Greetings from Asbury Park NJ
Business Strategy • Marketing Analysis • Experiential Design
I’m a creative with several decades of experience developing service products and collateral brochures for business districts, medical centers and the hotels. I’ve worked with clients in a wide variety of industries including medical, education, professional and retail in northern NJ.
I’m an artist, designer, strategist, and life sciences geek that founded HandyGuide®. This specialty location graphics brand makes geographic orientation and discovery in novel environments effortless. That 20 year experience yielded print expertise, operational efficiency insights, and an array of skillsets.
Currently Asbury Park NJ is the incubator for mentorships and partnerships with Iris Orsini at IrisDesignHub LLC.
Walking Across Bridges
Are you aware of the bridges you’re avoiding?
Maybe you’re working so hard you don’t even know there’s a short cut across that raging workflow river.
Well I didn’t know I was resisting a walk across until the other day. And it took a friend, a trusted guide, to help me see the metaphorical bridge I was avoiding.
As I make my way across my jungle bridge of possibility I remembered a lesson by Peter Shallard: that we all have two areas of growth to embrace: our network and our capabilities. This sure feels true.
Let me explain. Network: the nurtured relationships that interconnect us to an ever far reaching social web. Capabilities: our personal skillsets that combine to communicate the solutions we offer.
Now I could go into mega amounts of details of what specific items sit within these two intersecting spheres. And yet, in my opinion, how willing we are to grow our Network & Capability, is THE key pre-requisite to our mission success. In other words, how OPEN are we to embrace growth?
Go ahead, take a beat to see if you agree. If so, then the question is: how willing are you to SEE how you’re doing in these two areas?
How scary is it to examine the added skillsets that would have impact on our endeavor? And what’s the resistance within to looking at these fears?
I assure you that I really know how strong the urge is to NOT to want to take a good hard look. I can also tell you that not looking is also not seeing the bridges of possibility that are right there waiting to be crossed.
Perhaps you’ll join me to get curious and just brave enough, vulnerable enough to re-consider the top limiting beliefs that impede our willingness to invest in ourselves; to accept help; to open up enough to see the bridges.
So here’s a hammock visual for your mind to take a comfy pause.
Stretching Open
In your mental beach hammock ask yourself:
Do I believe in change as a positive force?
Do I believe people can change?
Do I believe I can change?
If you’re hesitating on ANY of the above, then you may want to explore how to help yourself be more open.
Understand Myself defines openness as exhibiting:
A high degree of creative and aesthetic sensitivity
+
An interest in abstract concepts and ideas with an intellect open to experience
Now I can teach you the first part, how to have a higher degree of artistic discernment; but what needs to budge first, within you, is having the interest in adding this skillset.
Sure, it’s also up to me to persuade you that being competent enough with art direction is a key capability for success with any modern day mission. And I’ll say that’s a given because we’re all presenting our endeavors in parallel to national and global brands that DO have their branding dialed in beautifully for an instant level of audience trust. So if your stuff looks disjointed, you’ll not get attention and you’ll not get traction.
So what keeps us from being open to the experience of adding key capabilities to grow our network for maximum impact?
Well you may have guessed that it’s FEAR. We feel it as resistance. And it is subconscious. And it’s like trying to see our own shadow. And it’s damn hard to face and overcome alone.
The good news is that we DO have the free-will to catch and modify our mind reflexes to better trust and embrace our vast potential. I have learned that it helps to know that fear is self-protective. At one point, these “ways of being” were modeled for us and/or traumatized into us as protective behaviors. Of course we’ve ALL picked up armor stories.
So please come meet me down by the beach.
Embracing Possibility
Let’s take a look at the our Openness Potential.
We’ll redraw our open learning heart as a circle.
This will be the concept of our Maximum Openness. That’s represents our unlimited willingness to embrace new beliefs to allow for new learning experiences. Essentially it’s our willingness to embrace change.
To that we add two more circles, one for our Maximum Network and another for our Maximum Capability. Now let’s add them up to equal the fourth circle of our Maximum Potential.
