Eryka Peskin, a friend of mine, recently asked me to review the language for a webinar she was hosting for her life coaching business, since I’m a freelance writer and editor. A few text messages exchanged quickly turned into a long phone call. In the middle of the conversation, Eryka asked, “Should I pay you for this?”
I took a break. “Probably,” I said, laughing. But I didn’t dwell on the subject. After hanging up, I replayed the conversation. I had hired Eryka, 49, for her coaching four years ago, so we had already exchanged money for services. And if I want to succeed as a freelancer, I can’t always offer free work. Yet when Eryka suggested the possibility that we move from a friendly favor to a payment negotiation, I hesitated. For what?
“If you’re independent and you’re good at what you do, your friends will want to ask you for help,” said Blair Glaser, 54, an executive leadership coach in Los Angeles. “And then, if you’re a generous person and it’s natural for you to give, you’re going to want to give it to them. So what happens in free labor is that the roles start to blur.”
Somewhere during my conversation with Eryka, we had moved from a friendly collaboration to a more formal edition of her work. But I wasn’t ready to have a conversation about money.
I love working with friends and wanted to learn how to cross the lines between doing work as a favor and charging a fee. I’ve spoken to various people who have worked with friends – personal trainers, graphic designers, real estate agents and consultants – as well as some of their client friends. Overall, they agreed that working together could be fruitful for both parties, provided the parameters are clear.
Ultimately, “there has to be healthy reciprocity,” Glaser said. “Otherwise there will be some kind of resentment that will lead to complications in work or in friendship.”
When to have the conversation
“The biggest sign that this conversation needs to happen is that when the problem arises, there is a moment of panic,” said Kavita Pandit, 66, an executive coach in Athens, Georgia. She recommends writing and practicing scripts, which she has done before. to do with friends this year after retiring from Georgia State University and starting your own business.
When a friend calls to ask for career advice, Ms. Pandit explains that she offers structured sessions at a fixed minimum rate and is willing to negotiate prices. “Your ace in your pocket is you have that language to engage in that conversation,” she said.
Nafasi Ferrell, founder and principal consultant of Narratives Unbound, an education and consulting company, said that pausing and reframing the conversation is one of the most powerful tools for broaching the topic of money with a friend. As an instructor for the Trauma of Money course, an online financial literacy program, Ms. Ferrell, 32, approaches wealth from a trauma-informed perspectivewhich involves recognizing when topics like money trigger deep physiological and emotional responses.
“Just take a moment with yourself,” she says.
Many entrepreneurs I spoke to said they would take a break to reframe an informal, friendly conversation between friends if they found themselves asking the type of questions or offering the type of advice they gave during sessions with clients. Ms. Glaser, for example, will tell her friends that she is happy to explore a topic in more depth in a coaching relationship, but will otherwise be content to listen. If she and a friend decide to work together, she’ll use language like “I’m speaking to you as a coach right now” whenever she feels the need to make a point outside of a scheduled session.
What to charge
Almost everyone I’ve talked to charges less for their friends and family. Ms. Glaser offers a 20 percent discount. Others negotiate on a case-by-case basis, depending on factors such as the intimacy of the friendship and the friend’s financial situation.
Ms Pandit even gave coaching sessions to friends as gifts or asked them to donate to a charity of their choice instead of paying her. “It’s not like you have to do an exchange of money to make it official,” she said.
My friend Eryka negotiates with every potential client, including their friends. She advises people to find “an amount that seems large enough for you to take your investment seriously, without being unfeasible.”
Sometimes friends insist on paying full price, which happened to Justin Miller, 42, a nutrition and lifestyle coach at Nerd Fitness who also offers personal training. When he asks his friends to choose between a full-price, 12-week coaching contract or a looser verbal agreement, they tend to choose the contract because they want the relationship to be more accountable.
Ms. Ferrell typically charges her friends full price for her financial coaching, but may give them a discount if she knows their finances are tight. However, she pointed out that women of color, like herself, often had to resist the urge to cut back on their services.
“The one thing I hear all the time is I can’t charge more because I’m stealing from my community,” she said. “Women of color, we give all the time. This practice of receiving is one that we really need to practice.
Amy Weitzman, a real estate agent in Massachusetts, always wonders why a friend might want a discount before agreeing to give them one. “I really try not to give from a helpless position,” she said.
She was often faced with the impression that she was merely handing out brochures and holding open days – not, as she explained, sourcing markets and negotiating deals.
“I deserve financial stability,” Ms. Weitzman, 47, said. “So I don’t want to make choices that compromise that, even if someone wants to because they know me as a friend.”
Bartering is a popular method among many entrepreneurs, especially if they are just starting out and have less disposable income. However, several people I spoke to pointed out that in-kind payments can be much more complicated and prone to resentment-producing situations. A graphic designer who charged $30 an hour decided to stop bartering after a masseuse who charged $90 an hour told her she owed three hours of design work for a 60-minute massage .
How to Navigate Conflict
Ricardo Tejeda, owner and operator of Show and Tale Creative, a creative agency in Asheville, North Carolina, used to make informal verbal agreements, but not anymore. “Everything is a contract now,” he said.
As a former musician, he has helped many friends in the industry with their promotional materials. “I was a broke artist who needed all the work and didn’t have the budget. So I understand that,” he said.
Still, he was ready to take a break and have a conversation with a good friend who had received a “supreme discount” when he noticed goal creep, the term for when work on a project begins to exceed the agreed parameters. “I had to remind him of the deal,” Mr. Tejada, 39, said.
Alissa Berkowitz, a communications and conflict management coach and consultant, recently had to sue a friend for payment. Ms. Berkowitz, 40, initially felt a contract was unnecessary, but then months passed without payment. Given her profession, she had the necessary skills to tackle the subject.
“They didn’t think there would be any consequences if they made me wait until I was like, ‘Yes, there will be consequences.’ And that means I will never work with you again, and that could affect our relationship,” Ms. Berkowitz said. The friend agreed to pay with a credit card.
Ms. Berkowitz is also expecting payment from her friend Kaitlyn Lynch for accompanying her in a dispute with a mutual friend, but she doesn’t have the same concerns. On the one hand, Ms Lynch, aged 39, repeatedly asked what payment method to use – something they had not previously agreed on because no contract was involved. Ms. Lynch has a 9-month-old, so “I can only do things in two steps, maximum,” she said.
The joy of working with friends
There’s an adage that friends and money don’t mix, but the reality is that money affects all of our relationships and there can be benefits to working with friends.
First, trust and shared experiences between friends can make collaboration more fruitful. For Ms. Lynch, working with Ms. Berkowitz on a conflict between a mutual friend was an easy decision, in part because Ms. Berkowitz understood how to appeal to their friend to preserve the relationship. Additionally, Ms. Berkowitz could be flexible about the timing and length of sessions, accommodating Ms. Lynch’s unpredictable schedule as the mother of a newborn.
I chose to work with Eryka in part because, as friends, we had already had conversations about many of the issues covered in our coaching sessions.
For Mr. Tejeda, working with friends whose values and perspectives he respects gives him confidence. “Morally, you are going to be aligned,” he said. He also emphasized how important friends could be for referrals.
Additionally, there is joy in helping a friend. Eryka contacted me because she respected my talents, a validation I appreciate. Why wouldn’t I want to share my gifts with my friends? And if I can find a way to “invite the question of money into space in a way that nurtures, loves, and cares,” as Ms. Ferrell encourages, why not get paid for it, too?
“We are all building new dreams in the world. So who do you want to be part of this dream? » asked Ms. Ferrell. “It doesn’t have to be a foreigner; it can be your best friend.
