What’s up with the fish?

For the first time in over fifteen years, I painted with paint and paper. The process wasn’t about creating great art, it was more about reclaiming a part of myself. The feel of a real brush is one thing you just can’t replicate digitally. Not better necessarily, just different. I also noticed after being able to easily back up and redo when creating images digitally, there was a hesitation before putting the brush down on the page. Way more pressure, and requiring a different kind of confidence. Which is a bit shaky after all those years.

Painting is also giving me a way to process. Rather than run lots of information around in my head constantly, I can step away and let other parts of my brain engage.

What are we learning from talking to people?

I’ve continued to collect input from customers and colleagues about the places they are finding challenging right now. One comment in particular sums up a lot of what I have been hearing:

Our organization needs to maintain focus on strategic objectives while they are overshadowed by short term financial concerns.

This may be from an organizational view, but, I’m hearing variations of the same thing from individuals. Lots of figuring out how to move forward in alignment with long term goals, despite short term challenges.

How does this relate to visuals and what we do at VisualsSpeak?

Visuals are particularly effective in helping to see and understand complex systems. Things where there are a large number of elements, and some that might seem conflicting.  Systems that involve layers of elements, where you have to have some kind of understanding of the interrelationships and how a change might impact the overall system.

As we look more at the commonalities between our customers rather than the differences, we are seeing that many of them are involved with helping people navigate complex systems.

• Intercultural communication, coaching and counseling help people to understand the complexity of their own identity and values.
• Career and life coaching start from the individual then explore how that individual intersects with the rest of their lives.
• Training and facilitation are often about understanding how parts affect the whole.
• Owning or leading a business is about understanding how many different pieces come together in alignment with a vision.

I am thinking more about how to create systems to help understand systems. Ok, so I don’t have the words dialed in to describe it yet. I’m realizing I need to go beyond just showing people how to reveal deeper information. I also need to show how to structure it to make it useful once it is surfaced. At that point it is about pattern recognition, which we all do everyday. Most often, however, it is not done consciously.

I’m thinking about what kinds of tools make the patterns organize in a way they can be used to shift understanding, so different kinds of action can result. What kinds of tools help manage big data sets without boiling them down so they no longer hold anything beyond the least common denominator?

Creativity is messy

Writing coherent blog posts isn’t easy in a high creative time. At least for me. The ideas are coming fast and furious, but not in a structured or neat way. I have so many ideas flowing, I can hardly capture them. Deciding to stop fighting with myself and how I thought things should be, admitting what is really going on, and returning to the practice of art have combined to unleash creativity at a level I have not felt for several years. It’s like coming home to myself again.

I still don’t know what will emerge. So many options. Stay tuned to see.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the comments on my post, Learning from my business: About focus. Gary Woodill notes

You start this post by saying that you thought that you have “a clear focus.”

Then you go on to describe in detail how that focus disappears: “…the most effective intervention is the one that works with the uniqueness of the participants toward a goal that is customized for the situation.” That’s not a focus, but a reinvention of your product and service for every client.

You describe the way that focus melts away: “Very quickly, the requests for new images and specific programs started arriving. Some wanted live training, some online, some a community, some discussion groups, some help with questions, some help with debriefing. Not just general, but tailored specifically to their application. The coaches wanted one thing, the trainers another. There weren’t enough of any particular group to support the development of anything.”

I think that in re-reading these sentences that you would agree that you don’t have a specific product or service, but respond to each client with a unique solution. Besides being exhausting, your business doesn’t have any “scalability”, which is necessary to grow and to develop efficiencies in order to make an acceptable level of profit.

Honestly, I expected more people to want to customize the tools themselves. To me the tools are infinitely scalable. I focused on creating a tool that could be used across disciplines and across multiple purposes. I understand other people think this is one of the biggest weaknesses in my business. I’m struggling to get beyond seeing my expertise is in what makes visual tools work across multiple purposes. Not specific applications.

Who is my current audience?

