On this episode of the podcast I talk to Christine Chopyak, a visual strategist and idea builder from Denver, Colorado.

We met last year at our Alptitude retreat on Mount Hood in Oregon. She's the author of Picture your Business Strategy, a book that helps you master the principles of "strategic illustration", a proven system for visualising ideas.

Christine discovered the power of visual strategy nearly 20 years ago and it’s changed her life and how she relates to people. For her it’s a way to make ideas come alive.

Christine will be joining us at this year’s Summercamp and will be running a workshop for people who want to learn how to use drawing to help them get more clarity for their business.

Here are some nuggets from our conversation:

• Too many thinkers like to hear themselves talk.
• Designing your week to help you manage your energy
• When you’re too attached to an idea you can forget what you’re actually trying to do
• Visual strategy helps you see where you’re going and see where you’ve been in one breath
• The brain processes images 60 times faster than text
• In order for your brain to understand an image it only needs to be 30% accurate
• 80% of the population learn visually
• From the ages of 0 to 3 we make sense of the world through shape and colour and so we all have the capacity to visualise ideas
• Prototyping and storyboarding your service or product is the best way to understand your customer. It’s both fun and revealing.
• The more complicated your business the more important it is to try and visualise it
• We don’t get to see the diversity of solutions unless we try and visualise them
• Engaging with your customers and clients using a visual approach can help you uncover what they really need
• Once we get our ideas on a page we see patterns that we can’t see when we’re in our own heads
• When you give people a picture they’re not so quick to start editing while they’re much more keen to edit your text
• Drawing together helps you start building together
• Doodling helps you listen and retain information better
• Use word anchors if you feel like you’re not great at drawing
• Join us at Summercamp to get hands on experience of being a visual strategist
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Find out more about Christine on her website - www.arlosoul.com

And you can email her on [email protected].

Her book is available on Amazon and is called Picture Your Business Strategy: Transform Decisions with the Power of Visuals