I do a lot of free stuff. I mean seriously, between SCORE, where I am not only a Volunteer Counselor, but also a workshop presenter, webmaster, email manager & committee chair; plus all of the free meetings I have with friends over their business issues. Add to that the time I spend on my own websites and marketing materials, networking events, going to introductory meetings with potential clients and preparing proposals; man, I am lucky to get any paying work done.
So I figured out that about 90% of my 60 hour working week is unpaid, leaving only about 10% revenue generating. Don’t get me wrong, I am doing fine, but with only 10% of my effort generating cash, I decided to come up with some other ideas to “monetize” (the new word for “make more money”) .
Even though about 40% of my time is SCORE related, I cannot monetize any of that. SCORE (a quasi-governmental dictatorship) has a strict policy that you cannot make a dime on anything even remotely related to SCORE. Once a year they round up all of the counselors who may have accidentally conceded a lunch check while wearing their SCORE name tag and fly them all out to the USS Nimitz in the middle of the ocean and push them off the stern. Again, don’t get me wrong, I am thoroughly enjoying my experience with SCORE and the time I spend is by my choice.
Next up clients… hmm. Do you think they would mind if I left a bill with the receptionist on way out of my introductory meeting? Attorney’s do it. Can’t very well monetize writing proposals to them… attaching an invoice doesn’t seem like it would get very far there either.
My friends? Oh, one of these days I too will come up with a way to take advantage of each of them.
So that only leaves marketing and networking. But I do smell an opportunity here… so in the future when someone I don’t know calls me, they will be routed to a message where they can leave their credit card info prior to my callback. While I’m at it, you will also have to enter your credit card before accessing my website. I am also going to order a portable credit card machine; before I will speak to you at a networking event, you will have to swipe. I should also probably charge you at least $3.50 for my business card. Just think, if this were to catch on it would be easy to tell who the really important people in the room are… they’re the ones who charge $10 for a business card.
I like it! I think I can double my monitizification or monitizeration or monitizibility, you know… mo-monity.
Yeah… I will definitely sleep on this idea….
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
Youtube
RSS
Sounds like a good plan to me… I’d like to get $7.50/card.
I’ll buy one…
Steve,
I fail to see the humor in this, innapropriate.
Bill Murray, District Director
Southwest Florida SCORE
Dark humor & 1st Ammendment aside, a resignation from SCORE will yield you another 21.6 hours of free time per week (Math is 60 hours x 90% x 40%). The extra time may or may not generate more income but you would be making a choice not to work under a code of ethics that was refined based on experience, fairness & wisdom. You must have anticipated that the use of “dictatorship” would piss a lot of people. I’m one of them!
I’m a SCORE volunteer because I found in SCORE a solution, when SCORE becomes a problem, rest assured that I will walk away. After 11 years, SCORE still offers me a solution.
I would rather see you balancing your volunteer and business hours and decide to seriously join us in finding better ways to work on our core mission: help the Tampa Bay area business community by offering effective counseling & strong, inspirational business educational workshops. Everything else is not that important.
Regards,
Juan J. Fret
ADD, SCORE SW Florida District
I am replying to you from the desk here at the SCORE office where I am on office duty today. I agree with you that SCORE is a solution, probably the best kept secret for small business. What I was trying to say in my post was not that the service we volunteers provide is anything less than awesome, but rather that the “higher ups” need to “lighten up” a little.