How I Made $10 Million Dollars by Working for Free

>>> CLICK HERE to Book Your FREE Strategy Call with my Team!! <<<

----

In this episode, Dan is going to take a deep dive into what it really means to “work for free”, how to change your mindset around it, and how to leverage it to get exactly what you want out of your company or career.

You hear people say all the time, “If you are good at something, never do it for free.” But the keyword here is GOOD. If you haven’t yet built up your skills to a place that are worth charging for, then how are you going to charge people for your services?

The world has this common misconception that you should never work for free, but let’s break down what the real outcome of working for free leads to if you do it right…

Dan learned when he was first starting out that he didn’t yet have a skillset to charge for, so he took on some work at no charge. He made a deal with the employer that at the end of the job if he had at least done a good job, he’d give Dan a testimonial in return.

At the end of the day, Dan wasn’t working for free, because he had gained something of value in return. It was then what he did with those results (how he leveraged them) that provided him a return payback.

In this episode, Dan is going to cover:

• Why “working for free” isn’t actually free, if you do it the right way
• What “results stacking” is and how to master it
• How to leverage your “free work” to work for you
• How to get out of your own way and understand your worth based on the market, not what you think you should be worth

“It is not bad to work for free; it’s what you do with it. It’s how you leverage it.” -Dan Henry

If you got value from what you heard here, please be sure to subscribe and rate this podcast! Bonus points for you if you write a review! ;)

— MORE RESOURCES FROM DAN —

Subscribe to Dan’s YouTube Channel
Follow Dan on Facebook
Follow Dan on Instagram
Follow Dan on Twitter

Want Dan’s WSJ bestselling book FREE?
Click here to get Digital Millionaire Secrets, FREE!

Interested in having Dan’s team personally work with you to grow your business?
Book a FREE Strategy Session here!

Want to learn the 5 Keys to Scaling ANY Digital Product, Online Course, Coaching Offer, or Mastermind?
Click here to watch the webinar now!

Click here to Visit our Corporate Website: GetClients.com

— TRANSCRIPT —

Hey everybody in today's episode, I'm going to be talking about how working for free helped me build an eight-figure online business. And should you work for free?

Alright, so this is a touchy subject in the entrepreneurial and freelancing world. I see memes and Instagram posts and all kinds of stuff all day long, just completely slamming the idea of working for free. I see tons of people just saying how, you know, it's offensive to think you should work for free and you know, never worked for free and all that. And I just got to say, I think that's crap. Think it's total crap. If you've ever seen the Christopher Nolan Batman movies in one of them, the joker said, if you're good at something, never do it for free. This is the quote by Jonathan Nolan, which is Christopher Nolan's. I believe his brother. I think he like wrote the script or some of the script or something. And I thought this was a fantastic quote. If you're good at something, never do it for free. And I fully agree with that.

I fully agree with that. And you're probably thinking right now. Well, Dan, you just said working for free is, okay. Now you're saying if you're good at something, you should never do it for free. Yeah. That's exactly what I'm saying. Think about it. What is the quote? If you are good at something, never do it for free. Well, how the hell do you get good at something? If you never do it? Like, I mean, just think about this for a second. If you never get a chance to do something, how do you get good at it? And how many people are going to pay you if you've never done it? Right. I remember when I first got started in this industry, I was doing Facebook ads for local businesses. And I had to do some campaigns for free in the beginning because people just weren't willing to give me money.

And so I remember one of my first campaigns, I did some free work for this business and I got them actually really good results, got some low leads or low-cost leads. And they made some sales. They actually made a profit. But for some reason, the business owner was just not about it. You know, he, he just, I don't know what his deal was. Maybe he was old school or whatever, but even though I got him an ROI, he just didn't want to paint. He didn't want to continue, but here's the, here's the thing I told him at the beginning. I said, listen, I will, I will do a week worth of ads and advertising for you for free. Here's all that I asked if I make you sales. If I make you a profit, I made sure he agreed to this. You will give me a testimonial, a video testimonial in your place of business showing what you do.

