Emma B is a stylist and event planner who occupies something of a "behind-the-scenes" role in the production of advertising and marketing material for magazines, events and commercial campaigns. She has been a fashion blogger and part-time freelancer for over 10 years and has now been freelancing full-time for the past year. In this interview Emma shares what she has learnt about determining the cost of providing your services to your clients.

As people who are paid for our creativity, we are often working with people who may not necessarily understand exactly what is involved with what we do, our history of experience, training, experimentation and refinement of our skills. Creativity is a difficult thing to quantify; what makes one painting multiple times more “valuable” ($) than another, when physically they are identical in material, size and time taken to produce?

In many ways, creative value is in the eye of the beholder, in other ways, that is far from the truth. How then, can a creative professional possibly learn to position themselves in terms of the value of their ideas; how do you know if what you do is “worth” anything to anyone?

And that’s just a third of the puzzle, the next part is recognizing what is involved in producing the work that you do, just how much it costs to get the final product into the hands, eyes or ears of your paying clients. With your overheads (overheads? What is overheads?) time, materials etc; how can you make sure you can put food on the table. Even moreso, a car in the garage and a roof over your head as well, just like everyone else seems to be doing.

Finally, you need to look your customer right in the eyes and tell them confidently and matter-of-factly the cost of the work that you can produce for them. For many, this is the single most difficult moment of all.