Name: Jennyann Carthern
Company Name: Jennyann Carthern Art & Illustration
and Paint is Thicker Than Water
Blog: http://www.paintisthickerthanwater.com/
Twitter: @JennArtist and @Illustratedblog
Facebook: www.facebook.com/JennyannCarthern
www.facebook.com/paintisthickerthanwater
Network: http://paintisthickerthanwater.ning.com/

Note from Jenn: The Right-Brain Business Plan® has helped artist and illustrator Jennyann Carthern proudly embrace that she indeed a Right-Brainer. And after graduating from art school two years ago, this creative approach finally helped her develop a new relationship with business. Check out her values cards and detective bulletin board pics below.  (All photos below courtesy of Jennyann Carthern.)

What is your business and what makes your business unique?

My businesses are about connecting with people, telling their stories and making art.

Paint is Thicker Than Water™ is a teaching business where I provide art lessons to teens that help them create their stories and find their niche. Guiding them to create structures in their lives to accomplish goals, dreams, and make plans for their future, using creative tools and encouraging them to draw from their imagination. I start at their core to awaken their calling.

I also offer private and group art lessons, along with portfolio development to youth approaching art school higher education.
In my Illustrative work, Jennyann Carthern Art and Illustration™, I provide Illustrations for Children’s Books and Privately commissioned Artwork. Private commissions include, Landscapes, Portraits, and Personalized Illustration for Children’s Nurseries, Bedrooms, and Play Spaces.

How has the Right-Brain Business Plan® helped you? What is different for you and your business after approaching planning in a creative, visual way?

The Right Brain Business has helped me create my businesses. It wasn’t long ago; that I decided to just do it, and start my businesses. I had graduated from The California College of the Arts, with a degree in Illustration and spent two years doing nothing, so I got rid of those two years of excuses and decided to just jump. I jumped with my eyes closed, crash landing into a pool of puzzle pieces. The Right-Brain Business Plan has helped me source through those pieces.

My past is riddled with business courses that I took at a local community college. Those courses overwhelmed and frustrated me, much like my experience in academic environments growing up. The Right-Brain Business Plan created a new conversation in my understanding and comprehension of the materials that I’d tried so hard to piece together in my business classes. It also stripped away a label from my spirit. A label I’d carried  growing up with a learning disability. That label carried a tremendous amount of grief toward education. Grief that felt discouraging and disappointing, especially when everyone else got it, except for me. I’ve replaced that with Right Brainer

I now know and believe that I never really had a learning disability. I was a Right Brainer all this time. Society  pinned that label on me, and I carried it for all these years. This awareness has guided my businesses in harnessing the creative in my students, and expressing that enthusiasm in my Art, while sticking it to the label.

Yes! I can see clearly now, and everyday is a bright and sun-shiny day.

What goals (big or small) on your business plan have you already accomplished or have made progress on?

Well, my first goal wasn’t actually a goal, but I had placed this word on my Big -Vision Collage, and my Life Vision Board. Spotlight! It’s weird how it happened, but YES! I’ve become a spotlight here on Jennifer Lee’s Blog, and I also met my accountability partner while attending  The Right Brainers in Business Video Summit.

Others goals I’ve accomplished since starting my Right Brain Business Plan include discovering my creative mission, to help others release their labels by nurturing their creativity and discovering their niche.

I’ve also learned that I should never settle for less. I’ve made God my business partner, doing this has given a clear vision, into the depths of myself. Within those depths I’ve found me. I’ve realized that I was to much of a Yes person. That’s not a bad thing, but I wasn’t always saying Yes, to the things I really wanted.

How do you use your creative intuition in your work?

I draw from within, it’s kind of like micro species or organisms. They live in this invisible world that surrounds us, unseen by the naked eye. Yet! They thrive, prosper and create life. My intuition breathes in this way, and relies on Faith. I don’t need to see it, to know something incredible is happening all around me, because I can feel it. So, if I feel something happening I trust it, and let it do it’s job! Trust, is epic after all, it may sink you or make you swim, but you’ll never know unless you Trust it first.

What’s your vision for your business?

To be the change I want to see!

To give birth to my dreams, and see them grow and evolve into something incredible.

I’ll give them all the space and time they need to learn, make mistakes, and grow. No matter how long it takes. I’m still in, and I’m here to nurture and make this happen. My career as an Illustrator has a bright future ahead, and my continued career as a Teaching Artist is here to inspire others.

I’m also here to stone the myth of the starving artist, and release a new creative fuel into the world. That Yes! Art happens, and it happens to be lucrative!

What advice do you have for other creative entrepreneurs?

Stop trying to be someone else!

What I mean by that is hold tight to what brings you joy, and don’t let others condemn you for it. If you’ve discovered a fun ingenious way to do things, do it!

Is there anything you’d like to share about your Right-Brain Business Plan® in terms of what it’s made out of or how you made it?

My Right-Brain Business Plan is really my blog. My blog is my journey and my transformation as I create the stage for my career. I chose the cast, directed the actors, and created some awesome special effects.

My blog re-lives the events of my Right-Brain Business Plan. Showcasing my Big-Vision Collage, pasted on foam board, and my values card deck, collaged on 5 x 7 index cards, that I later laminated. I also showcase pictures of my detective bulletin board, attached to the door of my closet office. I taped grocery bags to the inside of the door, then used sticky notes for the title and tacked a mini dry erase board to the door.

So please, visit me on my blog, and get inspired to start your own Right-Brain Business Plan!     http://www.paintisthickerthanwater.com

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Don’t give in, and don’t give up! Don’t settle for less, and Trust in what you want, how you’ll get there, and please believe in you!

Growing up, I always tried to fit myself into someone else’s mold, without realizing that my mold was already cast. Waiting for me to pick it up, paint it, and give it my dreams.

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”– Joseph Chilton Pearce

Don’t be afraid to take center stage!

Yes, you may not know all the answers, and Yes, they may laugh at you! What matters is the fact that you were brave enough to ask the question.

Be yourself, without consequence!

Creative Resources

Click here for more information about Jennyann Carthern.

The Right-Brain Business Plan® Kit is available now.

Access a multimedia library of interviews and resources from the Right-Brainers in Business Video Summit and order the book The Right-Brain Business Plan: A Creative, Visual Map for Success.