And he said, okay, now when it came time and I said, Hey, you know, Oh, and I'm sorry. And then I said, and if you're happy with the results, you know, we can continue and you can pay me well when it came time for that, he gave me all these excuses about, you know, his wife saying this and that. And I don't know, I didn't really want to do it, but here's the thing he gave me that damn testimonial. Okay. And I made sure to tell him like, Hey, all right, that's fine. But give me a testimonial. And when he gave me that testimonial, the next person I talked to, I showed them that testimonial. And guess what? I got, I got a paying client. So if you really think about it, you know, I'm not sure I worked for free. I worked to gain something of value, a testimonial showing off my results, whether or not that person signed up is irrelevant because I, something of value.

And to me, working for free is when you gain nothing of value in return. If you're not supposed to work for free, then why do we have internships? Why is it socially acceptable to work your butt off, you know, jobs like 40 hours a week when you get out of college after you've paid, you know, 60, 70,000 in college, you know, with interest to call it, Oh, and it's totally socially acceptable to go work for free for like a year. But when you're starting an online business or for freelancing or whatever, or you're coaching, you're telling me now it's not socially acceptable to do some work for free too, to showcase your results so that you can take that showcase and use it to get paying clients. I mean, what is wrong with people's brains? Like seriously, like if somebody went into the online marketing world, just like set off this like brain scrambler grenade and everybody's brains just stopped making logical sense.

All right. I remember the first couple of coaching calls I did were totally free. I did a call for this guy that was a doctor and he was an author and a doctor. And I remember I got on the phone with him for two hours, 100% free. The dude never paid me, but you know what? He gave me, he gave me a testimony that said, I learned more from Dan about marketing in two hours than I did in eight years of college and a doctorate degree and an MBA or something like that. And I guess he had taken marketing in college, along with his doctorate because, you know, he owns his own clinic and this, that, and the other thing. So after I got that testimonial from him the very next week, I landed two high ticket coaching clients just because they really liked the sound Oh, that testimony.

And it put them over the edge on the sales call and I did multiple coaching. And then I created an online course because I wanted more time for myself and my family. And because I had coaching clients that I got from doing free coaching, those results sold my court. And then I got people into my course and I got more results for that. And I scaled that course to eight figures, literally made a million bucks in the first month, the one that, that two comma club award. And then last February, we did a million dollars in one month in revenue. Like the scale just kept going up. But yeah, it dips down here and there mainly because sometimes you just have internal stuff going on. Like, you know, the thing that, that, that affected my scale, the most, other than anything, what wasn't Facebook ads or marketing, it was getting a divorce

Worse than that, that limited my focus. And so revenue went down for a bit, but you know, all of this came from working for free. If you want to call it working for free. And now people pay me $30,000 for coaching. They joined my elite mastermind. They paid $30,000. Last week, we got two people in the, literally got on the call with me, told me what their business was. I said, yep. I can help you is $30,000 for the year. Boom wire. The money they're in, they were at the meeting. Two weeks later, absolutely loved it. Went home, already got results. And then two other people that signed up the month prior already made their money back in the first 30 days. Imagine that imagine paying $30,000 for someone to coach you. And then you, as a result of that, you make your money back in 30 days and you have a whole 11 months to enjoy that coaching and make even more money.

To me, that's freaking awesome because I just love it's one thing to make money and grow your businesses. And another, when people just absolutely love your product and your product freaking works. And whether you want to look at it in terms of making money, growing a business dramatically, helping others, all of the above, guess where all of that came from working for free. Okay. But I don't really view it as working for free because I gained something of value and I call it result stacking, right? The more you stack results, the more you can charge, the more you can scale. You know, I'm not, I'm not trying to toot my own horn here because I get paid $30,000 for my coaching program. What I'm trying to tell you is if right now you're charging $200 for a call and you can't make any sales. Imagine me, who is somebody who was in the same position, it was difficult to get them, to convince somebody, to do a four call package for 200 bucks. Four calls for four hours for 200 bucks, 50 bucks an hour. Right now, when I do one, one call is $1,800. I do them sometimes when I just randomly feel like it. But now I sell a package for $30,000 to go from struggling to sell $200 calls to a sense of easily, easily selling $30,000 coaching packages and why it's because I'm, at this point, I got the results to show that I'm in the industry, but why? Because I started by focusing on the result and not on making money. You see, to me, when somebody says, well, we work for free. That means you're all about money. If you're, if you want to be good at something, then you need to do it. And if nobody's willing to pay you to do it, then get your butt out there and do it for free until you are good enough for someone to pay you and then you get better. And then somebody's going to pay you more and then you get better.

