Author’s Note: Lora Wedge interviewed me during the Your Community Your Story Economy Module on 6th August 2026. This post is based on the transcript of the recording.

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All of my life I’ve been in a position where the blunt reality is, that I have no money.

It was the same in my childhood. My mother literally didn’t have any money. Of course I can give you the reasons for it: my father was sending money back to Poland where our family were and my mother just didn’t earn quite enough to pay all the bills. But I inherited my mother’s consciousness around money which was, “spend it anyway on what it is that you want or that you need. Just borrow it.”

As a result my mother always was in overdraft but to be quite honest we were never short of anything. If we wanted to do something, we’d do it. I remember one particular time this film had come out called Dr. Zhivago and we really, really wanted to go and see it but, definitely, there wasn’t enough money for three children and one woman to go. My mother hit upon the idea of going through all of the pockets in all of the coats in the house. In those days people had cash, they had coins and they went into pockets. So she gathered up enough money from the pockets of our winter coats and we all went to see Dr. Zhivago. You could possibly call it magical thinking or perhaps you could call it resourceful and creative thinking. In any case, that’s the template for the way in which I see money.

If ever I’ve needed or wanted to do something, there has never been an obstacle. I’ve just borrowed the money and over the years I’ve extended my credit line over many credit cards and if I want to, now I could spend up to a hundred thousand pounds without even asking permission.

omid-armin-ESsGNnhUiCg-unsplashI don’t see debt as a danger but as a privileged tool available to relatively few people in the world. In my view, debt used consciously and with a responsible repayment structure is not something to fear. For me money is energy. It’s an amazing tool… we’re simply people that are using the energy around these numbers and figures to create something with our lives and with our community. Money is currency, the historic meaning of paper money itself was a promise or IOU.

And I extend that attitude to others, as I help out when the opportunity arises, because a business can fold for the lack of five thousand pounds, a house might not be built, a car might not be bought, a website not built… There are countless examples where people weren’t able to gather the funds to create those things that they needed for the next step in their lives, but I could step in, not because I had money, but because I had the capacity to borrow money. So you see, for me, I see it as a privilege to be able to borrow money.

I’ve always had a real abundance consciousness around money, but it’s not just about money. I give generously and I think I receive generously. One typical example was December 2025 when Joan Wilmot and I decided to step in and keep the Phoenix Café open over Christmas. We took it on as a private hire and we both chipped in. I definitely didn’t have the money to do that, so I borrowed it. It was a risk but I was very lucky because the Community stepped up and people donated food and they donated money.

I wasn’t legally allowed to sell food nor was I legally allowed to take money. I didn’t have licenses for that but I was in a position to receive donations. There were people coming up to me and stuffing twenty pound notes in my pockets, and people were bringing cakes every day and were so delighted to do so. As Jane Ellen Combelic said to me, “I always want to help, I always want to volunteer but I just don’t have the capacity to do it but there is one thing I do love to do and finally I can do it – and that is bake cakes!” – so she baked cakes every day.

I realise that I’m quite unusual in my abundant thinking as, generally speaking, I don’t think we can deny that there are quite a lot of people who have a sense of scarcity or lack abundance consciousness. But that’s nothing to do with money, that’s simply a mindset, and I believe that an abundant mindset is a teachable skill so I’ve decided to bring that into the Community through a series of conferences which I’ve planned with Ecovillage Findhorn CBS. I call the series Phoenix Rising.

Economics conference 2026 bannerThe first conference was about money, it was actually about the economy much more than money, so we called it Economics as if Life Matters. I invited lots of very inspiring speakers. I didn’t have any money, I didn’t have a budget, I just was convinced that it was going to be an amazing success. The Universal Hall was only available to book for one day. However I often think ‘constraint catalyses creativity‘ and the result was to come up with the idea of the conference continuing outside the building. One aspect was an ‘economic safari’.Easter Artist Hunt 2026

Wonderfully Laura Pasetti took it on as a project and called it an Artist Hunt; there were eight actors, each representing a business or project. They told the story of that business or project in very imaginative ways, focusing on the seeds that grew, making the enterprise successful. Click here to read some of the stories.

