There's something magic about the written word, and going through an evaluation process will help you learn things about your ambitions that you may not have known. Email Article Print Article Bookmark RSS Related Content:   Artist Finances   How to Sell Your Art Online   Quit Job for Art?   Create Your Blog

Most successful businesses have a written business plan. In fact, a business will increase its chances of survival if it has a well written business plan. A business plan helps the people running the business understand where the company stands and where it wants to go. Artists can benefit from the same planning. Your art is your business. Raise it to a new level by planning where you are and where you want to be. There's something magic about the written word, and going through an evaluation process will help you learn things about your ambitions that you may not have known.

A career plan, as we like to call it, is an excellent tool to use in conjunction with a financial plan. In fact, it's critical to success. With both a career plan and financial plan in hand, you put fuel behind your dreams.

Remember, the key to any plan is to make it reasonable. Goals can be as far flung as you want, but make sure you present realistic means to accomplish them. There's nothing worse than having a plan that's impossible to follow. Not that the plan is set in stone. Quite the contrary. You change and grow constantly, so should your plan. Keep it current. Update it whenever you have big changes in the way you think or what you're doing. Some people will want to look at it daily, others every half-year. The Career Plan should be re-drafted once a year. It needs to stay consistent with your frame of mind. Your frame of mind will change over time. Your Career Plan will need adjusting.

Don't worry about the order. You don't have to start with the Plan Summary. In fact, writing a career plan is a discovery process. It may be more productive to do the summary at the end, after you've figured out exactly what you plan to do. Work on the area that's most appealing first. Piecing it together this way makes the process much more efficient.

We're confident you can come up with an excellent plan and accomplish your goals. Please e-mail our Q&A if you have questions.

Next: Your Career Plan Summary

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