The following is an excerpt from my new book The Artists & Profit Makers Guide to Pricing, which is available for pre-order now!
I have a confession to make.
I’ve long harbored the idea that imposter syndrome is a little bit bullshit. I can’t quite explain why I originally felt that way, other than that it was an emotion I didn’t seem to experience. In a way, it felt like a form of self-sabotage, where people were just holding themselves down out of some made-up feeling or lack of self-worth. (If you’re someone who suffers from imposter syndrome, please don’t think I’m judging you. This story has a twist.)
My feelings seemed to be confirmed when I watched a video of entrepreneur and writer Reshma Saujani delivering a commencement address at Smith College. In the speech, Saujani shares how imposter syndrome is a result of systematic exclusion, rather than an individual phenomenon. We feel like imposters, Saujani tells us, because there are systems in place designed to make us feel that way. When certain places — a profession, a university, a career milestone — weren’t designed to accommodate us, of course, we’re bound to feel like an imposter if we find ourselves in those places.
There it is, I thought watching the speech. Proof of what I’ve thought all along, that imposter syndrome is bullshit.
And then I got hit with a bout of it myself.
I’ve been mostly fortunate to avoid imposter syndrome in my time as an artist or maker (save a brief stint in graduate school), but it reared its ugly head hard in my career as a writer. After trying and failing to get a book traditionally published (I wrote a book proposal but was unable to secure an agent, let alone a publisher) I pivoted to self-publishing.
Since then, I’ve been prolific, publishing five books. (This is number six.) The self-publishing game, where the volume of books published is an asset, is different than traditional publishing, where an author focuses on one book at a time for several years or longer, first writing and then promoting a single book.
In many ways, the process of self-publishing suits me better. I have a lot to say (in case it wasn’t obvious when I wrote over 30,000 words on email marketing) and I write in a niche where I might struggle (as it turned out to be the case) to get traditionally published.
But there’s still a part of me that feels like a bit of a failure for not securing a traditional book deal, and I see that imposter syndrome comes into play in the ways I do and (more often) don’t market my books.
Why am I telling you this story in a book about pricing?
Because despite my initial doubts that it existed at all, I’ve realized that imposter syndrome can have a big impact on your ability to price your work with confidence.
Whenever I teach pricing to artists and makers, I inevitably get some form of this comment:
“But who am I to charge that much for my work?”
It usually doesn’t come out exactly like that. Instead, it usually comes into play when we’re talking about market comps.
Market comps are art or other products out in the marketplace that you find to help support the prices you want to charge for your work. Comps is technically shorthand for comparison, but I like to think of comps more as support or justification. By seeing these other prices in the marketplace, you should feel better about selling your work at that price as well.
Instead, I often see the opposite happen. Artists and makers will give me all the reasons why they couldn’t possibly charge that much.
“Well she has an MFA and I don’t.”
“She’s been doing this for 20 years, I only started selling my work a year ago.”
“Their company has 50,000 Instagram followers, I barely have 500.”
“She works in a more expensive material than I do.”
“They have top-of-the-line equipment and mine is old and outdated.”
All of these excuses, it turns out, are a form of imposter syndrome.
As Saujani mentions in her speech, I don’t think these perceived shortcomings are only in our heads. They come from the different ways that our society marks value.
We think that our art is less valuable if we don’t have formal training because there’s an entire industry out there whose very existence depends on us thinking that to be a successful artist, you need to go to art school. (Something I thoroughly debunk in my book Permission to Be an Artist.)
We think that someone who has been doing this longer than us must be making work that’s more valuable. And while yes, I think we all deserve to earn more the longer we’ve been in the field, most of the people who have long careers in the arts simply have the luck of being surrounded by people who supported their artistic careers earlier. You deserve to make a living wage from your art, even if you didn’t have that support or exposure that would have started your art career sooner.
We think that someone who has a bigger social media following than us must be doing better (or more valuable work) because our society now uses followers as a marker of value and personal worth. In reality, social media is a lottery. Some people just get luckier (and gain more followers) than others. In fairness, maybe it’s more like the poker table. Some people can employ a combination of skills and tricks to succeed, but there’s also the luck of the cards. Sometimes you can do everything “right” and still end up with a bad hand.
When we compare ourselves to others in this way and use it as a reason to devalue our own work, that is a form of imposter syndrome. It’s what leads us to ask “Who am I to charge that much?” when calculating our prices.