I believe that a successful business can be a spiritual path, in fact I’m convinced of it! Growing food, creating homes, not only ensures our survival but can bring beauty and generate livelihoods for many other people?

That part of the conference was deliberately created to demonstrate the diversity of the enterprises that exist here in the Ecovillage and to show why that diversity is important for the whole world. I could tie it all in with the Scottish Government Community Wealth Building Bill that just came in, fortuitously, at that time.

I also invited a speaker called Joanna Hunter who teaches an abundant mindset. She teaches how it is our responsibility to change ourselves, to change our consciousness. She asserts that we can do that and teaches her many practical steps to set up successful businesses. Her ambition is to help spiritual people, especially women, to have successful businesses so that together they become a force that can change the world.

Imagine if a very wealthy owner, a billionaire owner, of an amazing business had the consciousness that wanted to create abundance for everybody else, how the world would begin to change. I’m not going to give examples or point fingers at what I consider to be a waste of money, created by the billionaire class. However, I want to point a finger to the fact that there are some billionaires, such as Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife, who are very generous with their money. There’s a whole philanthropy class, but that’s not good enough. I think every single one of us has to have a common sense around generating funds to sustain ourselves and improve the lives of others by creating really good businesses.

Joanna Hunter was a slightly controversial figure for some, but when she came, she was just hilarious, endearing, compassionate, clever, and she gave us all really practical tips. A lot of people engaged deeply with her. She was the last speaker at the conference and the following day, she ran a workshop which was oversubscribed. Participants really learned from her and have thanked me since then.

Summing up, I want to share the four very simple rules of having a successful business. It’s really not rocket science, it’s completely sensible, and it goes like this:

Number one: Have a product or a process that you sell.
Is that straightforward? So look around, what’s the thing that you have in abundance or the thing that you’re good at, that you know, that you would like to sell?

Number two: Tell people about it.
This is really important, are you ready for this? Tell people about it because if you don’t tell people about it they just won’t know. Here we may fall down in communities, especially in spiritual communities, we’re so shy and we’re so humble, we don’t want to tell people, so nobody knows about our business or our product or our service. You have to tell people about it. That’s called advertising or marketing. A lot of people find it hard to tell people about something they love, but if you just start sharing: ‘Oh I really love … ‘, then marketing isn’t so difficult. ‘I really love doing massage’, ‘I love decorating houses’, ‘I love collecting flowers’, ‘I love sharing meals’. Suddenly it doesn’t feel so hard, does it?

Number three: Make it easy for people to pay.
Oh my goodness, if they’re going to have to try and wrestle from you a place to put their money or if you make it really hard for them to pay by giving them a long bank code with numbers and the wrong name on it, that’s just not really very easy. So you can use a simple online account app, it’s not difficult. You can offer people the opportunity to pay cash or installments. You can buy yourself one of those little gadgets where you can scan a card. It just gets easier and easier, and of course it keeps your accounts for you easily as well. That way digital tools make it very simple to make it easy for someone to pay you.

Number four: Deliver what you said you would.
And the final tip, if you want to stay in business, you deliver what you said you would. If you don’t, your business is not going to last.

I guess, for now, my business is creating conferences for Ecovillage Findhorn. I’ve planned a series of five and they’re all related to the dimensions used by the Global Ecovillage Network, and by Gaia Education. I intend to do two of these a year and at the end of that period I hope the conference business will be up and running.

I have created for myself a consciousness based on the idea that I’m very abundant, that everything I need will come to me and, you know, frankly, it has.

I actually don’t have very much money, but I have everything in the world I’ve ever needed. I’m not saying that I want to be a millionaire. I’m saying, I feel like a millionaire.

Now, if you don’t have that, then you do not have abundance consciousness. What you have got is lack consciousness. I see a lot of it about, so you’re not the only one.

So here’s my offer, if you believe that you suffer from lack consciousness, come and visit my Lack Consciousness Clinic every Monday at 10 a.m. in the Phoenix Cafe at the Park Ecovillage Findhorn.

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Photos: The top image shows the abundance of my rose garden. The paper notes image is from Unsplash – and I want to give a shout-out for Omin Armin – Thank you for the use of your image!