Tag Archives: entrepreneurs

Here’s Your Answer

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In September 2024, I was nearly broke. Despite having learned financial discipline (fifteen years ago!) from Abundance Bound, I found myself slipping again. I thought I was doing all the right things, but something was off. I knew something — not sure what — had to change. Hiring a financial coach was out of the question—what sense did it make to spend money I didn’t really have? So, I crossed my fingers, closed my eyes, and hoped for the best.

My passion – my business – is helping those who know they have something they want to do, or have, or change, but need a way to see it through. When those people come to me, we sit together, and things start to quiet down. The noise of “shoulds” fades. The pressure lifts. Clarity takes shape. They stop spinning, and finally they focus on one true want—the one that actually excites them. And from that moment on, things start to move. Unless… they’re left to their own devices.

So why don’t we take the necessary steps even after finding our one true goal? One client expressed their block as the weight of childhood trauma. With me and money, it’s a sticky kind of embarrassment that whispers: How can I be so smart… and still be so dumb? My identity feels threatened. It freezes me.
But here’s what I’ve come to understand: (Analysis)Paralysis is a symptom of limited consciousness. We’ve come to believe the stories we’ve made up in our heads:

I can’t afford it. 
I’m not ready yet.
People won’t like my choices.

Indiana Jones contemplates taking the first step.

In spite of all of this, I managed to take off the lens of financial scarcity and took a step forward — hey, if your boat is sinking, you don’t haggle about repair costs. I re-invested in the financial wellness program, and once again, began the hard work.

A funny thing happens when we take that first step — we get answers, and our consciousness expands. It’s so obvious, yet we doubt it.

The Answers are in the Doing.

Until we take meaningful actions, we doubt that we ever could. But only after we do, do we see how capable we actually are. So then we take another next step. Then another.

By the end of December 2024, I was steadily on my way to financial wellness—and I had even managed to save money! The moment I took that first step, my energy shifted, I was open to new opportunities, and I booked several acting jobs.

By starting with just one step forward, I found the answers and the clarity I had been desperately seeking.

Balancing Money and Art

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Well-meaning coaches everywhere are telling actors to treat their careers like a business. We’re told to be the “CEO of our own Company”. We’re expected to spend a minimum number of hours working hard at our business. But working towards a bottom line “at all costs” is a prescription for anxiety and depression.

Here’s what this prescription neglects to include: Acting careers don’t exist without both the business and the art, plain and simple. They are two inseparable sides of the same coin. While most actors intuitively know this, they still believe that the only way to get work is by sacrificing and grinding away at marketing, networking, and self-submitting 24/7. Look back – haven’t we all gotten some good gigs just from doing our art? Work begets work, as the saying goes.
 
When I was just out of Conservatory, I worked hard “doing the rounds”, checking in personally with every office on a regular basis. It paid off with auditions and jobs by the end of that first year. But I also experienced the fun work of doing theater (often for free) that got me auditions and jobs as well. (I still do it.)
The key to living in our art and thriving in our business is not balance, but harmony. When we try to force balance by scheduling times and assigning days for either art or business, we muck it all up. Balance is natural. The idea that we can control desired career outcomes based on time spent, is an illusion. The business (and life) impersonally shifts, but we insist on taking it personally. When finances are low, we experience anxiety, guilt, shame, and when our creative skills go unused, we become depressed. The pain lasts as long as we distrust the natural ebb and flow of life. The pain deepens when we think we’ll never get out of anxiety (no money or job) or depression (no artistic fulfillment).
 
Ebb and Flow.
An actor’s life is filled with so-called good years and bad years. This is a constant. While we know the thrill of getting that big check from an acting gig, we also know the pure bliss of doing creative, ensemble work with no pay at all. Yes, the possibility of that dream job — both financially and creatively fulfilling — always exists, but once we see the natural ebb and flow of things, we begin to trust and allow it.
 
Instead of trying so hard to live up to soul-killing standards of being a business first and an artist second, just notice the obvious thing to do. You know when your business needs marketing. You know when your art needs a Viewpoints class. We are just so bombarded with outside voices telling us how to be a “successful actor” that we’ve stopped listening to our own voice.
 
You are genius. You are wise. Listen to your own voice.
 

2019 – The End of a Decade, 2020 – The Beginning of … ?

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As Creatives, we often feel the pressure of having to prove what we’ve accomplished, especially at holiday gatherings. Consider this alternative:

Instead of listing what we’ve done
(or going down that rabbit hole of what we’ve
not done), let’s reflect on what we’ve
experienced.

It is our life experiences, not our accomplishments, that make us who we are. Think about that.
Think about all the cool stuff you experienced last year – in the last decade – that has brought real impact to your life and is responsible for the awesome person you are. Look at your favorite photos. The best ones reflect experiences, not activities.

Grabbing a prize from a cereal box – one that I could play with – made me so happy.

When we look at what we want to achieve in the next decade, we can choose to either be in a state of anticipatory delight or in a state of aggressive control. Our daily routines can either be filled with aliveness or crammed with forced discipline.

Every day, I am delighted to discover new, unplanned opportunities: auditions, table reads, theatre productions, showcases, interviews, etc. Actually booking a job is just the icing on the cake!

Let’s create 2020 Goals that make us giggle at the possibilities, ones that are free of promises to “do better”. When we play with setting career goals – I’m talking full-on play – we always end up having fun.

I Have Too Much Money

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Yep, that’s my problem – I have more money than I can handle.losing-money And as long as I continue to believe that, it will forever slip through my fingers.

Over the last 5 months, I’ve taken money education classes through the Actors Fund in Los Angeles. The first seven weeks we examined our earliest money memories, our family history, our assumptions about money, and more. This was not easy, but with carefully guided homework and weekly discussions led by a professional social worker, we saw things more clearly. We discovered that while we (all artists) claimed to be broke or bad with money, none of us had the same amount of it. None of us had the same parenting around it, and none of us had the same “script”.

For years, I thought my script was one of 'Rent an auditorium and charge $39.95 a seat. Thank you for coming.'“scarcity issues”. Turns out, that’s just a catchphrase used to sell wealth seminars. When I discovered what my true script was, the clouds parted, and I was ready to take on the next phase of unearthing my real numbers. Discovering exactly what I earned and spent each month – down to the penny – was both terrifying and liberating. Louise Hay says, “In order to clean your house you have to see the dirt.”

Money is just one facet of our lives that needs identification. It also applies to our talents – if we don’t know what are talents are, we will never use them wisely. When I work with entrepreneurs and artists (one in the same, really) I say,  It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you. And we must begin with ourselves. What do I want? What kind of person do I want to be known as? What brings me joy? When we recognize who we really are, it frees us to fully express it. We no longer give away or talents, but instead we use them wisely, and life no longer slips through our fingers.