In my Business of Home column this week, I talked about when it might be time to call it a day. On Facebook, there was a ton of conversation about how a baker decided to stop making wedding cakes because she just could not make a living doing it. Unfortunately, she took down her post describing her decision.
In both cases, many well meaning people, advisors, colleagues effectively said that if the designer or the baker had charged more, made an appropriate profit, the problem would be solved. Others talk about value and how you have to be able to sell your value to get paid the right amount of money.
Of course, this advice is, on its face, accurate. It is just that it is not nearly enough. I will say it plainly: without the courage of conviction, the faith in your ability to transform, to create meaning with and in the work that you do, you will never find the humility and humanity in your art. And it is in the humility and humanity of your art that you will discover the power to ask for what you need to do the work you are called to do.
The baker was profound in her ability to know that she was undercharging and yet she persisted. What she did not do was to ask why she was not willing to get paid for what truly matters — the art first, its manifestation second. So she allowed herself to say that if only she stuck to her guns and charged more she would have been okay. It was not and it never will be.
As Bill Bakerwould say, a ship without a purpose, a profound story, is lost at sea. While that ship might find its way to shore, just as likely it will crash on the rocks, or worse, float aimlessly forever until only the shell remains with no life inside.
If you can come to the place of conviction, you can own your story as deeply your own. With that in place, and only then, can you set about talking about what you need to do what you do. Truly, that means pricing from the top down, being responsible for the necessary irrationality inherent in all creative businesses. You get paid what you get paid because it is what you need to get paid to feel empowered to take on your next project. You are fed, neither a glutton nor a pauper.
No matter the strategy, structure, technique, formula or other “do it this way” advice, the end boils down to this: your creative business must exist to nourish your art and not the other way around. Unless and until you acknowledge the absolute truth of this statement, you leave yourself open to possibility of compromise. Compromise are the never ending cuts, each relatively painless, but lethal in the accumulation. By the time your realize your peril, you are already dead no matter how much you think you know that the answer is right around the corner with a higher price or a better definition of value.
Instead, see courage as being willing to admit you do not know what you do not know. Callouses provide toughness and grit, sure, but they also create blinders to what might be possible. More callouses, more blinders, until you are, in fact, blind. Go the other way.
So many of you are lost in the idea that somehow your art has to be “worth it” to client with no mechanism as to how to define that value. This is especially true for social or individual clients. How about the idea that the return on an emotional investment by both you and your client in your art must be exponential to merit the investment in the first place. Translation: you are in the business of transformation, not pretty. Pretty died the day mobile arrived.
As Seth Godinwould say, talk to the smallest possible audience. Those that really really care about you, your art and your creative business. Make an outrageous promise integrally connected with an outrageous demand. Get paid for the outrageous promise(s) as you need. Then keep that promise(s). Rinse and repeat.
