If there is a common thread of questioning that weaves all creative professionals and entrepreneurs together, it’s pricing our work and offerings. At various stages of your entrepreneurial journey, you’ve probably asked all of these questions: How much should I charge? How should I price my work? How often should I change my prices? Essentially, what we really want to know is what is the right way to do it, so that we make money, avoid the plight of feast or famine, and be able to keep doing what we want to be doing. But did you ever stop to think about what actually goes into an hour of your time? I was surprised when I revealed a hidden habit of how I decided to charge for my hour.

When it comes to your business, do you have tunnel vision? Tunnel vision keeps you focused on the work directly in front of you, passively waiting for people to choose you. It tells you to share content consistently with the hope that what you have to say will resonate with someone, anyone. Most importantly, it keeps you trapped alone in the dark, surrounded by imaginary monsters. Inspired by something I read recently in Solo: How to Work Alone (and Not Lose Your Mind) by Rebecca Seal, I’m going to talk about business tunnel vision and share seven ways to escape it.

You never know how much you have grown until you are in a situation where you see clearly who you once were and who you have become. For years, I wanted people to tell me who I should be. Then somewhere along my journey, I shifted to doing anything I could do to get what I needed. But to my recent surprise, I discovered that I have been focusing on what I actually want, and in the process, found clarity, peace, and an opportunity to help more people. Where are you on your creative journey? Are you living in the land of shoulds, needs, or wants?

Comparison, jealousy, envy, impostor syndrome, fear of missing out, feeling like I don’t measure up—nothing triggers these feelings more than learning. From online courses to in-person experiences, along with multiple mediums of engagement, there are unlimited opportunities to learn daily. It always seems like everyone else is learning all the things, and I’m learning hardly anything. But I realized that the more important reality is not how much you are learning but how you best learn and tailor your experiences accordingly. In simpler terms: quality, not quantity.

I love those moments when you hear something so straightforward that it reveals something hidden in your brain. I recently shared feedback with a friend, and her response was swift: “Yep, I know that about myself, it’s a crutch.” I couldn’t get that phrase out of my head. I know what crutches are used for when we hurt our bodies, but what are they used for when it comes to our creativity? Are they good, bad, or even odd? These are the questions that I’m exploring, yes, in today’s monologue, but honestly, in my life. Because once you start revealing crutches in your life and work, you won’t stop seeing them. Then it becomes a question of, “What do you do with them?”

One of the constant forces of living a creative life is balancing the tension between creation and curation. Often, people explain those two acts of creativity as separate tasks: creators create and curators curate. Occasionally, they overlap, but they are usually separated. I don’t deny these two worlds. I think as creators we are in a constant state of both functions. We consume and curate the inspirational work that fuels our work. We create in the hopes that others will curate what we have done. But what happens as we amass a body of work throughout our lifetimes? How do we unearth the gold from the past so that people can benefit from it today? The answer is through the power of curation.

The past few weeks, I’ve been feeling stuck, left out, on the bench, not playing the game at my usual level of proficiency. The feelings were so intense, complex, and thick that I didn’t know where to start unpacking them. As I shared them with my business coach, she said a phrase that reverberated deep within me: “This sounds a lot like professional jealousy. I can so relate to this.” In this episode, I will tell a few stories of how professional jealousy has shaped my career. I’m going to talk about comparing yourself to others and how comparison is the root of professional jealousy. I’ll also share five ways to recognize and work through any jealousy you might be experiencing.

I was surprised when a theme popped up over the past few days. It’s centered around this question: What do you want your creative life to look like on your next milestone birthday? For me, that’s 50. It boggles my mind that I am closer to 50 than 30, let alone 20, but that’s just life. On the difficulty scale of questions to ask, this one is off the charts. I live life drifting between the present and some moment in the past. While I want to blame this behavior on the Internet, algorithms, and a culture that worships the youth and everything new, I don’t want to deal with reality. But I have to, just like we all do. And it starts with preparing for my creative future.

