Creative people have a love/hate relationship with money.
We love it, because – well, who wouldn’t want it?
But we also hate it, avoid dealing with it, and avoid even talking about it. Here are some of the reasons why.
1. We Think It’s Not Important
And of course we’re right. There are more important things in life than money – love, art, justice, world peace and coffee being just a few.
We live in a world obsessed with money, where human beings are treated according to their bank balance, not their intrinsic worth, and we instinctively revolt against this.
Creativity offers a window on a different world, with different values. Art exists in a different, more meaningful dimension. In a world gone mad, it can serve as a reminder that money is not the be-all and end-all.
2. We Don’t Know How to Get It
The starving artist cliche didn’t come from nowhere. It’s no secret that many creatives don’t earn as much as they’d like. And it’s not much fun talking about something you don’t have.
If we were better at selling than making, we’d be salespeople, not creatives. Sales and marketing can feel like impenetrable mysteries – we don’t understand what makes people buy, so it’s tempting to retreat back into our comfort zone, doing the best work we can and hoping that will be enough.
3. We Don’t Know What We’re Worth
One obvious barrier to earning a decent living is not charging enough for our artworks, products or services. That might sound like a no-brainer, but many creatives simply don’t realise the value of their work to potential buyers.
To us, it’s nothing special. It’s just what we do. Looking at it with a perfectionist’s eye, we see all kinds of flaws that are invisible to the untrained eye. That’s great for perfecting your craft, but not so great when it comes to closing a sale.
Because what may seem barely good enough to us may well look utterly fabulous to a potential buyer. But if we price ourselves or our work too low, it knocks buyers’ confidence, and makes them assume there’s something wrong with it.
Believe it or not, many people are happier paying more for quality than shopping around for the cheapest option. Who wants to have a knockdown painting on their wall? Or to give their loved one a cut-price ring? Or to do their big launch or party on the cheap?
4. We Don’t Want to Sell out
One of the reasons creative people have a reputation for eccentricity is our ambivalent attitude to money and success. The rest of the world would jump at the chance for fame and fortune, but even when it’s laid on a plate for us, we hesitate.
We hesitate because we are terrified of selling out – selling our artistic soul to the devil, earning piles of cash by churning out commercial crap. We know that all the money in the world won’t compensate us for the loss of our creative integrity.
5. We Don’t Want to Look Greedy
We’re sensitive souls aren’t we? And we have to be, it’s part of our job. If you’re not finely attuned to the subtleties of sounds, images, words, textures, movement and/or rhythm, you won’t go far in a creative career.
But this sensitivity has a flipside. We tend to be shy and diffident, easily pricked by barbed words or the merest hint of criticism. So we’re not always the best negotiators, and can shoot ourselves in the foot by avoiding discussing money issues for fear of looking ‘greedy’.
6. We Don’t Know How to Manage It
Spreadsheets, balance sheets, cashflow forecasts, profit and loss sheets, amortisation, appreciation, depreciation, fixed costs, variable costs, cash cows, averaging ratios …
Have your eyes glazed over yet?
The language of finance can be bamboozling – let alone the actual numbers. No wonder many creatives do the bare minimum of accounting, often at the last minute, when the tax deadline is due. It just seems too complex, too intimidating, or too plain boring for us to get our heads around it all.
7. We Wouldn’t Know How to Spend It
The whole process of earning, collecting and managing money – while at the same time preserving our creative integrity – can seem so difficult that we never seriously think about how we would spend the money if we did succeed. In other words, we don’t consider the purpose of money in our work and lives.
Sure, we may daydream from time to time about winning the lottery or landing the big contract, but we stop at daydreaming. We don’t articulate our financial goals, set ourselves targets and make concrete plans for using money to bring us security, stability, freedom – and even to support our creativity.
So we creatives have plenty of reasons for looking down our noses at money, or ignoring it and hoping it will go away.
But deep down, we know this is dangerous. Money is a fact of life, it’s not going away. Sooner or later, we have to deal with it.
Because money is important. Not the most important thing, but maybe more important than we care to admit, when we avoid thinking about it, talking about it or doing something about it.
Money stress is no fun. It poisons every aspect of life. That’s true for anyone, but if your passion is creativity, then one of the biggest dangers is that worrying about money will kill your creativity.
As a creative, your headspace is your workspace. If it’s taken up by worries of any kind, it’s hard to settle to the task in hand, and harder still to get into the creative zone where you do your best work.
Does that sound like a reason to take money a little more seriously?
“OK so what do I DO about this?”
