Yeah, I’ve read Keith Farrazzi saying similar things and I’ve seen it in practice myself. There’s a degree to which this wisdom is common sense. Still, there’s a fine line between proving your worth and being exploited. Trading the value of your work in exchange for the value of access to someone’s network can be a pretty powerful thing, but it’s also very easy for that kind of deal to end up lopsided.

I enjoyed the post you referenced. Socrates tells us that virtue does not come from money, but rather from virtue comes money and all other things good to man. That’s an absolutely essential truth for anyone to understand. Focus on being your very best, on making something that is the very best, on creating an experience that is the very best, and you’ll have the fulfillment of achieving excellence, which is its own reward, plus ample coin to pay the bills.

But the bills do have to be paid.

Most of the stuff from craigslist similar to the examples I showed above will never get anyone anything more than frustration. My point is that given the choice of working for myself or working for someone else for free, I’d much rather give the time to me. My imagination is infinitely more interesting to me and will likely help create a much stronger body of work that will augment my ability to get paid in the future.

I’m going to sweep all of this to the side for a moment, though, and say there are circumstances, every once in awhile, where you should take on an absolutely impossible project, even if it isn’t paid, simply for the thrill of watching yourself grow to meet its challenges. You can use the growth later. Still, only a truly worthy project is worth that much of your soul.

Great post. I agree with you in many ways — businesses should pay for value — but the question is *when.* I want to give you a counter-example: I occasionally get people offering to help me out with my personal blog for free. Some of them are very good and I take them up on it. And I’ve hired *every single person* who has helped me for free — in many cases, for thousands of dollars.

And when I “hinted” to you about becoming paid, that wasn’t really a hint — I took my book researcher, who initially started helping me out for free, and sent him multiple outside contracts (plus an hourly rate for his work with me).

Again, I agree: Companies *should* pay for value. But I guess my experience affects my way of doing things, because one of the ways I made such great connections was by offering to work for free and prove my value before a company paid me. Once you’re indispensable, the money will come.

I do apologize for coming off as an asshole, but I stick to my guns. More people should be doing work for free to open up doors to the big rewards. By removing the money barrier for a set amount of time (“I’ll work for free for 3 months, but after that we need to negotiate a fair rate”), you open yourself up to huge rewards. The $20/hour or $50/hour you could get now is chump change compared to what you could with a great network and a proven track record.