Do you have a three month business plan? Are you using it? Does it make you happy? Make you smile? Does it express the excitement you have for your business?
Yesterday I created my three-month business plan and just looking at it makes me hysterically happy. My plan has pictures! Hearts! Hot pink dots! Kangaroos! And confetti! How could I not love it? How could I not be wildly inspired by it? How could I not use it every day?
Big picture systems thinking.
Most importantly, I can see The Big Picture. In large-scale (4×6 feet) panoramic full color. It’s a huge monument to where I want to go. A Roadmap of Inspiration.
Having all your ideas in one place.
Getting it out on paper allowed me to have a huge brain dump of all those ideas, visions and details that had been bouncing around in my head.
When you carry stuff around for a while in your mind you just keep cycling through the same ideas and thoughts. There is less room for new thoughts and ideas to come in. So getting those thoughts down on paper where I can see them frees up some cache in my mind for new ideas, dreams and possibilities.
Clarity for your team.
Having all my ideas, projects and plans in one place makes it easy to show other people where I’m going, like the new assistant I’m hiring this week! (Part of my biggification process.)
By looking at the whole mural, she will get a strong, clear understanding of what my business is about and where we’re headed in the next three months. There’s a whole section of the mural that has the projects I want her to start working on.
And she’ll get this in about five minutes. Five minutes! I won’t have to take an hour or two to explain all the pieces and parts of my business because it’s all right there in panoramic living color.
Refer to your plan every day.
I’ll give her a digital version and print one on legal-size paper so that we can keep it handy and refer to it every day for guidance. Like a color-chromatic GPS system!
Another real life example.
I did a similar personal mapping session for Kelly Parkinson of Copylicious. She came to me with a ton of ideas swimming around in her head because she’s super creative and an idea-generating machine. As she said about the experience:
I saw one of the maps Julie had created for another client and thought that this was exactly the thing I needed. I needed to get out of my own brain. Even though I’m a copywriter so I should be able to write my way out of any problem, sometimes writing out my thoughts on my own business just gets me lost in the maze again. I needed something visual and something fun and an outside perspective.
We spent about two hours on the phone. I listened and asked questions while writing and drawing her ideas on a 4×8 foot piece of paper.
This is what Kelly had to say afterward:
I don’t know why all these things in my head are so overwhelming but when I see them like this it makes perfect sense.
You made it into a system that makes sense and I can see how it all fits together. This was so amazing. I’m so glad I did this.
Not only do I have clarity on this situation, but I also have a new vision for what my business could really become. I know EXACTLY what I need to be doing now–next steps and things to move toward in the future.
Need a three month business plan that you’ll actually love and want to use?
Send an email to schedule your session to: Julie at Making Ideas Visible dot com or read more about the process here.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Love your business plan! It’s so vibrant and inspiring. We are definitely kindred spirits as my business plan is visual, too. Great work!!!
.-= Jennifer Lee´s last post … D.C. Creativity in Business Conference Recap =-.
Jennifer, thanks! I’d love to see your business plan. I’m always on the lookout for right-brained ways to do tradionally left-brained stuff. The creative side of me does better when I can use a visual approach.
I love the concept! I saw an episode of “Angel” (again) recently in which one of the characters (Fred) got her thoughts out by writing them on the walls of her room as they occurred to her. I couldn’t help thinking how liberating that must be — but didn’t think “practical application” until I saw this post.
Thanks for the inspiration! Good luck with your plan!
.-= April, the ispecialist´s last post … Get Out…Again! =-.
April, very cool idea! You just reminded me of http://www.ideapaint. It turns your wall into a giant whiteboard.
I’ve been trying to figure out which wall I want to do this to so I can have a permanent place to scribble on the walls in my house. And no one will yell at me for doing it!
Julie, I checked out that ideapaint.com web site. Thanks for the tip! I think chalkboard paint might be more in my price range right now…. Actually, this close to the holiday season (and son’s b-day), I don’t think I’ll have either the time or the money to carry out this particular fantasy.
I’m rooting for you! Good luck choosing a wall!
Guess I’ll have to live vicariously through you.
.-= April, the ispecialist´s last post … Get Out…Again! =-.
This is so cool. Love the idea of a visual 3-month business plan. And even though mine wasn’t actually positioned as a 3-month business plan, that’s definitely what it’s become. The word “business plan” TRULY does not do it justice. So cool to see that you’re eating your own, um, kangaroos!
Thanks Kelly. Yes, even though we started out with *just* tackling some ideas and not with the intention of developing a business plan, we ended up with an inspiring roadmap that gives you a strong direction of where you want to go.
And yep, I need a good description for what this is–business plan doesn’t get the job done!
Love this! Perfect timing for our business as we are looking to embark on a Entrepreneurial & Strategic Planning program with Gaining Results. Thanks for the tip on making the process fun & enjoyable.
Great Lucy, I’m thrilled I could inspire your process. Good luck with it!
Julie, this is wonderful. Who says a biz plan has to be black and white with nothing but numbers and mind-numbing text? Your creativity makes the planning in itself exciting. When you look at it, you look forward to doing all that needs to be done. Yeah, even the dull stuff.
Hey Juile,
Great work!
Thanks for the post on our blog it went right to the core of both the One Page concept and really aligns with our overall approach to strategic plan implementation.
http://www.rapidinfluence.com/blog-0/bid/10621/Let-s-One-Page-Everything
In the end this is all about simplicity. In order to succeed things have to be manageable and understandable and I think your approach really makes a lot of sense.
It would be interesting to translate one of your visual business plans into our simplified strategic plan implementation solution, I think they would go quite well together.
Ed Loessi
http://www.rapidinfluence.com
http://twitter.com/rapidinfluence
Hi Ed,
I’d love to explore that with you. I’m fascinated by your one page strategy because, really, how much more do you need to know in order to move forward? Let’s talk….
I’ve been working with one page business plans and maps that you keep fresh. This approach takes one page to a whole new level that I had not considered. We’ve done something like this on some software development projects I’ve worked on.The big pictures work well for some, but I think left-brained people do struggle sometimes. There are people who prefer the 1000 words to the picture. What’s your experience with this?
Thanks
.-= Ed Martin´s last post … Stay Focused for Success =-.
Ed, I think that’s true. Visuals don’t work for everyone but I find that they do work for more than not.
This is totally inspired thinking. Most business owners allow the idea of business planning to overwhelm them. By creating them in an illustration it somehow feels so much less threatening and final – to your point, create a 3 month plan (which implies change at the end of the period).
You’ve really helped me envision a way to overcome the perceived challenge of planning!
Dena, wonderful! And you’re right about how it feels less threatening. I’ve had this mural up on my office wall for about a month now and I LOVE looking at it. Even though I still have a lot to do, I’ve been able to enjoy the process of revisiting it and seeing how I’m doing.
It continues to insprire me. The business plan that keeps on giving. Definitely not one to be put on the shelf. Hope yours turns out the same way! Stop back by sometime and let me know how it went for you.
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