Why I build a free community alongside paid work

I sometimes get asked why I spend time on a free community for landscapers while also helping other businesses on a paid basis. As if one contradicts the other.

It doesn't. It comes from the same starting point.

I'm not a pusher

If someone talks to me and what I build doesn't fit his situation, I say so. Not because that's commercially smart in the short term, but because I have no interest in selling someone something that doesn't fit. That gets neither of us anywhere in the long run.

Revenue isn't the goal I'm working toward. It's the result of something else: being valuable to the right entrepreneur, at the moment it's right for him. If that moment isn't there yet, I still want to have something to offer.

That's what the Academy is for

De Vakman Academy is a free network for landscapers and other tradespeople across the Netherlands. Not a sales funnel disguised as a community. Just a place where tradespeople meet each other, share knowledge, and sometimes start working together directly.

For a landscaper not yet ready for paid guidance, this isn't "the cheap version" of what I do further down the line. It's something else: access to a network, conversations with peers, knowledge that goes beyond what he's already doing. That has value, even without a single invoice ever coming out of it.

What this gets me

In the short term, nothing measurable. No revenue from a free community.

In the longer term, yes. Some Academy members grow into the point where paid guidance does fit. By then they already know me, know how I work, and don't need convincing that I do what I say. Others just stay members, and that's fine too. Not every contact has to end in a deal.

What I see in practice: someone who gets to know me through the Academy first hesitates a lot less during an intake than someone speaking to me for the first time through a cold conversation.

The choice behind this

I could have focused only on the paid side. More pressure on every conversation, closing faster, spending less time on people who aren't ready to buy yet.

That doesn't fit how I want to do business. I want to be valuable to the right entrepreneurs, in a way that feels right for both sides. I know by now that the revenue follows on its own, just not always from the first conversation.

Curious about the Academy? Join for free and see for yourself if it's for you.