Have everything

When I started shifting from contractor design work to consulting, one of the key things I kept reading, in book after book, was the idea of an abundance mindset. One must negotiate from a psychic position of abundance in order to relax, act with dignity, and get what they need to keep running their business.

This is, on face, a simple idea. Act like you don’t need the work. Cultivate confidence from within. Keep weakness & vulnerability honest, but bounded within the structure of a negotiation.

It becomes far more complicated to cultivate an abundance mindset when you have no clients, when the business is in economic free-fall, when your pipeline keeps instantly noping off at the first sight of a dollar sign. It would be nice to take a few months off to retrench, but these are structural issues that have lasted for over a year.

Of course there is fear. There is fear because this is uncharted territory, and the risk has never been higher. One lead recently said “I’m sure I’m one of many clogging up your inbox,” and I laughed; and then he instantly noped off because our cheapest service costs too much, and I laughed again.