Finding the Path to Financial Abundance

Finding the Path to Financial Abundance

In order to make money in this business you have to condition yourself to expect it. You can find financial security as a successful professional actor. You can condition yourself to make money in the entertainment industry. You can change your struggle from financial survival to abundance. Many people I know, with great talents, have not been able to find financial security as a performer. They may not have all the needed talents to guarantee prosperity. One such talent would be a talent for making money. I have found there are talented actors I have known who have not mastered this talent. These actors have periods where they get paying acting jobs but too often they find themselves between these jobs. They find themselves having to struggle at survival jobs in order to maintain themselves while they are waiting for the next acting job to come their way.

Never Stop Looking for Work

One thing can be said about the actor and work; the actor never stops looking for it. The minute an actor gets an acting job he should start looking for what other acting jobs are coming up. The actor needs to know what he can do, while performing his current acting job, to secure the next acting job. This way of thinking is often difficult for many actors. Once they get a job they tend to sit back and relax while they fulfill the producer’s needs. Often they find themselves, at the end of the show, with no prospect for the next acting job. The actor may think the agent is responsible for this but the only person who is responsible for success of your acting career is you. Don’t ever forget that. When I was vice president of Variety Productions, Inc. in Dallas, Texas, I was fortunate enough to work with the late Bob Hope on several college concert tours. I was functioning as director, but the truth was all I had to do was be sure everything Mr. Hope had laid out was accomplished. He knew his material, he knew his audience and he knew his business. This was a man who stayed on top of his game for over 70 years. Not a bad track record. When I asked him how he had managed to stay on top, he answered: compassion. I’ll never forget that. As a performer he always acknowledged his responsibility to try and give back more than he took. He was not only a brilliant performer but also a brilliant businessman. He managed to have the big seven areas of his life support his passion. He made a business out of his art.

Your Responsibility toward Expectation

Many actors refuse to take the responsibility of the business and, as a result, find themselves at the end of the unemployment line. This is not necessary. Your financial security depends on how you have set up your expectations. If you expect to make money in this business you will. It is a process. For expectation to work you must be prepared to take responsibility for making money as well as managing it. One actor I know is greatly talented. He is a triple threat. A triple threat is an actor who acts, sings and dances with legitimate training and or experience. He is a singer, a dancer and an actor. He is accomplished in each. He is classified as a legitimate performer. That means he was formally trained and took classes and received degrees in his craft. He seldom makes money performing these talents, although he performs them in nonprofit circumstances frequently. He makes his money as a wardrobe supervisor on Broadway. You can imagine what it must be like to dress performers who are no more talented as performers than you. It must make him think as if, for some reason, he is not good enough. I had asked him after a New York showcase (in which he directed and starred) why he was willing to work so hard for so little in financial return. He told me, in all sincerity, that he felt so honored to be allowed to perform that somehow expecting to take money for it seemed too much to ask for. My friend needs to start asking for it and, what’s more, he better start expecting it. Note: A quadruple threat for an actor in the show business industry would be actor, director, writer and producer. One can be a quadruple threat but should always have a confidant or trusted associate who will speak the truth and keep ego from running amuck.

