Art and Fear (part one): Interview with Hannah on The Passionate Painter podcast

“I think artists make a mistake thinking that their work speaks for itself.

Your work is wonderful.

But your work needs a frame, and you are the frame. You can tell people what to think of your work. Because if you don't, they're going to pick it up from other stuff - like the fact that you seem really insecure.

And they're going to be like, "ok, I guess it's not good."

You know, you're telling them that when you say, "I guess...uh..."

If you talk like that, you're saying, this isn't very good."

Listen to a thought-provoking interview about my own insecurities as a painter, and how I've learned to manage them, and what I've learned from artists who do well. RIGHT HERE.

Two shifts to help you sell more without selling out.

By guest writer, Business Strategist Sarah M. Chappell

You make beautiful work. You provide a service that helps your customers. You craft gorgeous products. You teach people life-enriching skills. There’s only one problem:

You feel so gross when you have to sell.

Most artists and creative small business owners operate from the “sales are slimy” belief at some point in their journey to make sustainable incomes from their work. But being afraid to sell because you feel that it’s manipulative or unethical—or that if your work were any good people would just buy anyway—leads to the same result: low sales that prevent you from having the freedom to devote your time to your craft.

If you experience this tension between wanting to be financially fueled by your work but afraid to actually ask people to pay you, you’re not alone. The good news? There are two simple shifts that you can make in your relationship to sales that will help you to promote your work without feeling like you’re selling out.

1. Stop making sales about you

Have you ever started a newsletter or social media post with the words “I’m so excited to share…”?

Or maybe it’s “I love this new piece” or “I’ve worked so hard to make this.”

(You can raise your hand. No one can see you.)

What do all of these have in common?

“I.” The focus is firmly on your experience as the maker, creator, business owner. No wonder you feel gross asking people to buy things from you! It sounds like you’re asking for a favor rather than an appropriate exchange for your brilliance, labor, and what your work will bring to the customer. 

Instead of centering your experience when talking about your work, try focusing on the customer: what does your piece, product, or service make possible for them? What will they experience through their purchase? What do they get out of it? 

This simple shift can have a massive impact on your relationship to selling. Your potential customers are not doing you a favor, or buying to make you happy. They’re buying your work because they want to!

2. Start focusing on service

There’s a business idiom that states “selling is a service,” and for good reason. Selling is not about forcing someone to buy your thing or reaching through the computer screen or across the event booth to grab their credit card.

Selling is about helping your potential customer to make a decision.

If someone is following your social media, walking into your shop, on your mailing list, or visiting your website, there’s usually a pretty simple reason: they’re interested in your work. They are actively seeking you out and want to know what you have to offer.

This means that your job is not to convince a potential customer that they need what you make, but to ensure that they have all of the information to make a buying decision.

Purchasing is an exercise in prioritization. Do I need this thing now? Is this experience or outcome what is most important to me at this moment? Does this solve a problem that feels urgent or like I’m ready to tackle? Will it help me?

When a customer is exploring your work, they’re running through these kinds of questions in their minds, even if they’re not conscious of it. And now that you know this, you get to answer them! Your sales materials are not going to focus on why you love your work, but how your work helps your potential customer. What transformation it will facilitate. What values it will affirm. What beauty it will bring to their lives.

Your customer is looking to you to help them navigate your work, understand its impact, and ultimately decide whether or not they want to prioritize it. You don’t need to sell them on it. You just need to help them.

Want to learn more about how to sell without that slimy feeling in the pit of your stomach? Business strategist Sarah M. Chappell is leading a free live training just for the Sunlight Tax community all about attracting your ideal customers without doing all the things or feeling like you’re selling out. Learn more and reserve your spot HERE.

Your Superpower: Seeing What Others Don't, a podcast interview

A podcast episode about art + entrepreneurship on Brand New Women, hosted by Scarlet Batchelor

“I want to say to you if you’re a woman or are BIPOC or are from a historically marginalized group:

You have a superpower. If you have had to operate in a world that doesn’t always see you, or that underestimates you, then you see things that they don’t see. And there’s business opportunity in that.”

Fostering democracy in the art world: an interview on the Not Real Art podcast

In this episode, Hannah debunks the myth that artists are no good with numbers and shares some practical advice to help us impart our own ‘freaky flavor’ into our businesses while also taking money-making seriously. You’ll also gain some insight into her journey from punk-rock-loving anticapitalist to creative tax specialist and what she learned about the art world and her own practice along the way, plus so much more!

