You may have heard of the “scarcity mindset” by now - the idea that when you believe everything is limited, you become limited. Let’s look at it from a business perspective.
With an abundance mindset, you believe there's plenty for everyone. You believe that there is enough time, money, wealth, love, and happiness to go around. You're optimistic about the future. You navigate obstacles with ease because you know there is something abundant just around the corner. You make decisions based on the Big Picture rather than a single snapshot in time. You’re comfortable taking risks. You don’t feel the need to control everything.
With a scarcity mindset, you believe that everything is limited: time, money, resources, love. You worry about the future because you carry a belief that you won’t have enough. As a result, you focus a lot on what could go wrong. You see the world as dangerous and unforgiving, so you go to great lengths to gain control over your time, money, resources, and relationships. All your decisions are fear-based.
The scarcity mindset breeds a critical inner voice and insecurity. It can drive you to integrate your view of the world (there isn’t enough) into a personal identity (I am not enough). Scripts like “I am not a good real estate professional” and “I won’t get any clients” may lead to lowering your fees, over-relying on lease referrals, and having loose boundaries with clients. You “play it safe” with business decisions, rather than take thoughtful risks that align with your values and create opportunities for growth.
Over time, scarcity leads to resentment towards yourself and your clients. You resent yourself because you’re devaluing your work and not setting a good example for your clients. You resent your clients because your loose boundaries and low fees reduce their commitment to the work. The scarcity mindset causes stress, burnout, and career-ending health problems. It’s an ugly cycle.
A Real-Life Example of the Scarcity Mindset
A few years ago I noticed my own scarcity mindset showing up. Here’s what happened:
In preparation for starting my coaching practice 2018, I started networking several months ahead of time, updated my website to reflect I was now a coach, and sent heaps of announcements out to referral sources. Right before actually starting, I began to worry about getting clients. My fears about not having clients took over and I submitted started offering my services for free!
I spent the next months, what felt like years with an overflowing coaching practice, but with no extra income to reflect the time spent with clients. I took a 100% pay cut, and to make up for it, I was looking to take on more clients. I was upset with myself for putting myself at risk for burnout. Because I was attracting clients who weren’t paying for their coaching, I resented them when they didn’t prioritize the work or cancelled appointments. In addition, my energy was so limited that I put aside other important things, like self-care and professional development.
Here's the thing: Success in business depends on embracing an abundance mindset. Financial well-being is fundamentally tied to positive expectations of the future.
Here are the abundance mindset practices I follow now. I try to remember that the mindset is a practice in itself. You have to keep doing it for it to be come more natural. You Won’t Become Poor By Giving This is at the top of the list because I believe generosity is the single most important thing you can do for your business. But let me explain this before you go handing out free services (learn from my mistakes). Being generous is about giving a piece of yourself or offering your time and expertise. It’s about inviting the entrepreneur down to your professional group. It’s about helping a fellow professional get more clients. It’s about connecting peers who share the same passions and values. It’s about empowering your colleagues through a simple word of encouragement and inspiration at a time when it matters the most. All without expecting something back. Being generous is not about getting loosey-goosey with your cancellation policy or handing out fees without restraint. Those things can actually hurt clients. Instead, ask yourself, “How can I help someone else to be successful?” Confidence Doesn’t Grow On Trees
Confidence is not something you have or don’t have. If you ask successful real estate professionals about how they got the confidence to do the hard things, most of them will tell you they didn’t feel confident. They had fear, and they did the important thing anyway. In fact, fear shows up because the thing you want to do is important and meaningful. Don’t wait for confidence to show up before you take action. You’ll be waiting forever. Remember that you can act with confidence without feeling confident. Just notice the fear and do the thing anyway. (Side note: work on feeling confident more and more each day). There is no Failure Only Feedback
To judge a result of a behaviour or action to be a success or a failure depends on the desired outcome and context. However, to accept that there is no failure only feedback opens up the possibilities of choice, the opportunities to change context, and the choice to identify how to make changes so that the feedback changes to the desired feedback. Smell the Damn Roses Look around. Check out your office. Your bookshelf. The degree on the wall. Your cute plants and your list of clients. That business license. Think about the big win one of your clients had today. Notice the awesome relationships you developed with other service providers.
The feeling of success doesn’t just show up and stick around. It’s transient. So unless you attend to it and savor it, you won’t notice it. You’ll end up in a futile and endless chase where nothing you do makes you feel successful enough. So look around. You’re doing it. In closing, an abundance mindset is not all about money, although you will make lots of it with this mindset - it’s about confidence in your real estate skills, feeling energized by your work, and providing more for your clients. It’s so you not only create abundance for yourself, but for others, too. You will level up your business and you will also impact and inspire others to follow suit, which includes your clients, colleagues, family, and community.
There is no limit to the value you can create, so long as you have the willingness to create it. If you have any questions about this or any other real estate-building topic, use the comment form HERE, and your question could be featured in a future blog post.
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