I was talking with business growth strategist Kathie Nelson about who I serve. Our customers are primarily in the US, but we have customers in many parts of the world. Occupationally, they are all over the place: consultants, trainers, facilitators, educators, mediators, intercultural communication specialists, coaches, therapists, and others. Some work with individuals, some with small groups, some with large groups, some with organizations.

Kathie suggested we look at the psycho graphics (the study of personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles) of our customers. This is where they look much more similar. They are all people who help others with complex issues to gain new perspectives. They share many of the following characteristics;

• Love to learn new things
• very creative
• open minded
• big picture perspective
• meet difference with curiosity
• passionate about diversity and inclusion
• motivated to help other people
• more process oriented than product oriented

When I talk with customers, the closer they match these characteristics, the more successful they are with the tool. When I ask these people how they use it, they rattle off long lists. They can see many applications and love thinking up new ways to use it. They use the tool a lot, in many different ways.

Learning from where I am

I have learned that if I want to effectively assist anyone to learn new skills or behaviors, I have to start from where they are, not from where I am. I see now that is exactly what I have been trying to do with thinking about my target market. Trying to jump to the other side.

I have had a lot of suggestions to create application specific tools:

Gary Woodill suggests: For example, I can see a set of your images being adapted for an art therapy focus, another set for a career decision focus, and the third set for coping with being released from prison (as just three examples – each with sizable markets and cadres of professionals you can train to use your images). It seems to me that you need to identify the various market segments for which you can develop image sets, and rank them by size. Then work on one market segment at a time, producing images, manuals and training sessions for that segment. That’s a business focus to me. At the same time, you can continue to be creative and not bored.

Ann Marie Lei’s husband: “she should make a set for parents and/or teachers, and teach them how to use them with their kids/students, to help kids express themselves or have difficult conversations.”

Chris Kondrat suggests: within a company-it could be used for training, meeting facilitation, strategic planning, visioning, employee orientation, exit interviews, focus groups, etc.

In addition customers have emailed with suggestions for career specific tools, job loss, grief support, K-12 special needs, tools for autistic kids, kids at risk, life-changing events, new identity, and new business direction.

I kept getting caught trying to leap to the outcome of a specific application, and wonder how I would ever know everything I need to in yet another specialty area. The only way I could see doing it was to be able to hire a subject matter expert. Not starting from where I am.

Using my strengths

If I start from what I know about visual language and who my customers are, suddenly the vision becomes clearer. I’m looking to serve similar people with slightly different applications of the same ideas. It’s starting to make more sense. I can map out core methods and worksheets, move into the realm of a particular target area, then get a content specialist to review and add to it.

Now Gary’s suggestion in the comments on the last post make sense;

Then work on one market segment at a time, producing images, manuals and training sessions for that segment. That’s a business focus to me. At the same time, you can continue to be creative and not bored.

Will you walk with us?

We really hope you’ll continue to share stories with us, and offer suggestions and ideas. It has been so helpful to feel the support and know we are not alone walking this path.

You can subscribe to this series by subscribing to the blog by RSS or email. You can also subscribe to our e-newsletter where we usually talk about tips and tricks for using our visual tools.

Here are the blog posts in this series;

My business has cracked (be sure to read the comments, lots of shared wisdom and support)

Analyzing what went wrong

Learning from my business

Learning from my business: About branding

Learning from my business: About focus

I decided I wanted to draw what the process of turning my business around felt like. This image of a snake popped into my mind, so I spent a day drawing it. The process of painting in all the patterns was slow and gave me plenty of time to reflect on why my mind chose this image to represent what I’m thinking.

At first, I hoped it was a deep message about some kind of transformation I was about to go through.  As I worked on the image, it felt much more labored and slow. It wasn’t a lightening fast snake presenting itself, it’s more like a big fat lazy one. Maybe not really lazy, but certainly one who wasn’t moving very quickly.

Learning about integrating change

I’m getting lessons about the speed with which I can integrate change — or not, as the case may be. Not necessarily because of logistical reasons, but more for how the understanding of needed change is so different than the actual process of doing it.

