Dear Helen...I Struggle to Know My Value as a Creative
"I struggle to know my value, so I choose instead to give everything away so I don’t have to face that question."
This is the second Dear Helen column where I take a creative mindset issue someone has sent me and offer my own opinion on it. My advice is simply that. Advice. It is not a rule you ‘should’ be doing and it might not be for you but it is an alternative way of looking at a problem in order to push through towards your creative goals.
A creative writes:
“I’m scared of failure and of success. I struggle to know my value, so I choose instead to give everything away so I don’t have to face that question. And, I shrink a lot. I say, well, there’s not enough money for everyone to have a paid Substack, so I’ll just shy away in the corner. And then if I did do it, the pressure of what I think I need to give so as not to feel I’m letting people down is crippling. I worry I won’t keep up, so my solution is not to start. Equally crushing.”
I received this comment recently on Substack and my heart broke slightly. I knew exactly how this creative felt. Exactly. I went through similar feelings when I created my Patreon four or five years ago.
This creative is really struggling with her creative self-belief and self-worth. And much of it centres around money and putting a value on her creativity.
I know, I said the icky M-word. Money. Ugh.
Now I’m guessing, because she mentioned Substack in the paragraph that she’s, in fact, wanting to start one, or has already started one. So I’m going to break everything down with that assumption in mind. However, it could equally apply to someone wanting to make an income from their creativity in other ways, too.
Before I go any further I must reiterate that I am not a trained coach or in the psychology field. I call myself a mentor as I simply talk to other creatives about their issues and bring in my own experience as ‘an unconfident creative’ for well over a decade.
Let’s break the paragraph above down:
I struggle to know my value, so I choose instead to give everything away so I don’t have to face that question.
Yep, I’ve been here. I worked for free for some time and then when I did go paid I chose to deliberately keep my prices low to keep the pressure off. And by that I mean - I kept my prices low because I didn’t value what I could provide. This was when I was an ‘Instagram influencer’ when I created essays for my Patreon account, when I sold my workbook, when I created masterclasses or courses and when I priced myself as a mentor.
By giving everything away the pressure is taken right off. It’s easier to think - well, it’s for free so no one can complain if I’m not providing enough value, or if my writing isn’t brilliant, or if it’s not up to the standard of a glossy magazine or newspaper.
In other words, we place less pressure on ourselves.
It is not uncommon, I see so many of us doing this.
Incidentally, the price for paid subscribers to my Substack is £5 a month. I genuinely looked to see if I could charge £2 or £3 a month (again, to take that ‘pressure’ off) but Substack wouldn’t let me. They say they set it at a minimum of £5 so we ‘value our writing’. On Patreon, I would charge just $1 a month for a 3000-word essay. Then I felt guilty for writing and publishing it because my patrons were on a ‘pay once I produced the essay’ system. Yes, I felt guilty for taking money off my patrons even though that’s why they had become a patron in the first place.
In effect, people paying me money was actually stopping me from writing.
Yesterday I was encouraging my husband to start a Substack. “You could easily charge £10 a month for what you have to say,” I told him. And yet…I don’t have that self-belief in my own words, my own value, my own knowledge and experience.
Some years ago I wrote an essay about creativity and making money. Here is an extract showing you what I was thinking at the time:
If you’d asked me a few months ago if I had a problem with charging people for my work I’d have said a flat-out ‘no’. Why would I have a problem with money? Money is great. It allows you to pay the bills, to provide for your family, to buy necessities and, if you’re lucky, treats and holidays and lovely things like that.
Who wouldn’t want to earn money doing something they loved? Writing on my computer. Extracting words and ideas out of my head and committing them to paper, or filming them on my camera. I can fit it in around my children and watch each and every sports match, I get time off whenever I want and walk the dogs during the day. It’s a fantastic way to earn a living. An absolute privilege.
That is if you allow yourself to earn a living this way.
So why do I always run away every time I start making real progress and, as a result of that, real money? What is it I’m scared of?
