Okay, Deep Breath, Let's Talk About Money
A wooden table with a twenty dollar bill held down by a hand, which happens to be my hand, which is white, nail polish free and mostly unremarkable.
I’m going to start with a story.
When I was 11, I found out that I had a savings account and that there was a couple of hundred bucks in there. I couldn’t stop crying.
My mom explained that saving was important, and that I might need it later, but I could not digest the idea that I had something that someone else needed. I’d seen the homeless people on downtown. I’d seen the World Vision ads on TV. I was inconsolable. My parents were perplexed.
If I’m honest right now, I’d tell you that I’ve never gotten over that moment.
And yet, I run a business.
So I need to spend a whole lot of my time and creativity and intelligence figuring out how to make money.
How in the world did that happen?
That ache is the hardest part of Firefly.
It doesn’t make sense to me to do wildly passionate heart-based work in a capitalist economy. It doesn’t make sense to me to only be able to do this work with people who have disposable income.
I’ve tried to soothe the ache by undercharging, feeling that it was nobler if I was scrounging for rent money myself. I’ve tried to soothe it by working way beyond my boundaries, years without bedtimes, bones aching from ceaseless hours at my desk, feeling that my broken health could somehow balance the mess of the world around me.
I still fall into these behaviours more than I want to admit. I’m working on it.
Here’s exactly what I do when someone asks me how much one of our programs costs:
“Oh I’m not really sure, I can send you the link later?”
“Bree’s really the numbers person, can you check in with her?”
Let’s be honest, what I’m really saying is:
“I’m terrified that if I tell you a number, you’ll think I’m heartless and greedy.”
Is it uncomfortable to read about this stuff? It’s uncomfortable to write it. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who feels like this, but I never hear anyone else say so.
Let me tell you about this one afternoon when money made perfect sense.
It was August and I was lazing around a tent at a folk festival with my dear friend Alex. She’d just put out a beautiful CD, full of heart and risk. She was charging $15 for it, which I felt was too low. I’d seen the thousands of hours she’d invested, the musicians and mixers she’d paid, the pile of brown boxes in her kitchen.
I told her that I thought she wasn’t charging enough, and she said, “Who wants to spend more than $15 on a CD?”
I said, “We all want you to make music. The price is the way you tell us what you need in order to keep on doing that.”
We both paused.
The August air found its way through the little screen tent window.
Could it be that simple?
Alex took a breath and said, “Well, you can pay me $20.”
She was probably right. People read meaning and emotion into numbers. When those numbers seem low they feel good, kind, generous. When they seem high, they feel distant, malicious, unkind.
Distant, malicious and unkind, as you may have guessed, are the last things Alex or I ever want to be. Yet we live in a world of big numbers. If ours are too small, we won’t get to keep doing this.
Why am I telling you this? I keep asking myself.
There are so many directions this could take, so many deleted paragraphs here. But I think I can sum it up with 3 little threads.
I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who has chipped a little money into our scholarship fund. This is a profound-for-me way that we’re using our little ecosystem to create some kind of balance. So far we’ve raised almost $3,000 in scholarships through donations, open mic nights and other studio events. This helps.
We’re working on a series of workshops for workplaces. We dearly hope these will bring in more funds so that we can do more free work with community organizations. (We also hope we can bring some Firefly sparkle to big, itchy workplaces.) We’d love your help to spread the word.
I’ve been playing with a money manifesto, to help me clarify who I am as a business owner within this weird, gain-driven world. If you’re curious, you can hop over and read it here. Also, this is a GREAT creative exercise, highly recommended.
So. Thank you.
For being here, for clicking links, for showing up to events and retreats and classes. I am the world’s least likely person to make it as an entrepreneur, but somehow this thing is working. The rent is paid. That small miracle. It’s because of you.
In it with you,