“Adventure means you are willing to stretch yourself beyond your current limits”
Let’s take a look at the our Openness Potential.
We’ll redraw our open learning heart as a circle.
This will be the concept of our Maximum Openness. That’s represents our unlimited willingness to embrace new beliefs to allow for new learning experiences. Essentially it’s our willingness to embrace change.
To that we add two more circles, one for our Maximum Network and another for our Maximum Capability. Now let’s add them up to equal the fourth circle of our Maximum Potential.
Limited Openness = Constrained Potential = A World of Stress
What’s the take-away?
Our endeavors can only go as far as we are equipped to embrace the experience of our own growth. We all live in a box. Yet, we can all make progress on the walls of our box to let our Potential expand.
Openness can be called Willingness. So how willing are you to trust just enough to be curious?
In the case of business ventures it means being willing enough to:
Follow the most time efficient path
Look at the core skillsets that might be missing
Inventory the capabilities that are better handled by an outside a vendor
Decide to experiment (and experientially learn) which tactics work best
We make our path in the forest
Can’t see the forest for the trees is that common expression implying there is too much focus on the details having lost the big picture view.
Yet in our ventures the details do matter.
How well we manage all the puzzle pieces depends on having key skillsets. After all, our capabilities play a huge part in our mission success.
In this decade, we are learning how to manage our many person-to-person interactions along with the various streams of information coming into us.
As well, we see our outgoing communications as more essential than ever during the ever increasing data flows into our human consciousness. Professional tools can help.
Here’s a first step.
Understand the power of branding
It’s more than a logo.
Branding is where design creates the ‘ambiance’ that makes your potential customer feel trust. At least enough alignment to express interest in the communication item they have encountered. Here’s a restaurant retail example.
Have you ever had a wonderful dinner out?
Where the music was soft, lovely and seating comfortable, the temperature just perfect, with a pleasant audio buzz. You subconsciously feel a wonderful ambiance.
Their well thought out service design yielded a magical space for your restaurant experience. Everything was considered and coordinated with careful forethought.
This in turn made you more willing to trust, and therefore consider, everything on their menu!
I trust that this explains the power and value of a well thought out, cohesive approach for all our ventures, not just restaurants.
You see, it’s because we are innately wired to seek beauty, simplicity, consistency, and unity in all of life’s encounters. Respectful branding is a basic stepping stone to crafting great outreach.
Now I totally understand if you are super tired of packaging your stuff yourself, or if it’s been frustrating to hire various freelancers piecemeal. Perhaps it feels like you’ll never get all of the puzzle pieces to work together to look pro.
It’s ok, we all start off that way. And of course you can continue to go for it solo (in the forest).
However, I’ve been there myself and remember the lengthy learning curves from my endeavors.
That’s why I share from my building experience to help you yield results as well. You can have an easier, faster path to sustained success.
If you’re willing to accept some guidance, we can evaluate the visual and informational materials you are currently using. Together we can do a review of your direct and indirect sales tools. I’m here to help you see how to present what you do.
My questions to you will be:
Are you collecting and compiling testimonials?
What word-of-mouth tools are you sharing with current clients?
How are you making it easy for past clients to speak on your behalf?
What other indirect sales referrals have you developed?
If you’re a DYI type – Go and test your logo
Print out just your logo on a sheet of paper
Give the print out to a friend
Have your friend ask three others to list a few adjectives based on their snap impression
Decide if these adjectives reflects the heart of the service you are offering
“Iris proved to be an essential first stop on the road to launching our new company. She guided our logo design with excellence and first-class support from start to finish. Iris is a great listener, a strategic thinker, and her responsiveness and professionalism were unbeatable.
Thanks for such great fast excellent great (yes that happy) work!””
Reach Out To Build Out
It all begins with a conversation about your productized service. Maybe you want to take your endeavor to the next level; well let’s see what that means. Maybe you want to find a line extension. Or maybe you just have complex information to teach. Whatever it is, packaging your content clearly can make all the difference.