We have spent the past few issues teaching you how to prepare yourself for financial abundance. You know how to treat your business finances as an entity separate from your personal finances, you know how to organize and keep track of your expenses, and you know from where you are starting on this financial journey. Great! Now what? Not a thing in your financial lives will change if you do not do the footwork. You need consistently to devote the time necessary to improve your financial situation. So many of us are great starters. We begin to gather knowledge and make great plans, thinking of the ultimate outcome, but then we often do not fulfill our plan by taking the step-by-step actions required to bring us to that outcome. Have you ever uttered, "I'm too busy"? Maybe "I can't afford it" sounds familiar. These are excuses and you need to look closely at where they have gotten you so far. Are you even one step closer to the financial prosperity you wish to have in your life? As artists, we tend to fear anything that might take us away from our artistic pursuits. After all, we have to devote ourselves to our "day jobs", the ones we know will bring in money to pay the bills. What other time we have we must spend on our artistic endeavors. Right? Wrong! The financial distress we are in is so distracting it brings an almost unbearable amount of stress into our lives and our minds. How creatively focused can we be under that much stress? If we make a little time every week to take care of our financial situation - such as reading, attending a seminar, setting up a side business - we would actually free up time later on. Imagine pursuing your artistic dream with no financial pressure! So what exactly does "priority" mean. A priority is a "must", something we "must" do, and a "must" is very different from a "should". We all have lists of things in our lives that we "must" do and we all have lists of things we "should" do. There is a critical difference between the two. For instance, I must pay my bills every month on time. This is something I would never allow myself not to do. However, I really feel I should exercise every day. Somehow, as much as I know I should exercise, I often allow other things to get in the way. For others, exercising every day is a must, and they are prepared to sacrifice to get that exercise time in. I suggest to my students that, for the period they are working with me in private coaching or in our Artists' Prosperity Bootcamp, they make implementing the steps of The Artists' Prosperity SystemTM a "must". Generally, once we see our financial pictures start to shift, we will not go back to doing things the way we did before. So, analyze your time. How do you use it? Where do you waste it? Be completely and brutally honest with yourself. Then, set aside a few hours every week to devote solely to the endeavor of creating financial prosperity. This practice will help you develop the sound knowledge that will allow you to start building the financial wealth you deserve and desire.