On Saturday, I led a Right-Brain Business Plan Workshop in San Francisco. During the workshop, I mentioned Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind. Pink asserts that the left-brain analytical skills which made people successful in the past are no longer enough to succeed. In this day and age, we also need to cultivate more right-brain aptitudes – more creativity, more meaning-making and empathy.

The Right-Brain Business Planning approach follows similar thinking. If you start with your vision and values, the details can follow. If you start with the left-brain details that you know you “should have,” you may limit your thinking or, worse yet, you may get analysis paralysis. By taking a more right-brain approach, you free your mind to see creative options, to explore and find patterns and purpose.

What’s great about bringing people together for an afternoon of right-brain business planning, is it helps to get them out of their heads. They connect with other creative entrepreneurs, they find common threads, they support each other. It becomes a more collaborative process even if they’re still making their own individual plans.

If you’re working on your own Right-Brain Business Plan, why not gather a few of your friends and make an afternoon out of it. Your right-brain will thank you!

PLEASE NOTE: The original 9-page handwritten, illustrated e-book is no longer available now that the full-length book The Right-Brain Business Plan: A Creative, Visual Map for Success by Jennifer Lee has been published by New World Library.

Please note that there are e-book versions of the full length book available on Kindle (although if you’re on a Kindle device, you won’t be able to see all the great colorful images. You will be able to see the full color images on the Kindle app for iPad/iPhone) and iBooks.

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.

If you haven’t yet seen this video of brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor talking about her stroke I highly encourage you to take a look. She shares her incredible story and the magical insights she gained about the left and right brain.

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?