No More Free For Free & Q1 Updates - Ep 207

In this episode, I share what changes when we stop doing free work that doesn’t lead anywhere and start building offers that respect our time and our audience’s goals. I break down how “No More Free For Free” reshapes speaking, webinars, memberships, and the way to plan paid events.

Other topics include:

• why we should stop apologizing for gaps and just jump back in
• the “No More Free For Free” rule and what it means in practice
• how we ask “Do you have a speaker budget?” early and confidently
• why you consider stop doing free webinars, office hours, and masterclasses
• my shift toward serving solopreneurs, small business owners, and teams with real budgets
• how Marketing With Meller delivers ongoing value through monthly live, virtual sessions
• how my signature program, The Recipe For Social Selling on LinkedIn, rotates coaching topics so members never feel behind
• my goal of 24 paid speaking engagements and the lessons I learned from saying yes to a “free” gig
• becoming an international speaker after UpLift Live 2026 in the UK
• the Small Business Marketing Summit and the speaker lineup built for practical action https://www.mellermarketing.com/sbms2026

Shout Outs include:

• Carol Dorsey (VA Services) https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroledorsey/
• Joshua Meller https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshmeller/
• Giulia Santos dos Reis https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliasantosdosreis/
  
  

UpLift Live Planning Team:

• John Espirian https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnespirian/
• Jeremy Freeman https://www.linkedin.com/in/businessbrainbox/
• Gus Bhandal https://www.linkedin.com/in/mguruuk/

Small Business Marketing Summit speakers & topics:

• Pam Lippitt: From Hello to Success: Creating the Network that worked for you
• Tom Wells: The numbers behind your best marketing decisions
• Elaine Belson: Why people overthink marketing and how to stop
• Umut Aslan: Building an ideal customer profile to move "from confusion to clarity
• Linda Brubaker: Ditch Your What and Sell Your Why
• Judi Hays: Building a LinkedIn presence that attracts high fee clients
• Annette Richmond: Less stress, more fun, better video
• Nancie Steinberg: Getting media coverage without a PR agency
• Lori Jo Vest: Why certain AI-generated videos and copy fail to sell
• Christopher G. Johnson: The 10 m

