I’m a little bit stuck right now.
On the one hand, I LOVE talking with people about their marketing/career challenges.
I also have, in some respect, built the brand by a desire/willingness to invest in others.
On the other, I am extremely filled up with projects for paying clients right now…all the way through the end of 2010. Which is great.
Well, except for the fact that I will get 3-5 emails per week saying “hey, I’d like to pick your brain/have a call on topic X.”
Say each call is 20 minutes…that’s 1-2 hours of time. Which, when you factor in work obligations and all of the other stuff I want to do, is actually a lot.
Now, I don’t want to respond and say “sorry, I’ve no time for you.”
And I don’t want to just do a pithy 1 sentence response, like “good luck with that.”
Sometimes I’ll say “hey, I’ve blogged on this, did you search for it?” Or “hey, that could be a good blog topic.”
But, I don’t want people, those who believe in me and are willing to be my advocates to walk away and say “hey, he doesn’t really care about me.”
And, worst of all, I don’t want to appear arrogant.
I’m open to suggestions.
(Note: judging from Jason Falls’ post, there are others who have this issue)