Are you facing this recession with a feeling of scarcity or abundance? Because the outcomes for you will be very different!
In the financial crisis of 2008-2009, I was part of a team leading the fastest-growing property company in the UK. We had grown 2000% in 8 years. Everything was going great. We were confident, feeling prosperous and looking forward to a great future.
When the global banking crisis hit three significant events brought the financial crisis to our doorstep: the collapse of Lehman Brothers, with whom we had a joint venture, three of our principal banks with which we had credit facilities had been directly affected by the bank nationalizations/re-capitalizations, and our Property Development Fund was affected by the collapse of the Icelandic banking system.
We had built a successful business – but its future was now at stake due to the unstable financial situation. We had made commitments on the back of the financial commitments to us – we were developing & building properties, we were hiring, we were growing.
Like many, over the next few months, we faced stress with things outside of our control. But in a time of uncertainty, in times of difficulty, we didn’t have a choice. We knuckled down and focused on the task at hand – we had our crisis team meeting every morning at 7:00 am. Working long hours. We were sweating. It was rough and we were working really hard to save the company.
But we managed it. We brought on new investors, we stretched every supplier, we let some employees go, but saved the majority, we looked after our customers, we slowed our growth – we saved our company and let me say at times it was painful. It was not fun.
Thankfully, before the crisis, we had already started a new development fund which had reduced our borrowing, had switched to a more profitable development program with more resilient property values and had implemented a cost-saving program.
The following two years we had our best two years ever. We turned around a £400k operating loss to a £11m operating profit.
In 2012 I moved on to become CEO of another business, actually a group of 7 smaller businesses that had just won a significant central government contract providing accommodation and care services that would triple its revenue.
The group had diverse interests but at its core, it was a property services business. Prior to winning the contract it went through a period of financial difficulty with contract profitability shrinkage, cash flow issues and a number of different people running the business.
In recent times there had been a feeling of scarcity triggered by a fear of loss due to the business continually struggling financially. However, there was now a feeling of hope and optimism now that the major contract had been won.
My first task was to mobilize this new contract and get to operate profitably. It was a massive challenge.
There was a lot of external pressure from government agencies, media and other interest groups. Internally, the business had underestimated the amount of cash that the mobilisation of this contract would consume and overestimated the profitability of the contract. This led to massive stress on the business and that old feeling of scarcity triggered by fear.
We managed to overcome those early challenges and operated the business for several years at breakeven and sold some non-core assets to fund the next stage of growth. In 2016 I moved on to my next venture, and a few months later with another media crisis the pressure of the contract took its toll on the business and the contract was handed back to the main contractor.
Two very different outcomes.
I wish I knew then what I know now. Turning that second business around may have been a lot easier.
From my own first-hand experiences and working with my clients in my coaching practice over the years I’ve learned these outcomes are largely pre-determined by the scarcity vs. abundance feelings and mindsets.
That is not woo-woo!
There’s enough cutting-edge science in Quantum Physics, Ontology, Chaos Theory, and Non-Linear Dynamics that prove that our outer world follows our inner world.
If you have chaos in your life. Check your thinking!
Your outer world follows your inner world. Case closed. If you can’t get past that level of understanding, stop reading now.
Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.
See, everything in life operates at a frequency. Everything is a wave giving off a harmonic frequency. Whether a light wave or a sound wave. If you look at matter under a microscope it is constantly vibrating. The human body operates at about 77 MHz.
Think of tuning forks in music.
If you were to take a range of tuning forks on the whole scale and lay them out in front of you. And you were to take a separate one that matched one of those tuning forks and hit it.
What would happen?
The tuning fork that it matched would automatically start vibrating and sounding because it matched that frequency. We know that through standard music harmonics.
Now, most of us are walking around as a tuning fork tuned specifically to poverty.
It doesn’t matter how much money you have in the bank. You’re tuned to scarcity. You’re vibrating at scarcity. You’re focused on what’s not there. I wish I had more…
So, if we’re vibrating at scarcity, what has to show up?
More evidence of scarcity.
In other words, if you want to become wealthy, what has to happen first?
You need to start vibrating at a wealthy frequency!
Let me demonstrate with another metaphor.
If I were to come to you and say, “Listen I’m thrilled about the deal we’ve done together. I’m going to write a cheque to you for $10m. I get the bank to draw a cashier’s cheque, so it comes out of my account, is guaranteed by the bank, and is put into escrow for 6 months, i.e., it’s post-dated for 6 months. But it is already out of my bank, cashier’s cheque your name on it. You can’t cash it for 6 months, but you know it’s there.
How do you feel? Don’t think about it. Feel it. Go there.
Now, what actually changed in your bank account that day? Nothing.
How did you feel differently? A huge amount I’ll bet!
Start to use that to validate what I’m saying.
If you knew you had that cheque in your pocket, and you just have to wait 6 months but you’re already a multi-millionaire.
Guess what starts showing up.
Opportunities, people, business deals, higher levels of sales conversion. You start attracting things into your world that validate your frequency.
But if you are running around trying to chase the next opportunity, the next business deal, the next division, the next promotion because you want to “earn more money” I have news for you.
Most of us have been doing that our whole life. How’s it working?
Same old, same old.
Until you change your frequency.
Now, how do you accelerate that?
In my experience, scarcity is the perception of poverty triggered by fear.
Whereas wealth is the perception of abundance triggered by gratitude.
What do you have in your life that you can be grateful for right now? What do you have an abundance of?
Air to breathe. People in your life. The fact you’re born in a time in human history that most people have dreamed about for centuries. The fact that you live in a country that’s not at war. That you have a passport you can travel. You’re not suppressed. You have food. You have people in your life who care about you. You were born with all your fingers and toes.
Is there not an abundance of things that we can be grateful for if we stop and take a second to point our compass needle in the right direction?
You start doing that when you’ve finished reading this article and all of a sudden life starts shifting.
Now, it won’t start shifting right away but you have already turned the wheel on the oil tanker. The only thing that can stop than from turning is you turning the wheel back the other way. By getting caught up in tuning into those fears of the worst that could happen.
You cannot get wealthy until you become wealthy. End of.
If you’d like more about how business coaching can help you tune into abundance, get in touch with me. You can book an initial complimentary 15-minute call with me at TimeWithShane.com.
