Before we jump into writing the actual plan itself, we have to know exactly where we want to go.  It’s time to sit down with pen and paper and do some personal business analysis.  Remember that all of this is subject to future revision and is intended mainly for your own personal use.  You may write down a goal here that you decide you really don’t want anymore in 6 months — great! 

In this pre-planning phase we’re going to cover:

  • Personal
  • Business Goals
  • Artistic Goals

Got the pen and paper? Maybe a fresh Word document?  Either way, you MUST WRITE THIS DOWN.  Every major life coach/guru out there advocates written goals as a key to success, and every major corporation maintains sets of written goals for their business.  I would contend that most successful artists/actors/musicians are also very goal oriented people, but there’s something about putting it in writing that makes it real.  I started doing this for myself a couple years ago and I was amazed at how much it helps me.  Maybe I’ll write a personal post on that later, but for now this is about YOU and YOUR goals.

Writing your personal goals can be a very extensive process, but for the scope of this series we need to focus on those aspects of your personal life that have a direct bearing on what choices you make professionally.  First, we need to distinguish between short and long term goals, so lets make columns for

  • Goals to accomplish this year
  • Goals in 3 years
  • Goals in 5 years
  • Goals in 10 years

Start with the outermost goals as those will be the most lofty and also the most vague.  Take some time with this and be honest with yourself.  The questions you ask yourself and the resulting goals will depend heavily on your personal situation.  Someone in the their late 20s with a Masters Degree will probably not have higher education goals, but someone in their late teens may see the bulk of their goals center around acquiring an education. Even for the 10 year goals, try to be very specific and ask yourself questions like:

  • What sort of life do I want to have in 10 years?
  • How much do I want to be working?
  • Do I want to have a family?
  • What do I want my financial picture to look like?
  • What financial obligations do I need to be ready for?  Money for retirement? Kids going to college?

Once you get started you will probably think of many more.  If anyone thinks of some really good ones, feel free to post them in a comment and I’ll try to add them in the main text later.  Once you’ve got some ideas about where you’d like your life to be in 10 years, it’s time to back up to 5 years and repeat.  Take your questions and answers from the longer term and project where you’d like to be on the road to accomplishing them in 5 years, the halfway point.  If you have any personal life goals you’d like to complete within 5 years, this would be a place to put them.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that we’re just going to keep backing things up until you’re looking at what you want to accomplish this year in your personal life.  Depending on where you are in life, this section may be the most full or the most sparse.  If you’re in the thick of your business/career part of life, that may be the dominant part of your goals, but it’s still a good idea to keep an eye on where you want to end up lest you lose sight of what’s important to you.   Either way, select some goals to accomplish this year that will HELP you achieve one or some of those long term goals.  Even if it’s just a tiny bit, it’s a move in the right direction and far more valuable than doing nothing.

Now that you’ve got some personal goals down, it’s time to move on to business and artistic ones.  We’ll use the same rubric of 10, 5, 3, and 1 year goals, though feel free to omit the 3 if it seems too redundant, or add more if you want to get more specific. 

Now it’s time to start writing down the stuff of your daydreams. 

  • Where you do want your business to be in 10/5/3 years?
  • What sort of gigs do you want your band to be playing?
  • Do you want to be signed by a major label and have a recording contract?
  • Do you want to be making your living solely from your art or music?
  • What level of houses and orchestras do you want to be singing with?

Since you know yourself better than I do, you will probably have much better questions and great answers.  Check your long term personal goals against your business/artistic ones and make sure they mesh, or at least have the potential to mesh.  Nothing in life is certain, but if your business and artistic goals are completely contrary to your other life goals, you’re in for some trouble down the line. 

Once you’ve got some long term and medium term goals written down, it’s time to move on to short term goals for this year. These need to be VERY specific and in most cases point toward a longer term goal. 

Example: If your long term goal is to be a college professor teaching acting, your medium term goals would involve acquiring the requisite education to be hireable in that field.  Your short term goals might be:

- Apply and be accepted to ________ School of Theatre

Again, these are just generic examples and yours will be much more specific, but it’s CRUCIAL that these be written down and printed out in a form that you can look at frequently.  This is where the power of written goals comes into play — their ability to help you stay focused over the long haul and reconcile your daily choices with achieving what you value in the long term.  The key to anything in business, art, or life is consistency, and keeping an eye on your goals will help you as we move in to………..

Your business plan!  Yes, it’s quite difficult to plan for something unless you know what that thing is.  Saying you want to be a painter is one thing.  Saying you want to be a painter with X recognitions and Y honors and paintings hanging in A, B, and C galleries and making $ZZZ per year from your art is something you can plan and work toward. 

Since this kind of deep work provokes so much thought and reflection, put your list away for a day and come back to it tomorrow where we’ll work on a current situational analysis for your business/art.  This will help discern exactly how things stand right now versus how you want them to be, and your your plan will show how you intend to deal with the disparity. The difference between your goals and your life right now is your plan. Put mathematically that means:

Goals - Current Situation = Your Business Plan