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In this episode, Sheldon breaks down the smarter way to use “free” in your business. Instead of giving away time, expertise, and energy with no return, he explains how to turn free value into a strategic funnel that leads to real, paid impact. In this episode:
The Safety Consultant Podcast with Sheldon Primus is your ultimate weekly guide to starting or growing a profitable occupational safety and health consulting business. Are you ready to be your own boss and make a greater impact? Your expertise can help more people create safer workplaces, and your skills deserve a platform where they can truly shine. If you feel limited in your current role and believe your knowledge could serve the broader workforce more effectively, this podcast is for you. Join us as we explore the steps to launch your own safety consulting business, share insights on navigating the industry, and provide strategies to maximize your impact on workplace health and safety. Now is the perfect time to take control of your career and make a difference!
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Safety Consultant Show with Sheldon primus, where we blend safety sparks with business brilliance and the pitch of Sheldon's signature width, whether you're a safety pro of fresh face consultant, or just safety curious, get ready for his show that'll educate, entertain and elevate your safety game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's dive into the art of consulting with your safety shirt for himself, Sheldon primus.
[SPEAKER_02]: This episode is powered by Safety FM.
[SPEAKER_02]: And today, I'm actually out in the field with you guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're actually outside porch with me in Portland.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of cold.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm talking and it's rainy outside, because Portland's being Portland, like it always is, or eat nice and rainy into the fall.
[SPEAKER_02]: and uh just honestly one of the be-out side and recording.
[SPEAKER_02]: So forgive the background noise, you'll probably hear a little bit of the fire crackling, you're gonna hear a little bit of RV travel noise, and you might even hear some light rain as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So who knows?
[SPEAKER_02]: depends on how good your hair is.
[SPEAKER_02]: But get right into it because again it's cold and rainy.
[SPEAKER_02]: So even though my outside outing is fun I like the mayor fact that being your own boss you could go bring your work wherever you are, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: If you work online or you work like I do where I'm a consultant like you guys know.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you know I could go anywhere, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So today's episode though, I'm actually going to help you guys because I want to work on this episode, this for everyone who's generous, but kind of tired, you're helpful, but underpaid, you're knowledgeable, but somehow you're still answering OSHA questions at family reunions or events at church or something like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: and you're truly giving away your knowledge or information for free as consultants.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what we do.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are literally the information people.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't create a product usually, but our service is our information and we get paid for how much we know and how we can get that information out.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you constantly give out information for free, then you're actually hurting yourself,
[SPEAKER_02]: Alright, so this episode I'm going to focus on free with a funnel, and that's to turn your free value into a paid impact, and I'll explain the concept of funnel later on as we go.
[SPEAKER_02]: But does the ground roll free as not your enemy?
[SPEAKER_02]: Free is actually a strategy, and you want to use that because if you're doing some free work without a strategy, then at that point you're honestly hurting yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you need that free work, and you need the strategy part together.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I lost my fire.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it stinks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Alright, so here's me without a fire, who probably here the United are going behind me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Alright, that means this is a shorter episode than I thought.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, free without a funnel, that's what we're gonna talk about real quick.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, here we go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's the truth about free.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've done a bunch of free stuff myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not bad.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love free.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody loves word free.
[SPEAKER_02]: You hear it?
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're like, yeah, free 99.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I love free.
[SPEAKER_02]: We all do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: The problem is accidental free.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, when that happens with the accidental free, you're being a helper, you've got some guilt charging people, you don't want to sound too sailsy, but you'll hear someone say, hey, get a quick question for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then all of a sudden you're there for an hour.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is all valuable time, whatever hourly rate you're working at before, you got to almost double that for when you're working with yourself and now imagine working that amount of hours at the work for free.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not going to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's the idea here.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not going to be working for free in these settings.
[SPEAKER_02]: So
[SPEAKER_02]: Here is how we're going to solve that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a mindset thing and also a lesson thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So mindset thing that we're going to work about is honestly, you want to make sure that, yeah, you have an angle if you would for free.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not going to, yeah, not going to go ahead and think of everything as wanting to get paid, not the angle I'm looking for.
[SPEAKER_02]: What you'll kind of hear in email marketing is what's called a funnel, not kind of you will.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've got my marketing degree, so you don't need yours, my bachelor's in marketing, and my master's is the master's in public administration.
[SPEAKER_02]: with the concentration and environmental policy.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I got this.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what do you hear about funnel?
[SPEAKER_02]: Honestly, you don't have to think about software or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: What it is is like if you're pouring a liquid.