As I deconstruct all the places of potential improvement, the lists become long. Like the patterns on the snake, the way things have formed come from a series of elements that interlink and relate. Making one change in the system affects many other pieces. Making many changes at once, or even contemplating them, can create a collapse. Which may be exactly what is needed. Allowing it to happen, however, I am finding much more difficult. I created the business in a way that makes sense to me, so any changes will require a lot of thought.

I started asking for feedback last week here on the blog as well as in my newsletter about my business challenges. I have gotten wonderful feedback and support. Along with silence from certain segments, which has been interesting. All of it together has shifted my understanding into a new place. One that is still pretty overwhelming.

As a result of this new understanding, my neck totally seized up. I could only move my head a few degrees to each side. My body reacted with a clear this is too much too fast.  I spent much of the week doing things to get it to release again: the chiropractor, snuggling with the cats, lying in the sauna, walks in the sunshine, and probably most important admitting another level of how incredibly painful this process is.

Continuing to move forward

I don’t feel stuck when I focus on doing things that that reside in my strengths. When I look at the the long lists and especially at doing the things that reside outside of my core strengths, I can feel my neck start to seize up again. I realize I need to work on my business through my skills, using the ways of knowing that work for me. When I don’t, it feels like I am fighting with my business instead of working with it.

I’m still processing the comments from my last post about focus, and am starting to get a much clearer sense of where my understanding is different than what I am communicating. I’m continuing to create new images. I’m revisiting what my goals are and how my business fits into them. I’m also starting to get a much clearer idea of what the core of this work is, and what I want to offer the world.

The idea is great, the systems behind it aren’t

In her post Making Ideas Matter, Havi Brooks talked about a comment she made during a webinar:

The implementation of an idea is more important than the idea itself.

This is at the core of what I am working on. I am all about ideas. My customers love the idea of VisualsSpeak. I have had other businesses that were great ideas. I’m not as strong or as interested in the systems that make them operate. But I have to learn if I want to turn this around. Or find other people to partner with who have different skills. Or get enough going using my strengths to earn the money to pay others to help.

Whatever emerges needs to have more ease in it. Not in a get out of hard work way, but in a working in ways that are strengths-aligned. More visual, less churning in my mind. Allowing the vision to emerge instead of chasing it.

Let’s just start with saying this is a difficult and confusing part of my business. I suspect if I could figure this out or come into some kind of right relationship with it, everything else could fall into place. This post won’t have answers, but perhaps by writing out the conflict someone will see a different way of looking at it that can help shift the logjam.

In my mind, I have a clear focus

I created a set of images that can be used across a range of disciplines. Primarily training, facilitation, coaching, consulting, diversity and inclusion, counseling, and education. In my mind, all of these are about helping people see themselves or other people more clearly. By starting the engagement with photographs, the mind creates or uncovers a different story than it would using words alone. This helps us understand whatever we are exploring in a different way than if we just intersect verbally.

To me, that is a clear focus.

After two years in the market, I fully understand that I may be the only one who believes that. Part of me understands it. Each of these disciplines speaks in slightly different language. People seem to focus more on the differences than the similarities. When people search for solutions, they often want something very specific that they think will solve their issue.

When I plan a group process, I start with an assumption that the most effective intervention is the one that works with the uniqueness of the participants toward a goal that is customized for the situation. I designed the whole VisualsSpeak process to be the bridge between those two places. This requires skill on the part of the professional to do some kind of assessment and to identify a desired outcome. I assumed customers would come with these skills, but not all did. I always do custom interventions, so it didn’t occur to me that others would want detailed directions of exactly what to do. But many do. Others use the tools in totally different ways than they were designed, and are happy with that.

Everyone wants something different

Creating a tool that is so flexible did attract a wide variety of early adopters. Very quickly, the requests for new images and specific programs started arriving. Some wanted live training, some online, some a community, some discussion groups, some help with questions, some help with debriefing. Not just general, but tailored specifically to their application. The coaches wanted one thing, the trainers another. There weren’t enough of any particular group to support the development of anything. We tried to serve these requests by talking people through their question development on the phone, starting the blog, and sending a monthly newsletter. I suspect that by trying to answer everyone, we answered no one effectively.

