Building your business the Right-Brain Way | Book Review

I am reading Jennifer Lee’s second book on business for creative people right now, called Building Your Business the Right-Brain Way – Sustainable Success for the Creative Entrepreneur.

It is very much a follow-up book of her first one, The Right-Brain Business Plan, which I actually haven’t read (yet). Now I think I’ve been missing out, because it’s about how you, via collage and drawing, can find clarity for your business (and life), by creating a visual map for success. Instead of reading it I have been watching the free rebroadcast of Jennifer’s Creative Live class this spring through. It is about how to create and use a visual business plan. While watching it one night I actually made my own collaged business plan and had a lot of fun.

This the second book is about how a creative person such as you and me, a right-brainer, should work visually to get clarity for a successful business. Not just a business that makes money and grows, but ones that makes you happy each day. To me the happiness part is more important than the money-making, but if they align – hurray! You are inspired to think about online marketing, what you can write in your newsletter, how to generate money making ideas, and how to plan for the seasons. Along with very hands-on tips you are also invited to explore your feelings. To journal, reflect, make lists and imagine your own future, much like a self-help book. And mind you, I don’t consider “self-help books” a bad thing! But if you do, this might not be a book for you.

It’s also very much a workbook that you can’t just read through on the train and be done with. It’s a book to be used, and pondered, and dealt with. I love books like this, but I also have a hard time using them. I want to keep reading, not stop to journal, make list, use the fun colorful worksheets (called play sheets in the book), even though I love to journal. I want to know what Jennifer has to say, probably because it is so much easier to keep reading than to stop and think: What do I think about this? What is my goals, my words, my ideas? What can I keep doing, and what should work on right now? The whole point of this book is to answer these questions yourself. Jennifer is the guide and helping hand, you are the one who has to do the work. You are challenged to find out what your core values are, why you do what you do and what creative acts makes you the most fulfilled! So I added in bookmarks on every second page, and I hope to get back to the exercises this summer, when I have more time.

This book offers a lot of reading, but you also get a pretty book. I love the beautiful cover, and inside you get a lot of photos, illustrations (by Kate Prentiss) and nine illustrated play sheets in full-color. It also features presentations of 38 Right-Brain Entrepreneurs. I like the ideas in this book, and would very much like to find clarity of my own.

I’ve been a fan of author and creative coach Jennifer Lee for many years, even though I haven’t actually read her until now. I’m a fan though, because I like her style, used to read her blog, I subscribe to her newsletter and have always attended her free Right-Brainers in Business Video Summit. She has always been generous with free stuff, and I love that she gives even striving peeps a peek into what’s going on with her. And like I mentioned, I have watched the free re-broadcast of her Creative Live class this year. If you want to know more about the book or the author, check out the links below.

Right-Brain Business Inspiration

• Building Your Business the Right-Brain Way: Sustainable Success for the Creative Entrepreneur – book information on amazon
• The Right-Brain Business Plan: A Creative, Visual Map for Success – also check out Jennifer’s first book
• Home of the book – blog, videos and inspiration
• Creative Live Class – with Jennifer Lee
• More great books – my personal reviews and recommendations

Have you read it yet (it came out last month), and how do you read books like this? Do you ever do the exercises?