Add A Zero

What does it mean to be fearless? To be confident in your gifts as an artist? Capable of transforming those who commission you and your creative business to do just that?

Add a zero.

What happens then? For most of you, the narrative of impossibility takes over. “I could never get that much.” My clients aren’t those clients.” “My market would never support me charging so much.” And on and on (and on) it goes until your ceiling is firmly in place and your retreat back to your comfortable (and most times logical) perception of the value you provide for the money. You intend to get there little by little, raising your prices incrementally all along the way. 10% this year, 20% next, until you feel like you are at the maximum you could charge given your own understanding of the so-called market.  Self-fulfilling prophecy of limits firmly in place.

Add a zero. Except this time check your fear and panic at the door. Ask yourself what you would have to do to be worth ten times what you are paid now. You could never do things the way you do them now and overnight become ten times more expensive. You have to change.  Specifically, where would you be willing to stake your claim and say to your clients – I am the best in YOUR world at this (ahem, they would not be your clients if they did not already think you were the best), I will prove it to you and when I do you will pay me. Yes, you might make some money other places, you have to keep the lights on, but ten times comes from the conviction that you are the best in your clients world.

There is a massive difference between costing a lot of money and being expensive. For those that do not appreciate the value of a BMW, the car is expensive. For those that relish in all that BMW stands for, the car just costs a lot of money. Something is expensive when you cannot fully embrace its value. Anyone that tells you that your art and your creative business are expensive is telling you that he is not your client. And by the way, neither are you. Yours is not to rationalize your expense to a client in the manner you might perceive it. Rather it is to appreciate how you are seen in your clients’ eyes and own the responsibility bestowed from their vision of you, your art and your creative business. This moves beyond whatever logical construct you have created for yourself to cap your own perception of value. Adding a zero allows you to move into that place where value is what you say it is.

No, I am not literally saying add a zero (although, in some cases, I am). What I am saying is to believe in the power you possess. Know that you can prove that power and earn what you need to to feel good about your ability to do your next project. Or you can keep convincing yourself that what you need is irrelevant and only what you can get matters.

I would like to think that if you are courageous enough to leap in the first place, you would be courageous enough to stand in your own light. If you are not, okay. Just know that your convictions are your own limits. If you are comfortable living there, please stay there. You can make a living. Maybe. However, if you are willing to shatter your own convictions, another world will reveal itself to you. No guarantee whether you will like it or not or whether you will find success there. The only thing I do know is that this is the place of integrity, of story, of opportunity. Scary for sure, but indelibly what you, your art and your creative business are all about. Resonance is where you will find your community. What you are able to do with it is up to you.

Add a zero.