The Marketing with Meller

Small Business Marketing SUMMIT

Thursday, April 23, 2026

12 Experts. 4 Hours. One Powerful Roadmap for Your Business.

10:00 AM – 2:00 PM ET | Virtual Event | Tickets: $67

https://www.mellermarketing.com/sbms2026

Transcript

Back On The Mic

No More Free For Free

Stop Doing Free Webinars

Building Paid Communities

Paid Speaking And UK Milestone

Small Business Marketing Summit Preview

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, welcome back, my friend. You might be wondering why I'm not publishing every week. Eh actually, I don't think you are. I think you're just as busy as I am, right? Can you believe we've just come out of the first quarter and we're already in April? I'm having a little bit of a hard time wrapping my heads around the fact that today is Monday, April 6th, as I'm recording this podcast. Now, I don't know about you, I've had a pretty busy first quarter, and I just want to give you an overview of some of the things I've been working on. Maybe this inspires you to take action in your business as well. But um I do want to just comment on the fact that, you know, I see other people doing this thing where they're like, hey, I haven't published a podcast in three weeks, and you've probably noticed, or it's been a while since I've emailed you. A lot of times people just don't notice because we have our own businesses that we're working on, right? So rather than calling attention to the things that we haven't done, my advice to my clients and members is always just jump back in, right? And just tell people what you're working on. Tell people what's coming up for you. And most important of all, make sure that the focus is in on them. So that's what I want to do in today's podcast episode. Walk through some of the things that I've been working on in the first quarter, uh, tell you about some things that are coming up for me and for my business that might be of interest to you. Because again, the focus is on you. This is not about me, right? And then I'll just talk about, you know, what might be coming up later on in 2026 as well. So, first I want to start with I have launched into this season of my business, and I'm calling it No More Free For Free. You may have heard me talking about this if you're one of my members or clients. You may have seen me talking about this on LinkedIn as well. And this should be self-explanatory, No More Free For Free. But let me take a minute just to break it down. Now, when I first launched my business in full time, it was really in the beginning of 2018. I did a lot of free speaking engagements. Often I knew that organizations didn't have a budget, and just getting on stage, getting those photos, getting visibility was really key. Over the years, I've learned to start collecting email addresses. And sometimes I'll do a thing where I'll pass a pie tin around the room and have people drop their business card in a hat in a pie tin, so to speak, and I'll draw for either a pie or a book. So that was a way of collecting email addresses, essentially, without an opt-in. It was really just I would email them one time, connect with them on LinkedIn, keep my fingers crossed. Now I'm getting into this more intentional phase of my business. I've made it over that five-year hump, and I actually heard somebody talking about the seven-year itch in relationships, but also that seven-year itch can apply to businesses as well. And it's not necessarily at year seven, it's someplace between year seven and 10. And as I'm publishing this episode, I am entering the full, I guess, eighth year of my business. Once I hit the end of the year, I'll be coming into my ninth year business. So I maybe I'm in that itchy place, I'm not sure, but I'm being more intentional about where I want my business to go in the future. And maybe this resonates with you as well. So I've moved into the season of no more free for free. And this applies both to things that I'm being asked to speak at and also my own offerings. So when I'm being asked to speak at conferences and events, I've been getting in the habit, and I want to encourage you to do the same as well. Always ask the question. You know, I would I first I say thank you so much for considering me. I'm curious, do you have a speaker budget? If it's not stated expressly that they're looking to hire me to speak, and it might be a little bit vague whether or not they have a speaker budget before I even get into a conversation with them. I asked the question. And I again I start with, thank you so much for thinking of me, because it is an honor, right? To be considered as a speaker. And then immediately asking the question, do you have a speaker budget? And usually they'll they'll say one of two things. Um, yes, we can talk about that more when we maybe get a call, or they'll say, What do you normally charge for events like this? And that's my cue to get them on a phone call because I want to make sure that when I'm proposing a budget for hiring me to speak at your event, I'm being considerate of many implications. You know, one of which is are you charging people? Uh, if you're trying to break even or make money on your event, I certainly want to be making money as well, right? I'm not gonna speak for free if you are charging people. If it's a local event here in Metro Detroit versus someplace that will require travel or a virtual event. And even if it's a virtual event and they're charging, I won't speak for free anymore. And I've had a couple instances in the in the in the first part of the year where I've I've drawn that line in the sand, no more free for free. And I've had a couple of opportunities that have come across my path. And I was asked to speak for free, and I debated on one particular opportunity saying no, but I