For the first several years at Liaison Design Group we were almost entirely focused on projects inside our home state of North Carolina. That was particularly true for economic development projects. Having spent more then nine years as a local economic developer in the Tar Heel State, getting to know the people and policies, this wasn't much of a surprise.
That all started to change one day when we got a phone call from someone in Georgia. They had done some searching and found one of our interactive maps. Tell you the truth, I don't know if it was for the Wake County Smart Grid project, the East Carolina University Marine Sciences map, the North Carolina's Southeast's interactive regional map project or something else. That's not really the point. the point is they found us online, contacted us and set the wheels in motion for our first out of state project.
While I won't say the floodgates opened wide at that very moment, that project has led to several others out of state—including a coupld website projects we're currently working on in Oklahoma and Michigan. With each project, we've refined our communication skills to operate 100% remotely. We've found new tools to help ensure our client sees our designs exactly as they should be viewed (just ask any designer how important this is). And we've begun to build a set of references of out-of-state professionals that can attest to our ability to execute from a far.
As we continue to grow outside of North Carolina, we may find some projects warrant air travel for kickoff meetings or other high-level strategy sessions. Closer to home, we're always happy to hop in the car and visit our clients. Either way, we're excited about extending our reach, and one of these days get the call from Canada, Germany or another international location so we may write a new post about working abroad. And in that scenario, I'd love to maker a face-to-face happen!