Every business, creative or not, needs direction — a road map of where it is and where it wants to go. And creating a business or strategic plan every six months or so is a great practice to get you to really think about the business as a whole. What gets missed though is being mindful in between the plans. Your business is alive and always evolving. Too often the freneticism of your day to day makes it impossible for you to see the evolution of your business. I would presume the same is true for your art. How you check in with yourself as an artist is not for me to say, but I would highly suggest you create a daily journal to check in with yourself as a business owner.
I love the Artist's Way and got started journaling after taking Julia's seminar more than 10 years ago. Julia's journal is about free form expression. But that you will be writing about your business, I am arguing you do the same. The journal is NOT there to solve any problems, develop any plan or do anything rational. The purpose of the business journal is to give voice to your inner voice.
Your daily business journal should be for a set amount of time every day (Julia does pages, I like time and would suggest 20 minutes) where you write to yourself about your likes, dislikes and vision for a particular part of your business. Optimally, you should journal at the same time every day. For instance, topic of the day (or week or month) could be customer service. What do you like about how you treat your clients? What could be done better? What do you wish you could communicate that you aren't?
The journal will keep you in touch with what is confronting you and your business today. When you read your entries back you will SEE what has to be done — you will have told it to yourself without even knowing that you did. You can then set about solving the issue as YOU have identified it (as opposed to how it has been defined for you). Whether that manifests in a strategic plan or something more immediate is a function of the severity of the issue, time and desire. And, yes, your journal will show that to you too. If you can write something once and forget about it, can't be that big of a deal. But if it shows up every day, time to get moving.
All sound too out there for you? Try it for a week. My guess is that you will be able to identify and act on issues affecting your business far better than you did the week before. If not, then you will certainly be no worse for trying.
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Journals for business are such an invaluable resource for tapping into the daily feed of what makes your business tick.It IS amazing to see the reappearance of certain issues within a business that need to be addressed! But also to see what you have written that inspires…Both need ACTION!
“New Age” maybe.Helpful definitely!
Love the posts. Keep them coming 🙂
These are great words of wisdom, Sean! As a business owner, you focus on so many different angles and details, it’s easy to lose track of all of the ideas or directions you want to take. It makes a lot of sense to focus on the recurring themes.
Thank you!
Such a great post. I’ve been journaling on and off unofficially for years — often in times of stress or chaos. With this post, I’ve gone out and gotten a new journal and am dedicated to making this a daily exercise even if for 15 minutes. It’s an incredibly helpful tool. Thanks Sean!