In the midst of this job-eating, business-depleting recession, some entrepreneurs – particularly owners of small businesses – are taking a step few could have seen even one year ago: working for free for their best clients.
Instead of moping, Watts Wacker got a novel idea from listening closely to President Obama’s inaugural address urging Americans to act with hope and virtue in troubled times. He e-mailed a letter to a handful of his best clients. He told them the nation’s business model had to change during this downturn, and he volunteered to go first. He told clients that if they had some work – but no dough to pay for it – he’d do it for free.
Earl Broussard responded first.
The Austin-based president of landscape architectural firm TBG Partners met Wacker seven years ago at an Urban Land Institute convention in Las Vegas where Wacker was a keynote speaker earning up to $30,000 a pop. They struck up a friendship, and soon a business relationship. For his company’s 20th anniversary, Broussard hired Wacker to speak to employees and help plot the firm’s future.
After receiving Wacker’s work-for-free offer, Broussard, a local board executive for the non-profit Urban Land Institute in Austin, asked Wacker to speak to the group for free. Wacker will do that next month, with only his travel expenses paid.
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