MEET MARIA ORLANDO
I am passionate about making things happen to improve people’s lives and grow a successful business aligned to a profound purpose.
Your challenge is my challenge.
My name is Maria Orlando. I am a Purposeful Business andĀ LeadershipĀ coach and mentor, an expert inĀ Digital Marketing, Communication, and Leadership forĀ businesses with purpose. I am certified in Positive Psychology Business coaching.
I help purpose-driven brands, companies, and entrepreneurs identify the strengths that determine their success, activate their purpose, and grow a sustainable, profitable, and tailor-made business that stands out from the competition. I do it through innovative communications strategies and leadership development. The method I use is from my experience of 10+ years in companies and specific techniques that mix design thinking facilitation, emotional and experiential digital marketing aligned to values and purpose.
If a client tells me that something is impossible to do, I say: āNo, we will find another solution to make it possible.ā And it has always worked.
At the first meeting, when I ask people I work with what they love about their business and what they hate about it, most of them answer: āI LIKE what I do BUTā¦ā. Unconsciously, they use ālikeā instead of āloveā and that ābutā means everything.
Throughout my career, I have seen lots of business owners and companies getting lost along the way. Do you know why? They didnāt have a purpose, a method, or proper guidance. Many of them gave up on their business just because it was draining their soul and life. They lost any self-confidence. Others didnāt reach their goals because they didnāt apply a tailored strategy and a balanced approach. Having a clear purpose, a well-structured method and atomic habits make you achieve concrete, faster, and more long-lasting achievements, without feeling drained from your business.
Do you want to build a driven-purpose brand? Do you have a business with a purpose, but you do not know how to communicate its uniqueness to make it profitable? Or, do you feel lost because you have employees but not followers supporting your purposeful goal? You are in the right place. I will help you facilitate the process by providing an innovative business and leadership approach aligned with your soul and purpose. It will give you concrete and long-lasting results.
To be successful in what you do, you need to create a working method, a long-term sustainable system that covers all aspects of your life and your business to ensure that what you do continues to produce concrete results.
I am Italian, and my journey into marketing and leadership started over 10 years ago. Finding my purpose in each thing has helped me overcome some difficulties and dissatisfactions, such as the ones related to an Italian system that doesnāt often work properly. Experience and hard work taught me to understand what I want and what I do no longer want.
Since the beginning, I chose to work on international projects embracing the challenges of professionals and companies from more than 40 different countries around the world. I learned to listen to their emotions, to align strategy with culture, and to help them communicate their purpose by enhancing their strengths, growing a business with purpose without sacrificing their vitality.
By working in the corporate world, I have learnt to look at things from different perspectives: as an employee, as manager, as director, and as an entrepreneur too. And this has made a difference in my approach to people and business. So I have understood that:
P.S All those things have solutions. And these are all opportunities to improve yourself and your approach to business.
To be aware of what you want you to have to learn to understand who you are and then become it.
After graduating in European Languages āāand Cultures I started to work in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry as a project manager and event planner. I was responsible for planning international events. I have always been passionate about this industry together with technology.
These experiences opened my eyes to a world where the purpose is everything. In this case, it was improving peopleās lives by spreading innovative medical technologies for the eyes and the brain. I managed to achieve incredible results in just 3 months by implementing an emotional but strategic marketing plan, focusing on empathetic public relations, and putting thought leadership into practice. The result was an increase in participation in events as never seen before, as well as an increase in new customers. From almost completely empty classrooms we had plenty of people and we had to search for bigger spaces. I started to manage small teams, partners, and stakeholders for negotiation, caterers, hoteliers.
Although I worked 10 hours a day, weekends included, reaching 17 hours a day during the events, my purpose was my benzine. But I started to lose 3 kg in 3 months and I was living an unsatisfactory quality of life for some reasons such as the fact I didnāt see the growth I was hoping for, although the business increased dramatically. Being independent for me is very important, as a professional and as a woman. It is something I cannot give up.
I understood it was time to embrace the change. Since the beginning, I started to study digital marketing, management, leadership, and NLP, learning from American mentors. It helped me stand out from the competition when digital marketing was still a fresh concept in my country. This has allowed me to always keep up with the times and to look for more job opportunities. I worked for Compagnia della Bellezza, Luxury Life International, CinecittĆ World, following many projects in the luxury industry about fashion, beauty, sustainability, and lifestyle such as Monaco Yacht Show, Milano Fashion Week, Isabell Kristensen Couture, Gstaad Hotel, but also about virtual reality, technology, augmented reality, wholesale e-commerce such as Ribilio, and even videogames.
I managed, coached, and empowered small teams at the beginning. Then, as a director, I got to manage teams of 25 people, both on-site and in other places in the world, working on multiple projects at the same time. Crazy? Not at all. Whatās the secret? A thought leadership, dedication, love for what you do, purpose, organization, ethics, and a positive mindset. You need to love what to do to be successful. I also managed very active virtual communities of 56000 people. They even purchased only because they felt understood. Read that again.
In the meantime, I worked as a freelance digital marketing consultant, life and business coach helping
Throughout these years I have never given up on training, getting important certifications at Bocconi University about the management of fashion and luxury companies, food and beverage and international leadership, and much more, such as the Business School by Marie Forleo. I got officially certified in Positive Psychology Business coaching and Design Thinking for Innovation.
I live for traveling so in 2014 I launched my slow travel blog Travellector which is based on planning tailor-made trips according to the personality of each traveler in order to have a more immersive experience and save time. This is because I am experienced in the Myers-Briggs model. And only in 2019, I started this website although I am working on it only now.
This section is about some goals I have achieved. I am not interested in showing what I have done but in showing that you can do it. We often do not know we have strengths that can make a difference. If you learn to discover strengths and weaknesses, you can make a difference too.
During these years, I have applied emotional and strategic marketing plans increasing sales, awareness, improving efficiency, organization, and communication by stimulating mutual collaboration on all operational levels, from the employee to the executive, contributing to the success of businesses. My kind of leadership starts from the discovery of yourself, action, and inspiration.