into troubleshooting their problems, leaving more time for answering more detailed, complex questions.

6. Provide A Summary

Along with the pre-meeting questionnaire, providing a post-meeting summary allowed me to bump up my pricing to the $400 target fee over time.

After every meeting, I would spend less than 10 minutes to summarize the highlights of our discussion and up to five key takeaways or action items that the client seemed most excited about or offered the highest value if they followed through.

Simply documenting the meeting with a quick email reinforced the value of not just the time spent, but of the exchange of information during the meeting. It also was a great way to encourage someone to send an update on the actions they took, providing accountability and potential for another paid meeting.

7. Protect Your Time

The hardest part of this process is limiting your availability and getting comfortable with saying no to people who want to pick your brain for free. It felt really awkward at first to decline those who asked and weren’t expecting to pay.

You may not want to turn these meetings into a full-time business, and that’s okay. This is not only about extra income. You’re reinforcing with your personal and professional network that both your time and knowledge hold tremendous value.

And particularly for my fellow female professionals: We often have a hard time asking for our worth, so this is a great way to reinforce in ourselves that we are not obligated to help everyone for free, just because they asked.

By Bernadette Joy, Contributor