Broke But Not Broken: How to Overcome Cash Flow Struggles as a Creative

[00:00:00 - 00:08:32]
What do you do when your budget is bare but your bills don't care? When your talent is bigger than your cash flow and you know, you have dreams and goals as a creative entrepreneur and business person, but you just cannot seem to make it work with your income right now and it doesn't match. Should you give up? Is this a sign that you're in the wrong business? That you're not called to be a creative? Well, my friend, going to address that very real reality when your cash flow is not matching the level of your dreams or your goals as a christian creative artist here in this episode of the God and gig show, give me just a moment to welcome those of you who are new to our show and then we'll get right into this super important conversation. Hello and welcome to our show. Thank you so much for making this podcast a part of your creative day. And let me tell you why. You're in the right place at the right time as a christian creative artist, freelancer, entrepreneur, anyone inside the arts and entertainment and content creation space, but with a heart for ministry, maybe even a position at a church. You want to thrive as an artist by connecting the dots between your spiritual life and your creative life. And that's why you're in the right place, because that's what we help you do. And one of those areas where we all have to struggle and deal with things is money, finances, cash flow. And those times when things look really rough, when money is tight, money's not coming in, you're not getting the gigs or the clients or the sales that you think. And on the business side, things look really rough. Now, I'm always going to advocate that you keep your business and your personal accounts separate. So right now, I'm really not focusing on those of you who might be dealing with that personal account that's not working out. And of course, I've been there, too. But I'm specifically focusing on your business. When cash flow is not coming into your business, your creative life, your gigs, your clients, what do you do? What should be your mindset? Are there practical ways that you can handle this when your cash flow just isn't working for whatever reason? Well, the first thing I would tell you that I did when I faced this very same situation, when I had to cancel some gigs, some other payments did not come in on time. And yes, I got the dreaded NSF insufficient funds in my bank account. Not a fun feeling, especially when you're someone like me that teaches other people how to thrive. And I realized, whoops, this does not look good right now for me, but to be transparent, I had to face myself, look in the mirror and say, am I still called to this? Is this a sign of failure or just a bump in the road? Something that I can overcome? So the first thing that I want to really impress upon you is that insufficient funds do not equal insufficient faith. If you're called to this, if you've been giving yourself to your God, to your gifting, to your calling, to your community, then just because things don't work out in your account does not mean that God has given up on you or that you should give up on your creative dream. It simply means you've got to recalibrate, you got to refocus. You may need to make some adjustments, but it does not mean that you're not called to this. Your income level does not equal your anointing. Even when it seems that you're trying so hard and nothing's working. It may just mean you just need to change some things around in your cash flow and your business strategy. But that doesn't mean that you're not called to be an artist or a creative who God wants to thrive in this area. You just got to make some changes. One of those changes that I made was separating the essential from the non essential. That meant some subscriptions had to go, some things that I was just buying, just to buy. Cause I thought it made me look good and kind of helped me feel like a creative. With all the new gadgets and toys and things on the Internet, well, those weren't important. I had to stick to the basics. So stick to the essentials. Your email service, the things that actually bring in clients, you can't give those up. Those still have to be paid for. So this puts pressure on you to actually find a new way of gaining income when things are slow. And that's the second part I want to make sure that I focus on. Don't go to a scarcity mindset versus going to an abundant mindset of, hey, there are ways that you can get that cash flow going again. There are products you can create, there are gigs you can do, there are relationships you can make. You need to sow into that when things are slow, so that you don't get so focused on simply checking your bank account every day and not seeing anything change. Start to think, what are the things that I am missing out on because I'm so focused on the money you might need now to focus on your relationships. Maybe that next client, that next gig comes from you hanging out, spending time with people, making calls, having that coffee with that person that you should have called back. Sometimes the social media contacts that you just thought were random followers, maybe you need to actually connect with them, dm them, talk to them, find out what's going on in their life. Don't become so focused on your own cash flow that you forget that the whole purpose of you being in this is to create and to connect, keep creating and keep connecting so that you can get that ball rolling again. Another thing I'm going to advise you to do, and a way that I avoided this cash crunch, is to plan ahead. Yes, this means budget. This means that you got to have some reserves. One way that I made sure that I didn't let the essentials fall was that I was able to move some money around that I had saved. So I did have a rainy day fund. If you don't have that, it's very hard for you to continue in business when you're trying to make things happen in your creative life. So I advise you to check out profit first. There's a link for that in the description below. And you can get these percentages of money to go to certain things. Your operating expenses, your taxes, your savings, all of that set aside so that if things get bad, you can always dip into one of those accounts, get something to hold you over until the cash starts flowing again. And the final thing I would say is, remember, you can come up with new ideas. There's things that maybe this allows you to do that you never thought of before. The cash crunch might have come when you were dealing with a certain type of business, a certain type of client. But this might encourage you to try new ones. And these might be the very things that start off new avenues, new streams of income, new ways that you can make money that you never thought of before. So see it less as an obstacle and more as an opportunity to grow your creative business and to think outside the box. My friend. I hope this helped you see insufficient funds as something that could possibly bless you, because you're not looking at it as the end of the road. It's just a bump. A very hard, humbling bump, as I can attest to. But it's not the end of the road. You can find things that will bring cash flow fulfillment, satisfaction and profit to your creative business if you just look at it the right way. I've got some more resources for this in the show notes, including our I heart cash flow mini course that we've created. It goes along with some other packages that we have in guidedgeeks 360, which is our membership. I highly suggest you check that out, especially our inspired creators collection where you can get that course and everything else that we've created in terms of templates and workshops to help creators thrive in everyday life right there inside our 360 membership. And that's all you have to do, is simply get it for $10 a month. So I hope you'll check that out. But this is the goal for you to thrive, for you to not get stuck, end your cash flow issues, but instead think of how you can stay fulfilled as a God honoring creative. Well, that's our creative checkup for today. So until next time, continue to become the creative that you were created to be. God bless, and we'll see you next episode.