Talent for Making Money

A talent for making money first comes with a mind set. Acting is a legitimate profession that makes many people who function as middlemen very rich. It is an outrage that the middlemen (the producer, the theater owners, network executives, advertisers, and countless staffers) make steady incomes while the actor struggles between jobs hoping for his next opportunity. Often the actor is willing to work for less money or less than perfect conditions for the sheer joy of working. Financial security is based on the mind set of being an employee or an employer. An employer is one who employees other people for a service in exchange for a fee or payment. The employer is the one who makes the investment and takes the risks with hopes of reaping the rewards. The employer circumstance is one with potential and possibility of wealth as well as security. An employee is someone who works for someone providing a service in exchange for a fee. The employee is dependent on the fairness and honesty of his employer. The employee is either supported by a strong union or at the mercy of his situation. If the employee works for a strong company he might be able to retire with a strong health and pension plan. The employer owns his business and manages to ensure himself a comfortable retirement through major investments, savings and company stocks even at the expense of his employees. It is clear that financially successful professional actors think more like employers than employees. Actors, who make little money under their union contracts, often not even making the minimum for insurance coverage, think of themselves as employees. For this reason the actor should think of himself as an employer. If he does not, he allows his career to be in the hands of someone else. I have discussed the damage done by this kind of thinking. It may seem easier but it could be the fear of taking control of your business that gets in the way of your financial success. Often actors with college degrees will work minimum wage jobs just to keep themselves available for the right part if it should come along. This can be very dangerous. It makes for low self-esteem which has already been recognized as one reason many people pursue this career in the first place. Taking survival jobs that create these conscious or subconscious feelings of inadequacy would be a mistake. The talent for making money should originate in your profession. It needs to be supported by your understanding of how money works and why people pay other people for services. A talent for making money comes from knowing what you have to sell and how much it is worth in the marketplace. You need to know your marketplace. You also need to know how the marketplace works. One thing is always true about business: someone is selling something to someone and the value is decided by the seller’s understanding of the buyer’s needs. It is from those needs that the amount of money to be paid will be realized. For the actor his financial value to the producer is the amount of box office the actor can guarantee. The more audience members like your work and come to see you create yet another character, the more value you have to the producer. This does not guarantee a hit or investment bonanza but it does mean that the production will be given certain probability of success if there is a large following for the performers involved.

The Actor’s Talents


For the aspiring actor who has no audience draw from previous work, the need to get any paying work is necessary. Many actors believe that their acting talent is all they should need in order to get the job. In a way that’s true, if you are using a narrow definition of talent. If acting talent only means your ability to create a character and take the audience to make believe you may have limited your talent base. This brings up two points I have discussed before. Your understanding of talent as a process and your understanding of make believe as a place you transcend. If you are of the opinion that art is compromised by looking at the actor’s art as a science, then you may not be interested in understanding your product responsibility or your business responsibility. You have a responsibility to your producer in relation to your being able to take a character to make believe. The process is dictated by the storytelling medium. You also have business responsibilities in direct relation to your knowledge of your buyer and in direct relationship to your product’s value to his efforts. There is a reason one actor is hired over another. There is a reason a director or casting director or producer decide on one actor over another. You want to know what that special something the actor who gets frequent jobs radiates that may be lacking in your efforts. Ironically, that special something probably had been lacking in their efforts before they acquired it. That special something is called confidence. As you know, confidence comes from focus through awareness and accountability.

What Working Actors Do

To make yourself competitive and prosperous in this business of story telling you may be required to do things that you would rather not do. You may need to change your way of thinking about the business and your place in it. You may need to look at the business as a participant, not as an outsider and addressing what things you think working actors deal with. You may need to know what kind of thoughts you think they have and how they go through their day. You may need to use your imagination in projecting your expected lifestyle as an actor. You may need to project your daily circumstance five years from now and set expectations as to the rewards of success. You may need to know how actors who have already found certain levels of professional success function. You may need to know about steady working actors who support themselves and their families in a decent lifestyle while still waiting for the big break to come along. You may need to know about the actors who pay taxes based on money they have made in this profession. You may need to know how these actors handle their daily life patterns and focus. You may need to know what goes on in these actor’s minds. You may need to know what these actors hold as expectations. You may already know some of these people. You may have friends who have made a living wage over the last several years as an actor. Talk to them. Explore how they do it. Explore how they maintain it. If not, you may not be putting yourself into the flow of circumstance to coincidence. You might want to be working in a place where the circumstance of working actors lets the universe help you. Ask yourself the question, “How do I use the reality of my daily life to take full advantage of the universal flow of energy?" Begin to understand how the invisible of your desires become visible to your reality. Know how to converse with the universal desire to give you what you truely believe you deserve.

Life’s Promise

You want to know what is considered the right circumstances and the right information. This requires effort and discipline to discover. Without that effort and discipline you will not give yourself the access code to life’s promise. You want to be clear about life’s promise. Life’s promise is that it will support you with direction and reward if you supply the determination and discipline and understand and use the law of attraction: ask, believe and receive. This promise must be supported by action, focus, clarity and accountability. It alos must be supported with the understanding of how you communicate and connect to the power of all that is. Many actors approach this business from a beholding position. They find themselves beholding to anyone who is willing to offer them a job or even a situation of a job possibility. Many actors will let their ability to act lay dormant waiting for an audition to happen. After the audition they are curious as to why they didn’t feel good about their audition or why they didn’t get a callback. You can only have the power of the audition when you keep your instrument in optimum shape with constant knowledge seeking and physical repetition of effort. You must set aside time every day to practice your skills as an actor. Practice the ability to learn lines quickly, practice your ability to go to make believe, practice your understanding of medium requirements in relation to your particular skills.