I’m glad you asked that. 🙂
The first thing to do is to visit this page and claim your free copy of the audio seminar I’ve recorded with Sarah: 5 Essential Money Skills for Creative People. It’s packed with practical advice to help you get a grip on your business finances and use them to support your creativity.
And if you want even more help getting on top of the finances of your creative business, check out Money for Creative People, our new course for creative artists, freelancers and entrepreneurs, teaching you the mindset and money skills that will help you succeed commercially as well as creatively.
What do you think?
Which of these seven reasons do you relate to?
What would you add to the list?
Do you agree that creative people could benefit from taking money more seriously?
About the author: Mark McGuinness is a poet, creative coach, and the owner of Lateral Action.
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« Previous 1 2 3 4 … 8 Next »Thank you for this post! Just yesterday I was apologizing for myself, for my lack of foresight, thought on money. It almost stunned me how little I had thought about these things in the way it seems everyone else has - and an injury just as I was interviewing to produce a doc series for national air, really showed the holes in my thinking. I just could not understand how I had not dealt with that side of life, been so absorbed in my work, and 'not have anything financial to show for it.'
I can't change the past but I can change now. I have enjoyed your email course, and I am working with a small business counselor from the Business Development Center to rework my business plan in light of my current situation and physical limitations.
I try to share my lessons with my teen who is interested in music. Culturally, for me, my family was not at all supportive of the arts ('that's for people with money'), so its also, embarrassingly, taken me all these years to stop hiding myself, state exactly what I want, and even face the isolation from my family after I chose to 'come out.' After that, was realizing that as much as I wanted attention for my work, when it came when I was younger, it freaked me out, scared me and I think 'success,' until now, scared me.
I also really believe now the whole connection between money (energy) and self-esteem - whether its as a woman, being culturally diverse, whatever - I just have a real disconnect on this issue that I am seeking to overcome.
In my meditations, I think about all the things I will do with the energy/cash.
I pray I can overcome, but that doesn't push me right now to check my business account balance when I don't want to since I don't know when the next commission is coming. I just finished a commission and one book cover photo assignment, but all I can think about are the many imperfections that still bother me. The self-criticism makes me push harder within to learn, do better, to grow more as an artist, to take my abilities to another level. Yet, when its in a vacuum, it can be too much.
Thanks for this article today, great topic!
My pleasure, glad it touched a chord for you.
Very wise. Much easier to change the future than the past. :-)
Success is scary. It's just not obvious until you get up close. Fortunately it gets better once you acclimatize to it. ;-)
And very good point about self-criticism - there's definitely a positive side to the inner critic, as long as s/he doesn't get out of hand! You might like to check out my piece on ways to assess your creative work.
Thank you. Ready to acclimate :)
Clicking on the article...thank you.
I think these 7 reasons are pretty darned insightful but I think, for me, #2 & #3 are probably the most true. When I am on a creative streak...it doesn't feel like work. When I have to press on because I have a deadline, it's a different thing altogether. The hard thing for me is that people just think I am always "on" and that I'm just so "good at those kinds of things" that I am asked for more and more. (It's hard to figure out how to stop and charge for services sometimes!
Well it's great to be in demand! And yes, charging is a good idea. As I said to Jenny, just because you enjoy it and it doesn't feel like work, doesn't mean people won't be happy to pay for it. ;-)
Mark,
A lot of arteestic types say they’re too busy or they can’t be bothered to learn about commerce. Some go so far as to say they’re not interested in material things. They act as though they enjoy starving.
I call bollocks.
The root of all evil—at least as far as creatives are concerned—isn't money, it's the negative tendencies and bad habits that we creatives hold on to that get in the way of our own success.
How much more well-fed could every starving artist be if they read just two of your seven points and put serious effort into addressing their underlying concerns! As in... Worried about selling out? How could you attract monied people interested in your work in a way that maintains your creative integrity?
Many thanks for shining a spotlight on these issues,
Nicely put!
This is a great question:
Yes. As Willie the Shake said, that is the question. I'd like to think that authenticity in creative integrity is attractive--that doing something that only you can do makes your work valuable to others who admire that. Sure, it doesn't always pay that way. But selling out doesn't guarantee a payout, either.
Brilliant! Not only did this make me laugh as it hits very close to home but it also made me think a little about the various approaches I have taken in the past with regards to self worth, how to get more and how to manage it all. As always, your articles are insightful and always found just time!
Glad it raised a smile to soften the blow. ;-)
#2, #3, #4 are the closest to my case, for #7 I could tell opposite , I know perfectly well how to spend every euro/dollar ones when I earned it. It's not hard to figure out how to invest in important things for life.
