I’ve said before that your beliefs about what is possible for you and your business will be the limiting factor in how your business grows, which is absolutely true. But your beliefs about the possibilities available to you and your business do more than impact your big picture. Those beliefs touch every part of what you do, from that big 10,000 foot view all the way down to the email you write when someone offers you work. When a job offer comes your way, how do you decide whether or not to say “yes”? What goes into your mental calculations as you figure out if this is a project you want to be part of? The nature of the project itself is probably something you consider, and you also probably look at the financial aspects of the project to see if it’s a good fit for you. But what else should you think about? How do you know if this project is something you should be part of? Specifically, how does your mindset influence the work you accept and the work you pass on? Let’s discuss.

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Hello, thriving artists, and welcome to the Starving Artist No More podcast. I’m musician, actor, audiobook narrator, and creative entrepreneurship coach Jennifer Jill Araya, and I’m so excited you’re here with me today. Today’s podcast episode is all about how your mindset around your creative work influences your work schedule, and this is a topic that I still wrestle with, sometimes a lot more than I’d like to admit. I’m can’t wait to dig into this discussion with you.

But before we dive on in, I do want to let you know about a free resource I have available for you on my website. The single topic I’m asked about more than any other is finances. How can creative entrepreneurs successfully manage their finances? And how can you even out your income so that you’re not constantly cycling back and forth between feast and famine in your work? On my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, I have a free guide that I think can help: “Say Goodbye to Feast or Famine: Three Financial Must-Haves for Creative Entrepreneurs.” This guide will walk you through three specific areas of your business finances that, once you address them, can smooth out that feast or famine cycle. To get this guide, all you have to do is fill out the contact form on my website, and it’ll be sent directly to your email inbox. Business finances aren’t easy, but they don’t have to be a constant headache, and I really think this guide can help. I hope you’ll take advantage of it.

Now that you know about that free resource available for you, let’s pivot to the main topic of today’s episode: how your mindset impacts your business schedule.

As I said at the top of this episode, how you think about your business and what you believe is possible for your creative work impacts everything. It is impossible to overstate the importance of your mental frame of reference around your artistic business!

But one of the places that I see this importance most clearly is in the scheduling practices of the creatives I work with. If a creative has a scarcity mindset, they end up constantly overscheduling themselves, often with projects that aren’t actually a very good fit for their unique creative energy.

There is a better way, a better mindset. A mindset of abundance will allow you to focus on the work that you most love to do, and to do that work well, and to be financially rewarded for that work.

Let’s dig into those terms and those possibilities a little bit more. First, I used two opposites to frame the situation: a scarcity mindset, and an abundance mindset. What do those phrases mean?

Let’s start by defining a mindset of abundance. If you’ve listened to previous episodes of this podcast, you probably already know that my primary creative work is as an audiobook narrator, and in my audiobook work, the exact definitions of words matter! So let’s get specific. Merriam-Webster defines abundance as “an ample quantity, profusion, a relative degree of plentifulness.” Thesaurus.com tells us that abundance is having a bounty of a resource, a situation of plenty. In short, “abundance” means that there are a lot of resources available, a profusion of resources accessible to everyone who needs them.

As it relates to your creative work, when you have a mindset of abundance, you are embracing a positive and hopeful way of understanding the possibilities available to you. You are choosing to view your specific little corner of your specific creative industry as one that has a bounty of opportunities available for you and your fellow creatives. You approach your work from the perspective of knowing that there are lots of jobs available for you and that, rather than having to hustle and scrounge for every scrap of an opportunity, the reality is that you get to cherry pick the very best options available to you from the abundance of work that’s out there. A mindset of abundance involves embracing an understanding of the world that includes a wealth of options for your creative work.

The opposite of a mindset of abundance is a mindset of scarcity. Merriam-Webster tells us that something is scarce if it is “deficient in quantity or number compared with the demand, not plentiful or abundant.” If you view your creative work with scarcity, you don’t believe that there are enough jobs to go around. You are worried about being able to get work. You don’t think that opportunities to thrive are truly going to be there for you. A mindset of scarcity says that there isn’t enough work, and so you have to fight and hustle and scramble for every little scrap of a possibility you get. A mindset of scarcity is one that tells you that any opportunity you get is an opportunity to be grabbed, because this might be the only opportunity of any kind that you ever get. You scramble to get anything and everything you can, and you hoard anything you do manage to get. Resources are scarce, and opportunities aren’t readily available, so any opportunity, no matter what it looks like, is an opportunity you have to say yes to. And even if you do say yes to every opportunity, a mindset of scarcity says that there aren’t actually enough resources out there for you to ever be able to succeed.

