(painting by Jennifer Lee)

NOTE: This first appeared as a guest post on Way of the Happy Woman.

As a creative entrepreneur and life coach, I’m always integrating my many passions to better support me on my path.  Two of my passions, yoga and creativity, serve as cornerstones for helping me bring more authenticity and awareness into my work.  In my yoga teacher training, It’s Yoga founder Larry Schultz shared, “Ashtanga is a science of sequencing poses using bandhas, breath and movement to create change.”  Besides describing the practice of yoga, Larry’s philosophy also resonated with me as a meaningful way to approach running a creative business (and living my life, for that matter).

As I grow my business I’m stringing together a series of small steps to create positive change.  Bandhas, breath and movement help me consciously flow through the entrepreneurial world with more intention and ease.

How can these yogic elements help you off the mat and in your business?

• The bandhas are specific energy locks in the body.  Engaging your bandhas connects you to your core strength and keeps you stable so you can stretch and move safely.   The other week, I injured myself by overextended in a backbend without fully engaging my bandhas.  I strained myself moving into a vulnerable position because I neglected to stay connected to my core.  In business, bandhas are your core mission.  What are you taking a stand for in your work?  What will ground you as you challenge yourself to move beyond what you think you’re capable of?  When I lose sight of my mission or compromise my core, I find myself overextended and overwhelmed.  Aligning to my mission keeps me strongly rooted in what matters most to me and to my business.

• The breath connects mind, body and spirit.  Larry would say, “Breath is food for the spirit.”  Pranayama, or exercising breath control, helps you stay present and focused.  When the mind wanders in yoga, you bring your attention back to your breath.  Off the mat, many of us juggle so many balls that we can get distracted from our mission or disconnected from ourselves.  If breath is food for the spirit, how are you feeding your spirit in your business?  How do you stay inspired and connected to your own innate creativity?  What keeps you present and focused?  For me, inspiration and breath show up by giving myself plenty of white space to develop new ideas, to reflect on what’s working or not working and to practice self-care.  What will breathe new life into your business today?

• In Ashtanga yoga, poses are linked together through fluid movement accompanied by breath and engaging the bandhas.  The vinyasa practice can be quite rigorous and yet it has a graceful flow as one asana leads to the next.  Being in business can be demanding.  There’s a lot to get done and usually with limited resources.  In the midst of these challenges, how do you maintain a graceful flow in your business?  What actions can you take to connect the mini-milestones that make up your business plan?  If you find yourself stagnant or stuck, what can you shift to move forward?  What helps me move forward is identifying small steps and taking them one at a time.  I have the big picture in mind, but I know it’s the culmination of taking all those small steps that will help me manifest my vision.

Yoga philosophy offers many insights into bringing more conscious intention and ease into your creative business and your life.  Trust that the ancient wisdom of integrating the bandhas, breathe and movement can help you access core strength, focus and flow.  And from there, you can create powerful, positive change on and off the mat.

Namaste!

The Creativity in Business Conference in D.C. this past weekend rocked!  What an incredible experience connecting with so many creative visionaries and forward-thinking people.  From improv games to on-the-spot tweets, from informative presentations to experiential, expressive exercises,  I learned so much from everyone I got to play with.

Photo by ShinyHeartVentures via Flickr

Thanks to conference founder, Michelle James, for bringing together such an amazing community and for giving us a fun and engaging forum to explore navigating the new work paradigm.  I had a blast leading the breakout session on the Right-Brain Business Plan and was inspired listening to the new insights that participants gained from accessing their creative intuition.  I also enjoyed sitting in on the other breakout sessions.

Here were some of my take-aways:

Social Media Creativity and Innovation Panel with Jennifer Abernethy, Frank Gruber, Sam Rosen and Jesse Thomas, moderated by Jen Consalvo

The expert panelists provided some great insights and tips:

• The improv principles of “Yes, AND” and “make everyone else look good” also apply to building relationships in social media.  They help us co-create a conversation that adds value and we help promote the good work of other people.
• Using hashtags helps you connect with others who have similar interests.  I loved being able to find fellow conference goers on Twitter in real-time by searching for the hashtag #bizcreativityconf.
• While it’s great to meet people online, it’s even more impactful when you can build those relationships off-line.  I couldn’t agree more!  The past several months I’ve had the pleasure of getting to meet some of my online friends in-person in the Bay Area and in Boston and D.C.
• Grow awareness by tagging people who are in your photos and posts on Facebook so that it will show up on their news feeds.
• I learned about the cool new online gratitude journal thankfulfor.com that was started by panelists Frank and Jen.
• Graphic recorder Diane Cline did awesome job illustrating notes of some of the sessions.  The visual map above documents the Social Media panel (you can click on the image to see a larger version and more tips).