Waiting for Luck

Achieving financial security in this business requires much more than luck. Even though it may appear that luck has often been a part of the success of someone else. Remember, luck is opportunity meeting preparation. Luck is a term that can be widely interpreted. The important thing to know about luck is, you create your own. Luck only appears to be luck if you are prepared to take advantage of it. Don’t forget, luck comes in two forms. Good luck and bad luck. Luck can be good or bad based on degree of preparation in relation to degree of opportunity. I can promise you have experienced both. If you had to define the two types of luck in relation to your life how would you do it? Would you know that what you might consider your bad luck is a guide to lead you to good luck. Think on it. What do you learn from bad luck experiences that could be altered to change the outcome? Does being a victim ring a bell?

Conscious/Sub-conscious Agreement

Being conscious is the act of perceiving, apprehending or noticing with a degree of controlled thought or observation about the things around you in the now. Being conscious is marked by thought, will, design and perception. It is the act of being aware and therefore accountable for your choices. The sub-conscious deal with thoughts that are existing in the mind but not immediately available to your awareness. The world of the sub-conscious deal with mental activities just below the consciousness. Think of it as a place. It is a place that holds the truth of your belief system. It accepts and incorporates all the assets and liabilities of your self-worth. The sub-conscious is also the place in your mind that has accessibility to the universal flow of energy and the universal guidance of faith set to your individual reality. That place is where the communication of all substance enables you to make visible the invisible of your imigination and desires. The understanding of the conscious and sub-conscious mind should also be tempered with the desire for a powerful conscience. Conscience is your understanding of right and wrong. It is your scruples, ethics and morality. Your conscious is the accepted value of your belief system. It either works on focus and positive perception or on automatic pilot and confusion. Be sure that you do not give up more than you are willing to give in relation to your quest for a successful acting caree. Make sure that your conscious mind and your subconscious mind are on the same page. You may discover that they are not. You must talk to your subconscious. You must use your imiganation and expectation to be your way of communicating with your subconscious. The now has great power over the past. You can change anything if you allow yourself the power of the now. The subconscious may be operating on the information it has recieved from past experiences and feeling. Do not let this happen. Be conscious of the power of your now. Make it control your expectations and your desires. Be very clear about the things you ask for, the realities you want to become visible in your life, and make sure they are supported with the communication power of clarity of the invisible (imagination and expectations)you wish to manifest. I paraphrase Albert Einstein who said: Knowledge is the recreating things of the past where Imagination is creating things of the future. All of these things I have discussed are necessary in order to insure that the expectations that you set for yourself are reality based. Reality based means your subconscious mind is in total agreement with your conscious mind’s desires. If you have not validated your talent for yourself and your own acceptance of worth, you may never have the support of your subconscious. This communication demands that you a clear of your individual talents. You must know how to define your ability to go to Talent and the talents you have to get you there. You must know your exchange rate in the marketplace. That means you must know the marketplace and your responsibility as a performer. If you have not allowed yourself to be given conscious approval or validation as to your market potential, it may mean that you sub-consciously may not want to accept the amount of work that may be needed to be competitive. Your subconscious mind will use that lack of conscious approval to keep your physical body in control of your life energy and make it impossible to access the universal flow of energy. The substance that manifests the invisible to visible. As I have discussed many times before, if the physical body controls your life energy for survival then your spiritual self will have little hope in growing and defining itself as a conduit of all that is: the communication to the source. Therefore, how you perceive yourself and your life circumstance will dictate how you find financial abundance.

