Scarcity vs. Abundance
Team Letter | June 19, 2023
June 19, 2023
Happy Monday, Team Alpaca!
I woke up today with one word in my mind about Alpaca: abundance.
For years, I’ve written and spoken on the concept of “scarcity and abundance” mindsets. The concept was first written about by Stephen Covey (he writes on personal success), and it goes something like this:
There are two mindsets one can adopt: scarcity or abundance. In a scarcity mindset, there is a finite amount of everything in the world: resources, sales wins, talented people, winning companies, happiness, all of it.
In an abundance mindset, you believe that there is plenty of everything to go around, and that nothing is a “zero sum game” – there doesn’t have to be a winner and a loser in everything we do, and we can be joyful in each others’ successes, because it doesn’t take away from our own.
Here’s the important part: the mindset you choose changes your behavior because it determines what you focus on, which affects how you act.
With a scarcity mindset, you’ll focus on the thing that’s scarce, and tunnel in on how to get as much of it as you can.
Want an example? I’ll give you one: I realize this weekend that I’ve had a scarcity mindset about a contract now for a couple of months. I’ve become pretty focused on saving the contract, and obsessed with the idea of “what happens if we DON’T get it?!” More importantly, I haven’t thought enough around “what are we trying to do BIG PICTURE with Alpaca? What’s it going to look like a year or 2 years from now?”
This is both futile (nothing changes from worrying, actually) and dangerous thinking! Most importantly: it SUCKS. It takes over my sleep and my brain, it takes me out of the present moment with my family and our team, and it is just a really unpleasant way to live. So what’s the alternative?
Abundance, of course.
In an abundance mindset, you believe that there is plenty of everything to go around, remember? So the resources are there, no matter what. The narrative becomes: “If I’m not getting what I want, I need to find another way. It’s not scarce - I just need to look at things differently, get creative, see a new path to what I want.”
This mindset is generative and creative, and it’s really, really fun. It usually results in new collaborations or partnerships. It often gives someone an opportunity to do something new. And it generates more robust and successful products and services. That sounds good to me.
When it comes to the OPS contract, and when it comes to our sales and marketing efforts, I think we MAY have slipped into a bit of a scarcity mindset. That’s okay - it’s going to happen to all of us at some point. There are a few known ways to foster a mindset of abundance, and you know what? We’re pretty good at all of them. Here they are:
Practice gratitude. Hey! We’re good at this. Team, let’s write some thank you notes this week. Not just to teachers – write them to the people you meet with, the people who help you, and the people you admire in the world. Thanking others reminds you that there is plenty of good to go around.
Foster collaboration. When you collaborate with others, you find new pathways toward success where you might have gotten stopped by scarcity before. I challenge you to collaborate with someone you usually don’t collaborate with this week – see what happens!
Give freely of your time and resources. Part of abundance is generosity, be it of time, resources, or even just praise! Again, the Alpaca team is amazing at this, and this week is a good time to remember that and get creative with some new ways to give. Who could we delight this week!?
I’m excited and ready to bring more abundance to my mindset this week, and to see what we can do with it. I think the possibilities are endless. I’d love it if you share with me how you’re fostering abundance this week!
See you out there – there is HUGE success in front of us – let’s go get it!
KB
PS: If you want to read a big article I wrote about abundance vs. scarcity and how it helped us create something big at Flywheel, here it is!