IAM2356 – Design Strategist Helps Clients Turn Complex Ideas Into Clear, Actionable Business Strategies

Title: Transcript - Sat, 18 Jan 2025 03:44:57 GMT

Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2025 03:44:57 GMT, Duration: [00:16:59.73]

[00:00:00.40] - Jonah Burlingame

By really embedding myself within the team and partnering at the senior level, I can best understand what the business is trying to do. What are their strategic objectives, and not only what they are, but why they are doing that. I really need to understand the why behind all of that, and once I have an idea of here's what the business needs to do and why they're moving forward, then I seek to understand their context. Right where are they in the broader landscape?

[00:00:30.87] - Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO Podcast.

[00:00:58.20] - Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the IM CEOAK podcast and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Jonah Burlingame. Jonah, excited to have you on.

[00:01:06.71] - Jonah Burlingame

Hey, good to be here. I've been looking forward to this.

[00:01:09.23] - Gresham Harkless

Yes, I'm excited to have a phenomenal conversation. Of course, before I jump in to that great conversation, I want to read a little bit more about Jonah so you can hear about all the awesome things he's been working on. Jonah is a seasoned design strategist and consultant who specializes in turning complex ideas into clear, actionable business strategies. With a rich background in software design and emerging technologies, he excels at improving the execution of innovative business strategies to drive real results. He brings a unique blend of creativity and collaboration to the table, making him an invaluable resource for senior business leaders navigating digital disruption and beyond. His strategic work Jonah is an accomplished abstract artist, creating paintings that explore texture and color using unconventional techniques like window squeegees and metal drywall blades. His multidimensional perspective allows him to approach business strategies with the same creativity and exploratory spirit he brings to his art. I love everything When I was preparing for this that it says on his LinkedIn that he specializes in translating high level strategic concepts into actionable plans, bridging the gap between visionary ideas and practical execution for digital platforms and SaaS businesses. One of the really big things I love when I first connected with Jonah and had a really in depth conversation is he simplified things to say that he loves to build things that solve problems that I think so many times we forget about with design and all the things that we can do, we forget about the source of why we're doing it And I think he really gets it. And I love that we're going to have a deep conversation around that. So, Jonah, are you ready to speak to the IMCO community?

[00:02:39.31] - Jonah Burlingame

I am. Let's do this.

[00:02:40.62] - Gresham Harkless

Let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, I know I touched on a little bit. Let's rewind the clock. Hear a little bit more on how you got started. What I call your CEO story.

[00:02:49.31] - Jonah Burlingame

Yeah, CEO story. That's kind of interesting because I don't really consider myself a CEO, but yeah, you know, whenever I thought about it, I guess I am get into that in a little bit. But really, my career, I have a long and storied career that kind of meandered back and forth between technology and design. Before there was really an intersection between the two. You know, I. I went to school for design, but I had owned some of the first computers and was programming and it just. They both fascinated me, but they didn't really fit together. I left a career in advertising about 2008 when I had discovered that user experience design, or information architecture, whatever we were calling it back then, was this really new emerging discipline that really made sense to me because it really brought together design and technology. And so I left an ad agency and struck off on my own as a contractor. And I had a few of my own clients, but primarily I was working as a kind of a gun for hire, if you will, with other agencies and others that needed this new talent. And, you know, I was. I'd gone to summits and I was taking classes and learning all about this, but a lot of it was finding my own way. But long story short, throughout my career as a UX designer, I found myself working on more and more complex initiatives, very large SaaS, platforms and mobile apps and such. And I found that no matter how well researched and designed and solving customer problems, these solutions were, that the more complex they were, the less likely they were to get to market. A lot of these got shelved, you know, after spending a lot of money. The client would shelve these for any number of reasons. And so it occurred to me that, you know, what I do is really understand the context of people using these solutions, understanding their hopes and dreams and fears and all of these things. And I said, well, maybe I can use those talents to actually help businesses get big ideas to market, complex ideas to market. And so I said, you know, I want to focus on getting things out the door and solving people's problems. And so I kind of turned myself inward toward businesses at that Point and said, I'm going to work with the actual leaders of the organizations to figure out how do we generate that advocacy, that, that alignment internally to be able to get these good ideas to market. And so I went from being a designer who was increasingly strategic to a strategist who can design. And so at that point I feel like that was maybe when I could start to call myself a CEO of my company of one rather than a contractor up until that point. So maybe that was my pivot point.