decided to proceed anyways, and it didn't work out as I had expected. And I wish in retrospect I would have said no. So I'm learning my lessons as I go. I'm not perfect either. And, you know, I'm sharing this with you because if this is something you would like to do as well, you're going to encounter those same situations where maybe it's a friend or somebody whose community that you're a part of, and they ask you to speak for free. And I want you to consider the value of your time. Now, for me, I want to grow my business. And I don't want to scale into an agency. I have worked with VAs and interns and things like that in the past. And I might hire uh an intern back again. Carol Dorsey, by the way, is awesome, and she'll be my first go-to choice. And I work with interns as well. Um, Julio Santos, Julia Santos Des Rias was my um latest intern. She's absolutely amazing. She's in a marketing manager now. So those models have worked well for me as well. But as I want to scale my business, if I want to keep it just me, then I have to think of ways to make more money doing the things that I'm already doing as a solopreneur and being paid to speak at events is definitely a lucrative thing. So, you know, considering that I am no more free for free when it comes to people asking me to speak at events. Now, the other way I think about no more free for free is what I am offering to my community. And I am no longer offering free webinars, free office hours, free masterclasses. I used to do this all the time, and these were great for list building. But what I realized over the years is there's a lot of people you can get to come out to these free events. They're a lot of work, right? Sometimes they will convert to clients. And um, my signature course, the recipe for social selling on LinkedIn, is something where I follow the model through Digital Course Academy, Amy Porterfield, really great model. And I think, especially during the pandemic and over the past, you know, five to seven years, online courses really experienced some great interest and a lot of great enrollments. And then as the world returned in person again, and I think now with the resurgence of AI, and we can find a lot of things using our Gemini or Chat GPT and things like that, there's greater value in giving getting that live one-to-one interaction with the experts than there is the on-demand, because we can go find that on-demand stuff ourselves, right? So Amy's moved away from it as well, and I'm following suit with a lot of my other fellow experts, digital course creators, et cetera, in no longer doing free launch webinars or free masterclasses or free office hours, anything like that. And during the pandemic, I was serving um job seekers, and it was a really great thing we did. We had a VIP job seeker office hours. We did these weekly for a while, and then we moved into once a month, and then I decided to taper them off. Moving away from serving job seekers, that community is served by many people. What I found is that that wasn't a viable path for me and my business long term, because when we're serving job seekers, it's often people who are unemployed and they don't have a budget or they have very limited funds and they will often not look for making those investments because they're on a limited budget. So why try to build that business up when I could instead serve people who do have money? And who's that? People like you, the self-employed, solopreneurs, small business owners, people who are corporate employees, VP of marketing and sales who are looking to train their teams. They have money. They have money in their budget. So I've shifted over into those audiences. And my no more free for free approach here is working because I'm still doing webinars and masterclasses and office hours, but now I'm doing them inside my membership and my signature course community. So my membership program is called Marketing with Meller. I have a monthly membership or an annual membership, and it renews ongoing until you cancel. What I try to do is give my members at least three, if not more, virtual events every month. Some are educational marketing focus, others are office hours or master classes and roundtable discussions, but I'm delivering a ton of value to my marketing with Meller members. And I'm really trying to focus on giving them my insights and expertise because they're paying for it through the membership, right? Similarly to my signature program, which is called the recipe for social selling on LinkedIn. Now, what's different between the recipe and marketing with Meller, marketing with Meller is a marketing focus. We talk about LinkedIn sometimes. The recipe for social selling on LinkedIn is my signature course completely focused on LinkedIn. And I walk people through the recipe, my recipe that I've created for getting the most out of LinkedIn. And it does include online course library as a part of it, as well as small group coaching. And in my small group coaching, I pivoted it a bit. And now what I do is I start with an educational lesson. And inside the recipe, I've got four modules. They walk through profile optimization, growing your network, invitation and messaging strategy, I think is what it's called. And then we get into posting and network engagement. And then the final module is called company page strategy and LinkedIn Analytics, combining two topics there. And what I do in the group coaching calls is I pick an area of focus related to each of those four sections. They're called modules. And I teach a live instruction. I'll do a live lesson as a part of it. Now, what I found is that my recipe members they tend to join with such vigor. They're like ready to roll up their sleeves and get going. And then life happens and business happens, and then