I wish I could give you some magic bullet to get over this particular money mindset hurdle, but as I discovered for myself, imposter syndrome can be tough to shake. That’s because it’s rooted not just in our guts, but in outside forces that are designed to make us feel inadequate. Getting past it means reminding ourselves that our work has value, even if it wasn’t created in the expected way or if we didn’t take the traditional path.
If your imposter syndrome comes from your lack of an art degree, it’s important to keep in mind that art degrees are a modern invention. For most of history, artists weren’t educated in art schools, and there’s no guarantee that’s how artists will be educated in the future. (When you factor in the rising cost of college tuition, unless something changes, it seems unlikely that artists will choose this path in the future.) Not having a degree doesn’t make your work any less valuable, especially when you take into account that most customers aren’t familiar with your background when they make a purchasing decision.
The same is true for the length of time you’ve been practicing your art. We all take different paths in life. Some of us discovered our passions when we were young, others when we were much older. But just like with your degree, your customers don’t know or care, and more importantly, they probably aren’t using the time you’ve been in business as a way to assess the value (and hence the price) of your work.
The value of your work, and the price people are willing to pay, are influenced by a variety of factors, most of which have nothing to do with you. When you let self-doubt about your personal experience impact your prices, you sabotage your chances of running a profitable business based on factors that your customers rarely consider.
This goes for technical prowess as well. My other experience with imposter syndrome came when I was in graduate school, though at the time, I just thought I couldn’t hang.
Despite having an undergraduate degree in metalsmithing, I was never the most technical metalsmith. I spent half my time in undergrad hanging out in the fibers studio, and my undergrad thesis used as many (if not more) textile techniques as it did metalsmithing skills. When I got to grad school, my fellow first year was one of the most skilled technical metalsmiths I have ever met. He had a level of knowledge and precision I couldn’t fathom. Meanwhile, I was sitting there sewing cut-up pieces of balloons into flowers.
It didn’t help that my advisor told me that she didn’t accept me into the program because of my metalsmithing skills. But, and this part is key, she told me part of my appeal as a candidate was that I was so entrepreneurial. She wanted me because I had a different, but no less valuable skillset, to bring to the program. But I spent my first semester in a complete panic, that I would be found out as a fraud for my lack of “real” metalsmithing skills, when instead I should have been leaning into the things I was good at.
We suffer from imposter syndrome and doubt the value of our work because we only measure ourselves against certain bars — usually ones we can’t clear. And that sets us up for failure.
I don’t have the patience or the personality to be a super technical metalsmith, but being in school with someone who did made me think that was the bar I should measure myself against as well.
But guess what? My advisor didn’t care about that bar and my customers don’t either.
My customers don’t buy my jewelry because of my metalsmithing skills. Yes, the skills I ended up developing are what make my jewelry possible. (Rather than learning traditional metalsmithing skills, I learned to torch-weld steel wire, which made my production process faster and easier.) But those skills suit my strengths and personality. I was never going to be a super technical metalsmith, so I stopped measuring myself against that bar.
And this is true for your work as well.
You doubt the value of your work because you’re measuring it against the wrong bar. (A bar your customers don’t even see.) We all have different strengths and the value of your work comes when you recognize the value that is uniquely yours.
Another bar that we tend to unfairly measure ourselves by is popularity, especially online. I often hear artists and makers tell me they can’t charge as much as someone else because that person has waaaaay more followers on social media than they do.
But social media followers (or any other online metrics) aren’t a true representation of the value of your work, and they certainly don’t determine how much you get paid. (Unless you’re literally selling yourself as an influencer.) In the next chapter, we’ll look at the concrete factors that determine your work’s price (such as the material costs, how long it takes to make, and the cost of living where you’re based), and in the third chapter, we’ll look at other markers of perceived value that can impact your final price. But spoiler alert: social media followers or other online metrics don’t factor into any of those.
When we let imposter syndrome impact the way we price our work, we are doing a disservice to the value our work brings to the world. Getting over imposter syndrome isn’t always easy, but as we work through the more concrete pricing exercises later in the book, I want you to be mindful of when you feel those thoughts creeping in. Anytime you find yourself thinking, “Well I can’t charge that because of X” I want you to stop and ask yourself if you’re measuring your work by the wrong bar.
Instead, focus on the bars that do make sense for your work. What is it that makes your work great? What is it that customers love about your work? Focusing on the positive aspects, instead of measuring your work against impossible standards, is the best way to banish imposter syndrome from the pricing equation.
Want to learn more about how your mindset affects your pricing? Pre-order The Artists & Profit Makers Guide to Pricing today!
