Are you still (or constantly) struggling to stay afloat? Could you use all the help you can get to build your financial foundation?  Are you practicing a starving artist mentality or an abundant artist mentality?  Read these integral traits you must have to be successful within your actor economy.  You may not possess all of the above traits just yet, but knowing them can help you make changes so that you nourish the ones that you have and go after the ones you’re missing.

1. Hard AND  Smart (not VS)

Creating financial abundance and staying out of debt rarely comes about without a lot of hard work.

Many actors might hope that winning the lottery will solve all their financial problems and/or winning the “big break” lottery of being a poor unknown actor one day and the next day starring in a TV series (MYTH).

The true path to financial freedom is to work hard to earn money, while constantly and consistently educating yourself to continue to have more value in the industry which will increase your salary.  This is a gradual process that you can easily accomplish with the right knowledge and tools.  Being smart AND working hard is what will get you off that “rat on a wheel” cycle of making money and then being broke (again, always…)

2. Goal-Oriented

I’ve said it so many times and I’ll say it again until you hear it to the bottom of your soul – most actors don’t plan to fail in this biz…most actors fail to plan!  The importance of setting and working toward goals is obvious. If you don’t know where you are going, it’s difficult to get there.

This is just as important when it comes to your financial goals. If you have money goals and are motivated to reach the goals that you have set for yourself, it will naturally translate to your wallet in immense and immediate ways.

Those actors who lack financial goals and just declare “I just want to work; it doesn’t matter how much I get paid as long as I get paid” don’t have a road map to take them to the financial destination they want.

3. Risk-Taking

To build not only a solid financial foundation, but real wealth, one needs to be willing to take risks. This doesn’t mean un-calculated, uneducated risks. It means weighing all the options and taking risks when appropriate.

Everyone knows the stock market has risks involved, but over the long term, history shows that it provides good returns on money that is invested wisely. People who invest in the stock market do their homework and have educated themselves on the risk…or they have trust in someone else who has that education.

For an actor, knowing what to invest your money in, i.e. classes, coaches, marketing materials, etc. reduces your risk if you’ve done your research and gotten educated on the value provided. Those actors who fear risk altogether end up never investing in themselves in ways that could impact their career and would ultimately save them money in the long run.

4. Curiosity

Being curious helps you learn, study and improve yourself.  My least favorite 3 words I hear actors utter are “I know that.”  There’s ALWAYS something to learn if you stay curious.

The curiosity of wanting to know more, to take the time to study and then take what is learned and put into practice is an important process that is driven by curiosity.  This leads to untold treasures and abundance, not only with physical dollars, but contacts, information, experiences and more.

5. Creativity

The work we do as actors providing our joyful self-expression, art and talent and our earnings don’t always match.

Unexpected obstacles and set-backs can mess with your financial plans. The film you got cast in lost its funding and won’t be completed or released (or pay you!); that “manager” collected the money for your work and went out of business; the class you paid high dollar for and expected brilliant teaching wasn’t all that. When this happens, changes are needed to deal with the new circumstances.

Creativity is essential to accomplish this.  I love this part of the energetic around money and finances because creativity allows you to make something good out of something bad or even when you don’t have the money to spend on what you’d like to invest in. It means juggling money to stay out of debt rather than simply paying with a credit card. It means bartering your value and skill set offering something for something.  It means figuring out a way by shifting from thinking “I can’t afford that” to “how can I afford that?”

Being creative plays a large part in keeping your finances and personal economy in order!  Seeing your ability to create in ways outside of actual acting will keep you interested and inspired around what you might have considered mundane or unimportant.  This stuff is just as, if not more important than the latest acting technique you learned.

STOP being a starving artist by adopting several, if not all of these 5 traits today!