they start falling off of the group coaching calls. And often what I hear from them is they felt like they're left behind and everybody's so much further ahead. Now, the great thing about this group coaching focus, the way I've revised it, is they can come back in anytime and they're not going to feel like they're behind because I'm rotating through each of the four modules and then I rotate through them again. We're getting new lessons every time, and I've found it's a really effective approach. I still do uh allow plenty of time for QA. And what I've been doing is giving bonuses to my uh legacy members of the recipe, people who've joined in years past, as long as they give me a recommendation or a testimonial in some format, and I have four different ways for them to do so, they get access into the next year of group coaching. And in fact, if they give me a testimonial in each of those four ways, they get lifetime access to the group coaching. Now, they don't always use every session, meaning they're not always attending, but they appreciate having that access to me because you know, why not? They're VIPs, they're my members, right? So this no more free for free is really working because it's allowing me to free up my time and focus these sessions, getting access to me on my members. So I want to encourage you to think about this approach. I do want to share that I had my best first quarter ever, ever, in terms of income because of this approach, because I'm shifting into charging people for masterclasses and webinars and you know, really shifting my focus into my members and my clients. This is working. So I'm super excited about this. And stay tuned for more updates as we go throughout the year. All right, the next thing I've been working on, I've had a busy speaking season, and I have a goal to get to 24 paid speaking engagements for the year. I haven't set a goal on speaking since I think the last time I did this was 2020, at the beginning of the year before the pandemic. Um and it, you know, it it's been a it's been an interesting ride, so to speak. Now that things are back in person, I'm feeling like this is the first year where things are back in full force. There's more opportunities that are coming to me. I'm getting more responses to the outreach I'm doing. And it's just been a wonderful season. So to date, let me see. I'm like, I'm looking at my calendar off to the side. I've had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Um, actually six to date. I have my seventh paid one this Friday, and then I've got two more, actually, three more after that. So 10 to date total, and I'm working towards a goal of 24. Now, as we're recording this, we're in April. Definitely, these things will tend to get booked out three to six months, sometimes a shorter time frame because organizations are local and they're just working on a three-month cycle. So I definitely believe the 24 is achievable. It's still a bit of a reach goal for me, which is good because I want to push myself to grow my business this year. But my uh biggest speaking engagement of all time has happened, and that was speaking at Uplift Live. And I have to give a shout out to John Asparian, who invited me to speak, Gus Bendel and Jeremy Freeman, who are the trio putting on Uplift Live. What an amazing event! This was out in the UK, and I'm from the US, and it was my first time ever traveling internationally outside of Canada. Here in Michigan, Canada's like our backyard, so it's not a big deal, but traveling internationally was my very first time. Brought my son Joshua with me, so we had a really great time, and um just had some really great experiences there. We were in the in Birmingham for a few days, and then we spent a day in London, actually, about a day and a half in London, did some sightseeing out there, and then came back as well. So now, my friend, I am an international speaker. Did you know that you only had to speak one place internationally to become an international speaker? True story. And I did a really fun video that I posted on LinkedIn as well about becoming an international speaker. If you go to my LinkedIn headline, you're gonna see international speakers in the beginning part of my headline for now. I'm gonna move it to the end later, but hey, why not use that? Because it's new right now, right? So that's that's an exciting thing. And I just want to thank John and team for putting that on. I haven't posted about it yet. I'm still digesting and processing everything from it. Had my family over uh for Easter over the weekend, and um we watched the video together, and it was really exciting to show it to my aunt and my dad, and you know, my my relatives that were in the room. My sister was there as well. So it was really nice to see for them to see um and to share with them my work. So that was exciting. So that's the second thing. So the first thing, again, I had my best first quarter ever. My approach of no more free for free is working. The second thing was traveling to the UK to speak at Uplift Live, my first international stage. And the third thing I'm working on is planning a series of events for my members, recipe and marketing with Meller. And on that note, I want to give you a little heads up. I'm doing this really exciting thing coming up on uh Thursday, April 23rd, 2026. I've done these live-a-thon events in the past. Usually I'll do like one or two a year, and I've decided to shift this into my no more free for free model, and I'm charging people to attend. Now, this is a four-hour event. Um, I've decided to call it the Small Business Marketing Summit, and we are focused on delivering business and marketing expertise to those of you who are self-employed or small business owners. And I'm gonna be paying the speakers, and