Many years ago, I used to facilitate round table discussions at Low Carbon Best Practice Exchange (LCBPE) events around the country. While I got free entry to the events, I wasn’t paid – not even expenses – to deliver value to event attendees. The ephemeral ‘exposure’ was  what I received in lieu of payments and while I did make many contacts, I can’t think of one that led to a paid piece of work. It did act as a valuable Petri dish for my Mastermind Group/woprkshop formats and skills, and I did enjoy the events, but from a business point of view, I made a loss on it.

Last year, a conference organiser sent me an invite to chair a session, along with lengthy list of tasks: a keynote speech, introducing other speakers, chairing two discussion panels, summation speech at the end. A full day’s intense work, using all my skills, plus at least another in preparation. I asked how much they were offering for this piece of work, critical to the successful delivery of the event, and I got no reply. Note that the attendance fees were in the high £100s for corporates, over £1200 for consultants. A small stipend for helping the event succeed was surely not unreasonable?

Now I get e-mails about ‘opportunities’ for  ‘workshop packages’ at events. In other words they want me to pay them to deliver value to their paying attendees. For a start, how do they maintain quality on these things and stop them becoming an hour long sales pitch? Certainly some of the LCBPE roundtables fell victim to this with ‘facilitators’ simply giving presentations on their product or service using printed out Powerpoint slides in a flip book. But, fundamentally, why should I pay to give others value which they are already paying for?

Another e-mail arrived today asking me to contribute a book chapter. It proclaimed that “the Chapter Processing Charge for this book is fully waived” What the actual..? Are potential contributors meant to be grateful they’re not having to pay for the pleasure? This is nuts.

Business works on a fundamental principle. You deliver value to someone and you get recompensed appropriately. Exposure rarely delivers income, so I pick and choose what I do for free, but I’m certainly not paying to work. If that sounds mercenary, how do you put food on the family dinner table each night?  As consulting guru Alan Weiss puts it, if I want exposure, I’ll sleep in the garden…