I comprehend unfamiliar and intricate business-lines quickly. I am a very curious person and the nature of how people do their job or run their company appeals to me. The fact that I am genuinely interested makes gathering the information quick and simple.

I think chaos is just energy that is not sure where it belongs. My mind works strategically and that helps see through the chaos. I look for a way to understand its complexities and define a box to put it in. I can embrace order so chaos doesn't scare me.

I have a creative soul. It is my innate reaction to the world to say "what if?" It is complete freedom to me to start with a blank space and fill it with thoughts. Every single thing you sense is a creation of some kind.

I have built budgets. I have followed them, and I am in complete understanding of how they relate to growth. I understand how they get derailed as well as revisited. I firmly believe a dime should get a dollar.

I have 30 years of experience in all aspects of marketing communications. I have spent my career working in a smaller market to live and raise children where the pace of life is comfortable. An unforeseen advantage of this has been my ability to work on all kinds of projects not just one type. This has allowed me to develop a broad skill set I utilize for diverse client types in a vast array of industries.

Innovation is a form of change, and for the most part, our culture welcomes change. As you might expect, people proposing change do run into barriers. I think of the world in large terms. I work for ideas, not for individuals. My creativity comes from the connections I make between work and my experience or observations. I am usually curious, and I need to exercise that curiosity to see if this or that is better. This gets me back to mentioning the what if...

In creative fields, individuals exist at different intellectual levels and are largely self-disciplined. Each member has a unique role to play, which can't be done by anyone else in his or her absence. They need to be treated with freedom and respect.

Hierarchy kills creativity. In meetings, establishing the round table mentality and suppressing the long table mentality, allows the person with the best idea to be the boss. When I manage a team of creatives, chances are that some of them are older, some younger, and some will be smarter - and they never try to hide this fact. I always try to be clear, tell them the objectives of what they are creating and the parameters on which that work will be judged, then let them work.

Branding is the core of every marketing communication. Ownership of a person's emotional response to a brand element fascinates me. It is the reason we make a selection or even a reason we choose against it. Sometimes this choice even overrides empirical data and is strictly based on emotion. I gobble up opinions about it and methodologies in utilizing it and creating it.

The following words are the result of a standardized test I took in high school...

With strong right hemispheric dominance and strong visual preference, you tend to perceive all, respond to patterns, overlook differences and seek diversity. You deal with material randomly and intuitively, and you tend to find symbolism everywhere.

For you, categories are temporary, created and recreated as events unfold. Thus learning can be “unlearned” more readily when needed. This implies that you continuously “adapt” to new situations and find differences in situations that others may not notice. Your learning style is naturally dynamic and flexible yet not totally chaotic.

Organization may not be your forte and you are likely to perceive it at times as constricting while recognizing the benefits that come from structure. While capable of being logical, you respond to your own inner-directedness, which is often not explainable even to yourself since it requires a sophisticated left-brain translation. You have a tendency to become more involved with the abstract in seeking out relationships and arriving at answers. More than most people, you're self-directed and skilled and move easily from project to project. Your visual preference implies that you are active and continuously seeking or processing. You tend not to categorize experiences, but rather simply have them and react to them, integrating it into the whole of your experience. Despite your seeming lack of organization, you’re one of those people who can almost always know exactly where you put something and easily relocate it.

Your best learning style is to see materials and relationships, as with charts and graphs, and retain them easily. However, if asked questions, you may find your access blocked since the input mode is auditory and runs counter to your strengths. You can help yourself by drawing pictures while you take notes, to use your visual talents.

I have owned a 35mm camera since my 8th birthday. I love shooting pictures and drive my kids nuts, but there are a few I am proud of. Lots of Nikon gear.

The SCAMPER technique is not something I invented, but I have used it in a variety of ways. It works extremely well in an adversarial situation by inviting opposition to look from a different perspective. The SCAMPER technique uses a set of directed questions, which you answer about your situation in order to come up with new ideas. The stimulus comes from forcing yourself to answer questions, which you would not normally pose. The questions direct you to thinking about a problem in ways, which typically come up with new ideas. SCAMPER is an acronym that stands for questions relating to the following:
Substitute
Combine
Adapt
Modify/distort
Put to other purposes
Eliminate
Rearrange/Reverse

Can you sell? I challenge any company to prove that every single member of their organization is a salesperson. They should be. Leads come from many places, and one simple engagement can be a building block to new opportunities. I think everyone can be armed with enough knowledge to provide leads, and if a company is good enough to work for, then believing in the product enough to convince someone to give it a try should be a natural progression.

If it has a finish line, I will do it. I grew up around and on motorcycles. Raced well enough to travel to nationals as an amateur and finished second in the US in 1980. Raced a few times as a pro and actually had a couple wins. I love the challenge, the preparation and the willpower.

