Why we give our best tools away for free

We are building Hey Workshop in the open, and one of our rules is that the free stuff has to be genuinely good. Not a teaser with the useful parts removed. The actual tool, that actually works, given away for real.

People find that strange. If the free thing solves the problem, why would anyone buy anything? Here is the thinking, because it might be useful for whatever you are building too.

The first thing you owe a stranger is help, not a pitch. Someone who has never heard of you does not trust you yet, and they should not. Trust is not something you can claim. It is something you earn by being useful before there is any reason to be. So we lead with the most useful thing we can make, and we make it free.

What happens next is the quiet part. When you help someone before you ask for anything, they remember. Some of them come back. Some of them tell a friend. And when they eventually do want the bigger thing, they are not buying from a stranger anymore. They are buying from the people who already helped them once.

That is not a trick. It only works if the free thing is actually good, which means the incentive is pointed the right way: make the most useful thing you can, and trust that being genuinely helpful is not in tension with running a business. It is the business.

So here is the takeaway for your business of one, whatever you sell. You almost certainly have something valuable you could give away: a checklist, a short guide, an honest answer in a comment section. Give the real version. Help first. The trust compounds, and trust is what people actually buy.

Next step: If you want to see this in practice, our free tools are at heywork.shop, and this newsletter is free to subscribe. Take the help, no strings.