the speakers are all members of my marketing with Meller community. So I think I've got 12 people in the speaker lineup, um, 13 if you include me, but we'll all be speaking about different areas of marketing and business tips for you. I'm gonna give you a quick little rundown of this in case you're interested. Um, so we have Pam Lippett. She's gonna be talking about From Hello to Success, creating the network that worked for you. I saw her deliver a similar talk in Southeast Michigan at an inform event and was I I thought I knew what I knew, needed to know about networking, and I learned some new things from Pam. So really great dynamic presenter. Then we'll hear from Tom Wells. He and his wife have a bookkeeping business, and he's gonna be talking about the numbers behind your best marketing decisions. So I am looking forward to that. This is one of the things I like to do when I plan events. I book speakers that I want to hear from, and I make sure that the topics are things that I would like to hear from as well. So I'm hoping you find some great value in these topics as well. Next up will be Elaine Belson, and she's gonna be talking about marketing, why you're overthinking it, and how to stop. And I know that she's done some talk, um, talks in the past about imposter syndrome and things like that. So this will be a new topic for her, and I'm looking forward to hearing her uh discussion there. And then we have Amut Aslan, he's a member of my um recipe program, and he's he's trying out marketing with Meller right now as well. His talk will be about from confusion to clarity, building your ideal customer profile. And I know he's got a strong background in sales training and working with leaders of organizations, so I'm looking forward to learning from him. Then we'll hear from Linda Brubaker, who will share ditch your what and sell your why. I love this. It's not just the what, the thing that you're selling, but the why that she'll be focusing on. So I'm looking forward to that. Next up, we'll have Judy Hayes, and Judy will be talking about LinkedIn. Her topic is building a LinkedIn presence that attracts high-fee clients. And you might be thinking, Brenda, why are you bringing a competitor on with you? Well, I don't look at Judy as a competitor. I look at her as a co-opetition. And by booking a fellow LinkedIn coach who's um, she's also part of my marketing with Meller community, right? By booking her, I'm actually helping to expose myself and my other marketing with Meller members to her connections and to her community as well. And some people might feel like Judy's a better vibe for them. They want to work with her, and there might be people from Judy's community who learn about me and decide to join marketing with Meller or to work with me on LinkedIn. So I'm looking forward to that, and I know I'll be learning from Judy as well. Then we have Annette Richman, and Annette is um my dear friend who'll be talking about less stress, more fun, better video. And I was actually playing around with CapCut this morning and uh thinking of Annette, so she's always got great tips, so that will be a great discussion. Then we have Nancy Steinberg. Nancy will be talking about free publicity media coverage without a PR agency. Nancy's got a really great PR background, so uh we'll be looking forward to hearing from her in her insights. Then we have Lori Joe Vest, and Lori Jo will be talking about why your AI generated videos and copy aren't selling. So if you're using AI generating, you definitely want to attend this. She told me a little bit of a backstory behind this, and I said you got to talk about this at the summit. So she's gonna do that. So thank you, Lori Jo, for joining us. Christopher G. Johnson, you might know him as a Zoom strategist and a uh virtual present and in in-person present uh producer as well. He'll be talking about the 10-minute meeting fix. So I'm looking forward to hearing from him. I always learn new insights from Christopher. Then we have Lori Vita, who'll be talking about how to lodge your expertise in your audience's memory. And I have to give Lori a little bit of a shout-out. Her last name is spelled V-A-J V V A G A D A. And she is using the name pronunciation on LinkedIn. And if you listen to it, she says, this is Lori Vita, like vitamin. And I think that's just a small example of how her talk here, you know, how to lodge your expertise in your audience's memory. That's just a small way of doing it, you know, using that story of the vitamin, so to speak, to remind you of her last name. So looking forward to that talk. And then finally, our last speaker of the day will be Liz M. Lopez, and she'll be talking about dominating your business success. I think she's actually got a book by the same name, and she's really got a strong presentation style. So I'm looking forward to having her kind of cap us off on the full day. Now, if you're interested in registering, I'll put the link inside show notes, but you can go to mellormarketing.com. It's all over my website right now, so it'll pop up and take you to the registration page. But if you go to mellormarketing.com slash SBMS2026, that stands for Small Business Marketing Summit 2026. And I put 2026 at the end of it because I'm thinking we'll repeat this in 2027. So keeping your fingers crossed on there. All right, my friends, that is it for today. This is their podcast episode. I'd love to say I'm gonna get back into the habit of publishing one to two episodes a week, but I've been busy and you've been busy. So you'll hear from me when you hear from me. But I am hoping to get back into that weekly cadence again. With that, have a wonderful day, and I look forward to hearing you. Or rather, I look forward to you listening in onto that next episode. Take care.