At the same time, the flexibility of the tool in my mind is its core strength. I was at a birthday party last night, and just in the room there were people who used VisualsSpeak in these ways

• training department for supply chain of a major sportswear company using it for leadership development, helping leaders get clear about how they work with people across cultures
• diversity department of a large hospital system using it for helping people work through conflict and job dissatisfaction
• food and nutrition department of another large hospital using it to help them identify what customer service means to different cultural groups
• independent trainer using the images to help people create definitions of racism, prejudice, oppression, and justice
• independent facilitator using the tool to help university faculty and staff do strategic visioning for their programs
• conflict resolution faculty using it to help students understand how much they read into first impressions and how each persons viewpoint varies so dramatically

And that was just a small selection of people at a social event. Almost everyone uses the tool differently, and each one of them often uses it for multiple purposes.

What does it do?

It totally depends on what you are using it for. Which I realize just totally frustrates people. But to me its like asking people what does talking do? Talking itself doesn’t do anything, its what and how you apply it that does something. Same with VisualsSpeak. It offers the potential for a lot of things, but you have to apply it to get results. We supply the tools, your results will depend on what you do with them.

It feels like all the marketing formulas for businesses are created for things that are definable, predictable, and concise. Starting conversations with photographs isn’t like that. You are opening the possibility for people to talk from places they don’t normally, sparked by associations that are individual to them.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but often a different thousand for each person. It’s where the deeper conversations often start. Suddenly I can see more clearly where we are similar and different, what your viewpoint looks like, and start to hear some of your beliefs, values and assumptions. The photos spark what might be sitting in your unconscious or subconscious, helping you see what might be missing from the story when you just use words.

Yet, I am constantly asked what it does. People do not understand it. I don’t seem to be able to explain it? Even people who experience it don’t always know how to apply it. Maybe its in my blind spot? I can think of endless things to do with it, all sorts of ways to apply it.

How it feels

VisualsSpeak is my passion, something I have spent five years developing and testing. I am not detached. Maybe it would be better if I was, but my identity is intertwined with it. So part of what makes it so overwhelming is when people don’t understand VisualsSpeak, it feels like they don’t understand me. When they don’t see its value, it feels like they don’t see my value. When they don’t know what it does, they don’t know what I do. I start feeling invisible and like I am not valuable. And while my head knows better, once again my heart still feels it.

Questions I have as I think about what I can do?

I’m not sure what I am missing here. Is the answer to select one tiny little thing the tool might do for a select group and just market that? Is it my inability to communicate clearly? Is the product wrong? Do I need to provide something else to go with it? Do I need separate sites or pages to reflect the language of each audience with examples for them?

How do you figure out where you are going wrong? Or is it just a matter of continuing to try things, hope something helps, and hope things work before you are out of resources? Or maybe it is how do you keep from getting discouraged as you try time after time, and it doesn’t make it better?

Will you walk with us?

We really hope you’ll continue to share stories with us, and offer suggestions and ideas. It has been so helpful to feel the support and know we are not alone walking this path.

You can subscribe to this series by subscribing to the blog by RSS or email. You can also subscribe to our e-newsletter where we usually talk about tips and tricks for using our visual tools.

Here are the blog posts in this series;

My business has cracked (be sure to read the comments, lots of shared wisdom and support)

Analyzing what went wrong

Learning from my business

Learning from my business: About branding

Brand is a whole bunch of smaller pieces

There are a lot of opportunities to make mistakes in branding. And once you make one, you can easily make a pile of others on top of it. Then you get more invested in the whole thing, so you add more potentially problematic pieces. Pretty soon you have an expensive mess. Like mine.