[SPEAKER_02]: from a larger container into a smaller container and the orifice of the second container orifice the hole of the second container is small, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And that case you're going to need something to help you transfer that into the smaller container.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what you do is you look around the kitchen, you look around garage, you find yourself a funnel with a nice big open top and a very small section to deliver the liquid on the bottom end.
[SPEAKER_02]: and it goes into that vessel, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's second vessel.
[SPEAKER_02]: So think of yourself as that second vessel and think of your service and your knowledge and everything else is what's going into that funnel and you're grabbing a hold of somebody who needs that information, going into that funnel top with your knowledge and expertise and everything else.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as that funnel goes down, you're gonna convert that knowledge
[SPEAKER_02]: into a paid product.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what we're going to talk about, so whenever again I say funnel, guided path from free to paid.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what we're looking for.
[SPEAKER_02]: Going to be simple, going to be humics, going to be ethical.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be effective.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we're looking for all that right now when we're saying funnel.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, so here's an idea philosophy if you would you're going to tell people what is needed and then you're going to teach them how to do it
[SPEAKER_02]: So again you tell them what is needed.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's your free stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when you teach them how to do it, that's your page stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for instance, get an article or maybe even a little video that says top three mistakes and confines based entry permits.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's free.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you do free online, you're going to need to have people in an email list.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that email list is very important, you've seen it plenty of times yourself where you had to hit a button, submit your email, get your free stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to do that too, it's okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how we get the funnel started, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very top end.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for that free content of top three mistakes, making a permanent required confined space entry program.
[SPEAKER_02]: and then after someone gets that, you're helping them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't forget, you're not just offering free to have a word free.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're offering free, oh, it's something that they need.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the person now is going to go ahead and click that button or whatever, even if you're a person, which is a great way to do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You get in person and let's say you're doing one of those networking meetings
[SPEAKER_02]: you see someone who is very interested in what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're talking real quick, you know how they do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: 60 second elevator pitch and you tell everybody about what you do, your product, your service and everything else and then all of a sudden at the end of your coffee, your breakfast lunch, someone comes to you and say, hey, I've been looking for that service.
[SPEAKER_02]: So another thing could be a you could have confined space entry you blank now I could give you a free assessment of how you're doing now
[SPEAKER_02]: and shake hands, you get your appointment, and then now you're doing your free assessment.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you find something which normally you do, that's your paid service.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can turn that around and say, hey, I can give you a quote from fixing this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Give them a quote and then a very timely manner.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then at that point, your free turns into a service.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, if you need help quotes, then go ahead and sign up while you don't have to sign up, but I want you to do it, please.
[SPEAKER_02]: there's my free I got a whole bunch of free right one of my free is this podcast you guys have been listening to for five years which is awesome it's something that I am dedicated to and I'm glad I could do it for you um you could go to the podcast service sign up and honestly it's just as easy as hitting a button on whatever device you'll listening to me right now and
[SPEAKER_02]: know email exchange or anything while you're doing is hitting the subscribe button so hit the subscribe button because I can see the data and most people listen with us describing so please do that and you can search safetyconsultantpodcast.com
[SPEAKER_02]: and once you get to the podcast page search words keywords like proposal keywords like actually have done a bunch of episodes about email marketing so things like that whatever's interest to you with your business do the keyword search right there and as an exchange which will be awesome for me is just subscribe and say I'm not really listening to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Another thing that you could do is go to the YouTube channel, which is youtube.com at safety consultant and you'll see me and subscribe to that and you get again a lot of free content and that's in video format and so at that point you could truly search the keyword proposal and then it could help you create a proposal after you get that free service in there.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, here's another example, a free service, how to find OSHA standard online and you show somebody how to do that online and he could be off a book, it could be a quick video anything and what happens is as a
[SPEAKER_02]: go ahead and look at your content you go ahead and promote whatever policy or standard procedure that you have and at that point you are turning free into a paid.
[SPEAKER_02]: So here's my pay thing to show you how to get these standards and now I could go over your safety program for X amount of dollars.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, free turns into paid.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what about a quick tip on recordkeeping, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody loves recordkeeping, especially in January.
[SPEAKER_02]: So now you do a quick tip on recordkeeping.
[SPEAKER_02]: However, format you use.
[SPEAKER_02]: Someone looks at that quick tip.
[SPEAKER_02]: You are helping them, all right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Now forget you're helping people with this information.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then from there, you ask for, you know, you need more help.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then here's my paid stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for me, you guys are listening to the podcast, you know, that for the podcast, you got five years of free information, you go to the YouTube channel and that at Safety Consultant YouTube channel.
[SPEAKER_02]: My original one, OSHA Compliance Hope is still there and you're getting a whole bunch of free information.