Brand Story Mojo to Increase your Brand Value with Michael Margolis

Michael shared his framework for storytelling:

• Believe in yourself first and why you’re communicating what you’re communicating.  Authenticity is key.
• Successful leaders are ones who can tell a story.
• We are always telling stories (most of them in our heads).  Facebook and social media are a way for us to externalize our stories and co-create them with others.
• Entrepreneurship is about making something better and getting others to care.  Stories help get others to care.
• People need to identify themselves in your story and then it will become their story.  It’s a way to engage people.

Improv Principles and Practices in Business for Breakthrough Performance with Mike Bonifer

Mike gave some great examples of companies who use improv principles to enhance their business success and facilitated exercises to help us embody the learning:

• Companies tend to focus on the successful outcome.  They try to re-create the next innovative product/outcome but fail because they really should’ve tried to institutionalize the successful process.  The game is the process.
• Mike defines games as engines for exploring the theme of your narrative.  They help create focus and discipline and they energize and invite team members to perform. Good games attract the good players.
• He had us play with the improv principles directly by inviting us to co-create a message around a random thing.  It was amazing to see what our group came up with to market cookware.  It was even more fun to get up in front of the room and “perform” it!
• Improv asks us to be very present with each other and to look for what we can build on.  What a great way to leverage creativity in the workplace.

For more session notes, please check out Ana Ottman’s great write-up about the sessions she attended (including mine!).

I was thrilled to connect with Sam Horn, author of one of my favorite books POP! Stand Out in Any Crowd.  I’m grateful for the insights and advice she generously offered.  And in our improv session we learned we both don’t like to cook !

During the evening festivities, “quantum comedian” Vanda Mikoloski had me in stitches with her irreverent enlightened humor that pokes intelligent fun at spirituality and personal growth.  She also did a great job of reminding all of us that we’re doing important work in helping to shift the consciousness of the planet and that’s nothing to laugh at!

To top it off, I had the good fortune of catching a ride to the airport with Jeff Klein, author of Making Good: Making a Difference While Making a Living.  I enjoyed learning more about the inspiring work he’s doing with conscious capitalism.

I look forward to staying connected online with all the great people I met and continuing to learn from their creative genius.

]]> http://www.rightbrainbusinessplan.com/2009/10/06/d-c-creativity-in-business-conference-recap/feed/ 3 http://www.rightbrainbusinessplan.com/2009/09/30/creativity-in-business-conference-d-c-oct-4th/ http://www.rightbrainbusinessplan.com/2009/09/30/creativity-in-business-conference-d-c-oct-4th/#comments Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:21:09 +0000 Jennifer Lee http://www.rightbrainbusinessplan.com/?p=244

This Sunday October 4th, I’ll be in Washington D.C. leading a Right-Brain Business Plan breakout session for the Creativity in Business Conference.  I’ve been excited about this awesome event for months.  I just got off the phone with conference founder Michelle James this morning and am even more pumped for what the day has in store!

Creativity is widely considered the new capital of 21st century business.  New ideas, new innovations, new systems and new structures depend on accessing novel levels of creativity — for everyone, not just the creatives or “artists.”  Everyone is creative and everyone could use an extra creative boost, especially in the world of business.  At this event, we’ll explore different facets of creativity as the key driver in navigating and thriving in the new work paradigm.

This event is for entrepreneurs, leaders, managers, learning/innovation officers, trainers, consultants, coaches and anyone who wants to be more innovative and adaptive in the changing world of work.  I bet that’s YOU!

I’m looking forward to being in community with other creative entrepreneurs and professionals.  If I don’t see you there, I can’t wait to share with you what I learned.

Can you believe it’s already December?!  Time sure flies when you’re having fun with your creative business (and your life!).  It’s been ages since I’ve posted on this blog.  I am working on a strategy for how to best share creative business resources here and through other means in the new year.

One of the things I’m excited about is starting a collaboration to create a telecourse for the Right-Brain Business Plan in the spring.  If you want to be alerted to when this is happening, please sign-up for my Artizen Coaching Newsletter and I’ll announce details there.

With the year coming to a close, it’s a great time to revisit your Right-Brain Business Plan and vision for 2009 and beyond.  I created a whole new plan for next year during the final day of the Art Every Day Month challenge (where the first Right-Brain Business Plan was born in 2007!).  I will be working on fleshing out the details around marketing, new products and services, financial goals, etc. over the next few weeks.  You can see more pictures of my 2009 Right-Brain Business Plan in progress on my Life Unfolds blog.

During this time of economic challenge, positive, creative visions for the future are needed even more so get started on your new Right-Brain Business Plan today.

Hip Tranquil Chick Kimberly Wilson recently interviewed me about the Right-Brain Business Plan e-Book on her podcast.  Find out why we start Right-Brain Business Planning with visioning and get some resources for your creative life.

