THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman:
Well, hello. This is your host artist, Miriam Schulman, and you’re listening to episode 117 of the Inspiration Place podcast. I am so grateful that you’re here. Today we’re talking all about poverty mindset. In this episode, you’re going to discover the difference between poverty mindset and starving artist mindset and how to break free of those limiting beliefs.
Today’s guest has dedicated her life to expanding how others interact with the world through powerful conversations. As an entrepreneur and certified coach, her work is frequently focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, imperfect allyship, and imposter syndrome. This work has taken her across the country onto stages and communities as a key speaker and educator. Our guest has a podcast that features open conversation and dialogue on the topics of her work and more. It’s called Pause on the Play. It’s amazing. I’m a huge fan. Go listen to it. Her support and leadership facilitates engaged conversations within six figure communities, international podcasts, and live events to connect people and create change. Please welcome back to the Inspiration Place, Erica Courdae.
Erica Courdae:
Hello, hello, hello.
Miriam Schulman:
You have the honor of being only the third guest I’ve invited back.
Erica Courdae:
I’m going to call someone who I think everybody’s very familiar with. I maybe, maybe not the first, but the third one. I won’t be the last.
Miriam Schulman:
The other two who returned where our friend, Rebecca Bass Chang. I had to have her back twice. It was just too good.
Erica Courdae:
Because Rebecca is amazing. Her conversation is not contained to one episode.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh no. And yours too. Like we got to the end of the hour and I was like, Oh, we have so much more to talk about.
Erica Courdae:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
And yours was one of the few that my husband listened to through the end. He was like, Oh, that’s good. I liked this one.
Erica Courdae:
Yes. When you told me that. I was like, Oh, I’m like, wow. Okay. I’m honored. Thank you.
Miriam Schulman:
All right. So today, Erica, we are talking about poverty mindset, which is something, it’s like artist’s mindset, but it’s kind of next level. So could you make a definition for us before we dive in.
Erica Courdae:
From my pint of view, part of it is, I think there’s poverty mindset in the sense that there’s this addiction to staying in it for some people. So there’s this place of like, it’s almost like the addiction to hustle culture. If I stay in this, this gives me something that I’m familiar with and I can stay tethered to it and somehow or another, it keeps me from going forward, but I can kind of use it as an excuse or a roadblock and some people can get stuck with that. But the other piece of it to me is this place of almost allowing who you are or how you are or something that’s been passed down possibly, limit you from what you can do, which you feel like is accessible to you. And that doesn’t mean that it’s all made up, but for some people it can become an excuse and it can become something that’s like, I can’t because of this.
And so where you’ll hear some people that talk so much about mindset and it may be part of it, but it really is a bigger conversation than that. And one of the examples that myself and India, my business partner, she’s been here as well have talked about, is this piece of like, what happens if from the example of a black person, you’re literally trying to charge something that you had family members that were bought and sold for less. And so it’s hard to get past these things. Sometimes it’s a large concept.
Miriam Schulman:
Wow. That’s like, I just had to like exhale a little bit. Yes, there is an artist recently in the New York times, her last name is Self. I’m going with the lasting cause the first name I will botch. So she’s an African-American woman. Her artwork is gorgeous and she was talking, and her artwork is going for like incredible prices now. We’re talking five, six figures. And she was talking about how triggering it is to see her art, which is figurative, go on auction, which is not what we’re talking about today. But that just like brought that to mind like that whole concept of she’s saying she was just very triggered by that.
What we’re mostly talking about today and I see this from a lot of artists. I did notice this more, which is why I wanted to bring you in because I feel it is a delicate conversation for me to have without help is, I did see with clients who came to me, prospects of color, that it was like the next level of starving artist mindset. And the way I see it showing up for everybody, regardless of background, skin tone, it’s really about increasing their capacity to allow abundance into their life. It’s not so much different than somebody who maybe has identified themselves as heavy or overweight and suddenly they lose weight. They have that difficulty, having that capacity to be the thin person, if they’ve always seen themselves in a certain way.
