Dates for workshops still TBD but feel free to contact me for more information. If you’re more interested in a one-on-one work arrangement definitely shot me an email. I don’t plan to have a lot of individual clients.

In the meantime enjoy the excerpt from the book!

Excerpt from The Right-Brain Business Plan: A Creative, Visual Map for Success
By Jennifer Lee
www.rightbrainbusinessplan.com

Does This Sound Like You?
You know you’re a right-brain entrepreneur if you respond with a resounding “yes!” to the following questions:
Do you hate the idea of writing a business plan but know you need one?
Do numbers numb you out?
Do words like business plan, cash flow, and balance sheet make your skin crawl?
Would you rather have an MFA than an MBA?
Do you have a big vision for your business but struggle with seeing it through?
Do you prefer colors, images, and feelings to spreadsheets, tables, and templates?
Do you want to make a positive impact with your business but avoid the business aspects of your job?
Do you feel that planning is boring or daunting, or that it gets in the way of the “real work”?
Are you turned off by the formality and nitty-gritty detail of traditional business plans?
Do you believe there’s got to be a better way to run your business?

You are not alone! I hear clients, workshop participants, and blog readers answer yes to questions like these all the time. Sure, your feathers may get ruffled when you hear the letters ROI, but that doesn’t mean you can’t artfully run a business.

Why a Right-Brain Approach to Business Planning?

Typically, we think of business planning as very much a left-brain activity, and yes, the left brain certainly does play a key role in the planning process, since it is geared for logical, analytical, critical thinking. The left brain is a rock star at solving problems, sequencing steps, and hashing out the details, all great attributes when it comes to testing a plan and carrying out the steps to make that plan happen.

The challenge is when left-brain thinking comes too early in the visioning and planning process and kills the party with its questioning, judgment, and need for every single piece of the puzzle to make absolute sense before taking that first step. This limits your thinking; good ideas are quashed before they’ve even had a chance to form. You get analysis paralysis. Unfortunately, this can leave you feeling frustrated, stuck, and without a plan to speak of. Sound familiar?

Fortunately, as a creative person, you’re naturally gifted with right-brain intuition, imagination, and innovation. But this isn’t about left-brain bashing. In fact, the left brain plays an important role in different parts of your planning process. What we want to avoid is letting your left brain hijack the situation.

When you approach business planning with your right brain first, you free your mind to see creative options, explore, and find patterns and purpose. You allow yourself to dream big and to connect emotionally with your vision. When you begin with your authentic vision, you’re so much better equipped to deal with all the other “stuff.”

Yes, it’s important to know the details and understand the numbers, but if you start from that point, you force yourself into a box and may not even get your plan finished because you become frustrated or blocked. You can always ask an expert about how to read a profit and loss statement, but you can only ask yourself about what matters most to you and your business. If you start with your vision and values, the details will follow.

Excerpted from the book The Right-Brain Business Plan © 2011 by Jennifer Lee. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com. Download the free illustrated poster of The Right-Brain Entrepreneur Badge of Honor and play sheets from the book at www.rightbrainbusinessplan.com.

Make sure you ask for references. And of course get everything in writing. A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Download mindmap PDF.

The source file for the mind map is available for download. The file was created in Mind Manager 8. You can also get the clickable mind map and a PDF as well.

The final part of creating my business plan was doing the left brain stuff a.k.a doing the finances.

The part I most dreaded was looking at the ins and outs of the money aspect of my business. Without it you have no business but still dreaded looking at dealing with the numbers. Now that I’ve done it I don’t feel so bad. I now have a framework to move forward with.

A business plan is supposed to be fluid not static.

So I now know where to put my attention in my business and what product and services to create and which ones are not worth pursuing.

If you don’t have a written business plan I highly recommend doing one. I thinking having it as reference is a great resource. If it is on paper you can still make changes nothing is written in stone.

The areas I covered in the finances were:

• Cost of my services
• Cost of my products
• Business expenses e.g. Advertising, Printing, Membership dues, etc

On Monday I wrote about creating my business plan. The next hurdle for me is figuring out what services to offer. Sure, I could offer a ton of services but I’ll get better results overall if I focus. My business plan is created using scrapbook paper, stickers and clippings from magazines.

I currently have services listed on my site but I want to fine tune my offerings. Trying to be all things to all people is not my goal. Being a jack of all trades…master of none isn’t good for the wallet. I would bet that most generalists would agree with me with few exceptions.

A lot of business books talk about how hard it is for people to pick a target market for their services. This I can say with honestly is totally true. You do feel like you are giving up something. But that is a scarcity mentality. You can’t service every single market.

Everyone does not need your services.

So I’m working on narrowing my focus and redefining my strategy. Having it all out of my head and on paper makes the task of work on my business plan that much easier.

Growing a consulting practice without some kind of plan would have been  a waste of time.

I recently finished writing my business plan. I figured it was time. I’ve been procrastinating about it for ages. But you can’t run a business if you don’t know where you stand or where you are going.

I’ve tried several approaches to creating a business plan – templates, kits etc. and none of it worked. Then I discovered the Right-Brain Business plan by Jennifer Lee. It’s a kit that offers the reader an e-book plus visualization about their business. I found this route of planning much easier that the left brain approach I’d tried before. Just using numbers and statistics just doesn’t cut it. Not that this right-brain approach ignores the numbers. It doesn’t. You still have to figure out the cost of doing business but that’s after you’ve done all the creative thinking about who you are, what your business is and what your unique selling point it.

To learn more about the right-brain business plan visit Artizen Coaching.