Ground is Shaking, Dreams still Waking

The earth shook in NYC this morning! As we all now know, it was a little earthquake based in New Jersey. At first I thought it was a huge truck passing by, and I have since heard that many New Yorkers initially thought it was Con Ed, a building collapsing or a terrorist attack. In split seconds, we attach our own narratives to unexplained phenomena. This is both an adaptive genius and a limitation of the predictive human mind.

I take the tremor as a reminder that, even in this city, a monument to human ambition, we are tiny children of Earth spinning through a wider cosmos. As Octavia Butler puts it, “God is change” — as much as we try to preserve and maintain, nothing is solid. Transformation is always happening. (Even the steadfast sun will hide its face on Monday!)

For those who feel stuck, awakening to the reality of change will be invigorating. For those who like how things are right now, the inevitability of change can bring up fear and grasping. Most of us experience a little of both. 

Since the new year, I have been feeling that this spring is especially lively. Projects and ideas that have been brewing underground are beginning to germinate and leaf out. Visions that I had just a few months ago are making themselves manifest. I’ve found new uses for sculptures I made two years ago and I’m bringing my artist friends and collaborators into my branding projects. Goals that I have verbally enumerated for several years are now part of my lived experience.

Why did it take so long? My mind could generate endless circumstantial reasons, but what I feel/know is that, when I spoke my goals in the past, I didn’t experience them as fully my own. There were dominant parts of myself that didn’t believe what I envisioned was possible for me.

Over the past 9 months, I have been practicing feeling the core of my body. I named this practice, my “core revolution.” When my mind starts spinning its wheels in the grooves of old insecurities, dramas and traumas, I turn my attention to the feeling of being that resides in my heart and the center of my body. 

This practice actually started in my feet. When anxiety threatened to sweep me away, I would turn my attention to feeling the bottoms of my feet. Standing alone at a party I would remember my feet supporting me; when I worried about money, the soles of my feet were still there. These feet that touch the ground remind me that I’m still here, walking this Earth.

In Buddhist iconography, the Buddha is often represented with one hand touching the ground. The story goes that he touched the ground at the moment of enlightenment, calling out Earth as his witness. I take this to mean that the embodied reality of living on and with our ever-changing Earth organism is part of experiencing the spaciousness of divine being. 

April is Earth month. Since everything we know is of Earth, it is everything month! I encourage you to feel this solid and dynamic planet under your feet whenever you can. In doing so, you offer your dreams a bit of structure to support their growth. Even when the ground is shaking, we can access stability and clarity within.

Keep moving and quaking! ⚡️⚡️

I’ll Be Your Mirror

I'll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don't know…

I find it hard to believe you don't know
The beauty you are…

But if you don't, let me be your eyes
'Cause I see you…

— The Velvet Underground & Nico

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Can you sense how it feels to be truly recognized? Have you ever seen yourself through someone else’s eyes? Have you ever had someone introduce you to one of their friends or colleagues and been humbled by the care and esteem they express? 

As hyper-social human beings, we understand ourselves in relationship with others — other people, objects, plants, animals, and places. As Niko sings in the lyrics above, we are mirrors for each other. 

I believe that my work as a designer, storyteller and strategist lies in being such a mirror. It’s a process of listening, reflecting and creating clarity. This clarity then takes form and gains real-world potency as messaging, visual design, and strategies for connecting with your audience. 

In some ways, it’s an alchemical process. And like all shamans, healers and head-shrinkers, my process takes place within an methodology and a set of practices that bring ideas to the surface and provide them a lattice to take shape as words, symbols and actions.

In the broadest sense, this attention, reflection and recognition, is love.

When we see ourselves clearly, that’s love. When we see the impact of our work clearly, that’s also love. When we are generous enough to share our skills and knowledge in services to others, it is also a form of love.

And most of all, when we get together with our colleagues and choose to act on a vision together — to collectively up our game or start a new venture — that’s powerful love that is amplified by the willingness to navigate the kind of long-term relationship that it takes to make something in this big, complex world.

This Valentine’s Day, I suggest that you notice the ways that your work is attention and love. 

I’ll be your mirror 💌

Is Your Culture Change Fast or Slow?

Were you following the UN Climate talks this past December? Like many others, I was struck by the last-minute statement from participating nations that we are experiencing the “beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.” 

Though critics have pointed to the vagueness of this declaration, I see it as a momentous shift. I believe that collective change happens mostly because we believe that said change is inevitable. As management consultant Peter Drucker said, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” 

Without intention, commitment and support, transformation happens at the pace of cultural change - sometimes quickly due to catalyzing events, sometimes incrementally and with great resistance. 

Many of us have been frustrated, even heartbroken, by the foot-dragging and pandering of our leaders when it comes to climate action. We still don’t know all the mechanisms by which our decarbonized future will emerge, but the VISION has been stated. It lives.

In our lifetimes, we will witness the end of the fossil fuel era. 

Repeat those words to yourself. 

They give me chills of excitement for the future - for the work we get to do to create this future. In 2024, I am committed to harnessing and distilling this visionary energy for my clients, many of whom are directly involved in creating the decarbonized systems and economies of the future. 

Gathering and sustaining momentum to do big things takes intention, attention and support. As a designer and storyteller, I reflect, distill and give form to new ideas and movements. Are you ready to take action?

In preparation for 2024, I developed 3 packages to serve the needs I most commonly see when I work with leaders to tell their stories, design their communications and strategize their outreach. 

