The other week I did a couple of interviews. One was with the fabulous branding therapy coach David Cohen who did that fabulous doodle bomb of me. My first ever! Mwah.

Harvard Business Review. Seriously?

The other was with the Harvard Business Review, ahem, for an article coming out in the fall that may include me, my work and my client’s experience of graphic facilitation. I’ll let you know about the article when it comes out. In the meantime, say prayers and make offerings to the journalism god that I’ll be included.

Back to the interview I did with David (yes he got to me first before HBR)….the interview and subsequent lunch was illuminating. This guy knows his stuff.

Finetuning my Sweetspot

I’ll write more later about the insights he gave me over lunch. He had me do a focusing exercise about my business which involved doodling a bar graph on the paper tablecloth of a Cuban restaurant. The exercise confirmed where the Sweetspot of my business is and kind of painfully highlighted where I don’t have nearly as much enthusiasm. So I’m doing some internal processing about that.

David gave me some great ideas about how I can realign some of my current projects, like producing a business mindmapping product, into a way that can deliver value for my clients who are in my Sweetspot. For that valuable insight and others I picked up the check.

Me and Gary Vee!

I met David, initially over the internet and then in person, after he talked about me in the same sentence as Gary Vee as someone who has turned their unique skills into a powerful brand story. David explored more of this idea in the interview he did with me. I talked about how I got into this work. Getting really clear about how I talk about the work I do because it’s not something that’s easily explained. And the worst thing that’s ever happened to me at a gig. Enjoy!

OMG, I color-coded my business and I am so happy. Oh the happy! Everything makes sense to me now. Allow me to explain.

I’ve been doing some coaching with the lovely and brilliant Cairene, a systems and time management savant, of ThirdHandWorks. She totally gets us creative entrepreneurs and how we think, organize and process.

Let me just say that when she dropped into our conversation this line, “….remember in design class when they talked about the color wheel?” I swooned and leaned in closer (on the phone) to hear what she was saying.

Bookkeeping has a color? A mood? Seriously? Seriously!

Like beautifully dyed Easter eggs

It does. Mine is blue. So does networking (yellow). Whimsy (pink). Creating, yes different from whimsy, I’ll explain later (orange). Blogging (green). Learning (purple). And marketing (maroon).

Not only a color but a mood, personality and unique qualities. Also yet to be discovered: a time of day, frequency and sequencing. Like on the color wheel.

Which colors (activities) clash or make mud when combined? Which are synchronous and harmonic?

Systems rock

This my friends is a system I can get behind. A system that excites me. A system I want to explore.

Just wait until you see my project timelines…..

Want to mindmap your business on your own? You can.

Which reminds me…..back in January I taught a teleclass with Cairene on how to mindmap your business/life. There were lots of cool things in the class like a guided meditation to see where your business wants to go and what it needs, investigating the iconography or images that animate your business, and constructing a mindmap of where your business is headed.

The mindmapping teleclass is available here in case you missed it.

So next Thursday I’m doing this thing, a teleclass, with my buddy Cairene MacDonald of ThirdHandWorks. I absolutely love Cairene and have participated in many of her Bite the Candy sessions where you carve out several hours to tackle a few of those things that have piled up—things that you don’t want to do–in a really gentle way. When Cairene asked me to be her January Guest Guide I jumped at the chance.

I’m really excited about it but also kind of nervous because it’s my first teleclass.
And it being my first teleclass, I totally don’t have the I should promote this thing shouldn’t I if I want people to come figured out. So this is me promoting it. Or really just telling you a little about it to see if it sounds like something that might be helpful for you.

Business planning for creative people

Since its January, we’re going to focus on business planning. But not the sucky, scary kind that makes creative people like you break out in hives.

What we’re going to do will be way cooler. We’re going to envision where we want our businesses to go and then create a visual business plan to get there.

As Cairene says: I love mind-mapping. I encourage my students to use mind-mapping. I think it’s a really useful tool to have in one’s tool box. It’s a technique that is organic and visual and intuitive and relational—and can help you discover and organize ideas in ways that list-making just can’t.

Exactly!

How it will work

Before we get to the mindmapping though, I’m going to help you tap into your intuition and take a visual journey through the landscape of your business. Maybe a visual touchstone or totem will emerge for you, like mine did recently when I got a vision of my people as sailboats bobbing gently in the Caribbean Sea.

