Want to see a magic trick? I turn kindness into money.
Last week, two business owners came to me out of desperation. Their other “web guy” burned them. Badly. Their websites stopped taking orders, and they needed it fixed right away. They had no other option but to ask for help, and they were referred to me.
It was the furthest thing from convenient for me to take on someone else’s unexpected fire in the middle of the day. But I (almost) always do if I can tell it’s genuinely a bad situation. I helped them out and invoiced them only $100’ish. And because I had to get back to my pre-interruption tasks, I didn’t even charge them extra for the urgency.
I had to get back to making sure my existing clients were taken care of. The next day, both of those people I helped out called and said something along the lines of, “I appreciate your willingness to help so quickly. Can I talk to you about this other thing…” Both are now full-project clients, one of them even now paying a monthly recurring retainer.
I can’t tell you how many of my clients evolved from a simple willingness to help, but it’s a lot. Even running a marketing company, word of mouth is by far my biggest source of leads. And half of those referrals are people that I’ve never charged $0.01 because I ended up not being able to help them. But I did know someone who could and pointed them in the right direction.
Kindness is the best form of marketing. People remember others that treat them as a fellow human.