Marketing plans struggle to be actionable if they are based on ill-defined, vague goals such as becoming the “best in class” or “most desired” in their industry. How do you define goals in measurable terms? How will you know when you’ve achieved these goals — and will accomplishing them generate more revenue and new leads? The path to success follows a plan or process that will yield results that can be measured. In leading exercises to develop a marketing plan, I have always broken this down by a comparison of HERE (where things are today) and THERE (where things will be in the future). Then looking at the metrics that drive each answer.

Effective leadership is central to developing an organization with innovative solutions. The influence of leaders on worker creativity and innovation has been underestimated in the past because we hold a conception that creative ideas should only be credited to the work of the individual. Certainly, creative eureka moments can come from an individual, but it's the work of an entire team that moves the needle. Communicating this concept until the team expects needle moving results of itself has been very successful for me as a leader. The rest of the time I am focused on what I can contribute as part of the team.

Brand is the total sum of all visual, emotional, rational and cultural images that people associate with a product or service. Brand springs from the organizational vision and passion. I can spend a day with a group and find it. A company's management team has an internal compass pointing in the direction of their brand. I can codify it and create the internal/external communications that will bring a brand to life and make it a powerful competitive weapon.

I grew up a gym rat and played every sport imaginable and won sometimes and lost sometimes. If you are invested there is a large amount of emotion. But when you are the coach - everything multiplies. Teaching a child to hit a ball with a bat and having them succeed means you did your job. The bonus is you also get to enjoy them feeling their personal success. The compliments I value the most are the ones that come from people I have reached in sports or business, that come back for a visit years later. This is my soft spot.

In graduate school I had to write a paper on the meaning of modern art. In all my digging I categorized art into four categories, even though most scholars only acknowledge the first three.
A) There are pieces the world could accept as a stroke of brilliance.
B) Some pieces only have the goal of getting a reaction.
C) Many pieces are art for its sake - or kitsch.
D) And then there is a really well done graph.
It communicates a clear message in an uncluttered way, that any logic-ruled individual would have to agree with. The professor laughed really really hard. He liked the perspective. I do honestly believe in how well a graph can communicate the point.

Patience will come just be patient. I am not naturally patient, I have learned to be. I have worked hard to teach my daughters to be patient and formulating ways to explain it to them has taught me what it actually is. As life evolves, you discover the things that are truly important. If you are wrapped up in what should happen, then you miss what does happen.

The reason I am a good communicator is the often-overlooked huge key in communication, listening. Really listening. It allows you to find that personal connection and have a true dialogue. There are many things you can do well without being a good communicator, but this business is not one.

I feel amazingly complete when someone I am trying to educate has the lightbulb moment. Teaching someone to understand the nuances of a client's perspective is not ever easy, but it makes sense to me to guide. Many young people in this business have the general skills but lack passion and sometimes the opposite is true. Either way, evolving their skillset, makes me feel like I have given something back to all the people that have helped me.

Having real personal connections is invaluable. Obviously, we can all thank social media on some level for our connections, but it is really nice to truly have personal connections. Having a meeting-and-event veteran or a photographer you can call and ask a question of is amazing. But when they will be completely honest and look out for your best interests it is priceless. I have met all kinds of people that have helped me all kinds of ways. Writing, brainstorming, coding, and you would be amazed at how many times a different perspective solves a problem.

Not to sound self-deprecating or melodramatic, but I am not a huge fan of awards. For me it is something in my past. I have won some awards - being saluted by your peers is very nice, but the need to be noticed is not. Having a client call and say, "I am really excited about this!", means much more to me. Admittedly, it still gets to me when I visit my mom and she has something I did on the fridge.

I can accept being ultimately responsible for the final output. Spearheading the company's creative services group, and turning business insights, generated via analytic processes, into emotive and effective consumer communications blah-blah does not frighten me. In my experience, it is a lot easier to produce great creative work when you have a substantial understanding about what motivates consumers. If that is missing, then I will find or create it. The 'WOW' the customer experiences when interacting with the brand message is always the goal, and being responsible for that is my job.

I am uncertain why punctuality is so important to me. Is it part of genetics? If something needs to be done by Thursday it will be done by Thursday. I expect it and I live by it. Deadline is synonymous with finish line.

I have tried "decorating" a couple times. I am terrible at it because I cannot multitask it. I cannot see the vision, get the vision or discuss the vision.

Looking at a product or service doesn't hit me this way at all. I look at a blank sheet of paper and start. I hear the question mid-sentence, address it, then finish the sentence. Marketing is a part of who I am, and I rarely feel the need to fixate on anything about it. I understand how it lives so jumping in and out anywhere along the way is easy for me. Therefore, a little of this and some of that is not any problem.

I like what I do. It challenges me and revitalizes my spirit. I think about marketing/branding/design all the time – it is who I am. I have always liked my jobs, except once. (I worked at Long John Silvers for three and a half hours and quit.) Many people struggle in their careers and I can understand parts of the frustration, but hating their job??? Not me. I love it.