In all of my talks, I always end with an appreciation for what artists do in the world, which is [that] we are the empathy builders. We are the people bridging divides and showing the less creative part of the population that a better world is possible. I think it can be really hard when you are an artist. I want all artists to take the making-money part more seriously, treat themselves like they deserve it, and not think of all money as evil and all people with money as evil, because those are attitudes that shoot you in the foot. They stop you from having any financial security.

Listen to the episode here.

Money Story: Lex Ritchie

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Lex Ritchie is a tarot reader and folk magical educator. You can find more about their work at www.thelexritchie.com IG @thelexritchie

HC: Who are you, what are your pronouns, and what do you do?

I’m Lex Ritchie, I use they/them pronouns, and I’m a tarot reader and folk magical educator. I help folks connect to their magic so they can make change in their lives and in their world.

HC: What brought you to a place where you wanted to learn how to get your money stuff together?

LR: It was really starting my own business that prompted it. I’m not someone who has a ton of experience with money. I grew up working class, not affluent. For a large part of my adult life, I didn’t make enough money to have to file taxes. By the time I started a business, I had never filed taxes. The other half of my adult life was filled with bad tax experiences--I had terrible luck with taxes. One year my partner's employer was committing tax fraud. Another year a number was wrong on our W2, and caused an enormous headache, and another year I was paid differently because I was a grad student. 

I went from making too little to file to owing taxes every year after that. When I started my business, I needed to figure this out and know what I’m doing.

Like a lot of people who go from being poor to having some money, there’s this pain around that. There is a shame of not knowing. A shame that you have to know these things now. I needed to go into this business with my eyes open, not giving in to the past trauma or knee-jerk responses I had before. I wanted to build my business and grow it into something that can support me. I had to take responsibility towards my business, like taxes. I wanted to take personal responsibility towards that.

HC: Is there anything that being in Money Bootcamp has taught you, or that has changed for you?

LR: It’s funny. I’ve been a part of Money Bootcamp for two years. I wouldn't at any point have been able to pinpoint that I know these things or that my relationship to money is changing, until I was talking to a friend who is switching to contract work from full time employment, because she has a baby. And I’m like, “hey, there are these tax benefits, and she’s like hey, how do you know all this?”

The fact I pay my quarterly taxes, I’m in this position where I know enough to ask the right questions, I don’t have to just go along with it. I know enough to advocate for myself - it provides me with knowledge and not just garbled nonsense. 

I come from a science background. My major was in science communication, so I know a lot about communication.

One thing that comes from having greater financial literacy is that I, as someone who owns my own business, have to pay taxes out of my account every quarter. It’s not automatic. Better financial literacy means knowing when I have enough, and don’t. Budgeting. That’s been part of this larger effort in my life of how to navigate money. Because I have this thing--I didn’t have money growing up, so I never feel like I have enough. I’ve learned how to navigate what I need, earmark for savings, and figure what is ok. Both my partner and I are chronically ill. Figuring out that my partner will not be able to do his work forever. Ensuring ok-ness with that. Past baggage from not knowing when we had enough. 

It’s easy to hoard. That is the default. When you grew up feeling like you needed to hoard money, its easy to do, because there’s a cultural default. [Having a sense of enough-ness is] helping me live my values in that way.

Having enough: for me, when I was in engineering, I studied sustainability. Sustainability is important to me. One reason I left grad school is that when we talk about sustainability, we aren't’ critiquing the ways we talk about progress, money, and the economy. The ways those feed sustainability and feed structures of unsustainability. The same goes for money and my values--I value sustainability and abundance. There’s a ceiling to that. It looks different. It manifests differently for different people. I’m recognizing that sufficiency for myself. Growing up poor, when you're stuck in insufficiency for so long, it’s hard to recognize when you really do have enough. For me, numbers make sense. Seeing it in my numbers was helpful, and allowed me to see that it is sustainable, that I could share more, and that saving wasn’t just pointless--I was able to build a cushion.

HC: Is there anything else you’d like other people to know?

LR: Something I want to talk about is to shout out to you, and how amazingly you hold space for how complicated and stressful and wrapped up in trauma and injustice taxes are. 

When we had our conversation last year, I was like “I have perennial problems around taxes” and you were like “none of that is your fault.”

You can learn more about what Lex does at their website: https://thelexritchie.com/