The blog of the University of Washington School of Medicine sums up the difference between these two frameworks like this: “An abundance mindset is when you believe there are plenty of resources for everyone.  A scarcity mindset is when you believe resources are limited.  A scarcity mindset causes hyperfixation, leads to short-term coping instead of long-term problem-solving, and increases jealousy and stress.”

Did you recognize yourself in either of those descriptions? Perhaps. And possibly you recognized yourself in both of them, maybe at different points in your career. The reality is that most creatives don’t live only in one or the other. You probably have some parts of your work where you think more from a scarcity perspective, and other areas where you think more from an abundance perspective. You might even move back and forth between the two over time, as your work evolves and develops. Yes, scarcity and abundance are opposites, but there’s a whole continuum in between the two.

And there might be aspects of your creative work in which resources actually are scarce. When I was working as an artisan, selling my work primarily at art shows and craft fairs, sometimes opportunities were scarce. If I was applying to a prestigious art show that only accepted 300 artists out of the thousands who apply every year, then yes, spots in the show were objectively scarce. Only a small percentage of applicants would be accepted. Today, when I take an open call audition as an audiobook narrator, only one person will be hired for the role that I’m auditioning for, and often hundreds of narrators will submit an audition. Again, that opportunity is objectively scarce.

But that’s looking at the situation from the wrong perspective. Yes, those specific opportunities are objectively scarce, but those aren’t the only opportunities out there. In fact, while an individual opportunity might be scarce, opportunities themselves are abundant! If one opportunity doesn’t work out, I can look for – and I can find – another.

A brief little illustration from the book Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers lays out the difference pretty well:

“What are the odds of winning the big lottery? Fifty million to one? Ah, but that’s if you’re being egocentric and thinking only of yourself! Someone always wins it. So what if you look past yourself and ask, “What are the odds that this rare thing will happen to someone?” Almost 100 percent. That’s a nice reminder when the odds seem impossible. Amazing rare things happen to people every day.”

Now, I’m not telling you that you should go out and start playing the lottery, and I don’t think Derek Sivers is, either. But I find his illustration really helpful. “Thinking only of yourself” is another way to describe a scarcity mindset. You’re telling yourself, “This opportunity didn’t work out for me, and so I’m a failure.”

Embracing the truth that “amazing rare things happen to people every day” is an abundance mindset. Now, you tell yourself, “This opportunity didn’t work out for me, but there are lots of other opportunities out there, and while my chance of succeeding in any single opportunity might be low, the more opportunities I see and reach for, the more likely I am to succeed.”

The mindset you choose to use as you view the world around your creative work matters. Your mindset determines how you understand the role of your work within the wider context of your creative industry, and it determines how many potential realities you perceive as available to you. You can only become, and you can only do, things that you can imagine. The limits of your mental model equal the limits of your imagination. If you want to become something, you must first be able to imagine it.

A moment ago, I used the word “choose” to describe how you form your mindset, and I did that intentionally. This is the old “glass half full versus glass half empty.” We all have an innate tendency to lean toward one or the other – half full or half empty – but just because one or the other is your first instinct doesn’t mean that’s where you have to stay.

You can choose to view your creative world with an abundant perspective. You can choose to say to yourself, “There is a lot of work available to me. There are abundant opportunities accessible to me. If one option doesn’t work out, I have other choices. Amazing rare things happen to people every day, and amazing rare things can happen to me.”

Now, aside from the fact that this is just a happier, more positive way to view the world, what difference does an abundant mindset make? Why does it matter whether you look at your creative business from a perspective of scarcity or a perspective of abundance?

It matters a lot and impacts your business in myriad ways, big and small, but the impact of your mindset that is always most apparent to me when I begin working with a creative entrepreneur is in the realm of scheduling.

Artists with a mindset of scarcity chronically overschedule themselves, and their schedules are full of projects that aren’t actually a very good fit for them.

Artists with a mindset of abundance might still sometimes find themselves with overfull schedules, but more often than not, their creative schedules allow comfortable breathing room for them to do their deep creative work, and if they do occasionally overschedule themselves, it’s because an abundance of projects that are absolutely, 100%, completely and totally perfect for them came to them all at once.