[00:06:07.10] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I appreciate you so much in sharing that and especially like how that transition has, you know, happened in so many different ways. And you mentioned that lot of times those, those projects that people are working on and get shelved. So could you take us through a little bit more on like how do you like ensure that that doesn't happen? Like what does that process look like and how do you make that impact?

[00:06:26.19] - Jonah Burlingame

Yeah. So I've kind of re. Reconsidered my approach to project work and now what I do is to partner at the highest level within the organization. I kind of, I think it's important to have the air cover. Right. And also understand the top level business strategy. So by really embedding myself within the team and partnering at the senior level, I can best understand what the business is trying to do, what are their strategic objectives and not only what they are, but why they are doing that. I really need to understand the why behind all of that. And once I have an idea of here's what the business needs to do and why they're moving forward, then I seek to understand their context. Right. Where are they in the broader landscape? Not just necessarily the market, but other drivers such as, you know, the technology. Think AI right now is the latest big emerging technology that's disrupting a lot of businesses, but also the economy, cultural shifts, any of these things that might be drivers of change for a business and understand the context that that business is operating. Now I have the why in their context and then I seek to understand what are their capabilities in house, what are their talent and technology, what are the individual politics that are happening within an organization? You know, that's, that's inevitable. You know, there are politics and you have to play with those. To me, those are kind of exciting because we're dealing with people. As much as technology drives a lot of change, it's still at the end of the day were people making decisions. And so if you can understand the decision making processes and the lens by which people were making these decisions, you can start to align the Business a little bit toward those things, toward a bigger solution and understanding how are they evaluating this opportunity or this solution and what is keeping them from doing something already. Right. And there are a multitude of these things, but I really work to try and help generate that advocacy internally toward something bigger than any individual functional unit could do. Right. Because you need that collaboration across the functional units. You need marketing and engineering and design and content and operations. You need all of the different groups to do anything meaningful. And so you need to involve them early on and understand where they're coming from.

[00:09:09.80] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And I feel like that that's such a huge thing to kind of get that, for lack of a better term, that, that buy in and that understanding. But I imagine that's probably a lot of what doesn't happen. Like those conversations aren't happening. That buy in isn't, I guess, developed from people where I imagine like different people in organizations are in different parts of the organization. They don't feel like they're a part of whatever that initiative is. They're less likely to support it, to put resources around it. And you know, those things that are necessary to really like, see the goal and the fruition of like everything everyone's been working on.

[00:09:42.24] - Jonah Burlingame

Absolutely true. And also keep in mind that strategy by its nature is really abstract. You know, at best it's a PowerPoint doc that has bullet points and maybe some graphs in it. And a senior leader is saying, here's what we need to do and you know, go in that direction. And then you have the business as usual team, the tactical teams in the house going, okay, great, we'll build it. What are the requirements? And you know, how do they connect the dots? And there's a huge gap in between that strategic concept and what you need to actually get things built. And so if you're asking people to kind of interpret and translate that strategic, those ideas on their own. You mentioned this earlier. A lot of people really can't do that, actually have, you know, think strategically and think tactically at the same time. There are a few people, I'm one of them, I think that loves to go between the two. I kind of get bored if I'm too abstract and up in the clouds or I'm too tactical. Right. I like to really translate between that. I really live between those two worlds and that's what excites me. And I've been told that's my secret sauce, if you will.

