Siri Casper, CEO & Founder of SIRIVISA Creative
Siri Casper, is the CEO and founder of SIRIVISA Creative, a brand focused on holistic creative solutions for forward thinking products and personal brands who want to excel at storytelling, and provide their customers a unique digital experience.
In this exclusive interview, Siri shares her diverse skill-set and professional background and aims to inspire aspiring entrepreneurs to take the leap and build the business they envision.
1.Tell me a little bit about your background and how you ended up choosing your field.
I actually started SIRIVISA Creative By accident! It was a series of pivots and opportunities that placed me on the path I’m traveling today.
I have always been a very creative person. I went to school for fashion which is originally how I interpreted my creativity and manifested it into a physical product. After much trial and error in the industry, I made my way into fashion tech and then joined a startup providing SaaS software. Through those career shifts, I realized that there was a lot of room to be creative and solve problems in different ways, not just in the creation of products. As I refined my skills, I started being able to identify what I was good at and combined it with what I was interested in to offer a unique take on a service that all businesses need. The path to SIRIVISA creative was not linear. In the building process, like any business, we took two steps forward, one step back, three steps sideways and then forward again. What got me into my field was simply a process of elimination, a bunch of trials and errors that helped me figure out where I belong and what kind of career I wanted to shape for myself.
What is SIRIVISA creative all about?
We provide creativity as a service. So what does that mean?
Our team focuses exclusively on generating and executing creative campaigns for businesses. We seek to understand and leverage data, human psychology and creative assets to tell compelling visual stories that build on brand culture and perception.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
Resilience – There are so many wrongs before you get it right. So many no’s before the yes. Being resilient enough to keep going, keep acting on data and not making emotional decisions is critical in building on the stamina required to run the entrepreneur’s race.
Empathy – Companies are just paperwork and a gathering of people who are working towards a common mission or goal. To connect to the people that make up the engine of a growing business, you need to be able to connect to your people. To inspire and support them in working toward the collective objective.
Similarly, business functions to serve a purpose and that purpose usually entails providing another human with some sort of service. Those humans are your customers. Customers buy emotionally and having empathy can help you design an experience that serves your customer’s unique needs.
Passion – When it’s no longer fun, because it won’t be fun sometimes. When it gets lonely, because it will be. When you’re so tired you forget to eat and your friends are posting about their dinner shenanigans on Instagram…Your true PASSION for what you do, for the solution you provide, for the culture you’re building, for the team that you’ve assembled and the change you’re perpetuating and your PASSION for the dreams you have….your Passion will stop you from throwing in the towel on the hard days and on hellish days, it will be the fuel you need to push a little harder.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
1) A Mistake I made right off the bat was thinking I can do it all myself to save money and hassle. #FAIL this mistake was taxing on my time, my money, my mental energy and my ego served no good.
I learned to try it all once, figure out what I suck at and find someone who can and is passionate about doing it better. Then give them the job. It’s far more costly to screw it up and try to fix it, than to get it done right by someone who can do it right.
2) I thought “because it worked once, it must work again.” #WRONG. Luck exists and just because it worked the first time doesn’t mean it will keep working or that other things will work. I used to let it feed my ego but learned quickly that everything I touched didn’t turn to gold and that corners shouldn’t be cut and to actually DO THE WORK.
3) My biggest lesson – Words cut deeper than a blade and heels slower than physical wounds. #POETICFACTS I learned this the hard way with some of my team members but also customers too. Watching not just WHAT I say but HOW I say it, WHAT tone I said it. Words sit with people a long time, they meditate and mull on it. Simply spending time to evaluate what I’m about to say and how my delivery may be perceived has helped me retain team members and clients and build stronger bonds with those humans.
Tell us a little bit about your marketing process, what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
For us we’ve always believed the best marketing is our customers. The work we do is shown to a vast world of other business owners through our customer campaigns.
The experience we provide them leaves us top of mind for our customers.
The best form of marketing for us is in our effort and commitment to our customers.
Beyond that, we practice what we preach. We develop unique, highly targeted campaigns for ourselves and deliver them to the right people at the right time and through the right avenues.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
I think it’s honestly been trying to balance my current wants with my long-term goals. There are a lot of distractions day to day but trying to politely divert it has been a juggling act for me. Practicing guarding my space and learning to say NO help, but I’m a huge work in progress in this arena.
If you started your business again, what things would you do differently?
So many things and nothing at the same time. I know I had to learn from my failures so I wouldn’t avoid those but at the same time, you just don’t know what you don’t know. I don’t know any other way than the path I walked in business to get here. Yes mistakes were made, yes they could be avoided but those have changed the current outcome and the current path I’m on. Would it change the people I met and all the really good things I’ve done? If the answer is yes, then I wouldn’t change a thing.
What valuable advice would you give new entrepreneurs starting out?
Gosh! I could go on for a year about this.
- My biggest thing would be to build yourself 6 pillars of importance in your life and constantly work on those things, making minor changes and evolution in each department so that the tiny positive changes compound into bigger evolution of self. Don’t try to do it all, be it all, focus on a few key things and don’t neglect your personal life in that equation.
