Pay attention to your side hustles. Sometimes that's where your big story is waiting. At least, that's what happend with my story. I have over 20 years of the corporate digital marketing experience. I've been working with major brands like IBM, Nokia, American Express and others. But throughout my journey, I was always nursing my side passions for visual stories, and it was expressed in two avenues. The first one started by simply taking a Italian language classes. I'd confess, I have no relation to Italy as I'm originally from Israel. It's simply a pure interest. I took those classes for over 10 years, actually, once a week. And as I was moving up the levels, we ditched the textbook and start watching classic films from the fifties and sixties and use them to practice the language. And that kind of drove my interest into classic Italian cinema. I started blogging, writing film reviews. I ran festivals where I curate the films and ran post-screening Q&A discussions. The other avenue was video art. My father in law, Buky Schwartz was one of the early pioneers of video art. His work is collected in major museums like the Guggenheim the weakening Smithsonian and since he passed away in, 09 my wife and I have been managing the estate and working to preserve his legacy. So video installation, video art, time-based media - this whole world is another aspect. So when I moved down from New York to Miami five years ago, I figured, How can I connect my that experience in digital marketing and my passion for visual stories? And that's when I started the Visual Storytelling Institute.

Pay attention to your side hustles. Sometimes that's where your big story is waiting. At least, that's what happend with my story. I have over 20 years of the corporate digital marketing experience. I've been working with major brands like IBM, Nokia, American Express and others. But throughout my journey, I was always nursing my side passions for visual stories, and it was expressed in two avenues. The first one started by simply taking a Italian language classes. I'd confess, I have no relation to Italy as I'm originally from Israel. It's simply a pure interest. I took those classes for over 10 years, actually, once a week. And as I was moving up the levels, we ditched the textbook and start watching classic films from the fifties and sixties and use them to practice the language. And that kind of drove my interest into classic Italian cinema. I started blogging, writing film reviews. I ran festivals where I curate the films and ran post-screening Q&A discussions. The other avenue was video art. My father in law, Buky Schwartz was one of the early pioneers of video art. His work is collected in major museums like the Guggenheim the weakening Smithsonian and since he passed away in, 09 my wife and I have been managing the estate and working to preserve his legacy. So video installation, video art, time-based media - this whole world is another aspect. So when I moved down from New York to Miami five years ago, I figured, How can I connect my that experience in digital marketing and my passion for visual stories? And that's when I started the Visual Storytelling Institute.

When I started the Visual Storytelling Institute, I googled "visual storytelling" and all I could find were references to graphic diesign, filmmaking or photography. There was nothing in the context of marketing, so my specific niche was really bringing visual visual storytelling from the world of art / entertainment into the world of marketing. And that's my specific specialty. And when I started I thought that our positioning was more as a trade marketing association. So we focused on monthly events and membership and all that, and quickly enough we realized this is not really our sweet spot, and we change our business model. We set VSI as a think tank. I had to come up with my own definition for what is visual storytelling in the context of marketing. I created a training framework. So what we do, we operate in four areas. One is training both coaching corporate clients at mid to enterprise level companies, and I also teach at the university Brand Storytelling course at the University of Miami's Business Schoo. We also provide production services as some clients interested in a polished product like explainer video or presentations, and then we do consulting advisory. Some people are looking for help in different areas of visual storytelling. The last part in thought leadership where we educate the marketplace about the promise of visual storytelling for marketers. I do it through my podcast, The visual storytelling Today, a recent book Total Acuity I published, speaking engagements, and Webinars talks.

When I started the Visual Storytelling Institute, I googled "visual storytelling" and all I could find were references to graphic diesign, filmmaking or photography. There was nothing in the context of marketing, so my specific niche was really bringing visual visual storytelling from the world of art / entertainment into the world of marketing. And that's my specific specialty. And when I started I thought that our positioning was more as a trade marketing association. So we focused on monthly events and membership and all that, and quickly enough we realized this is not really our sweet spot, and we change our business model. We set VSI as a think tank. I had to come up with my own definition for what is visual storytelling in the context of marketing. I created a training framework. So what we do, we operate in four areas. One is training both coaching corporate clients at mid to enterprise level companies, and I also teach at the university Brand Storytelling course at the University of Miami's Business Schoo. We also provide production services as some clients interested in a polished product like explainer video or presentations, and then we do consulting advisory. Some people are looking for help in different areas of visual storytelling. The last part in thought leadership where we educate the marketplace about the promise of visual storytelling for marketers. I do it through my podcast, The visual storytelling Today, a recent book Total Acuity I published, speaking engagements, and Webinars talks.

The right tool depends on your objective. For spreading the word out I'm using Wordpress for my website. It's a great tool, very versatile. One great advice I can give everybody is that definitely start blogging early and use a conversational language for your titles. A good evidence for this approach is if you just Google "visual storytelling," you most likely find my content and specifically a blog post that I wrote 3.5 years ago. What Is Visual Storytelling? And this is really the main avenue for organic traffic to my website. And that's how my reputation spreads. So Wordpress is a great tool. The other tools I'm using, I'm a great believer in using infographics, and this could lend itself into either memes, quotes that I create, and I use Canva for most off my content. Together with Pixabay, or Pexels. These are just free royalty image and video databases I'm using. For video, I'm using Final Cut Pro. And for CRM I'm using HubSpot, which is good track leads and email marketing I'm using MailChimp.

The right tool depends on your objective. For spreading the word out I'm using Wordpress for my website. It's a great tool, very versatile. One great advice I can give everybody is that definitely start blogging early and use a conversational language for your titles. A good evidence for this approach is if you just Google "visual storytelling," you most likely find my content and specifically a blog post that I wrote 3.5 years ago. What Is Visual Storytelling? And this is really the main avenue for organic traffic to my website. And that's how my reputation spreads. So Wordpress is a great tool. The other tools I'm using, I'm a great believer in using infographics, and this could lend itself into either memes, quotes that I create, and I use Canva for most off my content. Together with Pixabay, or Pexels. These are just free royalty image and video databases I'm using. For video, I'm using Final Cut Pro. And for CRM I'm using HubSpot, which is good track leads and email marketing I'm using MailChimp.