And part of what I see with the poverty mindset is if they’ve always seen themselves as that kind of person who doesn’t have a lot of money, it can be very difficult to charge prices and now be the person who does have money. I’m inviting you here to correct me wherever you disagree, where I got that wrong, or to add to it.
Erica Courdae:
Okay. So it’s not wrong. And I think that there’s a number of pieces to it. Part of it, I think is the fact that there is that capacity of how you see yourself. Can you receive it, but can you hold it? Can you maintain it? Do you have the capacity to keep it? It’s just like when you hear people talk about people that won the lottery and it’s like, you had all this money, but you couldn’t keep all this money. You didn’t know how to maintain it. And it’s not even always about stewardship. It’s about, are you in a place to where you can’t unwittingly undo all of this because you just can’t see yourself as this person. You can’t wrap your brain around this other iteration of who you are. But I do think that there’s this large part around, again, this capacity to receive and to hold, because if you have somebody that, from the artist’s standpoint, money can sometimes, from my point of view and how I’ve always put a process that artist mindset is that you’re almost a sellout, if you’re charging money and you’re receiving money and the accolades and the praise comes from not wanting to sell out, not charging large amounts. And again, being addicted to the hustle of it.
There is this kind of almost next level of it in the sense of, okay, you want more money, but can you charge more money? Can you receive that money when it shows up in your bank account? Can you be willing to understand that you have done what you needed to, to be worthy of it? And I think the worthiness is a big part of it when there’s this subliminal and sometimes very overt conditioning that you’re not worthy of this. You’re not entitled to this. You don’t deserve this. You can’t have this. I don’t give this to people like you, whatever people like you happens to be in that situation, because you don’t know what to do with it. You’re not smart enough. Just keep it simple and don’t do these things. And when you go beyond that, you’re pushing a status quo to do something that people like you aren’t supposed to do. Again, whatever people like you means, whether it’s woman, whether it’s a black person, whether it’s an indigenous trans person, it’s a queer person, whatever it is, you’re not supposed to do this. And so where in you do you possibly have something ingrained that’s going to try to prove that true, unknowingly.
Miriam Schulman:
What you believe becomes true for you. You’re always going to look for evidence of why that’s true.
Erica Courdae:
Right. And so, to be able to get to a point to understand that the way that you were conditioned to view or to think about yourself is not based on your own sense of worth, it’s based on somebody else’s lack of self-worth or their need for you to be lesser than in order to validate their self-worth. And so you don’t know that this isn’t yours, like it really takes some effort to get out of that, to realize that this isn’t how I feel about myself. This is what I was told I was supposed to feel about myself, but it’s not true. And to be able to live in a world and attempt to reconcile with yourself, that you do feel differently, even though the world doesn’t reflect that, which is where I think that the poverty mindset can be very, almost painful because you’re trying to change your own thought process. But the world is like, nope, no, no, we don’t do that. This is what this is. And you’re supposed to stay here. You’re not supposed to do this. And there’s so many things that fight against you when you try to.
Miriam Schulman:
One of the ways that I help my artists see that they can make more money is to not just raise their prices, but paint bigger. And another way, Erica, I see these things that these conditionings start to play in, particularly with women even more so minority woman is the idea that when you’re painting something bigger, you’re now taking up more space. Can we talk about that? Like why it’s so hard to take up space and the messaging about how we’re supposed to stay small and stay quiet and behave.
Erica Courdae:
Because taking up space wasn’t safe. When you were raised in a way that taking up space, having wants, having needs, using your voice, actually being audible with this voice, let alone having a purpose to it, that wasn’t safe. I mean, it’s true absolutely for black people. It’s true for indigenous people. It’s true for LGBTQ plus people. And it’s definitely true for women. We were not taught that it was safe to have a voice. Having a voice could very well, in some cases, literally, get you killed. It could cause physical pain. And that’s before you even talk about spiritual, mental, or emotional harm and trauma that you could endure by having a voice. Taking up space means that you allow yourself to be visible. It means that you’re allowing yourself to speak up and to not fade into the background and to not just go with whatever someone else says you’re to just simply nod your head to. When having a voice or taking up space or being vocal is something that was very often proven to not be safe, then it’s very, again, difficult to undo that conditioning.
