Today we’d like to introduce you to Marie-Rose Phan-Le.
Marie-Rose, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My career started in the film and TV industry, moved to technology in interactive entertainment content creation, and then veered toward making my award-winning documentary about indigenous healers/cultures around the world, which then led to my being a healing practitioner. From there I wanted to see if cultural values of ancient traditions could be used to create and grow modern businesses, and was given the opportunity to create a success model at High Impact and Syntropy Studio, both located in the Denver Tech Center. Each company was based on values such as Win-Cubed-Plus, in which there are at least three wins from the work that what we do, combined with respect, reciprocity, compassion, mastery, and innovation. High Impact is a visual studio providing illustrations, graphic design, animation, interactive media, and VR services for litigation, while Syntropy does so for various industries such as aerospace, BioMed, and technology. As both businesses sold very successfully, I am now working as an advisor to other entrepreneurs and leaders on growth strategies, production processes, and building sustainable cultures.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
BRIDGING INDUSTRIES
Having had the privilege and challenge of moving among various industries and career arenas has helped me to grow as a leader and an individual, as well as, support others to expand beyond their limitations. Being of a varied cultural background (born in Vietnam, living in France, then growing up in the U.S.) has allowed me to see that my work is about building bridges, whether it is between entertainment and technology or healing and business. The biggest challenge in these cases was cross-breeding ideas from various arenas and encouraging others to on-board with concepts that were novel in their familiar boxes.
IN BUILDING A TEAM
One of the greatest challenges was in curating a team of collaborators who are specialists in their field, but Renaissance people in the whole of their lives. These unicorns are stars as individuals, but understand the value of creative collaboration to push them to personal and team excellence. And, as Renaissance people, they have a more holistic approach to problem-solving and conflict resolution. Being able to bring such a dream team together to Denver at High Impact and Syntropy, at first felt like a daunting impossibility, but it seemed our values and standards began to draw us together and accomplishing this was a cherished vision realized for me personally.
Please tell us about your business.
As we sold the companies last summer, I continue my work as a business advisor and leadership coach. What I am most proud of at High Impact was being able to grow a business that doubled in size and grew tenfold in net revenues under my tenure, as well as, starting a sister company, Syntropy, with both success models based on humanistic values. We not only innovated in visual storytelling using VR, AR, Scanning technologies, video production, and animation visualization, but we also lived our collective values of excellence, compassion, respect, and reciprocity. I believe my proudest moment was hearing one of our animators say to potential recruits, “Love is in the lexicon of our business. We love our work. We love each other. We love our clients. If you don’t get that, you won’t be happy here.”
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
My next endeavor involves understanding that the future may not be about single businesses, but rather collectives of individuals with like-minded visions and complementary skillsets–Intrapreneurship. I am currently beginning such collective relationships that will be based on mutual values and goals and complementary skillsets. I see myself as not running one or two companies as C.O.O. or C.E.O. as I had been, but rather as a member of several business collectives.
I had been traveling between my home in Hawaii and my work in Denver, but now I see myself as being based in Hawaii and traveling wherever the collectives have work to do.
Contact Info:
- Address: KAILUA-KONA, HI
- Website: www.marierose.com, www.highimpact.com, www.syntropystudio.com
- Phone: 575/770-2058
- Email: m-r@marierose.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marierosephanle/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarieRosePhanLeAuthor/
- Twitter: @MarieRosePhanLeAuthor
Image Credit:
Ulderico Images, Syntropy, Lia James, Ken Baldwin
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