For creative businesses, money is a dirty word. Whether it has to do with pricing, paying yourself or your employees, even valuing your art (and yourself), your relationship to money lurks behind it. You might believe you can never have enough, only have to take what you need, or money is the root of all evil. You can say you do not care about it and the art is all that is important or you might need to show how much you have to validate the persona you portray to yourself and the world. I am indifferent to how you relate to money. There are too many far wiser people than me to guide you towards what is the healthiest relationship for you. I am only asking you to acknowledge the power and emotionality you have given to money.
Money is not real. It is just a construct society has created in order to better organize itself. Money exists and can do what it does because we all agree it does. Money is also not the root of all evil. The love of money is. To which I would like to add, so is the hatred, envy and just about every emotion you can attach to money. By evil, I would like to take a more holistic approach and say it is emotions attached to money that are the seeds of our own undoing.
I have made a lot of money in my life, lost all of it and come back to life again. Money is a crutch for me. It is something I can obsess over and create drama from. I can stop the fluidity of my life in a nanosecond by thinking about how much I have, do not have or even will have. And when I bring myself down to dollars and cents, I conveniently wipe out my own spirit in the process. If you value your entire being by how much you are (or are not) paid, it will never be enough. My aim is to embrace my ability to generate money and see it for what it is: that which will afford me the opportunity to live the life I desire.
While money is not real and has no emotion, it is energy. Literally, money is the food your creative business needs to survive. There is no such thing as overcharging or undercharging, just charging what you believe is fair value for the product/service you provide. The measure of fair value is what you need to earn in order to sustain your chosen lifestyle.
For creative businesses, fair value is not what the market will bear. You do not make widgets. The intrinsic value of your creative business is your ability to create. A rose might be just another rose, except that it is not when placed in the hands of an artist. Those that argue there is a limit to what they can charge (in most cases, a limit that is less than they think they are worth) create a self-fulfilling prophecy. The limitations speak more of emotions attached to money than to reality.
The emotions you attach to money will distort your own measure of fair value in one way or another. The more you acknowledge the emotions, the better chance you have to free yourself from them and to allow your creative business the opportunity to earn all that you need it to.
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You are a complete philosopher! So great at explaining and putting everything in perspective.
Thank you~
Expertly put, as always. If $$ is the soul & driving force behind creating the art, what kind of lives will we really lead?
Waxing most philosophical of late, sir 🙂
A key thought you make there is “The measure of fair value is what you need to earn in order to sustain your chosen lifestyle.”
This is key, and I’d turn it around to say that you can create a lot of freedom for yourself if you accurately assess what type of lifestyle will make you truly happy. From that, you’ll see how much money you need to earn.
Sean, you and I both come from that financial services background and I agree, we both know people (lawyers, hedge fund managers etc) making huge amounts of money… and who hate their work and lead pretty miserable lives.
Waxing philosophical myself, and to give others food for thought on what type and level of lifestyle makes sense for them, I blogged back in May on http://mccallumsolutions.com/time-the-ultimate-measure-of-wealth/
One last thought… my wife is one of those pressured financial services people (though she does like her job.. most of the time!) and she is raving about the book Womenomics. I haven’t read if myself yet (but will when she is done!), but sounds like it may resonate for many of the professional women reading your blog.
Thank you for this post… I imagine that you have an idea of how impactful this post was, but you cannot know how specifically it has addressed both me and my fledgling business.
This particular post hit the nail on the head for me – it’s often akward being a photographer and asking for “the” transaction… It also can get twice as muddy when your clients are also your friends. Thank goodness for those friends/clients that realize that while you ARE enjoying yourself, you are actually pouring your heart and soul into images and working longer hours than you’d like as you build a clientele, a business and a future for your family… And thank goodness working with the public has made me a more gracious and straightforward consumer.
Thanks again for a dose of Friday inspiration, I thoroughly look forward to your posts of thoughts and comments that keep me from feeling alone in everyday apprehensions, emotions and stressors.
I will also look forward to Womenonmics… Learn something new every day, right?!
Happy weekend- Andrea
well, well, well, you live with a beautiful yogi long enough,all the zen rubs off! Seriously my friend, as you often do, you hit the subject on the head, but very gracefully
lol@some of the other commenters’ observance of your “waxing philosophical.”
You certainly have been, but these latest posts have really resonated with me. I am not in the business of being creative, but I am definitely interested in business. Thank you for these last few posts. I will definitely recommend this to a friend, who is currently starting out in event design.
Sean,
Great post! Money in a creative field is a dirty word. I love the line, “money is not the root of all evil the LOVE of money is”; brilliant. The emotions do play a hand in our feelings towards it, especially since we sell intellectual property and not widgets.
Amanda