[00:10:53.94] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book or even a habit that you have. What's something you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:11:05.07] - Jonah Burlingame

I'll tell you the one thing that I adopted probably, probably over a year now is a new browser. And it's interesting to say that because there are only a handful of browsers that people tend to use. But this one has been a game changer for me and it's called the Arc browser Arc and it is based on a Chrome engine. So all of your extensions and all of that work that use for Google. But the difference is it has a left side panel on it that helps you to keep all of your. They kind of redefine what bookmarks mean. I've never found the bookmarks drop down all that useful in most browsers. This one's on the left side and you can create things that are pinned there all the time, but then you have the ones below that as you open up windows, they're always there, but then they kind of expire and they go away at some point. So it keeps everything nice and tidy. So it allows me to keep everything very silent load and very efficient. And then also I can find everything all the time. And one of the things I like the best about it is that if I'm looking at something, let's say an email or whatever and I click on a link, it brings up what is just a little pop up browser so I can look at it and then quickly make it go away. I don't have to clean up tabs and such later. So it's remarkable and it goes much deeper than that. But we don't have time for that. We could spend the whole time.

[00:12:31.37] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So what would you consider to be a little bit more of what I like call CEO Nugget? So that could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client or if you hopped into a time machine you might tell your younger business.

[00:12:43.87] - Jonah Burlingame

Self this idea of bloom where you're planted. And so I don't know, that was just always in my head of like, okay, how do I make the best of what this is? Right? And I was always thinking here I am, what do I want to be, what I want to do and that. And that makes sense, right? But then I got this opportunity to move to California as part of a startup I was working for, was acquired and moved is out there. Very quintessential Bay Area type of Story and I found myself in the Bay Area and realized, wow, the opportunities here are like nowhere else I could have imagined and such. I wish I had known about this earlier because I would tell people, oftentimes they say, do you have any regrets about moving to California? And I said, yeah, one. That I didn't do it sooner. Right. And so at that point I realized that I really needed to re frame that maxim. Not, not to bloom where you're planted, but plant yourself where you can bloom. And had I known that earlier that that's what I should be looking at, I probably would have come out to California a little sooner.

[00:13:57.75] - Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. And so I wanted to ask you now one of my absolute favorite questions, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. So, Jonah, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:14:09.58] - Jonah Burlingame

You know, of course a CEO has to do a lot of different things like making big decisions and, you know, in charge of client relations and the financial management and business development and staying informed about what's going on, the strategic vision. I mean, all of those things are on the CEO's plate. And I do all of those things. Right. Even as a solopreneur, I have to. I do it on behalf of my business, but I also have to do it on behalf of my clients businesses. Those are the folks that I'm working with. Those are my clients that I partner with. Right. So I'd like to think they're my. My peers that I'm working with with an outside perspective, but I don't know that I'm comfortable with CEO as Chief Executive officer. And so I thought maybe I would kind of reframe those letters a little bit and something I'm a little more comfortable with. I would think I would call myself a curator of entrepreneurial opportunities because I do that for myself and I do it for my clients. Right. So to me, that definition of CEO is, I guess, more authentic to me.

[00:15:13.82] - Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Jonah, truly appreciate that definition and of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best people can get hold of you find about all the awesome things that you're working on doing.

[00:15:30.52] - Jonah Burlingame

If you do want to get a hold of me, you can find me at my website, which is mind-arc.com no relation to the browser. It's m I n d-arc.com and you can reach me via email. Jonah minddark.com you can also find me on LinkedIn. Jonah Burlingame awesome.

[00:15:52.60] - Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jonah. I truly appreciate that. Of course, we're gonna have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you. But I love, love, love, like I said, the work that you do and the perspective that you have. I think so many times we get stuck in those silos and those silos don't allow us to kind of make the best decisions. And really understanding those silos are very dialed into that human. And once we can dial into that and understand that, I think we can see some really phenomenal things happening. So I love that you help these initiatives, these programs, these things come to fruition because that only happens by having somebody be that glue. So thank you so much for being that glue and remind us of how important that is.

[00:16:28.29] - Jonah Burlingame

Well, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that.

[00:16:30.42] - Intro

Thank you for listening to The I Am CEO podcast, powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at IM CEO CO. IMCEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation@blue16media.com. This has been the IM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.