You know you're good at what you do. So why does everything around the work feel so bloody hard?
You can repair, make, create - people love what you do and you know there's something real here. But the pricing is all over the place, you're tired of second-guessing yourself online, and honestly some weeks you're not sure if this thing is actually sustainable or if you're just keeping busy.
You don't need another course or a content strategy. You need someone who actually does this work, who's been stuck in the same places you're stuck, and who can help you figure your stuff out without making you feel like you need to become a different person to do it.
Livelihood first.
Business second.
I tried doing it the "proper" way for ages. The business plan, the scaling, the trying to look like I had it all together. And every single time, it ran me into the ground.
When I stopped chasing that and started building something around how I actually want to live and work, things shifted. My income got steadier, I stopped dreading Mondays, and I started enjoying the work again instead of just surviving it.
That's the thing I come back to with everyone I mentor - what does your life actually need this to look like? Because if we start there, the rest of it gets so much easier to figure out.
I'm not against scaling - for some people that's exactly right. But I think a lot of creatives are quietly being made to feel like their work doesn't count unless it looks like a "real" business. Like you need a studio, a team, a growth plan before anyone will take you seriously. And that's just not true. You can be self-taught, work from home, run things your own way, and still be completely professional and really bloody good at what you do. I know because that's exactly how I work, and it's how the people I mentor work too.
is this for you?
You're doing the work — repairing, making, creating — but the money coming in doesn't match the skill going out and you're not really sure what to do about that.
You've Googled "how to price repair work" more times than you'd care to admit and you still don't feel any more confident about your numbers.
You sometimes feel like what you do isn't taken seriously because you work from home, or you're self-taught, or you don't have a flashy website or a big following. Like you need to look more "professional" before you can charge properly or call yourself an expert.
You look at what other people are doing online and it either makes you feel behind or makes you want to close the app entirely.
You know you should be showing up more and talking about your work, but every time you try it feels cringey and weird and like you're pretending to be someone you're not.
People keep telling you to scale, or get a business plan, or treat it more like a business — and you know they mean well, but none of that advice actually fits the thing you're trying to build. You don't want to be a CEO. You want to do work you care about and get paid properly for it.
You've thought about packing it all in more than once. Not because you don't love the work — you do — it's all the stuff around the work that's exhausting.
If you're nodding along to most of that, this is what I help with.how we can work together:
This is for when you want proper, ongoing support. Someone in your corner over a stretch of time, helping you work through the bigger stuff - holding you accountable, confidence, visibility, how your whole livelihood is set up.
02
One-off Quick UnpickThe Long Length Stitch01
This is a one-off 90-minute session for when you've got a specific thing you need to work through and you just want to sit down with someone who gets it and untangle it.
One thing to know - Quick Unpick sessions can only be booked once every 3 months. This is intentional. If you need more regular support, the 3-month container is probably the better fit for you.
What actually happens when we work together 1:1
There's no set curriculum or programme to follow. We work on whatever is most real and most urgent for you right now. That changes as you change, and that's the whole point.Here's the kind of stuff that comes up a lot:Reclaim Your Worth 2.003
A pricing guide built specifically for repair artists. It walks you through how to actually price your work properly - with your tax, your rest, your pension, and your real life factored in. No guesswork, no guilt, just a clear way to figure out what you need to charge and feel good about it.
Not sure about 1:1 or reclaim yet? Grab this instead.
Free resource
Free resource
Hey hey, my name’s Gay.
I'm a repair artist, creative mentor, and self-taught sewist. I coined the term "repair artist" because there wasn't a word that properly described the skill and care this work actually takes, so I made one.
I've been self-employed for 10 years and I've been working on the good side of the fashion industry for over 20 - running clothing brands, selling vintage, building a visible mending service, opening my own sewing studio, partnering with brands like Adidas and Samsung, and eventually closing the studio because I realised I wanted to grow deeper rather than bigger.
Now I work from my back bedroom of my home in Nottingham. I repair clothes, run workshops, sell a bit of vintage, and I mentor other repair artists and tactile creatives who are trying to build something that actually works for them.
I don't have a business degree or a coaching qualification. I have a decade of figuring this out the hard way - making the mistakes, learning from them, and slowly building a livelihood that fits around my actual life. That's what I bring to mentoring, and honestly it's worth more than any certificate.
A.Leavy
“I cannot express enough how transformative my experience with Gay has been. From our very first session, it was clear that Gay brought a wealth of knowledge and a genuine passion for helping others succeed. What truly sets Gay apart is her holistic approach, seamlessly integrating business coaching with life coaching to address all facets of personal and professional growth”
M.Askari