“It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”
–Yogi Berra, legendary baseball player and coach.

Three Steps to a Winning Game

Athletes know working with the best coaches and teammates is a winning strategy. Entrepreneurs choose to play the game by their own rules and define winning on their own terms. Business owners can benefit from working with coaches and building their team. For business owners, it takes three things to create a winning season in the big leagues of business: the Inner Game, the Game Plan, and Team Building.

• The Inner Game is about understanding your true purpose and living your full potential in order to build a business that works for you. Casey Kerr at Find Your Roar is a coach who will help you find out what winning means to you and how to unleash your talents. Read Casey’s blog post on The Inner Game here.
  

• The Game Plan is about creating a high-scoring strategy to shape smarter entrepreneurial strategies and turn your passions into profits. I will help you create an action plan tailor-made for your life and your business. Read below on why having a winning game plan is crucial to your success.
  

• Team Building is about attracting people who will invest in your success: partners, employees, and a fan base of wildly enthusiastic customers. Sandra Larkin, the Metaphor Maven will develop inspired branding and marketing to show them who you are, what you do, and why you’re the best. Read Sandra’s post on how to to create inspired branding and marketing. This is the heart of your business.
  

Do You Have a Winning Game Plan?

The creative entrepreneurs I work with tend to struggle with linear business plans that include too many details. Yet, it’s crucial to business success to have a winning strategy in place. A simple business plan serves as your road map for the year ahead. You don’t need to know all the steps right now, but you do need to know your destination and what you are working toward.

What happens to creative entrepreneurs who don’t have a winning strategy in place? They often feel lost, overwhelmed, or stuck in their business. They lack clarity, which means they lack consistency. They end up chasing ideas, trying every new marketing tactic that comes along, or simply avoiding marketing all together, hoping that clients will show up.

The solution for creative entrepreneurs is to create a game plan that captures both the basics and the essence of their business in a meaningful and visual format. Create a collage, mandala or other visual representation of your plan that you can hang on the wall and look at regularly.

Have you seen how football players, choreographers and other athletes plan their moves? They use a visual representation of the movements they need to make and then they go over those movements again and again, both in real time and using guided visualization. Visualize yourself crossing the finish line of your personal race, arms raised and a smile on your face. What is waiting for you on the other side of the finish line?

Creative entrepreneurs don’t think like other people, and that’s a good thing. Creative entrepreneurs tend to think in circles and see connections where others don’t. Most of us became entrepreneurs because we want the freedom and flexibility to do the work we love, when we want to. We rarely have a clear separation between our lifestyle and our business. Creative entrepreneurs tend to take a holistic approach to business success.

Here are a couple of questions that I ask my clients as we begin the process of designing a six-figure business that is a match for all of who they are and that supports the many roles they play: business owner, spouse/partner, parent, community volunteer, adventure seeker, athlete, yogi … you get the picture!

You can see the full list of questions and a tutorial on how to create your one-page business plan in my new book The Artful Marketer: A Fundamental Business Guide for Creative Entrepreneurs. The book is available for free digital download today, January 20, 2015 at http://bit.ly/artful-marketer.

• What do you love doing more than anything else?
• What does an ideal day in your business/life look like?
• What do you do in your free time?
• What is your big WHY? (This is what keeps you working every day.)
• Why YOU? What is your unique brilliance? What are you best at?
• How much money do you need to earn to create the lifestyle you want?

Creating a winning game plan will remind you that you do have goals and a strategy in place for taking consistent action. This is especially helpful on those bleary-eyed mornings when your bank account is low, the coffee isn’t helping, and you have no idea what to do. Turn to your plan, remember your big WHY, and ask yourself: “What is one action I can take today to grow my business?” Trust your intuition and take action. Consistent action will keep you moving steadily towards your goal.

Be sure to read Casey and Sandra’s posts on how to create a comprehensive strategy for your winning game. Make this year the one where you reach the superbowl!