Gonna be honest here. The idea of One Dude Listening came to me last year. I was kind of inspired by other listening services out there.
I thought I could stand out easily with my writing and personality.
I had the facetious idea that this would be easy money too.
But as I was building the blog, particularly the sales page (ugh, sales, am I right?) for the call, it just didn't feel right to me.
I wanted to charge like $17 bucks for a 50-minute call.
This alone disgusted me so much that it destroyed my momentum in continuing to build the blog.
I just froze. Literally.
It reminded me of the times during my first venture; my first blog when I also toyed with the idea of being an (ughhhhhhhhh) "life coach" a.k.a. an annoying douchebag with made-up qualifications who thinks he gets to charge an exorbitant amount of money for feeding people inspirational quotes.
That was also the time I paid a lot of money for "coaching" and "mentoring."
They produced little to no results.
The onus was on me of course. It was all a big lesson.
Allow me to speak my mind about how I feel about charging for one's time without any tangible deliverables:
- I find it unfair some get to charge for their time, while others don't. Are we not all humans hence equal?
- If you charge say, $20 an hour for your time and you're working 8 active hours a day, you'll be getting $160 a day. And if you work 20 days a month, you're getting $3200 just to talk shit over Zoom or whatever. Many charge higher. There're people starving out there in poor countries. They can talk too.
- You should only pay a crazily expensive price for someone's time if you're a CEO yourself. You hence pay another CEO to guide you. Makes sense?
- Any mismatch in qualifications, character and abilities allows the seller to take advantage of the buyer.
- The idea of One Dude Listening is that I am absolutely not a qualified therapist or counsellor. I believe that to some extent, without any qualifications, I bridge the gap in helping those who want to get help. Yet, I also believe hence, I don't have the "right" to charge anything.
- I will only charge someone if they truly, really, superbly, positively want to shove money into my hands just to talk to them, especially if it's a fuck ton of money.
The last point may seem like a plot twist, but what can I say except that I have had my money lessons in life, lessons which dictate grabbing opportunities when it is right.
And hopefully then, it'd feel like everyone is benefiting.
My short-term goal is to sell apparels and merchandise. Will share more soon.
Peace.