The Right to Financial Abundance

You are well aware that financial abundance without emotional abundance is pointless. Perhaps the reason for your not having financial abundance comes from your fear of what financial abundance might do to you. This is a subconscious thought placement from the past and can only be removed by accepting that you are entitled to the abundance. It may be necessary for you to accept that you are not seeking financial abundance as a reward for your gifts, rather you are accepting financial abundance as your birth right from the universe. Know what you are really seeking to show as you strive to be a professonal actor. You are seeking to show you can become a character and create their world of reality through make believe. You are seeking to show that you can work through the collaborative process. You are seeking to show a buyer that you have the point of reference physically and the skills technically to make an audience believe you are who you say you are. You are seeking to show you can place yourself into the world where people who do this sort of thing live. You are seeking to prove your talents to be believed and validated are supported by both your conscious and subconscious mind. If this appears to be general in tone let me assure you it is not. Your ability to have financial security and abundance are patterns of belief that allow the connection between you and the flow of abundance to be realized and maintained. You can erase a lifetime of low self esteem and instantly replace it with confidence. You can remove yourself from a way of thinking that allows for failure to be an acceptable result of career pursuit. You can and must do this by accepting you have to power and only need access it. In order to do this you must be prepared to welcome what you discover. You must set yourself up to accept certain realities that may not appear to be overly favorable to your self esteem. Be prepared to accept the controlling elements of your life. Then be willing to create the discipline needed to regain control of your ability to achieve your dreams and expectations. You want to be prepared to accept that your expectations and dreams may be counterproductive to the efforts of your conscious and sub-conscious mind if they are not in harmony. The only way to control your sub-conscious ability is to tap into the universal flow of energy and make sure your conscious mind has no doubts about its goals or its abilities. Many people with lesser talents than others have found great financial abundance by not allowing their conscious mind to doubt or be distracted. No matter how technical talents may vary, the bottom line is the ability to do the job. In the case of an actor: being able to take both your character and your audience to make believe.

Pre-destined Lack

Financial abundance is not given to a select few. You may have a predisposition for financial lack from your circumstance of development. This predisposition need not be predestined if you are willing to acknowledge the existence of the predisposition. You want the willingness to remove those thought processes that make the predisposition part of your reality. At that point your reality can be changed. Acknowledge your personal concept of money and how money manifests itself. Look at your personal belief about wealth and the wealthy. Define the concept of money that you use at the present time. You may find that your sub-conscious is supporting its belief that you have great resentment for the wealthy and therefor it will work to avoid your having to be what you hate.

Personal Respect

Make sure that you have respect for your own career choice. It will go a long way in your effort to achieve financial abundance. The actor I discussed in an earlier lesson who disassociated himself with me because I supported his parents questioning his excitement for extra work is an example of a way of thinking that is deeply connected to sub-conscious power. If the sub-conscious is not behind a person’s efforts his chances of success may be limited. Remember, the sub-conscious is your birth right to connect to the substance and the source of all that is. You want to know the importance of the sub-conscious support. It is guided by your honest and solid commitment to your talent and professional awareness. No amount of practice or knowledge gathering is too much. There is, however, a strong possibility of too little. That possibility can be easily evaluated by the consistency and patterns of your career efforts. If your efforts are not consistent, focused and disciplined your sub-conscious mind knows. Your sub-conscious mind knows the depth of your respect for yourself. Your sub-conscious mind knows how much you believe in your personal success. That knowledge should allow you to understand what your sub-conscious is doing and why it may not be working for your success. There are many reasons that can be given for why someone does not achieve financial abundance. Certainly that can be understood in areas of employment where minimum wage is the given or where, even if you reach the top job with the company, you may realize an acceptable financial life but certainly not an abundant one. Abundance is an expectation of careers that are called professional. The professional makes a living within his profession. There are professions such as doctors, lawyers, business executives, investors, producers, actors, or any profession where success is judged by financial achievements. There are other professions that are service oriented. Professions like teachers, ministers, nurses, social workers, where financial rewards are not the deciding factor in the degree of acknowledgment of success. It might be suggested that you have told yourself that financial success does not constitute your value. However, your real belief may be connected to the established expectation of others about a financially rewarding career field. Don’t spend your personal life locked into financial need. Don’t be one of those people who hold a true belief that value is somehow connected to financial achievement.

