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Meet Shelley Iocona of ON ITS AXIS

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Shelley Iocona.

Shelley, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’ve always had a passion for technology. I received my first computer in the 80s (I think it was a Tandy 1000) as a gift from my parents and remember swapping out floppy disks to play adventure games. It fascinated me that I could give the computer commands and things would magically happen on the screen, soliciting interactivity and providing learning through entertainment.

During college, I was all over the place deciding what I wanted to do as a career. I think the idea of computer science was intriguing yet intimidating. After college, my Father encouraged me to get into technology and it was not only an insightful suggestion (he knew I enjoyed computers from my childhood), it was lucrative. I landed one of my first jobs as a web developer in San Francisco at a time when books and a desire to learn were all you needed to be successful. Solving problems and collaborating with teams created a love of the tech industry, and I’m grateful for having worked for some incredible organizations.

Continually investing in my education through industry certifications, and having a deep appreciation for and understanding of software development has been helpful. As my career advanced I developed a strong passion for product development. While at Yahoo I was able to collaborate with a colleague on an enterprise SaaS product. While pitching at an investor event, I realized we overworked, overspent and overbuilt, a common practice in product development today just as it was then in 2009.

My passion for the lean startup was ignited from this experience and I created my company, ON ITS AXIS, that same year with a mission to help organizations build better products. As the years progressed we went through a few pivots and today we focus on the intersection of products and people through product consulting, organization design and staffing.

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?
The entrepreneur’s journey is never smooth, and if someone told me hers was I’d be very skeptical! The biggest struggle for me has been patience. While my vision for ON ITS AXIS has always been strong and we’ve always been in a forward motion, there’s been plenty of times I wanted to move faster but the market wasn’t ready or I didn’t have the right team members identified to help get us there.

Recently I wrote an article about failure and how it breeds creativity (https://www.onitsaxis.com/leadership-culture/failure-breeds-creativity). Many founders have shared that the article resonated with them. One of the biggest takeaways I hope people receive when they read the article is that failures (we call them pivots in the startup world), are natural and necessary. Creating pivots that allow you to progress over time is not only what we have done in the last 9 years, it’s what we teach our clients to do.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the ON ITS AXIS story. Tell us more about the business.
At ON ITS AXIS, we create innovative product and people solutions for startups, scaleups and social good companies. On the product side, we do this through consulting and coaching, and on the people side, we provide organization design and staffing. We are a certified woman-owned business in a high growth phase.

I started this company in 2009 with a vision to help companies develop products using lean principles. A big part of my work is helping startups give flight to their vision through interactive prototypes, roadmaps and pitch decks while advising scaleups to create a repeatable process in their product organization, helping refine their customer discovery and development methods while optimizing their development team output.

Over the years we’ve helped early-stage startups receive funding, take their products to market, and witnessed our scaleup clients create the cadence they need to meet their board’s objectives or exit strategy.

We recently launched our staffing division to redesign the hiring process to more optimally achieve client goals, and we have made a commitment to be different by giving back. I think our social good component combined with our product and people focus is what truly sets us apart from others. All organizations need great talent but finding the right talent in an affordable manner with a team that has over 25 years in technology product and staffing is truly unique.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I’ve been fortunate to meet the right people at the right time in business, though I don’t know if I attribute that to luck per se. I’m a strong believer in using visualization techniques and designing life from the inside out, meaning setting goals, plans to achieve them and having the discipline of doing the work.

I apply this principle to my consulting practice with the belief that the right intentions – along with focused action – creates the desired outcome. Sounds simple, right? It is a simple concept that requires effort to apply! Life speaks to us if we listen.

I definitely feel lucky in my personal life. I met my life partner through friends and she is the most positive, inspiring, hard-working person I know. She exudes goodness and infuses everything she touches with inspiration.

Both of us hail from the East coast (Boston for her and Philadelphia for me). We come from strong, Italian families and love spending part of our time there when we can (we have a second home and satellite office in Philadelphia).

We spend much of our free time outside either soaking up the California sunshine with our 2-year-old terrier-schnauzer mix, enjoying meals and outings with our family and friends, and traveling internationally. It’s a great life and one that we are continually grateful for!

Contact Info:

Image Credit:
David Voorhees Photography

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