If you, and I always go back to animal cruelty, because unfortunately there are some people that have a better time envisioning these things through the sense of animals than they do humans. But if a dog is repeatedly kicked, at some point, it doesn’t matter how much love and affection you want to give this dog, this dog has been used to being kicked. And so even with another owner, it takes a lot of time and work and effort and deconditioning to prove that it literally is safe to do these things that it was proven before were unsafe. And so it’s very difficult when you have somebody that is trying to request more money, because I think that there is a place of when it’s bigger than self, it’s easier to do it. When it’s simply because I want more money, you’re made to feel like you’re being selfish. But it’s okay to want nice things. It’s okay to not want. Like I ate, but where you nourished? That’s a different thing. It’s one thing to be able to make it, it’s another to thrive. There are so many people that can’t even wrap their brain around thriving because it’s not even safe to exist.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. And I just want to point something out in case it’s not clear, you don’t have to be the one that’s kicked, if your mama was.
Erica Courdae:
See from that point of view, let’s also acknowledge that epigenetics, that whole passing of it down from like a genetic standpoint. But if you’re having to watch it by osmosis, that could be yours because that is what’s being modeled to you. So absolutely.
Miriam Schulman:
I do believe they’re signs about epigenetics, but even if you don’t buy into that, just to give a story example, my late mother-in-law was terrified of bridges because she witnessed a sibling die by falling off a bridge, terrified of them. My husband is now terrified of bridges. Is it epigenetics or is it because every time they went to a bridge, his mother froze up and got anxious or started yelling. I don’t even know what kind of behavior she had. I can only imagine because I remember what she was like. But if your mother acted like a crazy person every time you were near a bridge, you’re taught bridges are scary things.
Erica Courdae:
So conditioning.
Miriam Schulman:
Exactly. So even if you reject that science of it, there is going to be a certain level of conditioning that is going to be passed down to you by crazy parenting or whatever, however, that is showing up because you had a parent or a sibling or somebody else who’s experience was [inaudible 00:14:35].
Erica Courdae:
And this is the point that I’m going to say, I won’t call it crazy parenting only because, and this is also part of my own work of trying to not use crazy from an ableist standpoint. Okay.
Miriam Schulman:
To be compassionate to our parents. Well, my mother isn’t crazy.
Erica Courdae:
Well, but that’s the catch 22 right here in that there are some of our parents that are what medically might get that, and I’m using air quotes here, term “crazy” in the sense that like there’s true medical instability or some type of mental illness happening. And that’s just the fact of how those things were not diagnosed or acknowledged. It was just, oh, deal with it. It’s the sense of like, there were legitimately things happening and then there were these things that you’re just like, Oh my gosh, what is happening right now? And so there are things that in our head, we’re just like, I don’t want to be that thing. And yet there were legitimately mental illness and trauma type of things to be addressed that weren’t addressed. Them going unaddressed just was another part of the problem. And so I do think that, yes, the conditioning that we received from people that had trauma or mental illness or mental instability or a shitty environment. My mother grew up during a time during civil rights to where, again, my grandmother could pass to get in places and her children could not.
So she grew up during a time when it was like, there were shitty things happening around her and she was conditioned by some of those things. As where I think likely everyone else that grew up during that time frame, that was a black person because you didn’t have a choice, but then what do you do with that? When it’s passed on, when then me seeing that for her, it wasn’t safe being a black woman, doing a white man’s job. I saw that it wasn’t safe for her to feel as though she could be herself. And it then in turn was not safe for me to be myself. It wasn’t safe for me to have wants, it wasn’t safe for me to have needs. It wasn’t safe for me to really ask for things, not in a sense of how, like, I can want more than just the basics. I can have a voice and be visible and ask for what I want. And that would acknowledge that I’ve already admitted it to myself.
