This is an easy question to answer. Stop meeting people for coffee and instead send them to your Clarity.fm link.

I give lots of free advice on my YouTube channel, I don't need to spend time re-telling general advice and ideas that they can learn on their own time. http://www.youtube.com/c/DavidBarnettMoncton

This does several things:
1. Eliminates people who aren't serious
2. Gets you paid for your time
3. Eliminates the 'time suck' of travelling to and from cafes
4. Actually gets people to listen and value your advice.

I've been doing this for years and it works great. I always preface things by saying that if the conversation leads to project work for me, I'll credit back their cost of the Clarity call on my eventual invoice to them.

Arrange a call if you'd like to discuss further strategies. I've been working as a consultant for years.

David Barnett

David Barnett is exactly right: "Stop meeting people for coffee and instead send them to your Clarity.fm link."

That's how I ended up here. Too many people asking for advice and myself only too willing to fritter away my work day advising them for free ... thereby losing hours that I really owed to my paying clients and my own projects. Oh, and my long-suffering girlfriend!

Suggest them some tools like Value Proposition Canvas. That way you are offering solid advise. If they still need help, they have to pay. Never get to be reseller. Most of the IT guys never bother to understand their target customers and build a solution around their assumptions. So really cant help many of them.