You’ve got your creative business journal decorated and ready to go. You've started filling it with some great content, but you know you’ll need more ideas.

That’s what I’m giving you today. Thirty prompts for your creative business journal:

1. Draw your target customer. This might sound silly, but I promise it will make a difference. If drawing people stresses you out, find a picture of your target customer in a magazine. When you write your product descriptions, blog posts, and marketing material, have this picture out and pretend you’re writing to that one person.

2. Make a list or draw the things that your customers love. Think about what kind of books they enjoy reading, what television shows they watch, what magazines they purchase, and where they shop. The better you get to know your target market, the better you’ll be at tailoring your marketing material to them.

3. Develop your brand through your logo. Place a picture of your logo in the middle of a blank page in your journal. What words does your logo bring to mind? What do you think about when you see that logo? Ask a couple friends what they think about when they see your logo and add those words to the page. Is that what you want your logo to be saying to your customers? If so, woohoo! If not, change it.

4. Make a collage that represents your dream business. You can use pictures from magazine pages, book pages, scrapbook paper, your own illustrations, paint, photographs, and more. When you’re trying to make a big business decision, revisit this page. What will get you closer to your dream business? That’s your answer.

5. Fill a page with the things that matter to you most in life. This may not seem like something that can help your business, but it can. For instance, if you fill the page with pictures of your children, husband, and art supplies, you know what matters most to you. So, keep those things in mind when you’re planning your business.

6. If you could wake up tomorrow and do whatever you wanted, what would you do? Build a page around that and build your life and business around those things.

7. Brainstorm a list of your customer’s problems. Figure out ways that you can solve them. One problem that many of my readers face is being too fearful to follow their creative dreams, so I write posts to address that topic.

8. Dedicate a page to your competition. Try to figure out what they’re doing right and what’s missing. If you sell mixed media, you might find that very few artists offer their artwork on jewelry, and that’s an area of your business that you could expand.

9. Brainstorm places where your customers hang out. Can you find forums that they frequent? Can you think of blogs that they read and comment on? Can you think of places that they enjoy going?

10. Brainstorm how you can get involved in the places that your customers hang out. You need to go to where you’re customers are instead of always waiting for them to come to you. If your customers read a particular blog, ask if you can guest post on it. If your customers populate a specific forum, start answering their questions on that forum.

11. Create a marketing calendar in your journal. Plan out one thing you can do each month or every other month for the next year to promote your products. This could include getting active on social media, guest posting, getting featured on a blog, sending out holiday postcards to repeat customers, and more.

12. Map out your goals. On one side of the page write one of your business goals, and on the other side of the page write where you’re at now. For instance, you might want to have your own website and you might have already saved up the money to hire a web designer, but you haven’t taken anymore steps. Draw a map from where you’re at now to your goal, including every step you need to take to reach that goal.

13. Dedicate a page to mistakes that you’ve made. You want to learn from your mistakes, not repeat them, so spend time figuring out what went wrong and how you can do something different the next time.

14. Destroy your inner critic. Write down any negative thoughts that come from your inner critic such as, “You’re not good enough,” and “You’ll never do anything with your life.” Paint over them and replace them with positive comments. Whenever you’re inner critic is about to win a battle, review those positive thoughts.

15. Create a recipe for success. Pretend you’re writing a “recipe” for your business success. You must include all the ingredients and the directions.

16. Write down wise statements from your mentor. If you don’t have a mentor, brainstorm a few people who you think could help you to become more successful. Reach out to one of those people via email and start a relationship.

17. Use a page to illustrate the things you don’t like about your business. What do you put off until the last minute? What would you hand over to someone else?

18. Start brainstorming ways you could outsource the things you don’t enjoy. If you don’t like packaging and shipping your products, could you hire a local college student to help you for five hours a week to complete those tasks? If you don’t like blogging, could you stop—would it make that big of a difference?

19. Dedicate a page to the things you do better than your competition. If someone asked, “Why should I choose your business over so and so who’s 20 dollars cheaper,” what would be your answer? What makes you stand out?

20. Journal about one thing you could do better. Could you answer your customers’ emails faster? Could you make your packaging process simpler? Could you learn how to take better photos of your products?

21. Brainstorm ways that your creative business makes a difference to others. You might only use eco-friendly supplies. You might always send a handwritten note to make your customers feel special. You might make unique, handmade jewelry at a price that many people can afford. Include this information in your marketing materials.

22. Journal about the relationships that have helped you succeed. We often don’t reach success without the help of others. Include the blogger who featured your products, your husband who supports your creative venture, and your mentor who kept you going when you wanted to give up.

23. Identify ways you can give back to the people who’ve helped you from the prompt above. This doesn’t have to be a huge gesture. It could be as simple as sending that blogger a free print, thanking your husband for always supporting you, and treating your mentor to a latte.

24. Journal about the things that you lose yourself in for hours. Do you get swept away by painting? Do you love when you have an entire afternoon to write? What really gets you fired up?

25. Brainstorm ideas for your next product. What will it look like? What problems will it solve? How will it help your target customer?

26. Journal about the false assumptions you carry with you and your business. Do you believe you can make a full-time income with your art or do you assume that you’ll never reach financial freedom? Do you know that your art inspires others or do you assume that no one cares?

27. Document your creative story. Use illustrations and pictures to document when you got the creative bug and how it led you to where you are today. Use some of this story in your profile and about page.

28. Pretend that your fairy godmother is standing in front of you, and she grants you three business-related wishes. What would they be? Journal about them. What will it take for them to come true? Why haven’t they come true already? What’s standing in your way?

29. Draw your inner critic as if he’s a monster. Whenever that voice creeps into your thoughts, picture that monster and tell it to shut up.

30. Journal about your successes. If I’m having a day where everything seems to be going wrong, I’ll turn to one of the pages in my creative business journal that documents my successes. That helps to cheer me up and motivate me to keep going.

Here’s what I want you to do:

1. Print this list out and keep it with your journal, and when you’re having a day where you feel stuck, turn to one of these prompts to help get unstuck.

2. Come back next Friday, because I’m going to discuss how you can evaluate your creative business journal and use the material to increase your business success.

April Bowles-Olin

April Bowles-Olin works with creative women to lead more fulfilling lives while they make money doing it. She also attempts to add a little prettiness to the world with her art and jewelry. You can learn more about her at Blacksburg Belle or connect with her on twitter @blacksburgbelle.

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