[00:00:00] Here we are, early in the year. January is all about goal setting for so many of the people that I know. I'm sure it is for you too, thinking about what you want this year to look like. And so in that spirit, I want to spend a little time talking about the abundance mindset and the scarcity mindset. And I want to convince you to move from a place of scarcity to one of abundance. It's not about greed, it is about gratitude. I will explain all of that on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
[00:00:27] There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
[00:00:58] Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. Happy New Year. My name is Chip Close. I am your host of this, the Restaurant Strategy podcast. We put out two episodes every single week. Marketing and operations. We cover them both equally. Today we're still in this mindset thinking about goal setting, planning for the year ahead. And I want to talk about abundance and scarcity. But really quick, I want to ask you a quick favor. If you get any sort of value from this show, if you would take two minutes and just leave us a five star rating and and review on Apple Podcasts, that would be incredible. Don't lie. Just tell people why you tune in, what you've gotten out of the show, and why you think it's worth them tuning into the show. That more than anything would help me out again. Apple Podcasts leave me a five star rating and review. Take two minutes, do that now and then come right back for the episode.
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[00:02:51] Okay, so I want to talk about scarcity mindset, and I want to talk about the abundance mindset. And I guess to get started, we have to first set some definitions. So the easiest analogy I can. I can come up with because here we are all in food. So the easiest analogy I can come up with is that of pie. The scarcity mindset says there's one pie and therefore only so many pieces, right? There's one pie and we got to get the biggest piece we can for ourselves or we gotta divvy up a bunch of different pieces. But there's only one pie, and the abundance mindset simply says that we know the recipe. So let's just keep baking more pies. If we want more, we'll just bake more pies. It is not finite. It is. It is abundant. It is infinite, right? They, they are. They are two opposites. And I think so often so many of the people I know and work with, and I was certainly there as well. At one point in my life, I operated from this scarcity mindset. I thought deeply about the things I needed, right? That there was only so much in the world, and I just needed to get what I needed to get ahead in life. But it's not the people that think from an abundance perspective that see the world as opportunity and see more as just something inevitable, right? Not that there's only so much to go around, but if I need more, I will just go get more.
[00:04:08] That is an incredibly powerful shift. And I know if you're sitting on the one side thinking really deeply about your needs, you are not spending time thinking about your wants. But I want to change your perspective over the next few minutes.
[00:04:20] The way that I think about scarcity and abundance beyond the pie analogy is laughter. Laughter. Anybody knows that there is not a finite amount of laughter in the world. When you watch a funny movie, the movie gets funnier as it goes along. Anybody who sat up late night with a bunch of friends sitting around a table, and as things get stupider and stupid and you get, you get the laughter going, and the next stupid thing you say sounds even funnier than the thing that the stupid thing that came right before it. Laughter begets laughter, right?
[00:04:53] The more you do it, the easier it is to make it happen. It is not a finite well that you dip into. It's not like, you only get so many laughs in your life, and once they're used up, they're used up. I think those of us, those of us who've been around this planet long enough know that that's not how it works. Laughter begets laughter. It is the ultimate, the ultimate in that abundance mindset. So then how do we apply that to our lives and our businesses? Well, we have businesses that sell things, right? So if you want more, just sell more things. Now, that could be different day parts, different products, opening different locations, but you have a business that sells things, so you can simply decide to sell more things. Now, is it easy? No, but there's something simple about it. Simple is different than easy. We're after simple, and I, and I don't think any of us expect things to be easy.
[00:05:45] But if you want more, just go out and get more. Now, how does this, how does it work in practice? I think you need to set lofty goals. I think most of us are really good about just not asking too much of the world. We say, well, this is all I need to be happy. And that's fine. That's great.