Why is that? Why are scarcity-thinking artists overscheduled with not-quite-right projects, and why are abundance-thinking artists most often comfortably scheduled, not usually overscheduled, but if they do happen to be overscheduled, it’s with completely perfect projects?

Correlation does not equal causation, so you could argue I’m looking at this all wrong. That those artists with an abundant mindset have an abundant mindset because they’re good at their work and they get lots of work as a result, meaning their excellent skills resulting in an abundance of work came first, and their abundant mindset came second. In other words, is it possible that the abundance of work caused the positive mindset, and not the other way around?

And for the scarcity-thinking artists, is it possible they just aren’t as good at their work and so they don’t get as much work, meaning the lack of work causes their scarcity mindset?

Which comes first, the mindset, or the experience of scarcity or abundance?

It is possible that the experience comes first, but I don’t think so. I’ve seen it happen too often that the mindset determines the experience. I’ve seen it in the work and in the businesses of the creatives I’ve had the privilege of coaching, and I’ve seen it happen in my own creative life.

Again, I ask, why is that? Why does the mental model impact your experience so much?

Well, let’s follow the logical process of scheduling projects under the two mindsets: scarcity vs. abundance.

Let’s say that artist Heather has a scarcity mindset. She is convinced that there aren’t enough jobs in her creative industry for everyone who wants them, and she is constantly worried that she isn’t going to get work.

So when Bob offers her a project that doesn’t pay super well, she says yes anyway because she’s terrified it’ll be the only offer she gets for that time period. And when Mary comes to her about another project for that same time period, she says yes to that one too, even though it’s a kind of creative work that she hates and isn’t really very good at, because that one does pay better. And when Alex approaches Heather about a third project, still for that same time period, she says yes again, even though it doesn’t pay super well and isn’t work she enjoys, because who knows when another project might come her way, and work is work.

And when Michael then comes to her about a fourth project for that time period, a project that does actually pay well and that is a really good fit for her creatively, she jumps at it. Finally! Work she likes to do! But she doesn’t do a good job on it, because she’s already committed to projects 1 through 3 and so can’t give project 4 the attention it deserves. She gets all four projects done and submitted on time. But once all is said and done and Michael reviews the work Heather submitted to him, he decides he’s not going to hire Heather again, at least not for that kind of project.

Because of her scarcity mindset, Heather is grabbing and scrabbling for every scrap of anything that she can get, and she doesn’t have time to really do her best work on any of it, so when a truly golden opportunity comes her way, she blows it, and she doesn’t do a good enough job on that golden opportunity to be offered more golden opportunities like it in the future. Remember, the University of Washington School of Medicine says that the results of a scarcity mindset include “hyperfixation, short-term coping instead of long-term problem-solving, and increased jealousy and stress.” None of those results are going to be helpful to you as a artist who is striving to be innovative and to create with freedom and joy and excitement.

If you are working under a mindset of scarcity, you won’t be able to do your best work. Even if you’re overscheduled and do actually have a lot of work, like Heather did in this illustration, you won’t actually be doing good work on any of it. A mindset of scarcity prevents you from being the best artist you can be.

Let’s say instead that Heather has a mindset of abundance. She believes that there are lots of jobs out there in her creative industry for her and her creative colleagues, and even if her schedule looks a little light, she stays calm and trusts that, thanks to her consistent marketing and networking efforts, projects that are right for her will come her way. So when Bob offers her that project that doesn’t pay super well, she counters with a rate that is actually financially fulfilling for her. She negotiates with him to make sure that she gets what she needs out of the project. In this particular case, Bob decides to go with another artist who will work for less, but Heather feels good about it. She knows that working at such a low rate wouldn’t have been a good use of her time, and she keeps doing her marketing and networking.

 Mary then comes to her about another project for that same time period, but although this one has a great rate, when she looks at the project, she realizes it isn’t actually work she likes to do. So instead, Heather recommends her creative colleague Beth, who she knows loves this kind of work. Mary ends up auditioning and then hiring Beth, who does an incredible job with the project, and Mary is super grateful to Heather for suggesting the perfect artist for the job. Mary now has a very positive impression of Heather, which will likely be helpful to Heather in the future. But Heather still has no project lined up for this time period, so she continues doing her marketing and networking and keeps her eyes open for the right opportunity for her.