[SPEAKER_02]: And at that point you could truly, truly see some stuff that I got for you for free when you're ready and only when you're ready to do the next stage then you could go to save to consult in blueprint.
[SPEAKER_02]: and once you do that you get a course and once you get that course and you start learning more you're going to learn how to start your business right?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the key.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you get something free at first and then when you're ready then you'll go into some sort of paid service and I do have those things off already for you guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: and then let's say you're ready for coaching.
[SPEAKER_02]: You go to Sheldon.coach and then from there, you're going to go from the freed podcast and the free YouTube channel to possibly the course and then when you learn from the course, you get that going, you take some action, you see how good your life is getting and you're ready for some more.
[SPEAKER_02]: You go to Sheldon.coach and then you can sign up for my three month or six month coaching program.
[SPEAKER_02]: So at that point that's me
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be back with more of Sheldon primus and the same to consultant show, and just a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you ready to make a difference?
[SPEAKER_00]: Introducing the Safety Consultant Blue print course.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unlock your potential as a safety consultant.
[SPEAKER_00]: Learn the skills, strategies, and ethics to create safer workplaces for your very own client.
[SPEAKER_00]: From risk assessment to client acquisition, we've got you covered.
[SPEAKER_00]: Become a safety consultant and open doors to being your own boss.
[SPEAKER_00]: Join us and be the hero of Workplace Safety and roll today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Safety starts with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Take the first step now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Visit our website and enroll in the Safety Consultant Blue Freak Course and Power of Businesses for tech lines.
[SPEAKER_00]: Take the Consultant BluePrint.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: We now return to the Safety Consultant Show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once again, here's Sheldon Primus.
[SPEAKER_02]: see no spammy not sell the i told you what i'm doing but it's all on your terms whenever you're ready you're ready if you're not you're not just take all the content that's i have out there for free and use it you know uh yeah it's not mediocre it's good stuff
[SPEAKER_02]: So you want to give people a really good information that they could use so that you're helping them.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what we do.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're helping people in many different ways and but we need to get paid for it too.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you took out whatever loan you took out or when you cashed in your 401 or whatever you did to start your business, you had an agreement with your partner and even if you're solo, you had an agreement with yourself that says,
[SPEAKER_02]: Within this time frame I want to make some money so that now I could go ahead and leave my job And I'm going to provide for myself making the same or more money, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So you got to do that by actually asking for money So that's what you're going to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to convert a free into paid somehow So now I just want to
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I gave you the concept of funnel.
[SPEAKER_02]: It tells you by free, but again, you want to make sure that V3 is going to get some sort of value.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll walk through some steps for implementation, something where people truly will say, hey, just take this off my plate.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got a rewrite a safety program, but I got 20 other things to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Would you mind give me a quote for this?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how all that gets kind of converted, all right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's one of those things that you gotta get used to, the mindset, it also is if something's free, then it's not as worthy or it's not that good if you're constantly trying to give away free stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: then you're truly not going to see how good your services.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you want to make sure that our people will think I should say that your service isn't good.
[SPEAKER_02]: So at some point, you are still going to have to charge in order to get someone little, no, hey, I'm an actual consultant.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what I do, they ask your buddies that are a lawyer to give you some free legal advice.
[SPEAKER_02]: That might be the first 15 minutes and then they're like,
[SPEAKER_02]: The one you come into the office, you know, something like that, that's me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got students all the time and they want to get some help and I don't mind helping my students.
[SPEAKER_02]: I tell them all the time that after you're one of my students you're going to be stuck with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I tell them that all the time, you're new or now stuck with me and I do let them know though that I as a consultant I do have liability so I can't give you too much information.
[SPEAKER_02]: just for that cause.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I try to make sure that they're aware.
[SPEAKER_02]: My kind of unwritten golden rule is about 15 to 30 minutes worth of chatting about something before I have to go ahead and let you know we need to do steps further and get me under some sort of contractor something so that we could talk more.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but
[SPEAKER_02]: the first 15 or 30 minutes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm there.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are engaged.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're getting yourself some help.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what we want to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Get people help when they need it when they're ready for the next step.
[SPEAKER_02]: They'll pay for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: May well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for...
[SPEAKER_02]: Funnels for safety consultant.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to give you some more.
[SPEAKER_02]: So funnel is the information on top.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to work it down to where you get paid right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you could do a free assessment that will work into a paid audit.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for free, you could take a 10 minute look at someone safety program and then lead towards a full written program overhaul.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a funnel.
[SPEAKER_02]: webinar.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do this a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Webinars to a paid course.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would do a safety consultant 101 webinar, which I do for free.
