124: The Art of Business, Part 3

The Art of Business is a presentation, a keynote presentation that I was able to present on recently. And what I've done is broken this keynote down into three sections that we'll be diving into together.

I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life.

But when I first set out to

become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

So the way that this presentation was really born was by some deep reflection over the last 12, 13 years of my career and all of the different phases or versions of myself that I went through and grew through and what the takeaways were, what was the art of business at every stage. So at every stage I'll be sharing with you the choices, the mindsets, the philosophies and the art of business that got me through that phase or stage and to the next one. So we've broken it up into three sections really early mid and recent versions of myself. And I think it's fun to think about how this is going to continue and where the next version of ourself is going to be as well. Now, my hope for you is that while you listen to this series, you not only identify with where you are, what phase of yourself are you currently, what choices do you need to make, what mindsets do you need to adopt or grow? What philosophies do you need to think about? And what is the art of business for you at this stage as well? The other thing that I want you to really take away from this episode is that we all start from zero. We all start from phase one, version 1.0 of ourselves and then everything grows and goes from that point. So I hope that you enjoy this three part series.

Let's dive into today's now let's go to Bonnie 5.0. She's looking bright. Bonnie 5.0 is the confident I was feeling really confident. We had very much gained Some momentum. The year for this was 2018 to 2019. We didn't know it at the time, but, man, 2019 was just the best year ever, wasn't it? We didn't know what was coming. My revenue was amazing. I had figured out quite a lot. My freedom figure was incredible, and my team was growing, so I had some significant help. I mean, I was still overwhelmed, but I was feeling like we were starting to figure some things out. So the way that I created this revenue, I want to make sure that I'm telling you that along the way, is through art licensing, through my course, through speaking engagements, and through my Mastermind. So I had launched my Mastermind at this time for the first time, and then a little bit of, like, products in there as well. This was the year that I launched the planner that I had for a couple of years. So the choice here was huge for me. I had never been a part of a Mastermind, and I got invited to join one, and it was $25,000. This investment is insanity. I thought I was losing my mind. How could I ever consider investing this much money into something? And then all at the same time, I'm like, how? It absolutely would be worth it to step into a room where my belief were expanded, my opportunities were expanded, What I thought was possible was expanded. So I did it. The mindset here was around confidence. I think I lacked confidence a little bit and had to learn, really how to embrace that. I'll come back to that in just a second. And then this philosophy of being a good steward of ideas. I very much believe that God gives us ideas, and if we steward them well, we get another one. Can we be a good steward of ideas? Can we be receptive to the ideas that come our way? I think that's really fun. Confidence and self worth come from following through on something that you said you would do. I think confidence is one of the things that we all really struggle with. And it's often the questions that we get is like, I don't know, I'm not feeling confident. But, like, the easiest way to think about this is if you've ever really started eating well or really started going to the gym, right? Like, you're not feeling confident, and then you're 10 days into going to the gym every day, or you're 10 days into eating healthy. Can you feel that? Like, how confident you feel? Like, I told myself I was gonna do that, and then I did, and I'm feeling really amazing about it. And, you know, we break promises to ourselves so easily. More, more easily than we do anyone else in our lives. And so we've got to remember that that impacts us. And so confidence is built when you make a promise to yourself and you keep it. That's all you have to do to build your confidence. This will silence the inner critic. This will silence the inner critic. So the art of business at this stage in my life was actually understanding what it means to step into a room of people who spoke my language, understood what I was doing, didn't laugh at my big goals, didn't drop their. Like, their jaw, didn't drop at my big goal. Right. I would say my big goal, and they would say, that's absolutely achievable. Let me help you get there. Okay. Put me into that room. Right. Can you feel the power of that? I was to a place where I was unrelatable. And I like very much to be relatable. But I had no one who understood what I was doing, no one who understood the challenges. I mean, my husband, but I talk to him all the time, right? I needed to step into a room of people who really, very intentionally could support and understand. And for me, that was this mastermind. And it was incredible. Never looked back. Okay, Bonnie 6.0. This version of myself is called the leader. Maybe this is 2020 through 2021. Now we all have, like, collective humanity has so much in common now that We've lived through 2020. Revenue was amazing. This specifically came from art licensing through my membership, through planners and products through my mastermind, and through this conference. Freedom figure was amazing. So my team had grown to eight. Feeling pretty good. The choice, though, was, can I do this? What happened for me in this couple of years was that my business had grown faster than I had grown. And I wish so very much that someone had told me this, that alongside your business, you have to grow in personal development, too. You have to grow in your leadership skills. You have to grow in your ability to be vulnerable. You have to grow your resilience. Because this one hit hard this year. Hit hard. And I had a moment where I was like, I don't know if I can drive. I don't know if I can sit in the seat of this freight train that I have created. I mean, I really almost crumbled under the pressure. This was also when we were managing. Just a lot, like, anxiety. For the first time in my life. I went to counseling. For the first time in my life, like, I almost stepped away. It was too much. But I decided that I can do this and I will do this, and I'll do anything that I have to to get to where I need to be in order to, to lead the train, the freight train that I've created. So the mindset was really to learn how to embrace vulnerability and build resilience. The number one thing I was uncomfortable with was vulnerability. Like, it's not fun. Nobody, everybody knows that. But as you grow in your business, there's really no way around it. You will be vulnerable. You'll have to be vulnerable and you'll have to build resilience around it. Now, that doesn't mean we have to have a tough skin, but we must have, like a strong back. We must really have values that we believe in and be willing to stand up for. It's not easy, but it is worth it. So my philosophy here is to really lead with love. Really lean in to leading with love. Lots of books I read during this time and still reading Brene Brown's Dare to Lead is a great example of a great place to start. Jocko Willink wrote a book called Extreme Ownership. That's a great place to start. There's more, but I forgot to write them down.

