How to make more money might be something that you have been wondering about. You’d love to earn more but having conversations around money can make people uncomfortable. I’m here to change that!
Money is such a political issue. We love it, hate it, need it, all with equal measure. as creatives it is easy to forget that money is an exchange of tokens for our time. Because our creative work is linked to us, we struggle to pay ourselves properly. Other times we enjoy the work so much we don’t want to charge for it.
In this podcast I talk about the ways that you can make more money now, without having to reinvent everything. I talk about the ‘low hanging fruit’, the ways that your audience might be holding you back from charging more, and how your skill set is more valuable than you realise.
Download and listen it it now:
Have an honest conversation with yourself
We never sit down and chat to ourselves about money. Money comes in and money goes out. But have you ever really thought about your relationship to it? We aren’t born knowing how money works, it is something that we learn from our parents and the people that we interact with.
Think back to when you were a child. How did your parents talk about money? Did they make you save it or encourage you to spend it? Did you get given pocket money or did you have to complete chores to get it? I was one of the kids who had to earn their pocket money, and that has certainly made me think differently about it, compared to my friends who were given it.
If you have children of your own, think about how you are teaching them about money. Are you encouraging them to save it or make it? Do you show them that you work, or that you need money to pay for things?
Maybe you live with your partner and you both have very different attitudes to money- try to unpick why this is, and how does it affect your relationship?
Making more money
How we treat money tells us a great deal about how we feel about it. We might feel embarrassed wanting more, because the social group that we hang out with see ‘rich people’ as bad, and not something to aim for.
I’m not suggesting that we all need to turn into millionaires overnight, but I am suggesting that we should be paid properly for the work that we do. This is something that I talk about in my book The Business Of Creativity, and I also breakdown the issues that some creatives have with their pricing.
Pricing can be hard at the beginning. You can end up trying to match your competitors, or under charge for the hours it took to complete a body of work. Pricing is something that we should review every few months. You might have completed new training, or else your profile was raised in a press article. All of theses things should make you think about changing your pricing.
The next step is to look at your skill set. Is there something that you do already that you could make a help sheet for, or a short course? “But my audience can’t pay more for what I offer!” If this is the case, look at a side-step audience who would be able to pay. Offer public speaking coaching for those working in corporate jobs who are happy to pay a high fee for your expertise. You can also sell courses on leadership if you are used to running big teams.
We forget that our skills are valuable to other people who might not be part of our customer base.
Let’s work on your mindset
Our mindset can make us struggle. It can be the one thing holding us back from achieving our dreams. There is no quick fix, but we can start working on it straight away. Look at the way you talk about money. Do you constantly say “I’m broke”, “I can’t afford that”, or “That’s too expensive for me”.
Think about the way that you can reword it. You might not have the money right now, but you could say “I’ll save up for that”, “That is gorgeous, I’m going to have that in the future” or “I’m going to figure out how to find the money for that”.
How we talk about things becomes our reality. If we constantly speak negatively about our incomes, that becomes our reality. We end up with a closed mindset. Trying to change the way we think about money is half the battle one.
To help you there is a free worksheet that you can download so that you can find ways to earn more money.
These articles might help you work out how to find more money as well.
How to find the right mentor and coach
How to up-sell to create more income
If you want more help I have a few mentor slots left for this year. Prices increase on the 30th September 2019. To grab a slot now and find out more click here: CLICK