Lately, I’ve been asking myself and others this question, “When is an idea ready?” I’m curious about what it takes for others to act because ready is a commitment. It’s a decision to go from an abstract thought that plays out only in your head to something becoming realized through planning, acting, creating, editing, refining, publishing, shipping, and sharing. For myself, I’m not entirely sure when an idea is ready to go. I think it’s a mix of “can’t stop thinking about it” and “if I don’t do something now, I won’t do anything at all.” In other words, I amplify an internal sense of creative tension that I must resolve. For others, it’s a deadline, a belief, a desire, an obligation, even a calling.

I’m fifteen years into my business journey, and there is so much I still do not know. It seems like every day there is something new to learn. Not only about my business and the people I serve, but about myself. How I am wired; the future I want to create. The past I can’t seem to shake. In today’s episode of Getting Work To Work, I’m going to dive into a few lessons that I’m learning about business. It’s all about solidifying and creating a future that not only works for me but inspires other business owners to dig deep and go further than they thought possible. Business isn’t easy, so why make it harder on yourself than it already is?

What does it mean to trust yourself? Inspired by a quote from Seth Godin’s book, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work, I’m exploring what it means to trust yourself and how trust connects to your passion. For most of my business, I found it easier to trust someone else’s interpretation of me rather than trust my thoughts, desires, and feelings. But as I consider what it means to trust myself and do the work connected to that trust, I see an interesting new path forward. To outsiders, it looks a lot like where I’ve been before. But to me, it feels so much different.

How much time do you spend thinking about hypothetical scenarios, and how will you respond to them? If you’re anything like me, more time than you’d like to admit. After all, you’re proactive and responsible, but there is a fine line between planning and procrastinating. I recently realized that the more time I spend planning for problems that may or may not exist, the less time I spend producing work, improving my craft, and connecting with others. In today’s episode of Getting Work To Work, I’m going to explore several theoretical problems, why they are distractions, and how to keep moving forward.

If I were to summarize a common phrase I read, it would go something like this: “You are unique; the world needs your voice.” Every time I take that in, I nod along in agreement, but then another part of me starts questioning it. “Yes, I believe in the state of uniqueness, but with over 7.9 billion people in the world, not everyone needs my voice.” These feelings compound as I consider the way society takes the complexity of personalities and uniqueness and simplify them according to categorization, you know, putting people in boxes. Some groups are deemed worthy of speaking and being heard; others are silenced and shoved aside. Before I know it, a phrase meant to empower becomes something that overwhelms and quiets my soul. In today’s episode of Getting Work To Work, I’m going to explore what it means to share your unique voice for yourself and those around you.

A trap I’ve fallen into is only producing the exact amount of creative stuff required of me. No wasted effort. Efficient. I hold tight to it all, pretending every morsel of my creativity is precious. But today, my thoughts are different as I combine inspiration from Jeff Tweedy’s book, How to Write One Song: Loving the Things We Create and How They Love Us Back, with a fertile imagination in the initial stage of a new project. With all this energy and drive, what if I capture every idea possible without worrying about whether it’s correct or not? I’m going to explore this idea and ways to store your unused, rejected, and surplus ideas for future use.

https://media.blubrry.com/gettingworktowork/content.blubrry.com/gettingworktowork/gwtw506.mp3Podcast: Download (Duration: 7:19 — 11.1MB)Are you focused on telling a better story or becoming a more impactful storyteller? I think a lot about stories.

https://media.blubrry.com/gettingworktowork/content.blubrry.com/gettingworktowork/gwtw504.mp3Podcast: Download (Duration: 11:52 — 17.3MB)How do people make decisions? Not better decisions, the right ones, or even the wrong ones, but any decision from

https://media.blubrry.com/gettingworktowork/content.blubrry.com/gettingworktowork/gwtw502.mp3Podcast: Download (Duration: 7:16 — 11.0MB)There’s something to be said about having a productive, creative habit: doing your work, transforming ideas into art, and sharing