That’s not an easy thing. And if you grow up around the fact that you can’t do those things, then you become an adult and you’re supposed to do these things, and then you can’t wrap your brain around it, then you have something that you’re good at and you can’t receive adequate compensation for it because you’re wrong. Oh, do you think you’re better than everyone else? What makes you think that you deserve to be paid this amount of money? What makes you think that you are entitled to be respected or acknowledged for this? You’re not better than me. And so when you have that story playing in your mind, it can limit you and you get addicted to this place of I don’t have, and yet I can’t receive.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s not that they say, I don’t feel that I can receive this. It usually, they are very married to a different story, like they’ll say something else, like, well, I’m just starting out or people don’t pay that. I don’t know anyone who’s going to pay that for my art. They come up with these other stories and they’re so married to these stories.
Erica Courdae:
Yes. Because the stories become well, nobody else is paying this well, who’s going to pay this much for mine.
Miriam Schulman:
I already had this on my website. Like I said, if everyone else has memorized our prices.
Erica Courdae:
Correct.
Miriam Schulman:
Which by the way, anyone who’s listening, nobody knows what your prices are right now, except for you. You can double it tomorrow and nobody’s going to say, why’d you double your prices. I promise you they will not know.
Erica Courdae:
Right. There’s all these reasons why you can’t, whether it’s because you haven’t been doing it long enough, you don’t have enough education. You haven’t sold enough already to now ask this, even though all of these things then require us to make this a moving target. We just changed it to the next level. So it’s not like, Oh, I’ve sold five and now I’m good. No. Then it becomes 10. Then it becomes 12. Then it becomes 15. You just keep sliding it in your head because there’s no destination and now you can go past it. Which is the thing about it that makes it so bad. It’s never a thing of like, I did it and now I can move beyond it. Nope. We are just so, I don’t know, it’s almost like if I do this, what does that then mean about me? What’s next? And there’s, I think sometimes there’s this fear of, well, what happens when I receive that amount of money? If somebody paid me that, and then there’s the, are you going to pay it again? Because there’s a fear of, I can’t replicate it. So it’s like, well, once I do that, then I have to keep a certain standard that I don’t know that I can hold, but you don’t know because you’ve never tried it and so then we get stuck in the loop.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I also see this happening though. When somebody, they do ask for that higher price and let’s say, it’s for a commission. Now, suddenly they feel they have to paint it in a way they’ve never painted before.
Erica Courdae:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
Which is kind of like, if you think about it, ridiculous. The person commissioned you because they like what they saw, not because they want you to change to this other thing that you imagine that the person who charges more gets.
Erica Courdae:
Well, and I can say for myself, I’ve had times where it’s like, okay, so I charged this rate and I was fine, but now I charge this and I felt like I had to now throw in everything. How much more can I add? How much more time can I put into this? As if it wasn’t enough as it was, and it’s like, did I just really end up overwhelming the person? And of course, this is now me realizing this. I didn’t realize it then. But it’s like, you do all these things and it’s like that, wasn’t what they asked for. You felt like it wasn’t enough and so therefore you went in and overcompensated.
Miriam Schulman:
I did that by the way. With my artists incubator program, which is amazing. Somebody who had looked into it a few months ago and then was looking into it again, she says, I know you’ve added all these things. Did you raise the price? I was like, well, no, I didn’t. I just felt it needed at these other days. So I do it too.
Erica Courdae:
It’s one thing to say that I want to give more value or that I’m choosing to over-deliver, it’s another to over-deliver out of fear or that imposter syndrome showing up telling you that it’s not enough and you have to somehow give so much to be worthy of the value that you’re being paid because somehow you’re telling yourself that it wasn’t already valuable. that’s a different place.
Miriam Schulman:
It is different. I was thinking about before with the commissions is like artists who suddenly feel they have to paint better than they ever had. And now they’re so stuck, they can’t even do their commission because that pressure of like, well, my art isn’t worth that. Well, yeah, it is clearly because that’s why your customer agreed to pay you for your art and they know what your art looks like and that’s what they want.
Erica Courdae:
And what you said, I think was important, especially I think that shows up in art because if you think about it and you’re looking at, oh, is this worth his value? I’ve seen things that are like a line on a piece of paper that’ll go for millions of dollars. And then there’s somebody that has like, I don’t know, mixed media and they have completely crafted this huge thing and it it’s a hundred bucks, whatever that is. And so value is such a contextual term. Who’s deciding what that is when you have this thought in your head of like, oh, this isn’t worth it, or it’s not valuable enough or I haven’t done enough. It’s like by whose standards?