And then someone's going to pay you more. And then you get better in some who's going to pay you more. But if you sit there soaked in pride, this disgusting, just abhorrence mindset of everybody. You know, I deserve this. I deserve that. And, and you just have this expectation that everybody owes you something when you've done nothing to prove yourself, that's disgusting. That's entitlement and entitlement gets you nowhere. Okay. If I had to start from scratch right now, with everything I know with everything I've done. If, if somebody went out there and freaking, you know, did the little men in black thing to the entire internet marketing world and in a flash, nobody knows who I was. Nobody, everything was poof gone. You know what? The first thing I would do is I'd go find somebody at work for free. I document it. I get a massive result.

And then I would scale the living crap out of that. Still, I would do that. Guys, just stop the entitlement, just stop it. Like you're worth what you are worth. Think about that. If somebody is not willing to pay you any money for what you do, then you are worth zero currently, but maybe next week you'll be worth 200 bucks. And next month you're worth a thousand bucks. And three months later, you're worth 2000 bucks. And six months later, you're worth 5,000 and a year later, you were 10,003 years later, you're worth 30,000. But if you don't do anything to increase that worth, whether you start at free or a dollar or whatever, then you're not, you're never going to be worth more. You know, instead of sitting there saying, I know what I'm worth, I'm worth what, and you're not, you don't know what you're worth because you're worth exactly what people are willing to pay.

You. That's called the market just because it's you you're talking about now because everybody wants to make everybody feel good with butterflies and rainbows. Instead of telling them how it is, everybody has this idea that they know what they're worth. No, you don't. You're worth what the market tells you you're worth. Guess what? If something comes out tomorrow that kills marketing and entrepreneurship. If, if the world just decides everything is free, guess what? I'm worth squat, I'm worth nothing. And that's called the market, right? That's just called the way it is. So you are worth what people are willing to pay. And if you have results to show, then people are willing to pay for that results. But if you're just sitting there talking about how much you're worth and how you don't want it for free, and you're just sitting there freaking in your little bubble of entitlement, you're worth Jack.

That's what you're worth Jack. So guys, please think about it for a second. All the time you spend complaining about how much you're worth and how much people should pay you. You could be out there getting it. You could be out there getting better at what you do and forcing your worth to climb. Cause that's what I did. You don't get, you don't have to take that path. You could just say Dan, whatever, I'm the way I am. And you know what? That's totally fine. I'm the way I am too. But I'm just telling you my personal story on how I took that concept of working for free and turned it into what I have now, which is an eight-figure online business, a beautiful life, good doctors for my son, any materialistic thing. I want literally anything, you know, if I want a Tesla went out and bought a Tesla, Rolex, this and that.

Not that those things are super important to me. They're nice, but what's more important to me is memories. You know, like wanting to go on a two-week cruise, I'll go, wouldn't even think about it. You know, my son wants to, I mean, he's a little young right now, but my son wants to go to Harvard and it's super expensive and that's what he wants done. And that, that, that right there is worth a lot. My mother, my father, they get sick. Can't afford the operation. Guess what? I stroke a check. And by the time they pass out from anesthesia, I probably have made it back. And that right there is something that most people would do. Horrible things to get that level of personal financial power. There are people at Hollywood that have slept their way to the top. Maybe even killed their way to the top.

Well, that's probably more politics, but all I did was work for free, but yet the industry thinks that's so bad. Like just put things in perspective as anyway, I hope this helps you help. This makes you understand that it is not bad to work for free. It is what you do with it. It is what is how you leverage it. Okay? If all you're doing is sitting there working for free and expecting good things to happen. Well, that's not gonna work either, but if you work for free, you take that result and you market the crap out of that result. Now you got something. All right, love you guys. See you later.