“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” – Luke 16:10

A friend wrote after my column two weeks ago on “The personal trainer and the entrepreneurial shepherd”:

“You have to be sure about the return on investment though. If you can get the shepherding or the personal training advice without direct cost, that’s a bonus.”

He is right about ROI. Every entrepreneur must ask: does this input produce a return? That is the shepherd’s first question every morning — are the sheep fed, safe and multiplying?

He is also right that you can get advice for free. YouTube will give you 1,000 workouts. Google will give you 10,000 business plan templates. ChatGPT will give you a marketing strategy in 30 seconds.

But here is what I learned after that first home session:

The trainer does not sell me knowledge of a squat. I already know what a squat is. He sells me that he is in my home for an hour ensuring I do the squat with correct form, at the correct intensity, in the correct order, without distraction. If he is not there, the room remains a room with weights. If he is there, the room becomes a gym.

That is ROI.

Free advice has no eyes on your form. Free advice does not count your reps. Free advice does not come to your door at 6 a.m. when motivation is low and hold you to the standard. Free advice does not correct drift.

And drift is where businesses die.

As I have said before, nothing in life is free. The free video still costs you — it costs you in wasted reps, in injury, in months of trying, in the 80-90% failure rate we see in startups left to drift. The payment is not always in dollars. It is in discipline, consistency and time — and time is the one currency you cannot borrow.

The entrepreneur who trusts free advice with the little things — form, focus follow-through — will be dishonest with the big things: cash flow, customers and culture.

The shepherd, like the trainer, brings the gym to you. He does not send you to the gym. That presence, that accountability, that correction in real time — that is the return. And it is a return that free can never deliver.

Dr. Basil Springer GCM is a corporate governance adviser. His columns may be found at https://www.nothingbeatsbusiness.com