Naming is not easy

I started a company focused on visuals for a good reason, I’m not good with words. Certainly not in a clever way. Even naming my cats has been difficult in the past. I had Spinike because I had a Greek roommate and it was the only Greek word I could say (yes, Spinach). I had one named Miky for My Kitty, another named Yorky for Your Kitty. Told you. No cleverness.

It took me years to come up with VisualsSpeak. I know, pretty literal. I was working with visuals speaking.

What is wrong with it? Everyone misspells it. And we do not own the domains of the misspellings. No one can pronounce it clearly. Especially me. It’s just weird enough to confuse people, but not weird enough to intrigue them.

The designer logo

We hired a very talented designer to come up with the foundation of our brand. He did a great job, and I approved every single step. So this isn’t about him. When I hand people a card, they often comment on how attractive it is. People remember the dramatic colors and associate them with us.

But here is what we have learned about it as we have gone along.

Lime green and orange are not easy to print. In the photograph are three professionally printed cards using the exact same files. Monitor color differences aside, getting things to match when they are near each other is not easy. Like at a trade show where you have your cards, the manual covers, the bag logos and the sign in close proximity. It’s expensive and time consuming to even come close.The lime green in particular looks dramatically different if it is printed on a coated (shiny) paper as opposed to an uncoated paper.

That lovely gradient that makes the circles look dimensional? Not printable in all processes. Like the inexpensive screen printing on bags?  You have to compromise with something lik

e this:

Or pay three to four times as much to have the logo embroidered.

The trademark

You can’t protect an idea, so the other option you have is to trademark your name. What you are really trademarking is the way it looks on your products. We had to send photos of our logotype on our manuals, bags, and signs. Our designer was clever and desgined the TM to hang off the end, integrating it into the design of the name. Great. It took over a year to get the trademark. Then it becomes a registered trademark, which is shown by a ®. Remember, its what the actual name looks like— with the TM that is trademarked. Now what? VisualsSpeak ™®?

The tagline(s)

If I am not good at naming, I am even worse at taglines. Our graphic designer came up with the first one, Image-based Training and Consulting. Unfortunately no one seemed to know what that was. Once our product came out we thought, Image-based Tools and Training. Not much more helpful for people.

Now we have tag line of the month. Or situational based tag lines. Tom often will try one, I’ll try another. I’ll try different ones on various social media sites. People don’t seem to know what we do no matter which one we use. Sigh. We have dozens of notebooks full of lists of ideas. We could probably have tagline of the hour.

Currently we are using:

• Facilitating Conversations that Matter
• Inspiring Connections through Images

We have asked for suggestions from lots of people, even hired people to help. Still looking for ideas. If you have any, we’d love to hear them.

All adds up to $$$$

Each piece of the branding has taken a lot of time, and has cost a lot of money. Each step along the way, we have gotten more invested emotionally with the rise in financial investment. And we aren’t sure if any of it is really working. At this point, certain people do recognize the VisualsSpeak name, even more than my name. But we don’t know if it is really serving us or harming us.

Things we invested in and thought we would just be able to cross off the to do list have persisted to be a pain on a daily basis. These are the types of things that suck my energy and attention on an ongoing basis without a lot of contribution to forward movement.

What would I do differently?

Select an easy to pronounce and spell name. Pick a logo that is simpler to reproduce. Select colors that are easier to print. Don’t build the TM into the type.

I might even develop the branding later in the process. So instead of doing it first, I might come up with a temporary solution to use while I test the market. After I get that more focused, it would be easier to develop a more targeted solution. At least I hope it would.

Still not sure what to do with what we have created. What do you think? Should we stay with what we have, or think about creating new?

Will you walk with us?

We really hope you’ll continue to share stories with us, and offer suggestions and ideas. It has been so helpful to feel the support and know we are not alone walking this path.

You can subscribe to this series by subscribing to the blog by RSS or email. You can also subscribe to our e-newsletter where we usually talk about tips and tricks for using our visual tools, but in the next one we are going to ask our readers for help.

Here are the related blog posts;

My business has cracked (be sure to read the comments, lots of shared wisdom and support)

Analyzing what went wrong

Learning from my business