We’ll imagine what you want to do in the coming year (or if you prefer, in the more immediate next three months.)

Then we’ll brainstorm ideas about your direction and organize them into a visual framework with clear action steps.

You’ll get to play with markers, colored sticky notes and big paper. And any other kind of fun stuff you can think of that your visual plan might need.

You’ll come away with a customized-for-you visual business plan. One that inspires and delights you. One you’ll want to use it every day like I do mine.

But I can’t draw!

If you’re intimidated about not having the art gene (relax, there isn’t an art gene), no worries. We’ll be using colored post-it notes and basic shapes to compose our ideas. And you’ll receive a file beforehand with some simple icon drawings from me that you can easily copy.

Interested? Head over here to sign up. And find that pack of colored markers you have tucked away because we’re going to give them a work out! See you on the call next Thursday.

Oh, and the call will be recorded if you can’t make it.

It always tickles me when I walk into the office of a client I’ve done work with and see a mural that I did for them hanging in their office. Like at the CDC.

Or better yet, to see that one of my murals has been scanned, re-sized and printed (with my copyright permission) multiple times into posters and hung all over the building, which is what the CDC did with the 20-year history map I created for them last year. (You can see the full original on my Portfolio page.)

The CDC has also, via email and copiers, circulated the infamous (in a good way) Alice Waters mural that I did in 2007 during a talk she gave at the CDC. This is the mural that put me on the map, so to speak, at the CDC because everyone has seen it. And Alice loved it so much she signed it.

I love to see this happening because it shows that my clients have turned the meeting artifact—the murals—into a living document, something that they continue to refer to for inspiration and to chart their progress.

A practical example of my own

I have done this myself with my three-month business plan map. I’ve had it on my wall since October. Periodically I’ve been updating it, checking my progress, crossing off things I’ve accomplished or adding additional ideas.

After an illuminating conversation with the brilliant Can-do-ologist Marissa Bracke in which she asked me what would my ideal day look like if I felt perfectly supported, I took an orange marker and put a dotted line around all the to-do items that were delegate-able. Oh boy, was I amazed! Then I started delegating.

A War Room of murals

(The political operative in me loves the word War Room.) One of my corporate clients was in a process of reimagining a product line. If you’ve seen recent commercials with Julia Louis-Dreyfus then you know which brand.

I spent a day with their marketing team capturing consumer research and percolating ideas in six separate murals. At the end of the meeting, they declared they were going to set up a War Room with the murals so they would have a physical place to be with the ideas as they continued to have discussions and make decisions. Very cool idea.

When the team, and other folks who weren’t at the initial meeting with us, met again later to review the research findings and work on branding and advertising, they simply had to look at the murals to get the essence of the ideas that were generated that day.

Here’s why they needed me

If I hadn’t been there, they would have had to dig through an enormous, day-long PowerPoint deck to refresh their memory. Gah! I can’t imagine anything more tedious and inefficient.

It was a long day and there was a ton of great ideas and information flowing which can be hard to retain in its entirety. But all they had to do was to go to the War Room or flip through the digital versions of the murals I provided for them on their computer.

Why murals live on and flip chart notes do not

I think it’s the scale of these things–these murals I create with my clients–that lends them to living on past the meeting.

I mean, they are Panoramic. Typically about 4×8 feet, though the CDC mural was even bigger. The murals can certainly enliven an office space and keep your big ideas handy.

A mural can be used for fundraising

I visually facilitated a three-year strategic planning retreat for the Conservation Voters of South Carolina (folks who are fighting the good fight politically for the environmental community of SC) at a 170-year old house that had an original copy of South Carolina’s Succession, but that’s another story.

The final mural I did at the planning retreat was a synthesis of their action steps into a visual image that clearly showed all the areas of their work. I can’t show it to you because their plans to turn the state green are proprietary. Rock on.

They were already intending to hang all the murals in their office, like a War Room. I suggested that they also use their strategic plan mural to:

• Revisit and chart their progress at board meetings
• Use as a recruiting tool for prospective board members because in a quick glance someone can see exactly where the organization is headed
• Use with major donor fundraising for the same reason as above

How would you use one of my murals?

I love to hear stories about how my clients use their murals, so if you’ve got one, please send it along. Or share ideas about how you can see these murals helping with clarity and direction long after the actual meeting.

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.