From Vision To Execution
Welcome to this week’s blog. If you’re in my Pattern Design Academy program, you know that we are wrapping up this week. Wow. The 8 weeks went by really, really quickly. If you’re not in the program, let me explain that in this last week we dive even deeper into the Business of Surface Design. The theme is all about moving from vision to execution and I thought it would be valuable to talk more about this.
Personally, I follow a 5-step process that helps me translate my vision for the year into tangible pieces. I then take those pieces and break them down into tactical steps on a wall calendar. For those of you like me, who are very visual, the process involves office supplies which makes it fun and helps me quickly identify the different parts of my business across the entire year.
I’ve made the mistake in the past of trying to cram an entire process like this into one blog post. But this time, I’m going to cover the process over the next 5 weeks. Like a mini-series.
Let me start with the end in mind so you really get a sense of where we’re going and how valuable this is. Here’s a photo of my 2020 wall calendar.
I took the photo from a bit far away on purpose. I don’t want you to focus on the specifics yet. I want you to tell me what you see.
Right away, at a glance, what do you notice? Here’s what I see:
It’s not fancy - I tape it to the back of a door in our house
It’s a 2020 year at a glance calendar that I got at the office supply store
There are 4 colors of post-its – you can’t see the detail but here’s the key to the colors:
Blue is for my free From Doodles to Dollars™ mini-course
Yellow is for my Pattern Design Academy™ 8-week course
Orange is affiliate activity (when I’m helping someone else sell their course)
Red is travel dates – I haven’t traveled at all in 2020 because of the pandemic - These events took place virtually instead.
Okay. Now that you have a picture, let me walk you through an overview of the entire process so you know exactly where we’re going. By the way, here’s the post-it pack I like the best. More colors and more sizes!
Step one: Your Vision
The work starts with your vision and determining the 1-3 things that you want to accomplish. Sit down and write out a vision statement. Don’t get hung up about the fact that we’re in July. This process works at any time of the year. You can focus on the rest of the year instead of on a full year. Or take a shorter time segment like the next three months. I’ll dive into this in more detail next week but for now, start thinking about what your vision is for your creative business. Write down 1-3 tangible goals that you’d like to achieve.
Step two: The Parts & Pieces
Once you’ve established your vision, start to map out how you’ll get there. Remember that this is an iterative process and things change! Right now, working with a good draft is just fine. Using surface design as an example, if your vision is to start selling your designs, how specifically do you plan to do that? What are all the different ways you can earn money as a surface pattern designer and which ones are reasonable and achievable for you right now.
Step three: The Key Assumptions
Let’s dive deeper and identify the key assumptions you need to make about how long each step in the process will take. This part of the process makes the goal you set become real. There’s meat around the bones. To give you an example of the level of detail here, go read my blog about how to make $1000 at a holiday craft fair. It’s important to understand that details matter and breaking your goals down into small bite sized assumptions helps you achieve them.
Step four: The Tactical Plan
At this stage in the process, I move to that year at a glance wall calendar so that I can map out each major goal. I need something visual at this point. I keep it as simple as possible, using 3-4 colors to identify key activities. I step back, and “zoom out”, and quickly see how the parts and pieces work with each other. Is the timing of each major activity reasonable? Am I missing anything important? Have I included personal and family activities? Using post-its comes in really handy because you can move them around.
Step five: The Daily Execution
This is when I move into my Full Focus Planner by Michael Hyatt. I love this planner and it’s the tool that I use for step five. Michael says: “To accomplish our goals, we must distill our dreams into daily actions.” I follow his recommendation about “The daily big 3” which are your three most important tasks for the day. Keeping your task list short ensures that you focus on the right things. It also helps build your self-confidence as day after day you check them off the list and see the progress you are making.
Okay, how was that for an overview of the entire process? Does it make sense and can you see how each step builds on the one before it?
Join me LIVE on my Facebook page, Anne LaFollette Art, at noon pacific time every Wednesday to ask me questions and gain additional insights.
Next week we’ll dive into a real-life example to demonstrate how this process works, starting with Step one: Your Vision. I’ll see you then.
Remember,
It’s Never Too Late to Create
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MEET ANNE
Hi…I’m Anne!
My creative inspiration comes from a lifetime of observation. I grew up in Paris on the Place St. Sulpice and walked to school through the Luxembourg gardens. And that was only the beginning… Learn more by watching the video on my About page.