Next, Alex approaches Heather with project #3 that she’s been offered for this time period, and this project isn’t something she would enjoy and also doesn’t pay well, so she politely tells Alex, “Thanks for the consideration, but this isn’t a good fit for me.” Again, she doesn’t have anything on her schedule for that time period yet, but she keeps up her marketing and networking and stays open to opportunities.

Now, when Michael shows up with a project that is both perfect for Heather’s creative skills and that pays incredibly well, Heather has a wide open schedule to devote time and attention to this work. She accepts the job and absolutely loves every second of the work. She gives the very best of herself and her creative abilities to the work and manages to deliver a stellar finished product two days before Michael’s delivery date. Michael is astounded by the quality of Heather’s work and lets her know both that he’s super happy with the work she’s done and that he’s excited to work with her more in the future.

Now, obviously, this illustration is just that: an illustration. It isn’t reality. Unlike many of the stories I tell in this podcast, this exact scenario isn’t something that has actually happened to me or to one of my coaching students. But I have similar situations happen more times than I can count.

When you view your creative industry with scarcity, you will say yes to anything and everything, and you will overschedule yourself, and you won’t actually do good work.

When you view your creative industry with abundance, you will pick and choose what you accept, and you will have a schedule that allows you to do really excellent work because you have given yourself the time to do that kind of stellar work, and you’ll have more opportunities available to you in the future because your excellent work in the past will show those in your creative industry that you’re the kind of amazing, incredible, innovative artist who will do a truly amazing job on the kinds of projects that you most enjoy.

There is a cost to having a mindset of scarcity. The impulse to say yes to everything comes with a pretty steep price tag attached. That’s the root purpose behind my constant stressing of the incredible value of working within your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot. I discussed your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot in detail back in Episode 7, and it’s also part of the free guide on my website, “Say Goodbye to Feast or Famine: Three Financial Must-Haves for Creative Entrepreneurs,” which you can get at www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com. And I also discuss your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot in Episode 16, when I lay out the six essential components of a thriving creative business. A focus on working within your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot is so important that I consider it one of the essential components of your creative business.

What is your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot? Your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot is the area within your creative work where you are most creatively fulfilled, meaning you are doing work that you love and that lights you up and that takes best advantage of your creative skills as an artist and is the best representation of who you are, and where you are most financially fulfilled, meaning it is paying you your very best rates. Where those two things intersect, where you both have creative fulfillment and have financial fulfillment, is the place that I call your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot.

By working on projects in that Sweet Spot, you are both doing your very best work and you’re being paid well for that work. This type of work shows you at your best, meaning it’s an excellent example of the kind of work you want to continue doing in the future. The more you do this work, the more you will be thought of for this kind of work in the future, meaning it’s a marketing asset for you. Like a snowball picking up weight and steam as it rolls down a hill, working within your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot builds momentum in your business that allows you to continue doing work you love and to be paid well as you’re doing it.

Anything you say “yes” to that isn’t in this Sweet Spot has a cost. Every project you accept that isn’t in this Sweet Spot takes time in your schedule that could have gone to a project in this Sweet Spot. With a scarcity mindset, you’re always going to accept projects that are offered to you, even if they aren’t in your Sweet Spot, and if a last-minute Sweet Spot project does happen to come your way, you either won’t be able to accept it at all, or you will accept it but won’t have the time to do well on it, meaning you’re limiting your own opportunities within your Sweet Spot in the future.

Remember the illustration of Michael’s perfect project when Heather had a mindset of scarcity in my illustration from just a few minutes ago. Heather accepted Michael’s Sweet Spot project, but because she was already committed to three other projects, due to her scarcity mindset, she didn’t do a good job on Michael’s project and couldn’t give it the attention it deserved. So, Michael decided he wasn’t going to hire her again for that kind of project. Heather had an opportunity to do the kind of work that she wants to do long term, but her scarcity focus on the short term need to fill her schedule asap meant she was overscheduled. She wouldn’t be offered those Sweet Spot opportunities again in the future, at least not from Michael.

Warren Buffett isn’t an artist, but he is an excellent businessman, and he once said that “the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” Now, I myself don’t like to use the word “success” because it’s a word that has so many different meanings to different people, and because it often comes with a lot of really unhelpful emotional baggage, but still, Buffett’s point is a good one. Thriving within your creative work isn’t going to come from saying yes to everything. In fact, thriving from your work most often results when you say “no” more often than you say “yes.”

Steve Jobs had a similar viewpoint. He said, “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas.”