Miriam Schulman:
The thing, Erica, that most artists who come to work with me don’t understand is they’re the ones who get to decide how much their art is worth first.
Erica Courdae:
Correct. To be the person in charge of deciding what the value is of your efforts, of your talent, of your time. And having to say that this is what I am saying this is worth, and this is what I expect you to pay. That’s scary. That’s scary. I will say, as a black woman to show up with something and to then tell, let’s say a white man, this is what I expect you to pay. The person who from a hierarchy, societal type of place happens to be at the top, I could allow myself to be in a place I’m like, well, what if he doesn’t think it’s as valuable? And I have to say, am I concerned whether or not he thinks it’s as valuable. He can say yes or he can say no, but I’ve determined what I am tacking on as the exchange of goods here, what this is going to be.
But there’s too much inner dialogue with ourselves of whether or not somebody else is going to be willing to do it and you determining the outcome of the scenario before you’ve even decided to enter into it. And whether or not this is an energetic exchange that you feel good about. If you feel good about it, great. If you don’t, that’s a different conversation. But you also can’t decide that this person’s not going to be willing to pay it. You don’t know that. You want to receive what they want to pay.
Miriam Schulman:
I definitely see this by the way, very much along gender lines. Like I had a male client, he had no problem saying, yeah, that’s a $10,000 painting. No problem. I looked at it, like, are you sure? No, I didn’t say that to him. And I was like, he’s got them lining up in his studio. No, there are $10,000 paintings, Miriam, trust me. I was like, okay. But yeah, we are the ones who get to say so. Whereas I would have a female client with a painting, the same exact size. It’s like, you really think I can charge more than $500 for that? Not that much different, like not like one guy was in a museum. Nothing. No, no. Just their mindsets were completely different and they were ready to own that number.
Erica Courdae:
The level of self-worth that you’re willing to ask somebody else to compensate you for when it comes to this item, that doesn’t mean that you yourself are worth that. Because I think sometimes people will conflate that. But what are you asking to be compensated for for this thing? And that’s why, you may know what it is. It was from, I want to say earlier this year, and it was like an art installation and it was in New York and it was like white man in my pocket. And she kind of almost had like a little figurine type of thing. And she would literally keep it in her pocket to remind herself of what the mediocre middle-aged white man would say to like, when she’d feel like, Oh no, I can’t do this. It’s like, what would he say? What would he do? And it’s like, no, I do know. And there’s this reminder of, if you could have just a tiny bit of that bravado, I’m willing to ask for it because, why the hell not. Part of it is like, yes, poking fun, but there’s truth to that. There’s a lot of truth to it. And there’s something to be said about tapping into something that you don’t feel like you have access to. But apparently this entire group of men feel like they have all the access to it. It’s all mine.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. It’s like using the, an alter ego to help you step into it, which is a very powerful tool that a lot of successful people use. Like Beyonce has Sasha Fierce, just to name an example. I know there’s a lot of NFL stars. Somebody who follows the NFL would know his name, but I cannot think of it. And he’s like, oh no, no, it’s not me on the field, it’s this other dude.
Erica Courdae:
Well, I think about Tracee Ellis Ross. And she talked about her mom. And how, of course, when people talk about her mom, they talk about Diana Ross in a very specific way. And I remember on something, I think it was an interview with Oprah. It was like one of the, I think SuperSoul Sundays or something. And she specifically said, Diana Ross can’t hold a candle to my mom. And so it’s this like differentiator that the image is not the person. And so I think when you are selling a good or a service, it’s sometimes helpful to remember that your worth is not directly tied this. And if you’re able to give yourself this other worldly type of thing, like this isn’t me as the individual, then it can help you to disengage from it so tightly.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s aery powerful tool and I’m glad you brought that up.
