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Mind mapping for business has been one of the biggest drivers of success in my 12-year career.
Yet, when I first heard about it, I nearly laughed the teacher out of the room.
That’s how arrogant I was when taking my first course in business fundamentals.
I’m sure glad I had a change of heart.
Since then, I’ve explored every form of mind mapping I’ve found.
It has made my career so much easier over the past twelves years. It’s also helped make everything much more interesting while regularly helping to improve the bottom line.
Ready for my best mind mapping secrets and case studies?
Let’s dive in!
What Mind Maps Are & How They Help
Mind mapping is a visualization activity that operates like a Swiss Army Knife for the mind. In other words, it helps you accomplish more than one goal.
For starters, this cognitive learning and productivity technique helps you:
- Brainstorm
- Visualize information in fresh new ways
- Connect central themes with subtopics and related concepts through logical branching
- Improve memory and comprehension
- Think more logically
- Plan for success
- Avoid unnecessary problems
- Reveal hidden opportunities and assets in your current business
- Develop courage and mental strength when you need it
As I discuss in What is Mind Mapping, the technique has a long history. Until his demise, Tony Buzan was historically one of the most active teachers in the field. My favorite term from him is found in his book Mind Map Mastery. He says that mind mapping promotes “radiant thinking.” In my experience, this benefit of mind mapping absolutely true because it helps you blow away the clouds of confusion and bask in the light of good ideas you enjoy using and pursuing.
Mind mapping has been shown in scientific studies to help medical students, and researchers have actually used mind mapping exercises to study how business students are developing. Likewise, researcher Emilia Tosheva has found that mind mapping is useful for learning entrepreneurship skills, especially since digital mind maps are easy to share. This is a great point because so much of business requires abstract thinking. Mind maps help stimulate much more direct, concrete thinking thanks to how they help us visualize concepts and processes.
6 Powerful Use Cases for Mind Maps in Business
Let’s turn now to different ways you can use mind mapping to make great progress in your business life.
Keep in mind that there are many different ways to mind map. But I personally try to follow Buzan’s main suggestions. These involve:
- Always having a central image or keyword
- Using multiple colors to keep the activity visually engaging and fun
- Connecting ideas through branching
- Moving in a clockwise formation
As you explore your options, keep in mind that it’s okay to make mistakes when mind mapping. It’s not an exercise in art. It’s about generating ideas, gaining insight and discovering opportunities as quickly as possible.
Now let’s dive into specific mind mapping examples that will you enjoy all of these outcomes yourself.
One: Product Creation
At the simplest level, anyone can get started in business by simply having a product that serves a particular market.
As you can see in the picture above, I used a mind map to brainstorm a new product. I literally have a section in grey exploring the question, “Who wants this?”
Once I have a product identified and am ready to start building it, I often use mind maps to design the book or course I need to create.
Since this is a linear process with many non-linear aspects to work out during the design stage, I often use arrows to help me work out the best possible flow. Here’s an example mind map for that:
Two: Planning Your Future Business Activities
Buzan talked a lot about planning. In fact, the blog you’re reading now follows a plan I mind mapped with Tony Buzan during one of his ThinkBuzan events. To this day, I follow this mind map, which is almost purely picture-based:
As you can see, I followed Buzan’s rule of using multiple colors and a central image. Here are what some of the images on this mind map for my business mean:
- The central flag has lips on it which represents the goal of serving the entire world and multiple languages
- The man speaking into the camera represents me doing more video (at the time I did not like being on camera, but now my YouTube Channel is massive thanks to developing courage and following the business plan)
- Around the seven o’clock position in purple, the medical symbol with the comedy and tragedy faces represents the goals I had to write The Victorious Mind and help medical students
Although not all of these goals have been as fully realized as others, I still follow the basic plan. It remains powerful and only took fifteen minutes to create.
Three: Developing Courage & Overcoming Obstacles
As I mentioned above, I used to dislike being on camera. In fact, I went out of my way to avoid it, limiting the success of my business by only speaking over slides.
Mind mapping helped me get over my fears about how my skin outbreaks were holding me back. I actually applied three kinds of mind maps to get over it, which I teach in detail in this video:
They involve using mind maps to identify your FOS:
- Fears
- Opportunties
- Strengths
By visualizing your obstacles on paper, it’s much easier to come up with strategies for eliminating them from you life. That way, you can create your plans and follow them. Without doing that, it’s very difficult to enjoy any kind of success.
Give these three forms of mind mapping a try if you’re facing any kind of mental barriers when it comes to doing the things needed to see success in your business.
Four: Designing Presentations
Not all business people need to deliver speeches from memory or remember presentations.
For those who do, mind mapping provides a quick way to craft a compelling message.
It’s good for both live presentations and streaming. In this mind map example, you see one of many mind maps I’ve created for live streaming on YouTube:
The great thing bout mind mapping in this way is that I don’t have to write out boring slide shows. I can just follow the clock-like structure and unpack at a glance what I wanted to say by “decoding” each part of the mind map. You can also place each image in a Memory Palace if you don’t want to look at your mind map while presenting.
Give this form of presenting a try. You won’t regret it.
Five: Training Your Staff
As we’ve seen, research shows that one reason mind maps are so effective when it comes to business and entrepreneurship is how easy they are to share.
You can either take pics of them like I’ve done to share mine on this page. Or you can create digital mind maps and share files. You can even collaborate on creating mind maps with a team.
When it comes to training purposes, you can put an entire vision statement on a single mind map to help keep your company aligned with your goals. You can also help your team understand certain aspects of your business by using a close alternative called concept mapping.
A mind map can also help with company events. Check out this “World Mind Map Day” example Buzan used to use for both internal purposes and to help market his business:
Created by mind map expert Phil Chambers, it’s a powerful example of using software for mind mapping for helping an organization see everything involved in a company event at a glance.
Six: Reflective Thinking
Entrepreneur and business author Dan Kennedy often points out that many people fail to take time out for reflective thinking. As a result, the slow their progress and don’t enjoy the insights they need.
That’s why I often get out of my office and remove myself from all computers and devices.
I love mind mapping outdoors and combining the practice with journaling for overall self improvement. It has helped me identify key areas that need more attention in my life. I’m talking about sleep, diet and regular meditation.
How to Harness the Powers of Mind Mapping in Your Business
It’s difficult to exaggerate just how powerful mind mapping has been for me. I’m glad I ran into Tony Buzan and started following his advice.
As a result, I wound up being able to mind map with the master himself and many great things have unfolded ever since.
My biggest suggestion is to use the technique to feel more free and get into “flow” in the sense that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi meant it.
In other words, mind mapping helps you get “into the zone.” This is so important because it helps reduce the many levels of abstraction involved in planning and conducting a variety of business procedures.
Everything from product development to helping your team develop customer service processes will enjoy much greater success just by taking a few moments to develop mind maps.
Keeping your mind maps visible will also help you remember your goals. I often keep my mind maps on my desk until the day the project is done and do not allow myself to move them because I know how easy it is to forget about projects.
If you’d like more ideas on how to remember your business goals, please get my free course now:
It will help you use a variety of memory techniques, all centered around the Magnetic Memory Method, an enterprise that simply would not have grown without mind mapping.
So if you’d also like to beat the statistics that say most businesses fail in fewer than five years, give mind mapping a try.
And if you have any questions where my personal insight might help you and your business, feel free to get in touch.
Just as Buzan helped me personally with my mind map, I’ve enjoyed helping other entrepreneurs work on their over the years.
With these techniques as part of your practice, greater success is not only guaranteed. It’s inevitable.
All you have to do is map it all out.