A project that is a “good” project is fine. And if you’re in a financial situation within your business and life that truly requires you to say yes to this “good” project so that you can pay your bills, then accepting that “good” project is absolutely the right thing for you to do.

But even in that situation, recognize that your creative industry is one of abundance. “Good” isn’t the best that’s out there for you. There are great and amazing and incredible and fabulous opportunities available to you. And every time you say “yes” to something that isn’t in your Sweet Spot, you are choosing to devote time and energy and resources to something that isn’t the kind of work that you want to ultimately do.

Even more than that, saying yes to work outside of your Sweet Spot sets you up to get more work outside of your Sweet Spot. The work that you do is your calling card, what you will become known for within your creative industry. Do you really want to be known for work that doesn’t light you up creatively and that doesn’t pay you well financially?

Saying “yes” has a cost, always. When a project outside your Sweet Spot is presented to you, it’s important to take the time to consider whether the cost of saying “yes” is really worth it.

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself when a project comes your way to help you determine, with your mindset of abundance, whether or not it’s a project you want to say yes to:

• Is this project in my Creative & Financial Sweet Spot, meaning it’s going to be something that lights me up creatively and that pays me an excellent rate financially? Or is this project something that I’m only considering because I happen to have free time in my schedule?
• Is this project going to be work I can use to market myself for future projects within my Creative & Financial Sweet Spot? Or is it going to pull me away from that focus?
• What is the cost of saying “yes” to this project? What am I giving up by agreeing to do this work? Is that cost worth it?

If you’re being honest with yourself, and if you truly embrace a mindset of abundance and a perspective that rejoices in the many possibilities that are available for you, you’re probably going to find yourself saying “no” a bit more often than you used to, before listening to this podcast episode. You’re going come to the realization, deep in your core, that a project outside your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot is simply too costly. It would pull you too far away from the area in your work that matters the most to you.

Put simply, your time and your creative energy are too valuable to be spent on work that isn’t in your Sweet Spot.

But still, sometimes, even with an abundant mindset, the answer to a non-Sweet-Spot project will be yes. Sometimes you’ll decide that accepting work that maybe isn’t exactly what you want to do and that doesn’t pay you the rates you deserve is actually worth the cost. But my hope is that when you do say “yes” to a project outside of  your Sweet Spot, you do so with awareness and intention. You do so knowing that there is a cost to this “yes,” and that it’s a cost that is worth paying for you right now. You are choosing to say yes not from a place of scarcity and fear and lack, but from a place of abundance and possibility and imagination, and that is always a good place to be.

Thank you so much for being with me today for this discussion of the impact of your mindset on your creative schedule, and the cost that comes with saying “yes.” I hope this episode gave you some food for thought as you consider how to fill your schedule, determining what projects you accept and where you focus your creative work. I hope those questions I mentioned earlier give you a starting point you can use to think about the role of your artistic work in your wider creative industry. These principles are ones that I’ve seen help the creatives I work with, and I hope they are helpful to you, too.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing to this podcast so you don’t miss a future episode! And I would so appreciate any ratings or reviews you leave for me. Also, if you have a creative colleague who you think might enjoy this episode – or any episode – of this podcast, please send this to them. Sharing is caring! If you have a suggestion of a future topic for this podcast, if you have any questions for me about my work as a creative entrepreneurship coach, or if you’d like more information about how you can work with me, you can reach me on my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com. I’d love to hear from you.

As usual, a huge thank you to my husband, Arturo Araya, who is the tech wizard behind this podcast. His audio engineering skills are invaluable to me! Thanks, Arturo.

A mindset of scarcity will cause you to overschedule yourself and say yes to work that isn’t going to let you shine. We don’t often think of there being a cost to saying “yes,” but there absolutely is, and a mindset of scarcity will cause you to pay that cost every single time. I hope that, instead, you will embrace a mindset of abundance around your creative work.

Give yourself the time and the space you need to be the incredible creative you are. Accept projects knowing that the cost of saying “yes” is absolutely worth it. Amazing opportunities are out there for you. Give yourself the time and space you need to truly take advantage of them. Saying “yes” to a mindset of abundance is one “yes” that is absolutely worth the cost every time. With a mindset of abundance, you open yourself up to all possibilities and set yourself up to truly enjoy every golden opportunity. You will always benefit when you schedule with a mindset of abundance. I can’t wait to see what you create.