That’s me and Kimberly in the photo above when she was in San Francisco this July leading her Yoga and Creativity workshop.  Kimberly is ultra inspiring with her amazing fempire of eco-yogo clothes, a yoga studio, her Hip Tranqui Chick book and Get Your Yoga on CD, her foundation and so much more!  I think of her as the Martha Stewart of the yoga world.  Namaste.

You’ve read about the Right-Brain Business Plan and now you’re ready to make one of your own!

This product is perfect for you if…

• You’re a creative entrepreneur
• You hate the idea of writing a business plan, but know you need one
• Numbers make your skin crawl

With this colorful, out-of-the-box e-Book, you’ll be guided through the creative process of envisioning your business and crafting your unique and personal business plan. It’s like having your own creative cohort alongside you for inspiration and motivation! Takes you all the way from the vision through the action plan.

Product includes:

• 9-page illustrated, colored and hand-written e-book
• 15-minute guided visualization to get you in touch with the big vision of your business
• a link to a simple, “right-brain” template for getting started on the “left-brain” numbers

Price: $19.95

For all you creative entrepreneurs, I wanted to let you know about my new monthly column on the deliciously delightful and inspiring wishstudio blogzine. My Musepreneur column will explore the heart and soul of business and sharing right-brain ideas, tips and resources for creative entrepreneurs. Check out my introductory article and find out if you’re a musepreneur!

I’d also love to hear what you’d be interested in seeing or learning about, so please let me know.

Sometimes our best ideas come to us when we least expect them. One way to spur that process is to use metaphors and similes to get you out of your logical mind and into your imagination.

What’s a metaphor for your business? If you love music, what if you imagined that your business were a song or the score to an epic movie? Where would your business be in the song right now? The overture or the chorus? What themes do you notice throughout your song?

How is the growth of your business like a flower in bloom or like a tidal wave? If your business were a hat, what kind of hat would it be?

See what inspires you or even just strikes your fancy. You can even simply take a look at what’s around you right now and use random objects as starting off points. Who knows, imagining your business is like a ballpoint pen or a flashlight might spark a new product idea or may help you solve a problem in a fresh, exciting way!

Earlier this week I was talking to a client about her business. She had been spending lots of time in front of a Word document and her marketing plan was feeling heady and hard. So, we shifted things up a bit. By physically moving around and connecting with her values, we discovered a whole new angle on her business. She lit up. The energy she created from that place was invigorating, inspiring and engaging (quite a fabulous combo for attracting her prospective customers, don’t ya think?). Fresh, fun new marketing ideas and actions burst forth.

There is so much power in creating from what you’re passionate about. And tapping into your right-brain intuition through movement and creativity helps deeply connect you to that passion. It’s the heart and soul of your business. And that’s truly what makes your business unique!

When I first started my coaching practice back in 2003, I quickly put together a website and chose the name Change Journey Coaching. It was a fine name and a clean, professional site. (In other words, it was standard, generic and safe.) It lacked my heart and soul.

Over the years since then, I learned to claim my unique voice and launched my new brand last fall. Artizen Coaching reflects who I am, what I value and what I bring to my work (and life). Sure, it was scarier to publicly take a stand for what I believe in (Would people not get what I’m about? Not value it/me? Blah, blah, blah). The cool thing is that yes, people are getting it and valuing it. And by coming from my heart and soul, my business is growing and I’m attracting wonderful clients. Most of all, I feel in alignment with my values both personally and professionally.

How are you bringing your heart and soul into your business?

A client said to me in a recent session, “Business is an uncreative process.” The statement felt weighted down by lots of have-tos and shoulds. As we dug a little deeper, we realized that this was a long-held belief that business could only be analytical and logical. As we explored even further, we uncovered that what was really exciting her about her business idea was the opportunity to make a positive impact and to express herself. Now that sounds like a creative process to me!

I definitely think of business as an extremely creative process. (Believe me, I wouldn’t be doing it if I thought otherwise!) It requires coming up with new ideas, products and services. It means constantly innovating to differentiate yourself in the marketplace. It involves taking plenty of risks and developing several creative options to choose from. And, at the heart of it, it can be a reflection of you, your values, vision and voice.

Yes, business does include some tedious tasks as well as the necessary planning, analysis and decision-making. Those are the “whats” that need to happen. The Right-Brain Business Plan is an example of the “how.” The “how” can totally transform something seemingly boring or laborious into something fun, creative and even joyful and inspiring!

A few months ago, I was feeling overwhelmed by all the different pieces of my business. Instead of getting stuck in the what, I switched the “how.” I created a mind-map to help me sort out how all my endeavors fit together. Once I saw how the colorful lines flowed together, I reconnected with why I am doing what I am doing and was excited by all the opportunities ahead.

What limiting beliefs do you currently hold about business? How are those beliefs stifling your creativity? What right-brain “hows” can you incorporate into your business to energize and inspire you (and your customers)?