Miriam Schulman:
Hey, I’m so sorry to interrupt this juicy conversation, but I just wanted to remind you that I am taking applications for my Artists Incubator Mastermind program. If you’re lacking a solid strategy or a winning mindset, and you’re disappointed with your current art sales, I can help you. If you’ve been listening to this podcast and you found my tips helpful, then maybe it’s time to take the next logical step and work with me on a deeper level. If you’re ready to invest in your art career and join a dynamic community of artists who are doing the same thing, you can go to Schulmanart.com/B-I-Z to apply now. More than just an enrollment call, we’ll also discuss the steps you need to take to make 2021 a better year than this one. So go to Schulmanart.com/Biz.
Now back to the show. So we talked about alter ego as a tool. What are some other tools that you recommend people use to break free from poverty?
Erica Courdae:
I mean, one of the things that comes up to me first is like, if you know for a fact that, and it may seem like a very simple thing, but really being aware of what you want and what you need income-wise revenue for your business. Because let’s say for example, you need to bring home $10,000 a month just for an easy number. Then you probably don’t want to try to sell this really large amount of a hundred dollar items or $10 items. You know what I mean? So if you can literally just start by saying, what do I need to survive and then to thrive? I do think that there is something there to be able to kind of figure out what do I need to receive and being able to acknowledge, like, I don’t want to work this hard to have to sell so many of something because you have no option, but to tie together this amount, plus, this dollar amount is going to get me, how much, how much work are you really trying to put out here?
So I think that that’s a part of it. I think the other is sometimes having to, again, remind yourself that your worth is not the dollar amount that you charge, because it can be directly tied to a low number, which can make you feel a certain way, or it can be tied to a high number that even still is not about you. And so remembering that this is you providing a service, this is you creating a good, this is you doing something and you receiving compensation. But you are not, in your audience’s case, you are not your art. You are not your art. Look at yourself as the curator for your art. If you are somebody else and you are selling your art for you, what would you do? Would you sell it the same way as you would personally, having your emotional attachment to it? Take yourself out of it. An art curator wants to get more. Cause then that means, yes, you get yours, but they’re going to get more. So it’s kind of like, how can you do this in a way that you detach personally.
I want to unpack some of the things that you said. So first of all, what Erica was talking about, I fully advocate. It is always, let’s just say your income goal for the year was a hundred thousand. It is always easier to sell a hundred paintings for a thousand dollars. It’s easier to sell 50 paintings for $2,000 than it is to sell a thousand paintings for a hundred dollars each. That’s a lot of people to find, to buy paintings. And it’s never easier to do the more volume way. People like the fool themselves, that they think that they will make more if it’s more accessible and that’s never the case. And if anything, the high end collectors, it feels so backwards, but it’s true. They’d rather spend more money because they equate a high end price tag with better art, just like they do in the wine store.
They will skip past those $10 bottle wines. They don’t even look at them because they assume it’s not as good. They never say, Oh, I got this $10 bottle of wine, it’s amazing. It should have been $200. They will never ever in their life say that. And the same thing is true with your art. They will never say, oh, I got this painting for a hundred dollars and it should have been 2000. No, you have to put that higher number on it and you will attract better collectors and you will repel those low end people that are actually harder people to work with.
Or to make into returning customers. So let’s acknowledge them when you’re trying to have someone that is a repeat curator of your art. Don’t think that because you charged it at $10 or a hundred dollars or whatever that is, that that means they’re going to come back and buy more. No, that’s not necessarily the case.
Miriam Schulman:
And also it’s not necessarily the case that once you double your prices, they won’t buy it. I remember when I was painting pet portraits and there was one time where I had too many, I said to my assistant, I’m not doing this anymore. Double all my prices. And I sold more that week than I had before. And one of the sales that I made was somebody who had bought it at half the price a year ago. And she didn’t say, oh, you raised your prices. She didn’t even notice, she didn’t say a word. It was like, okay, I probably need to double it again.
Erica Courdae:
Absolutely. I feel like the big thing is just, if you are at a place and you find yourself making something and you provide this to someone else and they provide you compensation and you don’t feel good about it, you don’t feel excited or you don’t feel energized, take some time and figure out why, or if you’re not able to provide it to other people, they’re not buying it. It’s important to question why, because I think if you are not charging enough and maybe they aren’t buying and you feel a certain way about it, there’s something there to pay attention to, to see if maybe there’s somehow in there, you haven’t allowed yourself to be able to charge more, to be able to charge with this is worth, so people just aren’t, they are literally not seeing it.