The Gift of Clear Seeing

10 Branding Essentials

This is a unique moment to take stock and begin to surf the tide of new beginnings. In service to this process, I have compiled a checklist of 10 branding essentials that every venture needs for success. It’s set up as a brief quiz that will allow you to evaluate your brand’s superpowers and give you some pointers on how you can up your game in ‘24. 

Give yourself and your venture this gift of clear seeing and you will also be entered into a raffle to win a free, one hour brand audit and brainstorming session with me in the new year. 

Do You Trust Your Audience?

One evening last week I found myself deep in an internet rabbit hole anxiously researching symptoms of obscure medical conditions and dredging my memory to recall whether I had ever experienced any of them. I couldn’t fall asleep that night. My mind was spinning over vague sensations and painting what-if scenarios of premature aging, catastrophic vitamin deficiencies, disease and death.

Ironically, my mental tailspin was inspired by a wellness product that my friend recommended to me — some supplements that she said were making her feel great. She sent me the link to the product website and I took a quiz to “see which formula was right for me” — everything went downhill from there.
I relayed the story to one of my mentors, who noted that, when she was considering writing a book, she spoke with an agent who said the key to selling self-help books was to tell people that something is wrong with them and then promise that your book will help them fix it.

My fellow baby Marxist anarcho-syndicalists will be familiar with ideas about manufactured desire and the history of diverting the fears and discontents of the masses from revolutionary action into the desire for more kitchen appliances. In “The Century of the Self,” documentarian Adam Curtis compellingly describes how the modern public relations and advertising industries are rooted in the post WWII belief that the latent desires of average people were, in the aggregate, antisocial, violent and destructive. 

“A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick.”

— Ben Okri

In the simplest terms, most products and services have been marketed based on an underlying story that we are at best incomplete and at worst, downright dirty, ugly and alone — that is until we buy the right car, night cream or breakfast cereal!

As an entrepreneur in the branding and communication design space, I think a lot about the assumptions that underlie messages and visual design. I am as vulnerable to fear-based marketing as anyone else, but I also believe that we can enroll each other to take action by cultivating mentorship, compassion and vision. It is possible that this approach cuts down on impulse buying/voting/reposting, but perhaps it also fosters more durable long-term relationships and more conscious choice. 

This ethos of conscious choosing requires us to trust our audiences. In an era of loneliness and more social media than human-to-human socializing, I believe that trust (in self and others) is a secret currency of our day. How much trust are you cultivating in your life and work? How do you discern when and to what extent it is safe for you or your organization to be transparent or go public with your story?

Big Deck Energy

I have been working helping clients clarify, package and tell their stories in visually and verbally compelling ways for over 15 years. I’ve been influenced by the work of Civil Rights leader Marshall Ganz via the work of my friends Heather Box and Julian Mocine-McQueen of The Million Person Project. The wisdom they have brought into my world is that when people share the authentic, personal reasons why they do the work they do, others can connect with the collective vision and join up.

If this personal approach sounds counterintuitive for someone working at a company or organization pitching new products or services, consider the fact that something landed you in this specific time and place to transmit this specific offering. What would be possible if you were able to identify and share that kernel of inspiration?

My other major influence has been Marianna Lescuel and the team at New Agency (formerly L Studio) who showed me the power of creating a beautifully designed, finished product - whether it be a digital deck, custom printed book or distilled executive report or “one-pager.” When we subject our ideas to the structure of a series of pages or the slides with a beginning, middle and end, amazing clarity is created.

The third thing I have learned from is the power of group work and reflection. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a big fan of mind/body/heart training. I am interested in the ways that awareness and attention unfold as the world we experience. This engagement has led me to work with teachers like Kelly Blaser, who create spaces where participants get to experience themselves as whole and empowered through conscious relationship with others and a collective. 

Being a mentor and participant in Kelly’s CCLI program has transformed the way that I work with clients, giving me a lot of trust in the power of listening, holding space and reflecting the clarity and vision that people already carry. 

So many of you have new offerings you are bringing into the world. I offer the chance to create the tools you need to express your vision for the world in a way that inspires others to join you. The clearer your message, the easier it is for you to spread it — whether you are pitching investors, enrolling your clients, hiring a team or bringing new products to market. Tap into your big deck energy today!

Postcard From an Iconic Design

How great design creates stability, efficiency, cohesion and flow

This summer I had the privilege of staying at the Neuendorf House on the island of Mallorca. A dear friend of mine “won” the stay via a charity auction in support of Ukraine shortly after the Russian invasion. The house is a minimalist masterpiece in earthy pink created by architects ​​John Pawson and Claudio Silvestrin. 

With its high-walled interior courtyard to its temple-like pool-facing facade, the house holds a presence within the body of its occupants. To dwell there is to know exactly where you are in space because every aspect of the design frames the landscape, the sky, the furnishings, your own body. The house demands our attention, not just to it, but to each passing moment of the day within its environment. The light changes in the tall, Stonehenge-like opening of the courtyard as the pool goes from clear to mirror reflection as the sun travels from dawn to dusk overhead.

I paint this picture not just to tell you about my summer vacation, but because the experience brought me into direct contact with the power of design. I felt as if the house itself gave me directives for my daily activities - pick up your clothes so as not to interrupt these beautiful lines; take note of this slanting shadow; lie on the ground to look at the stars through the frame of these courtyard walls!

I see the Neuendorf House as a metaphor for how design very literally structures our understanding of the world. Great design can create stability, efficiency, cohesion and dynamic flow. As a designer and storyteller working in the world of branding and communication design, I see how the strong parameters set by visual design conventions and consistent messaging platforms set my clients free to flow and connect.