What I found fascinating about this, other than the fact that scores of adults do, in fact, compete in a contest like this, is that they use visual images to remember pieces of information. Images stick with us. A reporter trained, competed and won a championship using visual images. Take a look.
I started quilting a few years ago and started to make a business of it about a year and a half ago. I’m starting to immerse myself in visual images. I’ve been a writer for most of my life, so learning to express myself in visual images is a whole new skill.
I read in the blog, Do What You Love, about a woman who wrote a book to teach artists to make right brain business plans. (See the interview here.) I was intrigued. I’m also trying to be frugal, so rather than rushing to my credit card to buy a copy of her book, I tried to imagine how it could help me. In the interview, this author talks about “guiding readers through a visual and creative process to identify their vision.” I took a stab at visually expressing my vision for my business. Here’s what I came up with:
This is basically a diagram of how I want my business sales to progress. The first circle, containing two little smiley faces, represents the current state of my business - an average of two sales per month. The circles progress to the last circle with 50 smiling faces representing 50 sales per month (to 50 happy customers.) Even 50 sales per month would probably not entirely support me, but it’s as much as I could imagine at the moment.
So what use is this chicken scratch, you might ask? This little diagram immediately brought home to me, in a very visceral way, that I was not prepared for 50 happy customers per month. My first thought on finishing the drawing was, “I’ve got to get organized.” I got a clear mental picture of the well stocked, organized studio I needed to create to pull this off. Every time I look at this drawing, it’s a reminder that I need to ramp up to get where I want to be in terms of sales. And it helps me to imagine doing that. I would never have predicted this result from trying to draw a business plan.
This brings me to the book, Your Money or Your Life - my money bible. For those who haven’t heard of it, Your Money or Your Life is a 9 step program to make peace with money in your life. The result of following the program can be to arrive at a place where you no longer have to work for money because you’ve pared down your expenses and amassed sufficient savings to live off the interest.
One of the things you do in this program is to chart how much money you spend every month. When you begin to build savings, you chart your monthly interest income. As your spending first decreases, then levels off, and your interest income gradually increases, you arrive at a place where the two figures meet. This place is called enough.
I’d like to be able to show you this, but I haven’t done this charting for more than a couple of months at a time. I did chart my debts when I was trying to pay them off. I put the chart on my refrigerator and watched the line go down as I got closer and closer to being debt free. It helped keep me motivated. Unfortunately, as soon as my debts were paid, I put the charts away and got in financial trouble again.
I see some new charts in my future.
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