So

this is all about demonstrating courage. Like, when you demonstrate courage, you increase your capacity. Like, difficult things that you live through increase your capacity. And as nauseating as this might be, I actually don't think that I had had too many difficult things before this. And so I couldn't handle it. Things got difficult and I just absolutely crumbled. And I learned that that's part of building capacity. Walking through difficult things, many of you know this makes you stronger, makes you more able to deal with them as you go. So the art of business at this point in my life was developing leadership skills. But I beg of you, wait until the 6.0 version of yourself. I beg of you to start this earlier than you think you need to. I wish someone had told me that. Start developing your leadership skills before you really need them so that they're there when you do need them. Which brings me to Bonnie 7.0. This is today. Okay. So I would like to think that I'm stepping into the visionary role for the first time in my business. Without a vision, the people will perish. As you grow, your people really need you to be the visionary to set the goal, to understand the why of where we're going. This is present day. Revenue is amazing. This is from Art Licensing, Course Membership Immersion, Live Planners and Product Mastermind. All of the things that we're doing, Freedom, Figure and team. So the choice here was to keep doing it all myself or actually learn how to build a team, actually learn how to delegate effectively. I decided to learn how to delegate effectively. The mindset is to overcome comparison. This is something that I've worked on the whole time, but just know that it never goes away. This was specifically really hard for me as I launched the podcast. I felt like I should have done this 10 years ago. Everybody's already done it. I'm so late to the party. I was comparing myself to everyone and I had lost sight of the only person who actually matters is the person who's listening on the other end. So stop comparing yourself to anyone else and only think about the one person who needs what you're doing. It's selfish to not work yourself out of the system. It lowers your impact. If you want to impact the most people as you can, you've got to work yourself out of of the system to increase, increase your capacity. So the art of business at this stage has been to stay in my desire zone. Now let me unpack that a little bit. I love this quote from Clockwork. Clockwork is by Mike Michalowicz. It's an amazing book. He says, whenever expensive resources are doing the inexpensive work, the balance is surely off. Immediately transfer the work, even if you're a micro business of one. As soon as humanly possible, get the inexpensive work off of your plate and go focus on the big impactful stuff. Hire a part time assistant, get an intern, pull mom or dad out of retirement and let them volunteer. Just get help fast. The longer you do the inexpensive work, the longer your business will be trapped in inefficiency and as a result you will stay tiny forever. Doesn't that like oh, is so true and something we really, really need to hear. So your desire zone is really your zone of genius. And this is from Free to Focus from Michael Hyatt. And so I love to think about everything we do from these four quadrants. It's proficiency on the bottom, it's passion up the top. So number four, your drudgery zone are things that you're not good at and you hate doing. Example of this for me is accounting. Okay, I have no business in there and I also hate it, but I still tried to do it for a long time. Now your disinterest zone is something that you're actually really good at, but you don't like doing it right. Give me an example of something that comes up for you. Something that you're actually really good at, but you don't enjoy doing it. It drains you. That is your disinterest zone. Bookwork, accounting, shipping. And then your distraction zone is something that you actually really love doing, but you're not that good at it. For me, this is like designing webpages. I freaking love it. Just give me a webpage to design. I'm there. But I'm not that proficient at it. I really have no business doing it, but I do have fun doing it. And then your desire zone, do you see what's left is the things that you're good at and you're passionate at. This is your zone of genius and where I want you to be spending 90 plus percent of your time. So as we look at this and I wrap up the session, I want to invite you to think about what version of yourself you're in and what of these things that I've covered. Choices, mindset, philosophies, strategies are you currently trying to work through? These are the choices that I had to make, the big choices that I had to make at every version of myself. So on the left, keep my job, keep figuring stuff out on my own, Stay in my comfort zone. Own. Let David keep his job, save 25k, don't join that mastermind. Kind of give up, hide and do it all myself as opposed to let's quit my job. I'm going to invest in what I need. I'm going to boldly claim my space. I'm going to let my husband come home from work. I'm going to join that mastermind. I'm going to fight, and I'm going to figure out how to hire. Now, when you look at this, what one say left or right do you think is the safe, like the safe choice? We think it's the left. The safe choice is the left. And so you think that I'm going to tell you to take a risk today, but what I actually want you to understand is that this was the safe option. Staying over here on the left was much riskier. Keeping my job meant that I may never leave my job. Keep figuring it out on my own means that I would have never gotten to where I needed to be. Staying in my comfort zone means that I wouldn't be here with you today. Letting David keep his job means that I burnt out. Saving 25k means that I would have never had that idea that helped me. Giving up and hiding again, we're not here today. And doing it all myself means that I'm crumbling. Do you see how so many times we think the opposite is true? But truly the safe option is taking a bet on yourself, facing fear and doing it anyways. We have to start acting like the future, more successful version of ourselves before we become them. Because it's the only way that we actually become them. So what does that person look like? Are you acting like that person today? Are you acting like the seven figure version of yourself? Are you waking up, taking yourself seriously, being decisive, being motivated, working to get clarity or whatever that goal is for you? Are you acting today like the incredibly successful licensing artist with your work in anthropology and tarte and all over the world? Are you acting like that person today? Are you waiting for it to come to you?

I hope you enjoyed this session of the versions of myself and again, the choices, the mindsets, the philosophies and the art of business that is in every stage. And I hope that it also helps you think about what are those things for you, my friends? Create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world and remember, there's room for you.