As I’m sitting here typing that last sentence I pause and think for a while. Because I genuinely don’t know the answer. I’m watching the snow come down outside the kitchen window and my phone, next to me, makes me jump. It’s my husband and he’s just texted that my daughter has been made captain for their big netball tournament today. I think about my daughter, who’s eleven, and how she’s constantly telling me how great I am with my writing and my YouTube but also how confident she seems to be in her own abilities. Confident without being arrogant.
Where is my confidence in my abilities?
***
My thoughts daily consist of who on earth do I think I am charging people for my creativity?
And who am I to sit at home playing at being a writer? Surely I was just one of those housewives that pretended they had a job whilst their husband went out and earned a proper living with proper work?
My head was and still is alive with thoughts like these on a daily basis.
And quite honestly I am sick of it. Utterly sick of it.
So, I’m not backing down this time. I’m sitting here at my kitchen table, three days it took me on and off to write this essay. This time I didn’t start it only to get so far and then neglect it for weeks. I’ve consistently written five hundred to a thousand words every day.
I watched a YouTube video the other day by Rachael Herron a hybrid author and podcaster. She was talking about money and shame. Rachael felt shame because she was in debt. Me, I feel shame for wanting to make a career and earn money doing something I love.
Shame. Guilt, Feeling like a fraud.
It’s time for those feelings to be placed in the trash.
Not all of us in our creative lives have a Patrick Swayze saying “Nobody puts baby in a corner” before hauling us out.
We have to haul ourselves out. We have to have sharp elbows and push our heads above the parapet. We have to take a step out of our comfort zone when our mind is screaming at us to stay where we are.
And it’s bloody hard. But it is achievable.
I say, well, there’s not enough money for everyone to have a paid Substack
I’ve caught myself thinking this, too. In my low moments when I’m questioning what I’m doing I think of it like a pyramid scheme and that at some point it’ll all come tumbling down.
But in reality, it’s not like that.
Do you know why your brain is telling you this? It’s because it’s trying to stop you from taking a leap out of your comfort zone. It is trying to protect you.
In instances like this, I find it helps to look at some hard facts and figures. Here is an example and I’m just going for a few English-speaking countries for this purpose:
There are over 330 million people in the USA.
There are over 67 million in the UK.
There are over 38 million in Canada.
There are over 25 million in Australia
If you’re looking for 250 paid subscribers at £5 a month which would give you a monthly payout of £1000 (rounded down to £4 a month roughly after Substack and Stripe fees) just from these four countries (a total of 480,000,000 people) you are looking to attract just 0.0001% of the population. There’s a lot of noughts in that percentage. If you go worldwide there’d be even more noughts.
So when you look at it in those terms there are way more people who could potentially read your substack than you think. I know this is a crude way to do it and there are far more variables and interests and the number of adults and all sorts but I do think the internet makes us think the entire world is very small and that we are all chasing the same audience. And it really isn’t. And we aren’t.
Just in the last half an hour, I saw a tweet from someone celebrating their 70,000th subscriber on Substack. That’s almost the capacity of the England Rugby Stadium at Twickenham near London. A lot of people.
We are not all chasing the same audience. People subscribe to me for a number of reasons, for example, they relate to what I write about, they like my style of writing or they like to follow my creative journey. And it will be the same for you. Even if two people are writing about very similar things it might be that they relate to one person more than another. We all have our own writing voice, writing style and way of approaching a subject.
Hypothetically, if there was a limited number of people willing to pay for writing - why shouldn’t you be one of the people who receive the money?
What makes you less than other people?
There could be a number of people scattered around the globe who really identify with what you have to say. You could make a real difference in someone’s life.
And that’s when we come around to the value we give our words, our talent, and our thoughts. Our lack of awareness of our talents. Our comparison with other creatives. Our lack of self-belief.
That’s all it comes down to. By not charging for our writing or creativity we can hide away in a corner and stick rigidly within our comfort zone. It’s safe there. By charging the minimum £5 or $5 a month we are putting our feet well outside our comfort zone. It’s scary. It’s hard. But it is achievable.
No one pays if they don’t want to. You are not forcing them. It’s entirely voluntary.
And that’s when we come to the next part of the paragraph:
And then if I did do it, the pressure of what I think I need to give so as not to feel I’m letting people down is crippling. I worry I won’t keep up,