Financial Abundance

The answer to financial abundance lives in a clear understanding of what abundance means to you. If your idea of abundance lies in the area of a Bill Gates or a Barbra Streisand then your idea of abundance may be a bit overzealous. Abundance needs to be clear enough to be visualized. Abundance may be seeing you with no mortgage and a lovely home in a safe and upscale neighborhood. It may be seeing two cars that are trouble-free, paid for and fun to drive. Abundance may be college funds for your children to cover wherever they want to go or money in the bank. Abundance may be savings for special things or travel funds for getaways. Abundance may be stocks and bonds without fear of the market’s ups and downs or investment money to play with and always money to tithe to insure the universal flow of energy. Take stock of your assets and liabilities as a product and as an employer. Look at this business as a valid and profitable enterprise and yourself as a valid and accepted participant. Deal with those actors in the 2 percent success rate. Learn from their experience and level of ability. Set your business up in such a way that there are no areas of chance. Know how you create a character and what kind of characters you create. Strengthen your knowledge of business and your knowledge of show business in particular and know where you stand competitively today. Know what you must do to be competitive in higher paying and more recognizable areas tomorrow. Begin thinking as a working actor with expectations of financial abundance. Acknowledge your communication and agreement between your conscious and sub-conscious mind. Learn to train your sub-conscious mind to work for you. Your sub-conscious is your lifetime employee not your lifetime controller. Set your goals and actively pursue and practice your craft and your business. Allow yourself the joy of being an actor and the thrill of knowing what you do. In order for the odds game to work for you must participate. For every 10 “no’s” there will be one “yes." Each “no” is a positive sign that you are moving toward your next yes. All good actors are stars. They go beyond the level of expectations and are brilliant. They stand out above the others. There are many who do this by happenstance. There are others that know how they do what they do.

Truth of Abundance

The truth of abundance lies in life’s promise. Remember, life’s promise is that it will support you with direction and reward if you supply the determination and discipline and understand and use the law of attraction: ask, believe and receive. This promise must be supported by action, focus, clarity and accountability. Your financial abundance starts with your willingness to achieve it. It will come from your fulfilling your responsibilities to your craft and your learning the rules and strategies of the game. If you’re willing to run the race you can achieve financial abundance. Paying lip service to your efforts will not change your circumstance. Allowing self-pity and procrastination to be used as excuses for bad luck will not be accepted. Accept certain truths that have always been important to unlocking the doors of financial abundance. You are the one ultimately responsible for your success. You must know your assets so you can use them. You must know your limitations so you can change them. You must cultivate the ability to have compassion and forgiveness for yourself and others. You must have the knowledge of what you want and create a plan of action to achieve it. You must also have the knowledge of when to change your actions if they are not giving you the result you want. Finally, you must never give up and you must be grateful for the opportunity of living. Acknowledge your right to be anything you are willing to work to become. Accept the obstacles in your path as points of needed awareness. Accept that there is no one with more power or energy than you and develop the ability to access it. Know the energy of your life is supported by the energy of the Universe and it can be accessed by action, compassion and truth. Accept today your right to be financially abundant. Know that the only thing standing in your way is fear of what financial abundance might require from you. Know that this fear can be removed with knowledge and repetition of your hearts beliefs. Fear is the reverse of talent. Knowing this will give you leverage in your quest for financial abundance. You must creat a talent for abundance so that talent can live in Talent. Talent is a place. Talent is a state of being. Talent is realized when knowledge and repetition of that knowledge converts to muscle memory so you can control your life energy for the purpose of comfort and healing. You must be a storyteller in your heart. The need to be an actor must be supported by a reason great than yourself. It must be a burning desire. Take that desire, take that need, and manifest it into action. Make sure you continue to achieve the talents needed to be a successful professional actor. Let your talent, supported by your sub-conscious, be a conduit for the energy of the universe. Become part of the oldest profession known to man. The profession of being a talent based storyteller. Remember, the story tellers are the pathfinders to that magical place called make believe. The storyteller is the calmer of the savage beast. The storyteller is the comforter of the soul. The storyteller is the activator of the healing energy that is within each of us. This healing energy can only be activated when an individual’s life energy is at peace. Taking the audience to that peace should be what the storyteller wants the power and ability to do. With that ability will come the financial abundance you so richly deserve.

And, always be grateful. Being grateful is acknowledging your appreciation for the gifts of health, happiness and security/wealth that life brings to you. It is the appreciation of life without a sense of being beholden.

Have a wonderful week and know,
I wish you well.
Russ