Why I'm giving away my creative business planning workbook for free
Unorthodox? Sure. But it's also incredibly aligned.
Mindset Mastery is a weekly newsletter about the psychology of self-employment from Jenni Gritters. If you’d like to support my work, I invite you to become a paid subscriber for $5/ month! Paid subscribers receive monthly journaling prompts and business-building exercises, along with other perks.
“If I decide to freelance, people won’t take me seriously,” I told my therapist.
It was 2018 and I’d been laid off from my full-time editing job a month prior. I was trying to decide if I wanted to take another 9-5 job or say yes to the few freelance gigs I’d been offered. I knew I’d rather have the freedom of freelancing but there was a memory echo-ing around in my head that was holding me back.
The first time I freelanced full-time, it was 2017. A few months into the 6 month stint, I was at a friend’s PhD defense and it ran an hour longer than planned. One of my childhood friends was with me at the defense and when I started to check my phone obsessively, she asked what was wrong.
“I need to get back to work,” I whispered.
“Well, you don’t really have a real job, so you’re good!” she declared, smiling. “You have plenty of time.”
She wasn’t wrong that I had time. She was wrong about my job, though. Still, her comment stuck with me for years. I started to buy into the fact that working for myself wasn’t real or serious.
This brings us back to my therapist’s office years later.
“Maybe you aren’t taking freelancing seriously,” she said, not unkindly. “After all, it’s a legitimate way to work and make money. Maybe it’s about your perspective. What would you do if you were taking it seriously? Would that make you feel like you did have a real job?”
I told her that I probably needed an actual plan for freelancing if I was going to consider it to be a legitimate option. I needed to think of it as a business. She agreed, and asked me to make a business plan before our next session.
I went home and googled “business plan.” I copy and pasted a basic template into a google doc and got to work. But I found pretty quickly that I needed to expand the template to include my creative dreams and goals. I needed to include information about how I wanted to work, not just the services I was offering. In the end, I had a 15-page business plan that I’d made all by myself.
I used it to mock up three businesses. In the end, I chose a writing and editing business as the one I wanted to build. 5 years later, I’ve adapted my business a number of times and it’s made more than $500,000 in revenue. But despite all the changes in my life and work, I’ve always come back to my original business plan when I needed to check-in.
Today, I’m offering that creative business planning workbook to the world.
I’ve refined this plan over the past half-decade and offered it to hundreds of coaching clients. It’s now 22 pages full of questions and exercises to help you figure out what you want and how you’ll deliver it to the world while prioritizing your own health. It marries feminine and masculine business approaches. It offers both a practical and philosophical take on work. It encourages you to stop hustling and start listening to your body.
In other words, this is not your standard business planning workbook. It’s meant for people who want to build sustainable businesses that are lucrative and prioritize their humanity through measured growth. It’s for anyone who’s self-employed, anyone who’s working in a creative field, and anyone who’s even thinking about becoming self-employed. It’ll also work for you if you run a small agency or small business.
I know this is a non-traditional thing to offer for free. When you read about “lead magnets,” the standard recommendation is to create something very basic. This workbook isn’t basic.
I know could sell it as an e-book, or turn it into an audiobook. I’ve thought extensively about both of those options and turned them over and over in my mind, with my coach, and with my husband. Maybe I’ll sell the workbook eventually. But in the end, I decided two things:
1. This is the kind of business-building approach I cannot gate keep.
I want everyone to have it. I especially want you to have it if you come from a community where you do not traditionally have access to business coaching and tools.
The world needs more businesses that don’t adhere to the hustle-and-grind ethos. We need more non-traditional entrepreneurs. We need businesses run by minorities, people with chronic illnesses, caregivers, and womxn. We need to put the power back in workers’ hands, so they can leave their 9-5s with confidence. This business planning workbook is the best tool I have in my kit for adding momentum to that movement.
2. I’m focusing my energy away from social media.
I know I’m not alone when I say that social media is chafing lately. Perhaps it’s the addition of Threads that tipped me over the edge. (Am I really supposed to strategize around using another social media platform?) Perhaps it’s just that it’s summer and I want to be outside. Perhaps it’s that engagement is lower across the board, so it feels like social media efforts aren’t paying off in the same way. And perhaps the paradigm is shifting for all of us.
I keep thinking about a message one of my followers sent me after I posted about avoiding joining Threads. They said: “The answer to our problems is almost never ‘more social media.’”
They’re right.
These days, I’m focusing my attention on other ways to connect with y’all: Substack, building in-person community where I live, joining smaller communities online, and growing my email list. So yes, if you download this workbook, you’ll be added to my email list. I won’t spam you, but I will keep you posted about my upcoming coaching offerings, programs and workshops.
I used to think “lead magnets” were kind of sketchy. Now I understand that they’re a doorway into a new type of connection with y’all, away from social media.
All that said, I have a few simple requests: If you love this business planning workbook, share it. If it inspires you to rethink your relationship with work, join my new coaching program or opt for a business review to get my feedback on the plan you’ve built. Or simply email me to tell me how the workbook worked for you, and give me feedback about what else you might add.
Sending love and light,
Jenni
Curious about my background? I’m a writer and business coach based in Central Oregon. I have two small children and I work part-time so I can spend a lot of time with them. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with non-linear business building and teaching people how to build successful businesses that support their human needs first. Check out my coaching offerings here and follow me on Twitter & Instagram!