Beside reasons you pointed out, the crucial thing in my case is motivation problem. When it comes to intristic motivation to create I hardly experienced eny problem but when it comes to motivation to create for earninig money just becouse I normaly need it I am wreally week. Beside that whats the moust interesting aboout is when it comes to negotiation and closing the deel of seling my artwork I know how to do it, but to know how to atrraced potentional custumers to make agreemats happened, this is a big problem, don’t know why but I am somehow blocked in that.
Please sorry for my lousy English it not my native si it probabily dasnt sound nice when I try to use it.
OK firstly I love the icons and mosaics on your site! There's an icon from Constantinople above my desk where I'm typing this. (Sadly not an original.)
So you're saying you're pretty good at negotiating and closing the deal once you're in discussion with a potential buyer, but it's generating the leads that's your biggest challenge?
If so, then have a look at my pieces about why artists and creatives have an unfair advantage at internet marketing and how to find an audience for your creative work.
In your case, I think you could do some great videos/photo articles about how you create your work - people interested in the creative process (like me) would be interested to see how it's done, and it would be a good way to attract links and word of mouth that could get you noticed by people who would be in the market for your work.
A brilliant post. It articulates the main reason I want to handle money well—so that it does not distract from the work I love to do.
Distractions are odious, as Shakespeare should have said. ;-)
"Creation is a better means of self-expression than possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed" by Vida Scudder.
"Happiness and Money are just a by-product of the good service you have given" by Henry Ford.
Hence:
Creativity, Market and Commitment are linked!!
You can work very hard from a creative point of view but the market plays a key role for your financial success!!
As a consequence, nowadays a creative person must be a "Purple Cow" ( expression made up by Seth Godin ) in a very good market and in so doing, financial success will be just a by-product!
But if you are a really, really creative person , you will be very, very happy to make just a decent living with your marvellous art !!
Othewise, you are just a sort of creative person because in the end you are more materialist than creative!!!
And if you are frustrated from a materialist point of view, you can't be good at creating your art!!
Ciao, greetings from Italy!
Ciao Fab, good to see you.
That's a nice quote... AND Ford worked pretty hard at setting up his by-production line. ;-)
I realized years ago that I'd spent my entire life believing that I was simply not capable of making money. Other people were wired to make money, but (I believed, without realizing it was a belief) I was not.
When I was faced with having to make a living, pronto, from my creative work, I unwittingly installed a glass ceiling over my head, setting a goal to "just get by."
Guess what happened? Yep: I made enough to just get by, and not one bit more.
For the past few years, I've been buy deprogramming myself of my unhelpful beliefs, and dismantling that damned glass ceiling. I've a long way to go still, but the *psychological* transformation has already been astounding.
I appreciate my value.
I acknowledge that I am phenomenally capable – of making money, and of learning how to make money even more effectively.
I have have updated goals to make much MORE than enough -- not because I want or need stuff to proof my worth (though I confess I like stuff!), but because I know that the more prosperous I am, the more impact I'll be able to make.
Not only will greater profits give me greater freedom to do my greatest work, but it will allow me to do things like fund the organizations and people that mean the most to me. To give back.
Along with eliminating money stress (a huge incentive, I agree), THAT's a really good reason in my book to take money a little more seriously!
Thanks Melissa, you're absolutely right that mindset is a critical factor here. We also need the hard calculations and concrete action - but if we haven't noticed that glass ceiling, we don't realise how much it's cramping us...
Yes! Of course without concrete action, we won't get anywhere. But I believe mindset is the biggest thing getting in the way of creative folks. (Or any folks, for that matter!)
Very well put, Melissa. Exactly what I was getting at below, but you did a much better job of saying it. :)
"That might sound like a no-brainer, but many creatives simply don’t realise the value of their work to potential buyers.
To us, it’s nothing special. It’s just what we do. "
This right here nails it. But for the person who can't do what we do but enjoys it/wants to own it, there is definitely a $ value attached. Think of a car mechanic. They're probably have a knack for it, they might even enjoy it. For someone who needs what they offer, they get paid handsomely for it. Artists have to realize that what they do does have value. If a creative goes into a situation feeling that what they do is 'nothing special', that will come across in their work and their attitude to potential clients. Then they wonder why no wants to pay them for their efforts.
I've come across this plenty of times - someone introduces themselves to me and downplays their ability. So when I see it for the first time, I'm expecting something poor or beginnerish - and then I'm blown away by the quality!
The expectations you create have a big impact on a potential buyer's perception of value.
This all speaks to me. Money is a near impossible topic. At times I have, literally, lost my ability to speak when asked about money and prices. I'd almost rather not sell anything than deal with it. But I try. I try anyway.
Good for you for sticking with it! And watch this space for some help in finding your voice...