Comments on: Scale or Say No

By: Lucretia Pruitt

Lucretia Pruitt — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:03:30 +0000

Hm. Thanks for the reply Geoff. I’ll think about what you said.
Personally, I will never take my phone number off of my site.
Every single call it has ever resulted in is one that I really appreciated having. Even tho some of them were calls that started with “I’m calling you because I can’t find any way to get ahold of person X who is a friend of yours, and s/he needs to be aware of this think that is about to seriously impact his/her life negatively…”

I agree that spewing isn’t okay. It’s one of those “if you don’t want people to call or email you? Then don’t put it out there” situations.

I just don’t necessarily think the paid/unpaid thing is the same issue. But I may be wrong.

Either way – this is such a thought provoking post. Thanks for taking the time to put it out there.

By: Return of the Jots! (…and other PR Blog Jots) « Media Bullseye – A New Media and Communications Magazine

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:09:05 +0000

[...] Wah, Wah, Wah – Geoff Livingston – There isn’t much more annoying than publicly complaining about the pitfalls of success. Case in point, social media “stars” who complain about all the requests they get for their time. I don’t think anyone should work for free, and I can imagine that getting flooded with emails and not having time to even respond to them all, much less fulfill everyone’s requests would be a somewhat annoying side effect of success. I still can’t muster up much sympathy, and agree wholeheartedly with Geoff: get over it, and figure out how to say no. Because complaining about it on Twitter kind of makes you look like a jerk. Or to quote that 20th century philosopher Chandler Bing, “Oh no! My wallets too small for all my twenties, and my diamond shoes are too tight!” Or, as Geoff puts it: “Allowing oneself to feel victimized by success is not really an accurate way to look at things. There are no victims in this, only volunteers. We have blogged, checked-in, and tweeted ourselves into this position, one we wanted from the outset. Really, these are opportunities, great choices on how to spend our time. Building intelligent systems to scale our work, or to better select the opportunities we really want and say no to the rest is the great entrepreneurial challenge here.” [...]

By: Geoff Livingston

Geoff Livingston — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:51:03 +0000

So true, Danny and Casey. These requests are a result of our own actions.

Which brings me to Lucretia. When someone calls you or reaches out to you privately, then you have an absolute right to request for payment. It does not give you license to publicly spray your rates all over the social networks, dropping your rocks on the table in a mannerless brash way, crying foul because you have too many contacts.

The issue with complaining about the dilemma of any blogger, famous or not, is that you put yourself out there. That was a choice. If that brings requests and inquiries, like it has me and you and thousands of others — that’s a part of the game.

If it’s that much of a burden, perhaps you should consider ending your social media presence. Or possibly removing email and contact methods from your blog. While everyone knocks Seth Godin, his commentless non present approach seems to resolve a lot of this. Otherwise, grin and bear it.

By: Scott M. Stolz

Scott M. Stolz — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 01:13:51 +0000

You are right that this is something that is learned and not necessarily taught in books. And it requires learning to say no, and possibly turning your business into a real business, instead of running it as a self-employed person. And it takes a change of mindset for both of those.

By: Lucretia Pruitt

Lucretia Pruitt — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:46:15 +0000

Oh wait a minute. I think I’m confused here. When you were talking about “demands on time” the other day – I didn’t realize you were responding to “requests for payment for ‘picking your brain’ requests” inclusive of that.

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding that – but given your first paragraph, I don’t think so. (Please let me know?)

If that is the case? Then I have to say that these are two different issues.

Let me say quite frankly that I can bring to this discussion literally hundreds of bloggers (especially mom bloggers) who can tell you that the phrase “pick your brain” presages every request or call that really means “get you to work for me for free”. Not necessarily from friends, or even people who have established a legitimate relationship with the person in question – but from those who have at best a tenuous connection via a social platform like Twitter and DM to say “do you mind if I give you a call and pick your brain?”

What kind of calls are those? “Who would you recommend for this kind of project?” and “Would you mind introducing me to your friends X, Y, and Z and see if they want to be part of my new campaign?” and “I know that you’ve done X – can you tell me how so I can do it?”
The people behind those calls will very much be presenting the knowledge gleaned from these calls as their own when it comes to their paid jobs or to making their own profit from it.

These bloggers? Not “social media stars”, In fact… far from it. Most of them are so far down the alphabet that D-list looks like it’s in the stratosphere. That’s why the people who call them get away with saying things like “can I pick your brain” and they don’t feel comfortable saying “no, that’s you asking me to work for free…” because they are afraid that saying No or requesting pay for that will get them blackballed from future opportunities.

Long before I was a blogger, or the phrase ‘social media’ had been coined even, I responded to my genuine community with “anything I can do to help? Just let me know” and meant it (and still do) and replied to those trying to get me to make them look smart, informed, or connected by pretending to be friendly when they *really* were just trying to use me with “of course, I charge x-rate/hour for that sort of thing.”

I agree 100% with you on the fact that more people need to learn to say no effectively – but I don’t agree that requesting to be paid for information or expertise is the same thing as whining about being in demand.