Pauselius: Bloom + Grow Forever

A sponsored post from Matt & Darice of Pauselius, a Holistic Creative Studio

Our clients, friends, and family are probably wondering what we’re doing, altering our business identity + mission yet again. In fact, we’re pretty sure we can hear the head scratching.

Before we went through our recent change, we were struggling with our identity on several levels – and had been for some time, in fact. Not the sort of thing most folks want to hear from a creative team that brands small, passionate businesses, but as they say, the truth will set you free.

The Roman Gardens Weren’t Built in a Day

Our original morph from Two Hands Creative to He She Us made sense (sort of). We had been attracting people who didn’t seem to value our work or our time, so we decided to re-brand and rewrite our mission.

He She Us was meant to be a shortened version of our story: Matt does A, B, C; Darice does X, Y, Z; and Together we are unstoppable, sort of thing. That idea was quickly put to the test by Google who, in its infinite wisdom, sent a lot of eager folks from Japan to our doorstep looking for some ‘adult entertainment.’ Analytics, if nothing else, made us painfully aware of our naivete. (In reality, those searches were a marvelous second reason to re-brand, not a first.)

Through both of those incarnations, we felt like we were ignoring our true selves. We were trying to follow a prescribed business model + a strict set of rules that we were told would lead to success.

Unfortunately, that road was straight + boring, not unlike Interstate 80 through Nebraska. As masters of winding country roads, self-guided detours, narrow one-way alleys, and left-side-of-the-road parallel parking, we were completely out of our element on the business super-highway. Not to mention completely miserable.

Thankfully, life presents ample opportunity to embarrass one’s self, and lucky for us, we are ever willing participants.

This last re-brand from He She Us to Pauseli.us (more accurately an un-brand) is our version of a holistic business + life.

We want to share more of ourselves with our visitors + clients, to tell our stories, random thoughts, and mouthwatering cookie recipes. We want to be ourselves – to offer ourselves – to connect with people on a truly personal level. We want to show ourselves unpolished, uncut, unapologetic.

We want to put all of ourselves into one project instead of juggling multiple interests. And we want to encourage others to do the same.

Why the hesitation?

It’s a popular belief that for a business to succeed it must be one thing, and one thing only. It must have its eye on the prize + everything it does should bring the business one step closer. Well guess what? One size does not fit all – especially in a small creative business.

For anyone who knows us, the fact that it took us so long to throw out the rule book must have come as quite a shock. Of all the things we question + insist on doing our own way, why not our business? (Hey, hindsight is 20/20, and we’ll be the first to tell you that we both have really strong eye-glass prescriptions.)

What Holistic Business Means to Us

Holism in design + business is a natural extension of the creative process. When we’re working on a project, our ideas are being drawn from our life + experiences. They are colored by our emotions, polished by our aesthetic, and framed with a perspective that is uniquely our own.

Taking a holistic approach is important to us because we believe we should be able to: be ourselves, our gifts + talents are far more meaningful when paired with our story; love our work, it’s more than a job, it’s our passion + life’s work, and should never feel like drudgery; and look our business best, so the local + global community remembers our brand. (We just have to keep this one for a while!)

The amazing thing about that concept is that it was there all along. It was sitting right next to us making a big stink + complaining that we were ignoring it. We just had to give it a little sunshine + water.

With Love + Gratitude,