Iceberg Visual Consulting – Javier Miguel Garay

Por Iris Prigent

Are you having a hard time to sharing your ideas with a business angel ? with your students ? with your shareholders ? with your stakeholders ? Javier Miguel Garay is the man you need to talk to. In fact, this 26 year old entrepreneur can help you explain easily any concepts to any audience with visuals (drawings, schemas, videos…). Created two and a half years ago, his company is based on the importance of visuals in life and mainly the importance of visuals to share messages and ideas in today’s society. Indeed, the rapidity of the shared messages causes only those messages to be well understood which are effectively shared.

The company

Iceberg Visual Consulting’s goal is to help any organisation draw on paper or through video an idea or a message for any type of audience. Its goal is also to listen to the client and make the best tangible asset in order for people to understand exactly the message the company wants to deliver. As Javier Miguel Garay said, “he doesn’t sell visuals, visuals are the tool to deliver a message”. Thus, the service he offers is like any consulting company : he will advise you in order to get the best results after the diffusion of the visuals. Consequently, what are the advantages to go with Iceberg Visual Consulting? Better communicate new decisions, make workers realize the importance of their work and of course match with the new generations types of communication.

Currently located in Innogune buildings in San Sebastian, Iceberg Visual Consulting works not only with private companies (60%) but also with public institutions (30%) and entrepreneurs (10%).

If you are a private company, how can he help you ? Help your direction board to communicate internally, communicate about future strategic plans to investors, summarize all the decisions taken during a meeting or an event.

If you are a public institution, how can he help you ? Communicate your goals and beliefs for the future years, help others understand your organisation better, and teach your values to a particular community.

If you are an entrepreneur, how can he help you ? Find a better way to explain your future project to investors and to your future consumers.

Why is Iceberg Visual Consulting based in San Sebastian?

San Sebastian is a city that moves a lot towards innovation. Historically, an industrial region, the market is moving towards the 4.0 industry which can be seen as an opportunity for consultancy as companies are willing to communicate changes.

Moreover, San Sebastian is a city that attracts entrepreneurs and start-ups which create a really good ecosystem and more legitimacy to new businesses.

Iceberg Visual Consulting office in Innogune (San Sebastian campus)

Business history

This company was born two and a half years ago as EDUMOTION (education in motion and emotion): a company making videos on school/university subjects in order to change the way students study. In fact, Javier Miguel Garay noticed that in a lot of countries the education system hasn’t changed since 1950 and saw in it, with a friend of his, a teacher in Euskadi, an opportunity to help and change the world. They then did 60 innovative videos about economics in order for his friend to use it in class. Students were watching the videos at home and simply put in application the theory into projects, debates and exersices during the class.

Visual made by Javier Miguel Garay

But, the education system wasn’t ready for him to come and change teaching as there weren’t enough resources for innovation. He therefore had to change his business and find another way to use his talent of summarizing and visualizing ideas. Thus, he looked at other companies and realized that they needed visual thinking for events and for internal communication. So, he started to train in order to be able to visualize any subjects or ideas. His main source of training was watching TedX and making drawings to summarize conferences. Doing this training allowed him to become perfectly good at it but also to learn about society and the new expectations of people and the market. During the same period, he attended events and one particularly made him well known in the region of Gipuzkoa (north of Spain). Realizing most companies where seeing him more as an artist rather than as a consultant, he decided to change the name of his company to Iceberg Visual Consulting and its communication.

Future projects

To give you an example of what Iceberg Visual Consulting is doing, let me tell you about their future projects! Soon they will know if they are going to make 200 videos for a company that is looking to digitalize the consent of surgery in the health system. This e- health start-up will also be ordering 2000 more videos next year.

This project will be really challenging for the company as it will increase their numbers of workers and also the ecosystem of the company. Moreover, Iceberg Visual Consulting will try to export their ideas to other regions in Spain. In fact, Javier Miguel Garay realized that few companies have heard of visual intelligence in Spain.

The man

Javier Miguel Garay is a dynamic and energetic 26 year old entrepreneur. He studied Business Administration in Deusto University of San Sebastian. At the same time, he entered “Innovandis”, an entrepreneurship and innovation program. After, he left the business department to start a master in Teaching and at the same time join “Empieza por educar”, a foundation that looks for equality in education, where he taught for the first time. After university, he went to Mumbai to teach in “The Riverside School”, the second best school of India. Apart from teaching, he was also implementing with other students projects in order to impact the lower social class and the community in India. It is after all this experience, in 2015 that EDUMOTION was born and Iceberg Visual Consulting was born.

Even with no concrete experiences in a consulting company, he is now well known as a professional consultant specialized in strategy that is able to help you deliver any message you want. He is also a daily learner specialized in innovation and technologies with more than 80 events and more than 200 speeches he attended in the past 2 years. To conclude, Javier Miguel Garay always considered himself a change maker. Now with his own company, his goal is to improve society with visuals that will allow better communication inside and outside organizations. Using his own words, “no one is going to cut his wings” and we can believe that with this kind of motivation, Iceberg Visual Consulting will be soon a “not to be missed” consulting company.

The main qualities for an entrepreneur by Javier Miguel Garay

1. PASSION : as you have to do something you like because it is going to be long hours of work
2. PERSISTENCE: as entrepreneurship isn’t easy at all and doesn’t look like in movies
3. PERSEVERANCE : as you need to commit both to your passion and to your project
4. CREATIVITY : as competing in price will never be a sustainable goal
5. EMPATHY: as you need to understand each of the people you are going to interact with

Article based on an interview of Javier Miguel Garay on 13th of November 2018

Thank you Javier for having shared your experience with me and good luck for the future!

Iris Prigent