My Right-Brain Business Plan Experience

 

The weekend before last, I  attended the Right-Brain Business Plan (RBBP) workshop virtually via the brilliance that is creativeLIVE. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the RBBP it is a creative and highly visual method of business planning created by Jennifer Lee. The RBBP is an approach for those creative entrepreneurs who'd usually want to curl up in a ball at the thought of having to do a traditional business plan.

Before I proceed I have a confession to make. To be quite honest, the thought of writing a business plan doesn't make my skin crawl. Not to say that I relish spreadsheets, but writing an executive statement (no that's not a curse word) or an operations plan isn't totally outside of my wheelhouse. In fact when I was an undergraduate (cough cough) years ago, I was in an entrepreneurship certificate program which was more or less four semesters worth of business plan writing. Not to mention that I used to work as a grant writer, which requires some of the same skills.

All that being said, I was still really interested in Jennifer's method. Just because I don't find business plan writing terrifying, doesn't mean I wasn't up to trying an approach that seemed infinitely more fun. I also knew that I eventually wanted to become licensed to facilitate RBBP workshops so this was a good way to get a front row seat, and for FREE to boot!

Yes, I did say Free. For those who are unfamiliar with creativeLive, they attract awesome instructors who are experts in their respective fields, and offer 1-3 day courses for free via livestream. If you miss out on the live course, or just want to re-watch at your own pace to soak up all the learning, you can purchase the videos which are well worth the price. The experience with creativeLive was top-notch, they do a great job of engaging the online audience and really bring you into the experience so you don't feel like you're passively listening to a zzzzz lecture. I'm saying this as someone who is studying e-learning, so I'm pretty picky about what I consider quality online learning experiences.

So back to the #RBBP these are the things that resonated with me:

• The sense of community that formed in the creativeLive chatroom, which also extended to other social media sites like FB, and Twitter. In fact one of the participants Beth Olson took the initiative to start a FB group for the participants and it still serves as a great space where people are continuing to share their dreams, goals, and successes with plenty of community support and feedback. 
• I did some collaging... OK more like copying and pasting.
• The business self-portrait exercise was enlightening. I asked four different people to describe me in three words, and all of them said creative

•  I'm trying to launch a business as a graphic recorder (GR), so that fact that they had Tim Corey come in to do graphic recording on day 3, made me feel as if I was in the right place. It was the first time they'd had a GR in a creativeLive course and seeing/hearing the reactions of the participants and how they valued his contributions helped to solidify my resolve.

• I recently signed up for a mentor via MicroMentor to help me develop my branding/marketing strategy, and we'd scheduled a call smack-dab in the middle of  Day 3, so I had to step away for an hour. One of the first things my mentor @RobWolfe asked was what my core values and business personality were. He encouraged me to just do a brain dump and then we'd work together to pick the top 3 values/personality traits. However, because I'd been engaging in the RBBP I was crystal clear and was able to tell him that My Core Values are: Creativity, Clarity & Collaboration and My Business Personality Traits are: Energetic, Unorthodox & Engaging Rob actually has an MBA and has helped other entrepreneurs gain clarity on what their brand footprint is (as he likes to call it), the fact that he asked some of the same questions that Jennifer did validated that indeed business planning via collage is in fact productive! 

 It's funny because Jennifer, who seems really diligent about self-care, told a little story about her "date with Destiny", Destiny being the name of her massage therapist that she'd had the day prior to the workshop. On day 2, I was actually supposed to be going to my cousin's baby sprinkle which was also a spa party. As the mother of an 8 month old, one might say I'm waaay overdue for some self-care and I was quite looking forward to going. But alas, I stayed home because I didn't have enough milk stored up. Though I was happy to be tuning in to the RBBP I was feeling a bit down because yet again I'd missed an opportunity for "me time" and let that little voice that was telling me that I didn't really deserve that facial, manicure, and pedicure win out.  I share this because I now feel like staying home and engaging in the RBBP course (albeit with two little people swarming around me) was a form of self-care. I was able to make new contacts, gain clarity about my business, and got the kick in the pants to finally launch this blog. 

On that note, I ought to turn in. I'm quite excited that tomorrow (rather later on today, considering it's 1:40 am) I'll be conducting my first Skype interview to launch my Drawn to Success interview series with none other than Tim Corey! and I don't want bags under my eyes :) 

Disclosure: The links to the Right-Brain Business Plan website are affiliate links, however I do wholeheartedly endorse the product.