How to Create a Real Financial Safety Net

Creating financial safety is not what I thought it was, and not what a lot of people say it is on the internet. To create true financial safety, you have to be very careful with the kinds of people you deal with. People who will not have clouded lenses to look through at your skills, who don’t let their biases get in the way of valuing your talent.

You need people around you who see your skill. Don’t get tricked by their compliments. They may say the nicest things, and you might ongoingly help them and support them, but the moment you ask for help? Suddenly they’re nowhere to be found.

Unfortunately, the indie film and indie business industries are especially abundant in these areas. They often don’t view one’s skill as the bottom line, but rather, one’s personality, or if they fit into some kind of superficial criteria.

Superficial criterias are a set of rules that people judge others on not based on their kindness, heart and trustworthiness, but rather, on some external quality or part of their personality.

The vast variety of superficial criteria people can have for other people can surprise you.

Sometimes, even the things you think are the most positive things to be accepted for can be turned into a rigid and stifling criteria, where, the moment you don’t meet it, they stop supporting you or lose interest. The moment you meet the criteria again, all of a sudden they’ll start showering you with attention.

This can happen if you have a sense of humor, and the moment you stop being funny, you stop hearing from them. Or if you’re wearing a full face of makeup, and you stop wearing it, so then you suddenly stop receiving DMs from your girlfriends telling you that you’re “gorgeous”. Or if you get recognized by a large film festival and finally get attention from filmmakers from Sundance, but the moment you leave the organization, all of those friendships leave, too, and you become “boring” to them. Suddenly, perfectly harmless parts of your personality become a prison that the whole relationship is dependent upon.

Friendships and relationships dependent on external factors.

As this saying from the movie Up goes,

I don’t know if they actually said this in Up, but I found this on the internet. I think you get the point.

To create true financial security, you need to build relationships with people who you know 100 percent value skill and kindness over everything else. A way to find this is to find places where they often can’t afford to have people who are inconsistent and undisciplined: blue-chip professionals.

Unless someone already earned your trust in your industry (where you don’t have to follow a certain superficial criterion to gain their trust), if you have to start from scratch, I highly suggest starting with the blue-chip professionals in your industry.

Because otherwise you can just end up accidentally falling into someone’s criteria for three months to two years, one day wake up and find you no longer fit that criterion, and realize you just lost a friend.

Happened to me more times than I can count.

Also, you don’t deserve to post beautiful artwork you made, and your life’s work, or write a freakin book, only to have your “closest friends” ignore it, and never talk to you about or compliment you on the amazing things you create.

It can harm your own self-perception on both yourself and your artwork.

You deserve to be cheered on for your art and not just for that new car you bought or that tight dress you wore.

With your skills and your projects and your finances, you don’t want to build a castle on sand. Or a house of cards. And wake up one morning that because you changed, so did the amount of friends that you had.

Or risk being fired because you stopped being funny.

To guard your finances, you have to guard your focus. Who has been taking up your time in your DMs who hasn’t been supporting you back, who forgets all your past supportive actions and makes you reprove yourself, who you’re spending all day trying to prove your worthiness to, who doesn’t even ever call you like you call them but DMs you all the time like you’re suddenly their best friend because it’s fast and convenient?

One good way to guard focus is this great free Google Chrome extension I found called “News Feed Eradicator”. It blocks your newsfeed with a positive quote, so you can protect your mind and don’t have to spend your energy on people who don’t care enough about you.

Another good question to ask yourself is, are there moments of disrespect with these people? Pay attention to how you feel.

Also, ask yourself, do they ask for your help on a project, and you put aside a bunch of your time to help them, scheduling out several months in advance, only for them to drop out and cancel their need for help from you, without every letting you know, after you invest eight hours into helping them for free? And then they ghost you for a bunch of months after? Then they may not be the best person to work with or spend lots of time collaborating with in the near future.

People have to earn your trust.

Earn your time.

Another suggestion for financial security is starting your own business and finding your own clients, by solving other people’s problems (in an industry where people aren’t so darn jealous, angry, or biased on recognizing other people’s skills - having non toxic-acting clients is critical for your own wellbeing if you have to personally interact with them) (you don’t want clients who guilt you for things you didn’t do wrong).

Leadspicker is an incredible website that allows you to automate finding potential clients on LinkedIn, using a detailed search done by an ai bot. It is a paid software with a free trial that is a truly great way to find customers who are relevant to the product you are selling. I tried it and was impressed by how the ai agents did research on my behalf for the LinkedIn clients that aligned with my values.

As the website mentions,

“Automate research and signal tracking across LinkedIn and job portals. Monitor social posts, job portals and more to identify high-intent leads instantly.”

To start any kind of business, what you really need are high-intent leads, or in other words, customers. Clients. Because the thing is, so many people have BEAUTIFUL products to sell, but there is so much biased information on the internet about how to sell it to people. Leadspicker works by creating a spreadsheet with high-intent potential customers to reach out to. They’re also a very chill group of people who run the software. Great work and kudos to them for making things easier for small businesses! This is a great workaround for Meta ads as well.

When you start a business with a client base of people who see skill without bias, you can’t get fired based on someone else’s biases.

It’s a great security measure to take for your finances.