Being Geek Chic is a blog for stylish geeks, sophisticated nerds and people who enjoy the musings of a complete dork. Join us as we dream of driving the TARDIS, cuddle with our eBooks and test out an iPad sleeve. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi and a team of brilliant lady nerds. Meet the team.
Meet Lindsi Gish (@lindsi). Specialities include: killer marketing strategies, digital oriented communications, solution implementing, semi-serious cycling, and amazing godmother-ing.
She’s a Minneapolis-based communications wonder woman with a wealth of PR, marketing, and digital design experience under her belt (check out her impressive LinkedIn). After kicking ass and taking names in nonprofit settings and global PR agencies, Gish took the plunge and launched her own storytelling/strategizing/streamlining company, gish&co.
One year later, this lady geek is living the dream. On her own terms and with incredible initiative and energy, she is “helping good people get good work done.” And what’s cooler than that?
So, in her own words, discover how Gish finds her inspiration, puts it to work, and ultimately, conquers the world.
Q: How did you discover your passion for digital communications and marketing? Why do you love the web so much?
A: I had a professor by the name of Mike Morgan (goes by MC Morgan) who taught a couple of classes I loved—one was Elements of E-Rhetoric, and the other was Weblogs and Wikis. (Yes: Weblogs! This was over a decade ago, mind you.) I remember the rhetoric class sparking something in me—it made us consider how people create, consume, and collaborate on content online, and how that could change the way people communicate, and work, and live. And in the weblogs class, we had to create our own blogs and post to them regularly. That’s how I learned to code—by figuring out how to customize my Blogger template. And it’s also why I started playing around with Photoshop (a bootlegged version I downloaded from Limewire, of course)—to create custom headers and that kind of thing.
So, that was the start of it. After college, I also had an awesome boss who introduced me to things like Social Media Breakfast and MinneBar, and taught me how to set up my first WordPress site, and let me experiment with design, and social, and SEO. He helped me understand that this stuff I loved playing around with could actually help me earn my living—and he definitely believed in me more than I believed in myself at that point.
Truth be told, though, I’m not passionate about digital communications and marketing. My business tagline is “helping good people get good work done”—because that’s the part I love. Helping interesting, talented people and organizations making important, needed changes in the world. People who just need someone who cares about their thing, and can help them get other people to know and care about it, too. Marketing and communications is simply how I make that happen.
Q: Where do you find your inspiration when working?
A: If anyone has a silver bullet answer to this question, holla atcha girl, would you?
The truth is, it’s hard. When I ran communications at Second Harvest Heartland, I would often tell people that nonprofit work seemed, from the outside, as though it would be really rewarding—but it’s still a business at the end of the day. At any workplace, you’ll still struggle with workload, team dynamics, politics, all of that. But I would regularly and intentionally remind myself that the stress I was going through didn’t hold a candle to the stress of a working mother, just trying to feed her family. That’s why we were doing what we were doing.
Today, running my own little business, my world is a whole lot different. Setting my own schedule, choosing the types of projects I want to work on, and the people I want to do them with, is a dream—no doubt. I feel really fortunate to have the opportunity. So now, that’s what motivates me. I have to work to sustain this life—so I do.
Q: If you could have any superhero power, what would it be?
A: Dang, I totally had an answer ready for “What vegetable would you be?” (an onion, obviously… LAYERS), but not the superhero question.
Can I travel at the speed of light? Is that allowed? Because it would be killer to be able to see the world without spending a fortune on flights—or wasting a day on either end, for that matter. (If that’s not a real superhero power, then we need a new superhero. LET’S WRITE IT! That’s totally geek chic!)
Q: If you could take any fictional character out for a drink, whom would you choose and what would you drink?
A: Full disclosure: I totally opened my Goodreads account to get ideas for this one. Turns out I read a lot of garbage teen fiction, thrillers, and business books. Debating the merits of whether authors of certain business books are “fictional” is a discussion for another blog post. Or cocktail date, in this case.
For lack of a better idea at the moment, I’ve got to say Mae from The Circle. This book. Ugh. I hated it. Or, rather, I hated the experience of reading it. But I reference it all the time, so, something happened. Synopsis: it’s a dystopian (and I guess Orwellian) novel about the post-Facebook/Google/Amazon world, suggesting that total and complete transparency by all and for all is necessary and just. The problem: Mae is such a flighty and dense and ridiculous protagonist that I wound up hollering at her at every turn.
So, my answer: Mae Holland. And the drink: the tidal wave shot. Google it.
(Next time, I promise to have a better answer like: An Old Fashioned with Holden Caulfield. I just prefer to be happy.)
Q: What would you tell your 13-year-old self?
A: Whoa. First, that life gets easier. (There was a point right around age 13 when I was desperately trying to convince my dad that we should move away so I could go to a different school and have a fresh start.)
A few more thoughts:
Emma Bauer is a Being Geek Chic Contributor. Clearly, she’s got great taste. She is a PR enthusiast, dog lover, tea drinker, art appreciator, and of course, aspires to Be Geek Chic. Follow her on Twitter: @emmalynnbauer