But if you’re selling it and there’s no accomplishment in it, there is no triumph in it, then there’s a place to acknowledge that, energetically, this didn’t feel good, this exchange didn’t work. And it can sometimes make you mentally or emotionally, de-value your contribution and your talent and the world deserves it. And so you don’t want to allow yourself to stay in a place of diminishing that spark. And so it’s important that when that comes up, pause and see what there is to pay attention to, what is there to acknowledge, what can be shifted and how can this look and feel differently going forward. Again, art is something that nobody else was going to do it just the exact same way that you do it. And how is it that you can bring this to the world in a way that feels good to you and that can create a legacy that lasts way beyond any money that you received for it.
And a large part of that is feeling in a way that you have embodied your art with something that goes way beyond what you paid. It goes with that energetic kind of aura that stays with it, that you believe that this is one of a kind and worth way more than anybody else can pay for it. Keep that in mind, don’t diminish the worth or the value of yourself or your art.
Miriam Schulman:
I love that. That’s so beautiful. And I just want to add one more thing to that before we call this conversation complete. If what we were saying today resonates with you in any way, and you’re wondering, are my prices high enough? The way you know is, if your prices feel comfortable to you, they’re not high enough. Your prices need to feel uncomfortable. Okay, Erica is vigorously nodding her head. So I just feel there’s something else that needs to be said.
Erica Courdae:
Is important to not allow yourself to stay complacent when you are creating, because creation does not come from stagnation, it does not come from comfort. It comes from you being in a place that you have stretched your capacity to receive, to convey, to articulate, to create. And so in order to really get the magic, it has to be from a place of asking yourself, what else is here? Really, is that it? What else is there? Pull back those layers, question yourself deeper, really dig into what it is. Some of the most beautiful and impactful art that comes to mind for me did not come from complacency. And so why would charging complacency rates equate because you’re not creating complacency art, so you have to make adjustments accordingly.
Miriam Schulman:
Boom. That is where we’re ending. All right, Erica, thank you so much for joining me here today. And I also want to give you a big, thank you for all the work you’ve helped me through the last, I don’t know, three, four months, however long we’ve been working together. It definitely has pushed me into some of those uncomfortable places where I’m using my voice in ways I hadn’t before. And it’s been uncomfortable for me and I’ve been embracing that journey. So thank you for that. And thank you for joining me here today.
Erica Courdae:
The pleasure is all mine. Thank you.
Miriam Schulman:
How can people currently work with you right now?
Erica Courdae:
You can work with me either by being a one-on-one client, which is calls and Voxer support, things of that nature. You can learn more about that by going to my website, Ericacoordinate.com. And while you’re on the site, you can also set up a consultation call with me if you want to talk about what it is that you need and how I can support you. We also have Pause on the Play, the community, if you really thrive in doing this in a community type of space with others like yourself that are looking to create impact. That is Pauseontheplay.com. And of course, if you are just putting your toe into the DEI space and are like, can I do this? Yes, you can. Come listen to the podcast, which is on Apple, Spotify, and all the places you listen to your podcasts. It is Pause on the Play.
Miriam Schulman:
So her podcast is amazing. I’ve done a one-on-one with Erica and I also did her seminar on-
Erica Courdae:
Implicit to Explicit.
Miriam Schulman:
You still, you still offer that too, right?
Erica Courdae:
Yes. We’re actually going to be bringing that back in January. So if you want to get in before we release those to the public, go ahead and shoot me an email, team@ericacoordinate.com. We can go ahead and get you in there before everybody else gets all those seats.
Miriam Schulman:
That is great. Thank you so much. And thanks so much, everyone, for being with me here today. For those of you in the United States, I hope you have a beautiful Thanksgiving. And for everyone else have a great weekend, I guess. We’ll see you next week, same time, same place. Make it a good one.
Thank you for listening to the inspiration place podcast. Connect with us on Facebook facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @schulmanart. And of course, on Schulmanart.com.
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