[00:06:03] Understanding how to live humbly and small and be really grateful for what you have is great, but that's not the only way of doing it. If you want more, just say you want more. A few weeks ago, I did an episode about this. You know, the sort of the truth and, you know, the counterintuitive realities of goal setting. I talked about how I like to set goals for me, my life and my business. Right. I shared all of that with you over the last several weeks. And I want to share this as well, because I used to operate from the scarcity mindset and something switched in me before four and a half years ago. And I adopted this abundance mindset, right? Wasn't anything that anyone told me. It was me finally hearing the things that I had heard all along the way. You get started with this is by saying, this is what I want, not what you need. You know what you need? You need a house, you need a car. You need, you know, money to pay your bills and all of that.
[00:06:59] But what do you want? Because if you want more than the things that you need, that's okay.
[00:07:05] It's okay to want less and it's okay to want more. But if you want more, the best way to do it is to set lofty goals. And this is not about greed.
[00:07:14] What happens is that this is, I believe, really about gratitude.
[00:07:18] So if you just say, well, I want, you know, if you Just go and say, well, I'm hoping to do better than I did the year before and all of that, you're not going to stop ever. And acknowledge where you got.
[00:07:28] So if you set a lofty goal and then when you hit that goal, you have a moment where you can be grateful, where you can acknowledge how far you've come.
[00:07:38] I was at point A. I said I wanted to get to point B. I did all these things to make that happen. And, man, look at me. Look at where I got.
[00:07:48] It is not about greed. It is about gratitude. It's about acknowledging your accomplishments along the way.
[00:07:55] When you don't set lofty goals and then you get there anyway, there's no sense of accomplishment. I gotta tell you, I lived this way for a long time.
[00:08:06] That's the thing where the goalposts keep moving, where you just want more and more and more and more and more. But when you sit down, you say, man, I want these things. And then I'm going to do the following things to make sure I get those things. And then when you do all those things and you get the things that you said you want it, you step back and say, wow, that was amazing. Look what happened when I put my mind to it. Look what happened when I took action.
[00:08:28] You do have a sense of acknowledgment and gratitude that that cannot be replicated any other way.
[00:08:36] Write down the things you want, put a plan into place to get the things you want. When you get there, pray on it, meditate on it, to have a bit of grace and humility that, oh, my God, how amazing it is that we got there.
[00:08:51] The biggest thing I want you to see today is that there's a difference between living a scarcity mindset. There's only so much to go around.
[00:09:00] Well, I get a paycheck and I got to stretch that paycheck versus the world we live in now, where you go and you get a side hustle, you can get a second job, you can start your own job, you can start your own agency, your own business.
[00:09:12] And all of you guys, I'm guessing if you're listening to this, you run your own businesses. You own your own businesses.
[00:09:18] You are business owners, not restaurant owners. You are business owners.
[00:09:22] And through food service and hospitality, you take care of the people in your community.
[00:09:26] However you define those products and however you define community, that's how it goes.
[00:09:32] Be bold, set lofty goals, be ambitious, but write them down. And when you hit those marks, acknowledge them, have a bit of gratitude. So it's not about greed.
[00:09:44] It's about gratitude. And I think most of what you're going to write down is actually pretty, pretty, pretty humble.
[00:09:50] If you want a Rolls Royce, a Bugatti, you want a yacht, you want a beach house, fine, that's okay. Write that down too.
[00:09:57] But I think most of you will find that actually the loftiest goals you can think of are still pretty, still pretty realistic.
[00:10:06] As we move into the year ahead, I want you to have that abundance mindset, not that scarcity mindset. There is not one pie. There is one recipe. And you can make as many pies as you need to get, as full as you need to get.
[00:10:23] Remember, laughter begets laughter. It is not about greed. It is about gratitude.
[00:10:28] I hope you guys are setting intention at the early part of this year and setting yourself up to have the best year yet. 24 was hard. 25 continued to be hard. Let's make 26 better than we've ever imagined. The way we do it, the way we do it is by adopting the abundance mindset.
[00:10:50] There is not one pie, there's a recipe and we can make as many pies as we need. That's it, guys. Thank you very much for being here. Again, one final request, get any sort of value from the show. Please go. Leave us a review and rating on Apple podcasts. All those five star reviews really do help tick us up in the in the search bar. Helps more people find us, which just helps grow this community. Thank you very much and I will see you next time.
[00:11:46] Sam.
