Back in October,  I wrote about a disconnect I’d discovered, having to do with the vision of my business – turns out, I wasn’t in that vision!  I sat down to correct the disconnect with a fresh visualization,  but the first go-round was unsatisfying.

So I closed my eyes, and tried again.

Instantly, I was transported
to the seashore.

I sighed, in that long-suffering way usually reserved for characters in Jane Austin novels.   Why? Because this seashore image, like the previous studio-with-a-view one, had been popping into my mind quite a bit.

But I’m not a big ocean person, and the beach is hardly my dream work environment. I pushed ahead with the image anyway, to see what would happen.

When last you heard from me way back in October,  I’d written a post about a problem with the long term vision of my business: I wasn’t actually *in* the picture.

So using one of the visualization exercises in The Right Brain Business Plan, I sat down to correct the problem.  I closed my eyes, and asked myself (and the dog siting beside me) what a picture of my success in business would look like, what doing the work would feel like.

The First Bit:

I saw myself in a beautiful, huge studio space, with hard wood flooring, glass walls, and a gorgeous view of trees and mountains in the distance.  It’s an image I’d had in my mind quite a bit recently, so it wasn’t surprising.

Lately, a lot of my energy is going into the background work of the big picture & other bits of biz planning – basically, that means staring at the walls, consulting with cohorts & staying plonked down in front of creativeLIVE workshops for days.  I’ve added bucketloads of ideas into the plan, and edited even more of them out of the picture.

You know the picture I’m talking about, right? The really big, Big, BIG picture-window view of a project or business?  The business visualization (also obnoxiously reffered to here as ‘biz viz’ ) that encompasses an organization’s goals, values and mission? A future-proofed projection of where the project & its leadership are going, and why they’re going there?  The picture that’s supposed to guide my choices as a leader, and keep me inspired & motivated as I build this thing?

Yeah.

I suddenly realized I didn’t have one.

Note! If you somehow missed my Show & Tell spotlight on the Right-Brainers in Business Summit* you can still check out Emmit’s flashing circus lights for free until 9pm eastern, tomorrow night!

So, by now you’ve heard…

About Jennifer Lee’s The Right-Brain Business Plan, right?   I’ve certainly rambled on about it enough lately,  so if you *don’t* know, you probably stumbled in here from a search engine, looking for discount tickets to Cirque du Soleil or something. (You wont find those here, just for the record, but you’re welcome to stick around for the popcorn and sage-advice for quirkipreneurs)

Anyway, Jenn (that’s her lovely face up there) offered me the chance to interview her for the Circus.  I jumped at it, and this is the result.  Tada!

Tori: I’ve been talking with my audience, and while they’re really clear on the “Right-Brain” part, some of them still aren’t sure about what a business plan actually *is* — can you give a quickie explanation?

So, by now you know…

…that Emmit is my Celebrity Business Plan, right? And that some of his pages appears in the The Right-Brain Business Plan book by Jennifer Lee, right?

But did ya know that Emmit and I will be part of the incredibly awesome line up on the Right Brainers In Business Video Summit? And that you can sign up to watch it for free?

No? Well, dammit.

Someone must have neglected to tell you.

Someone like, say, me.

First, a quick video break, courtesy of Emmit, Hisself.

Now, back to the serious business of business modeling!

If you’ve been following along, you already know that my trusty sidekick (Emmit-the-business-plan) started moonlighting as a fashion model.

And if you haven’t been following along, well, here are the links to what happened before:
Part 1:  The Five Questions
Part 2: The Intuitive Visualization

Ready to get on with things? Ok!

When last we left Emmit, he felt that he’d found his true calling on the fashion catwalks.  Since The Circus Serene’s content is largely personality-driven, the celebrity aspect actually makes some sense.  But being a celebrity isn’t a business model, so I decided to test my “Five Business Model Questions” out on Emmit Hisself.

The result is (somewhat surprisingly) darn close to an actual, actionable business model.   Here’s what I came up with:

A Few Days Ago…

I rambled through an explanation of business models, and cobbled together five questions that a proper business model addresses.  You might want to keep them handy, so here they are again:

1. What value does your thing create or enhance?
   
2. How do you capture that value?
   
3. How do you deliver that value?
   
4. Who do you deliver the value to?
5. How do you keep that process sustainable?

Seems pretty logical, so far.

Ready For The Weird Part?

This is where Emmit-His-Self got involved.

(If you’re not familar with Emmit yet, well… he’s a bit hard to explain. Emmit is my business plan, and he’s sort of a cross between Eddie Izzard and Bozo The Clown  – if Bozo were a closeted drag queen with a fetish for sparklies)

Anyway, when he first heard I was writing about business models, Emmit got all excited. On went his best Italian clown nose, and the  Big Shoes from Prada, and he strutted off to the Fashion District in search of a new career.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that we weren’t talking about that kind of model, so I just sorta went with the flow.

Twice last week,Emmit and I scheduled Twitter chats for discussing business models.  Twice last week, Twitter totally fell down on the job! It was a major Tweet-chat fail. So I’m taking the planned chat content, expanding it a bit, and plonking it down here. There’s more than one way to skin a clown, dang nabbit!

The Topic? Business Models.

Ok, first things first… Emmit is a business plan, not a business model.

What’s the difference?

A business plan is like a road-map and itinerary;  it shows you where you’re going, when you plan to get there, a bit of the surrounding terrain, and gives you milestones by which you can track your progress.

A business model is more akin to the vehicle that carries you on that road-trip – or at least, a blueprint for the vehicle.