We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Frances Naty Go. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Frances Naty below.
Hi Frances Naty, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
Resilience, for me, has two roots. One is deeply personal. The other is a conviction I’ve carried for as long as I can remember.
The personal one is simple: I am building something that supports my family. That responsibility doesn’t allow for the luxury of giving up. On the hard days, and there are hard days in any business, that anchor holds. It isn’t glamorous, but it’s real, and real is what keeps you going when motivation runs thin.
The conviction runs deeper.
I believe that being different is not a disadvantage. It is the purpose. Culture is what drives change in the world, the stories we tell about who we are, where we came from, and what we value. The organizations that protect and celebrate those stories, museums, cultural institutions, nonprofits, arts organizations, are doing some of the most important work in our society. They are the keepers of what makes us distinct from one another, and that distinctness is not something to smooth over. It’s something worth preserving.
Goldlilys Media is named after Monet’s Water Lilies, works painted by a man who kept creating even as his eyesight failed, because the work called for it. I think about that often.
The organizations I serve don’t always have the loudest voices or the biggest budgets. But they carry something irreplaceable. My job is to make sure their presence online reflects the weight and the beauty of what they actually do, built not just for now, but for what comes next.
That belief is where my resilience lives.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I build website masterpieces for museums, cultural institutions, nonprofits, healthcare organizations, and creative leaders doing work worth remembering.
Goldlilys Media is named after Monet’s Water Lilies, and that wasn’t a casual choice. Monet created those works in the final decades of his life, nearly blind, with no certainty that the world would receive them. He kept going because the work called for it. That’s the standard I hold for every website I build. Not a campaign. Not a redesign project. A legacy-worthy digital presence, built for launch day and everything that comes next.
What makes this work special to me is the organizations I get to serve. The way I see it, there’s a natural arc to a life well lived: you take care of your health first, then you go out and engage fully with the world: the art, the culture, the stories, the experiences that make being alive worth celebrating. I serve organizations on both ends of that arc. Senior healthcare, health and wellness, and life sciences organizations that help people live well. And museums, cultural institutions, arts organizations, and nonprofits that give people something beautiful to live for.
These organizations don’t always have the loudest voices or the biggest budgets. But they carry something irreplaceable. My job is to make sure their presence online reflects the weight and the beauty of what they actually do.
I lead both the strategy and the build, which means nothing gets lost between the thinking and the result. That integration, owning the outcome from concept through execution, is what mission-driven organizations deserve when they invest in a website.
Right now I just finished working with Forever Balboa Park, one of San Diego’s most beloved cultural destinations, on a Garden Party event webpage launching this June. It’s exactly the kind of project that reminds me why this work matters.
If you’re building something worth remembering, I’d love to hear about it.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Looking back, three things made the biggest difference.
The instinct to help, even when the world didn’t fully make sense yet.
I grew up barely speaking English. Adjusting to life in the United States was disorienting in ways that are hard to describe — so much didn’t translate, culturally or literally. What did make sense was technology. And video games, specifically Japanese RPGs, where I spent hours not just playing through the main story but doing side quests for non-playable characters. Characters who needed something. Who couldn’t move forward without help.
I thought I wanted to make those games for a living. Instead I realized I wanted to do something closer to what drew me to them in the first place, helping real people, at real organizations, do meaningful things for the world. When I build a website for a museum, a cultural institution, or a healthcare organization, I’m thinking about the multiplier effect. A stronger digital presence brings more visibility. More visibility brings more funding and support. More funding means more cultural programming, more research, more community impact. I’m not just building a website. I’m doing a side quest for an organization that, if supported well, makes the world measurably better for the people it serves.
For anyone early in their journey: pay attention to what made sense to you before the world told you what should make sense. That instinct is usually pointing at something real.
The ability to sit with ambiguity without rushing to a solution.
Early in my journey I thought clarity was something you arrived at quickly or not at all. I’ve learned that the most important work, for my clients and for my own business, happens in the space before the answer appears. The organizations I serve are complex. Their goals are layered, their stakeholders are many, and their histories matter. Learning to ask better questions before reaching for solutions changed everything about how I work and how I’m trusted.
For anyone early in their journey: resist the urge to prove yourself through speed. The consultant who listens longest often sees most clearly.
Learning to price from value, not from fear.
This one took the longest. For too many years I priced based on what I thought someone would say yes to rather than what the work was actually worth. The shift happened when I stopped trying to lower the barrier to entry and started building trust before pricing ever entered the conversation.
When a client understands the problem clearly, understands the risk of getting it wrong, and trusts that you are the right person to lead the work, the number stops being the obstacle.
For anyone early in their journey: pricing anxiety is almost always a trust gap, not a price objection. Build the trust first and the conversation changes entirely.
Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?
My ideal client leads an organization that exists for a reason beyond revenue. A museum director who loses sleep over whether their exhibits are reaching the communities they were built to serve. A nonprofit executive who has spent years earning trust and knows their website isn’t reflecting the weight of that work.
A healthcare or life sciences organization that wants people to feel confident and cared for before they ever walk through the door. A cultural institution that celebrates what makes us different from one another, and understands that difference is worth preserving, not smoothing over.
What they have in common isn’t their industry. It’s their orientation. They are stewards, not salespeople. They think in years and decades, not quarters. They are accountable to boards, funders, communities, and sometimes history itself. And they’ve reached the point where they know that a website built on the cheap, or handed off to someone who doesn’t understand the mission, is a liability, not just aesthetically, but strategically.
The person I work best with is someone who is ready to invest in getting it right. Not because they’ve been convinced by a pitch, but because they’ve been thinking about it for a while and they’re finally ready to move. They want a partner who leads, someone who can hold both the strategy and the execution without dropping either. They don’t want to manage a vendor. They want to trust someone and get on with their actual work.
If you’re reading this and you recognize your organization in these words, that recognition is probably worth a conversation.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://goldlilys-media.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francesnatygo
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@goldlilysmediallc
Image Credits
Photos by Sarah Dupree of Echo Stone Media and my friend Amanda Chojnacki created the branding for my business which includes logos and backgrounds.
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