pricing is a transmission
every facet of your everything is a transmission.
what you do. how you do it. why you do it.
clear carriers of message + meaning.
which is why being clear on + coherent with your transmission is fundamental.
the price you put on your work transmits your intention + purpose.
a call-and-response around who-and-why-and-when-and-how.
i see so much communal incoherence around the relationship between money + our mark making.
we have a lot to talk about there. and we will.
because we have to.
because it matters.
especially in light of the global moment + how it’s shifted life-and-self-and-community-and-world for all of us.
that on top of the hungry ghost of capitalism + the crushing weight of systemic racism / anti-Blackness / the many varieties of organized oppression.
it matters.
i haven’t raised my rates in a few years.
i was considering it before the global moment.
then that felt both incoherent + inhumane.
as i’ve been building this next octave of my work, i made a decision.
not only would i not raise my rates, i’d lower them.
sometimes people lower prices because they’re not selling at their current rate.
there’s no shame in needing to adjust.
and that hasn’t been my experience in a long time.
i’ve filled every spot i’ve opened on my calendar in the last decade.
at one point, i was scheduled almost a year in advance.
then i decided i had no interest in maintaining that kind of calendar anymore.
each month i have at least three times the amount of people asking for space than i have spaces to give.
every training i’ve taught has been full.
sometimes beyond my biggest expectations.
and i’ve been selling as much art as i can make.
my decision to lower my rates is based on my understanding of pricing-as-transmission.
shifting what i’m transmitting + who i’m transmitting to + why i’m transmitting at all.
like the art, for example.
so much – too much – of the art world has tried to make art an exclusive thing.
the domain of the wealthy, the self-appointed elite.
something for a select few.
this runs counter to how i understand the Indigenous origins of art.
art-for-all. everywhere. everywhen.
it also runs counter to who i want to have my art + with why the making of art is so primary for me.
and, deeper still, it’s at odds with how i want to be as a human.
it doesn’t support the kind of relationships i’m interested in.
or the communities i want to build + inhabit.
or how i want to feel about my art.
or what my art wants to be-and-do in the world.
art has quite literally saved my life.
making it. having it. living with it. being lived by it.
and, for me + my marks, that shouldn’t just be available to a select few.
so, i’m cohering the transmission.
the same holds for the work i’m doing with creative humans.
i’ve changed how i work.
and who i work with.
and how it’s priced.
and why i’m doing this work now.
we need wayshowers more than ever.
people clear on their soul medicine. firmly rooted in that medicine. coherently transmitting that medicine in effective ways.
including, for some, building a solid business based on that medicine, in ways that sustain both builder + the people they’re in community with.
there’s a larger conversation to be had around why i’ve decided to make these shifts.
we’ll get there.
right now, it’s important for me – for you, for all of us – to inhabit a coherent transmission.
what we’re transmitting. who we’re transmitting to. and why.
when we understand coherence, there’s no friction with our transmission.
this is true whether we raise or lower or maintain our rates.
and remember.
coherence is a process. a way of being. not a destination.
it’s not fixed anymore than we are.
i’m also not trying to fill gaps in my sense of self with things not designed for that.
so, for me, this comes down to being clear about what this new octave is.
and what it’s not.
to issue a good call to the people-and-purpose coherent with this octave + to make the response to that call simple, clear, now.
forward.
