Why Would Someone Pay for My Hobby? Imposter Syndrome in Creative Businesses

On 22nd September, we held our first online gathering for The Business of Being Creative. It was everything I hoped for – informative, supportive and honest. It really cemented for me why I’m doing this and how important it is to create a space where we can talk openly about the realities of running a creative business.

There was much I came away wanting to explore further, but one comment stayed with me "why would someone pay for my hobby?"

On the surface, it seems like such a simple question, yet I think it touches on something that sits underneath so much of what we do as artists, makers and creative business owners. Someone else in the group gave it a name, and I’m so pleased they did - imposter syndrome.

You may or may not have heard the term before, but I suspect you’ll recognise some of the thoughts that came up in our conversation: "Who am I to charge that much?" "There are people much better than me." "I’m not a proper artist." "I’m just making things at my kitchen table. I’d feel guilty charging more."

I’ve been selling my work for six years now and it pains me slightly to admit this, but sometimes when I sell a bigger piece – or even a small one if I’m having a particularly wobbly day – I get an uncomfortable feeling that the customer will take it home, realise they’ve made a terrible mistake and return it for a refund. On really bad days, I can even feel as though I’ve somehow ripped them off. "How could something I made possibly be worth that much?"

This is despite the fairly compelling evidence that, after six years and thousands of sales, I’ve only ever had one person return something because they no longer needed or wanted it.

And yet, I still sometimes struggle to believe the evidence.

When we think everyone else has it figured out

One of the most comforting things about our first gathering was discovering how many of us recognised these feelings. We look at someone else’s Instagram account, their beautiful products, busy market stall or professional website and assume they are completely confident in what they’re doing. Meanwhile, behind our own screen, we’re questioning everything.

One creative talked about worrying that her work wasn’t good enough and that eventually her customers would realise it. Yet this wasn’t someone waiting nervously for her first sale – she had been successfully selling and supplying shops for years. Another artist said that despite continuing to make sales, her imposter syndrome actually seems to be getting worse.

That really stayed with me because I think we assume success will eventually cure it. But perhaps the problem isn’t a lack of evidence that we’re good enough. Perhaps it’s our reluctance to believe the evidence that’s already there.

When does a hobby become a business?

This came up several times during our conversation too. One person described still feeling stuck in a hobby mindset despite dealing with all the very real responsibilities of running a business.

I think that transition from I make things to I run a creative busines can be incredibly difficult, particularly because so many creative businesses genuinely begin as hobbies. You paint because you love painting. You make jewellery because you enjoy making jewellery. You collect sea glass and start turning it into pictures because the world has suddenly gone into lockdown and making something helps you cope. (That last one was me.)

There isn’t a dramatic moment when somebody hands you a certificate and says, "Congratulations. You are now a proper creative business owner." Instead, it happens gradually. Someone asks if they can buy something, then someone else does. You open social media accounts, book a market, perhaps build a website and eventually register as self-employed. Somewhere along the way, you’re supposed to change your perception of what you’re doing and start thinking like a business owner. Except sometimes our confidence doesn’t catch up with our reality.

Is imposter syndrome affecting our prices?

And this brings me back to something I seem to be banging on about rather a lot at the moment - the topic of pricing our hand made work. Because imposter syndrome isn’t just an uncomfortable feeling. It can actually affect the decisions we make.

When we don’t quite believe in the value of what we’re selling, keeping our prices low feels safer. Those little dopamine hits when somebody buys something we’ve made give us validation and, if we’re lacking confidence, it can be tempting to make that validation easier to get. We can justify it by telling ourselves "it’s only a hobby", or "I don’t need to earn as much as someone doing this full-time." Then somebody buys it and we get the reassurance we were looking for. But whilst that might feel great in the moment, we haven’t necessarily proved that our business works. We’ve proved that somebody will buy our work at a price that feels emotionally safe for us. Those are two very different things.

I’m increasingly convinced that underpricing doesn’t always happen because we don’t know how to calculate a price. Sometimes we know perfectly well that we should be charging more, but we don’t quite feel entitled to. A lower price reduces the perceived risk of rejection and creates a layer of protection. And calling what we do "just a hobby" can do something similar. If it’s only a hobby, it doesn’t really matter whether it makes a profit. We don’t have to look too closely at our costs, worry about paying ourselves properly, put ourselves out there or discover whether people will actually pay a sustainable price for what we make. But if we want to build a business, eventually we have to.

But it doesn’t stop at pricing

The same lack of confidence showed up in our conversation in lots of different ways. Someone talked about feeling uncomfortable posting on Instagram because she worried she was boasting or bothering people. We talked about comparing ourselves with other makers, feeling uncomfortable selling, struggling with the administrative side of business and even finding it difficult to describe ourselves as business owners.

That’s why I think imposter syndrome is such an important conversation for creatives. It can influence what we charge, how visible we’re prepared to be, how confidently we sell, how seriously we treat our finances and how much work we take on. More importantly, it affects how we value and look after ourselves as artists. It can influence whether we invest in ourselves, establish boundaries and genuinely believe we are entitled to make a living from our creativity.

When you look at it like that, confidence isn’t some fluffy extra that we can deal with once we’ve sorted out the 'proper' business stuff - it's part of the business stuff.

So how do we stop it?

Here’s where I have to disappoint you slightly because I don’t have the answer to that! I’m certainly not writing this as

someone who has conquered imposter syndrome. Far from it. But actually, I'm not fully convinced the goal should be to eliminate it completely. Perhaps a more realistic starting point is learning to recognise when it is making our business decisions for us.

When we set a price, rather than asking “What will someone pay for this?”, perhaps we need to ask whether that price is based on the realities of our business or is it based on what feels emotionally comfortable for us? When we avoid posting about our work, are we genuinely making a marketing decision or are we worried people will think we’re showing off? And when we say “It’s only a hobby”, is that genuinely what we want it to be, or does calling it a hobby protect us from having to take ourselves seriously as business owners?

There is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with creativity being a hobby, as long as you appreciate that a hobby doesn’t necessarily need to make a profit, have a marketing strategy, meet growth targets or follow a pricing formula. But if you want your creativity to provide you with an income, at some point you have to give yourself permission to treat it like a business – even if saying “I own a business” still makes you squirm a little. Try saying it now. Personally, I still find “I’m self-employed” a little easier!

Maybe this is why we need each other

One of my biggest reasons for starting The Business of Being Creative was to tackle some of the isolation and self-doubt that can come with running a creative business. I hoped that bringing creatives together would give us somewhere to talk honestly about the things we often struggle with quietly. What I hadn’t anticipated was quite how powerful it would be simply to hear somebody else say, “I feel that too.”

At our first gathering, people who outwardly appear to be successfully running creative businesses talked openly about imposter syndrome, burnout, pricing, visibility, overwhelm and confidence. That openness reassured me too, because some of the things I had worried were my shortcomings turned out to be shared experiences.

Perhaps that’s one way we begin to loosen imposter syndrome’s grip. Not by waiting until we magically feel confident, but by talking about it, sharing our experiences and reminding each other of the evidence.

When a customer buys something we’ve made, we haven’t somehow tricked them.

They saw something we created. They valued it enough to spend their money on it and they chose it. Perhaps we need to get a little better at trusting them.

So I’d love to know: where does imposter syndrome show up most in your creative business? Is it in your pricing, selling or visibility, or simply in allowing yourself to believe that what you’re doing really is a business?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Helen x

The Business of Being Creative