[SPEAKER_02]: I haven't done it last year, but normally I do one a year and next year I'm planning on doing one a quarter.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you want to take the safety consultant 101,
[SPEAKER_02]: you're going to get a boatload of information in four hours so it's honestly free with the value you're getting four hours worth of trying to figure out how you're going to get your business going so just keep up on sheldonprimus.com so you can get the next one
[SPEAKER_02]: But honestly I just spend four hours with whoever's there and we do the tackle some stuff for free I show them how to get started and then if they're ready after that then I introduce them to safety consultant blueprint course and then they could go ahead and purchase that one and if they're truly ready to launch their business or to accelerate their business then they could go to
[SPEAKER_02]: coaching program where it's me and you, and we truly work on that 101, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So free talk to paid contract.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's another way for you to get your funnel.
[SPEAKER_02]: So honestly, it is a mindset thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Free is a sample.
[SPEAKER_02]: Paid is the service.
[SPEAKER_02]: Free is telling people what needs to be done.
[SPEAKER_02]: Paid is telling them how to do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, so again, it is a mind-shift line set shift for you, so you're gonna have to take some action now and I'm gonna close this up because we probably hear the rain picking up even more.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, I'm taking you on.
[SPEAKER_02]: You guys are outside with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hopefully you like the fresh air.
[SPEAKER_02]: Really feels good.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's starting to pick up rain and I got electronic so I'm gonna wrap this up.
[SPEAKER_02]: So steps and leave you with things to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're gonna answer some DMs from people who are reaching out to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: They need help.
[SPEAKER_02]: Help them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, show them what needs to be done and then give them a quote for how to do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to start posting if you're good with words and you like writing stuff, then go ahead and post on LinkedIn on Facebook or any of that get your post up.
[SPEAKER_02]: People that reply are invested, we've spawned to them and then again offer whatever free you can and eventually you know that you could work towards a paid service.
[SPEAKER_02]: talks.
[SPEAKER_02]: You could do talks.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd done a lot of talks in my career, and these talks have led to some sort of paid service.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember I did a talk with many people in the ASSP conferences that have led to either some other business or other service.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what you want to do though is you want to write your funnel down.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's okay to kind of draw funnel out and the top of the funnel, what's the things you could give away for free?
[SPEAKER_02]: Just go ahead and write that up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then from there you ask there you think it through as to what can I convert from my free stuff into paid.
[SPEAKER_02]: and I'll be great to use an AI assistance.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you got one, help the Azure AI to this and help it really understand what your product is and then ask your AI assistant that use chat, GBT, but there's many others, say, hey, this is what I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: How can I do a funnel and it will understand funnel?
[SPEAKER_02]: and how can I make a free service into a paid service?
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's not a bad for you to do, help you think things out, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So again, free is not bad, it's not a problem.
[SPEAKER_02]: But free without a funnel is a problem, because you are in this to make some money.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't want to have to go back to work for anyone again.
[SPEAKER_02]: I left my business in 2000, well actually I started my business in 2008, we're now in 2025, I went full time in 2012, so honestly I'm unavoidable at this point and I want to be because yeah I had learned how to shift my mindset where everything is not free, but a lot of things are free.
[SPEAKER_02]: You could truly do a search for Sheldon Prime as and you could see
[SPEAKER_02]: upload years of free things that I have for you and that's fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want you to get the information you want so go for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's another reason I'm asking you to subscribe so you could get to the information that you want, not wait for me to do an episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: I may already have an episode in my five-year archive, so just go ahead hit subscribe because you might not be able to come back right away and do it, but once you hit subscribe, then you could go back to whatever service you're listening to me on, and then you could do your research when you have time, okay?
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's it, I'm gonna wrap this up.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you guys for listening and I hope you enjoyed being outside with me today and we got some fresh air together.
[SPEAKER_02]: So awesome, every self of good rest of your week, go get on.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a wrap for today's safety show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember, safety isn't just about hard hats and caution signs.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about business smarts too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for joining us on the safety consultant show with Sheldon primers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, stay safe, stay savvy, and keep consulting like a boss.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go get him.
[SPEAKER_00]: The views in the opinion you expressed on this podcast or broadcast are those of the host in a guest and non-necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company.
[SPEAKER_00]: Examples of analysis discussed within the past hour only examples.
[SPEAKER_00]: It should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available, as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information.
[SPEAKER_00]: Assumption made within this analysis are not reflective of the positions of the company.
[SPEAKER_00]: No part of this podcast of broadcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means mechanical electronic recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast of broadcasts, Sheldon Primes.
[SPEAKER_01]: This episode has been powered by Safety FM.