Name: Cass Mullane
Company Name: Prosper Creatively, LLC
Website: http://www.ProsperCreatively.com
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/ProsperCreatively/
Cass Mullane is a Right-Brain Business Plan® licensed facilitator based in Colorado. She’s the May guest host of our RBBP Facebook group so make sure to stop by and get some support and encouragement from her. Plus, check out Cass’ book The Cool Stuff Jar: Three Simple Ways to Live a Happier Life.
What is your business and what makes your business unique?
My company, Prosper Creatively, LLC, is all about merging business and creativity. By tapping into your innate strengths, taming your Mind Monkeys™ and incorporating the amazing power of play and creativity, I show you how you can transform your business and your life.
I have the unique combination of being a strong creative as well as a strategic thinking MBA. After departing the corporate world in 2004, I built a thriving business and personal coaching practice that focuses on accountability and specializes in delivering solid business skills for right-brainers and creatives in a fun, visual way. Tapping into this whole brain approach has helped to make me a highly valued coach with a fun international clientele.
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 Plan® gave me a high-quality tool to use in my coaching practice and also for myself. Creating my own visual business plan was a blast, and I knew that by using this visual and hands-on approach, I could help many other entrepreneurs wrap their heads around their businesses.
In the bigger picture, I started making it my mission to figure out more ways to marry up creativity and business. I consistently use visual tools to capture possibilities, to map out concepts, to design plans, to measure progress and simply to take notes. I also hold retreats in cool places like Barcelona, that are a combo of business, creativity, and play.
And, just for fun, I’ve been teaching relaxed art classes in my studio that I plan to put online in 2020. I did not imagine that I’d be a business coach who also teaches art!
What goals (big or small) on your business plan have you already accomplished or have made progress on?
• A beautiful studio space outside my house in a delightful professional environment at Cottonwood Center for the Arts in downtown Colorado Springs, CO. Over 70 artists have their studios in this thriving non-profit, so I’m happily immersed in daily creative stimulation.
• Wrote and published The Cool Stuff Jar: Three Simple Ways to Live a Happier Life, a #1 International Best Seller on Kindle. It’s available now for 99 cents! WOO HOO!!
• Utilize a team of assistants and contractors to do the work I don’t need to do myself
• Got my knees replaced so I can satisfy my wanderlust more comfortably
• Spending more time producing my art
• Shifting my coaching practice to focus more on the Cool Stuff Jar® mindset – choosing the good, incorporating play and creativity, life-long learning
• Preparing to launch a podcast in the next several months
• Creating digital and physical products relating to the Cool Stuff Jar® mindset
Why do you love teaching the Right-Brain Business Plan® and using it with your clients? What are some client success stories?
Many of my entrepreneur clients have never done a business plan, often because fear has them paralyzed and they don’t have a clue where or how to start. What the Right-Brain Business Plan® does is allow me to shine a light on their fear (and make it shrink dramatically) and show them a path to follow using their innate skills to develop something that was previously unfamiliar or scary.
One story I love is about a painter who was one of my earliest RBBP clients. We came up with a great visual way to measure progress on her monthly moola targets. She painted two bulb thermometers side by side on her studio wall and filled them in as moola came in and moola went out. As the month progressed, she could always see where she was in terms of cash flow and in terms of hitting her targets. No more fear!
How do you use your creative intuition in your work?
Creative intuition is one of my favorite tools whether I’m using it to come up with suggestions for clients or in making my art. When I feel a hit with a client, I know when something’s right and I know when I need to delve deeper and peel back the layers. One of my unique skills is that I can help guide people through many twists and turns they’ll encounter in their business. Tapping my creative intuition helps me deliver tailored coaching to individual clients and to business teams.
When doing my art it’s the same – I work loosely, abstractly and organically. I do not plan my art from start to finish and I don’t normally know exactly what it will look like at the end. My joy is in the process and in the journey that I go through in order to arrive at a piece of art.
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 very first Right-Brain Business Plan® was made out of some sturdy cardboard packaging that I knew would make a great cover, and some cardstock taped together for the pages. I love to make books out of discarded materials, so the project was both practical and fun.
Nowadays, I still use the original book structure and I’ve replaced most of the original images and words with updated material. I’ve also expanded it to include a sketchbook and journal pages and my regular planning favorites: sticky notes and the whiteboard.
It’s simplified over time so it only contains images and words that conjure up the things I need to stay focused and on track. For example, I do not have the individual names of my management team, but I do have a very specific image that represents my team. When I see the image, it immediately draws my attention to my team.
What’s your big vision for your business?
This is kind of cool because I’m in transition now.
My book, The Cool Stuff Jar, came out and right after that, I had both knees replaced. That shifted my perspective as I had about six months where I was either prepping for the surgeries or rehabbing my knees, so I was not personally generating a lot of revenues for my business. I had plenty of time to think about what impact I could have on a much bigger scale and to decide what I might need to take on in order to accomplish this giant idea I came up with.
So, my Big Vision is: Spark a worldwide movement for individuals to intentionally choose to be happier by paying attention to their individual mindset, taming their Mind Monkeys™ and fully incorporating the power of play and creativity to transform their lives.
My tag line for everything is Expand Your Mental Playground™.
What advice do you have for other creative entrepreneurs?
1. Choose your mindset every day – make this skill into a power tool for your toolbox.
2. Show up and do the work.
3. Focus on doing what only you can do – delegate the rest.
4. Own your money and make it into a power tool for your toolbox – shine a light on the fear.
5. Value your time and charge for it.
6. Build a healthy team to work with and hang out with quality people.
7. Spend time with people who are smarter than you – learn from them.
8. Seek harmony between your work and your life.
9. FILL YOUR COOL STUFF JAR!!
Stay tuned over the next 12 months as I roll out my new Cool Stuff Jar™ world. I’ve got digital products, videos, classes, card decks, the paperback copy of the book, a podcast, plus business and creative retreats all in the works. To be the first to learn about all the fun as it happens, click here.
Also, please consider reading The Cool Stuff Jar: Three Simple Ways to Live a Happier Life. It is chock full of suggestions that you can start implementing immediately. If you feel so moved, kindly take a few minutes and write a review.
Want to create your own Right-Brain Business Plan®? The Right-Brain Business Plan® Kit includes supplies to make your own accordion book style visual business plan.
