Every once in awhile (like this week), a company asks me to speak to their employees. And every once in awhile, after I send over information on my speaking fees, I get some variation of this response: "Oh, this isn't for profit, it's just to help our employees grow and learn. And we use recordings of the talks on social media." To which I respond with some variation of this: "Here's my two cents — and please understand that I know you're just trying to do the right thing for your people. When speaking for non-profit organizations or educational institutions, I often waive my fee, because these organizations are often struggling financially. These people truly need my help and likely wouldn't have the opportunity to learn some things and grow otherwise. A successful agency with a roster of impressive, high profile clients, to me, doesn't meet that criteria. I completely understand if you weren't allocated a budget for this; I also understand, having worked in this industry for 30 years, that you likely have no control over that. Again, please understand that I don't ever take this kind of thing personally. I get it. But what's happening here, in my opinion, is that a profitable, professional organization is looking to exploit other professionals for its own gain. Not only am I training [agency's] people for it, I'm giving the agency content to promote itself across social media. For free. Think of it this way: Any client who asks [agency] to work for free is disrespecting the professional relationship and exploiting your people. Taking advantage of your good will and generosity. So your agency and the professionals like yourself who work for it deserve to be paid for the work they are asked to do, as a matter of professional respect. Other professionals, like myself, deserve the same level of respect. Not to mention that this is literally one of the things companies have paid me to do for the last two decades ;-) So my answer has to be no. If [agency] truly cares about the growth and success of its employees, your executives will create a proper budget and allocate the necessary resources for doing so. All that said, I honestly do appreciate your thinking of me — and I wish you much success, regardless." Moral of the story for those of you reading this: 1) If you routinely ask professionals to do this kind of thing, stop it. 2) If you are a #UX or #ProductDesign or any other kind of professional who is ASKED to do this kind of thing, for free, by a for-profit organization, the answer is always NO.