IAM928- Marketing Strategist Helps Companies Stand Out

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[00:00:00.10] – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

[00:00:32.60] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Laurie Hamilton of Prosperity Productions Inc. dot com. Laurie, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:42.70] – Lori Hamilton

Awesome. Thank you so much, Gresh. I appreciate you having me here.

[00:00:45.29] – Gresham Harkless
No problem. Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Laurie so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. With more than twenty years of experience across a broad range of industries, Laurie has worked as a marketing strategist, researcher, and creative consultant to help more than one hundred companies stand out from the competition sessions in sessions in business innovation. A professor of insights at Columbia University's master's degree program in strategic communication, she has worked on strategy, product development, creative direction, and positioning for more than fifty Fortune five hundred companies. Lori, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:27.00] – Lori Hamilton

I'm ready. Hello, community.

[00:01:28.50] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. How's it going? So let's do it then. So to kinda kick everything off, I want to rewind the clock a little bit, and hear a little bit more on how you got started. Could you take us through your CEO story? We'll let you get started

[00:01:37.90] – Lori Hamilton

with the business. Yeah. I mean, but here's what happened. My dad died during my freshman year in college, and my mom took all the money. So I needed a job to stay in school. Through divine intervention, I got a job doing research for the UCLA Medical Center, going out and doing interviews and EKGs in people's homes in the projects of East LA in English and Spanish and it was awesome. And I got to stay in school, and I worked with these two guys who grew up there. And I learned that my little Berkeley, I'm open to everything education was incomplete. Mhmm. Because I did not realize how fortunate I was to be given a sense of long-term time, of college, of purpose. And my dad was a doctor.

He put a hospital in a poor community that never had one, and so he used to take me on rounds. And people would be, like, you know, with, like, tubes everywhere. He'd be like, Missus Jones, where are you tap dancing again? And she'd be like, oh, doctor. You know, and it just taught me to see the best in people, and being able to stay in school from doing research and telling people stories in all walks of life I lucked into it basically and I had several different jobs. At one point, I was a little out of touch with myself.

I was a VP of marketing for a bank in the south. It's a bank that was started by people who were too conservative for the Puritans. Mhmm. And I was married to a guy who would say things like, Laurie, when do you gonna wanna grow out of being a performer? And I'm like, have you have you met me? I got divorced. I left the job, and I started this journey of what I really wanna do. I mean, I still have to make a living, and I read over a hundred books on how to find your path, etcetera, and made a lot of mistakes. Started a consulting company, and basically by following what I call the near star, which is what lights you up? What lights you up in terms of topics, in terms of activities, in terms of working environments, and people? And I found that following what lights you up is a better, happier, more successful path than having some preconceived north star of what someone else wants you to do.

[00:03:51.30] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Appreciate that. And you said it's called the near star?

[00:03:54.69] – Lori Hamilton

Near star. That's what I call it. The near star. Like, you got the North Star, which is where I'd be. And you have the near star, which is like right under your feet. You're like, I feel like wearing orange today.

[00:04:03.90] – Gresham Harkless

Yes.

[00:04:04.40] – Lori Hamilton

That's what I'm doing. You know? And the more I follow the it's for me, it's cooperation with spirit. Other people may look at it a different way. You're gonna be better at things that you love. You're gonna be sparklier. You're gonna have more to offer. You're gonna be happier, and you're gonna have more energy if you follow those tiny little lights that light you up.

[00:04:26.19] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And I love that phrase, you know, the near star because I think, you know, I often say this especially in marketing, you know, you're trying to find a north star because that's gonna align everything that you're doing. And but I think that as you said so well, you know, in your story and everything that you've been able to do, sometimes it's the thing that's right in front of you that we often will overlook because we're looking for the North Star that is guiding us to where we need to get to follow to get to where we need to be.

[00:04:52.30] – Lori Hamilton

Yeah.

[00:04:53.19] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. And so, I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper in here a little bit more on how you work with clients. Could you take us through a little bit more of that and what exactly that looks like?

[00:05:01.39] – Lori Hamilton

Basically, have you ever seen the show Undercover Boss?

[00:05:04.30] – Gresham Harkless

I have. Yes.

[00:05:05.10] – Lori Hamilton

Okay. So you know how there's always like, what in the world is going on with these people? That's what I do. I have clients that come to me and they're usually in a few things. Either make me look smart, keep me out of trouble, reduce the excruciating pain in which I find myself, or make this crazy dream come true. And what they wanna know is I mean, think of marketing as a conversation that you have with your customers when you're not in the room.

And when you're doing innovation, people always think it has to be fancy. Innovation is when your clients or your customers experience more value for you, from you, exactly. So what I look at is a company is trying to give a gift to a target audience, but they don't know that audience very well. Now have you ever had someone give you a gift and you're like, I knew why you thought that was a good gift? Oh my goodness. I'm gonna love this. Or when someone knows you well, you're like, oh my goodness.

So how I work with my clients is they come to me and they say, we need to understand this market, or we have a new ad campaign, or we're doing a new product, or we wanna go into a different area, or we, we, we feel like there's more potential here. What's going on? And me and my team go in and we uncover what's going on. And the challenge of that is you can't just ask people. So we do a lot of different kinds of there's a bunch of different tools, but basically what it boils down to is getting people to reveal their world through story. Have you ever met someone who's like, I'm a people person?

No, you're not. Or you're at a party, and someone's like, Grish, that was such a funny story. What are the chances it's a funny story? Alright. Right. Right? Versus when you're watching a movie or a television program, you know the characters better than they know themselves. So what I've done is combined my education in acting and script analysis with research and marketing to put together a series of experiences that cause people to tell us and show us what's going on in their world, so that we can then go back to our clients and say, here's what's really going on. Here's the gift they want.

Here's how you wrap it so that they see the value. And there's a whole bunch, you know, we do quantitative research and qualitative research and focus groups and facilitation and go into people's homes, a whole bunch of different ways of doing that. But basically, we're going, if you wanna give a good gift to this person, here's who this person is, and here's what they love about you.

[00:07:31.50] – Gresham Harkless

Love that. I love the whole kinda gift-giving aspect because I think, often I'll say this a lot, and I think we even talked a little bit offline about it. It's like, I think feel like we all kinda have our gifts or things that we're doing, and a lot of times, they manifest themselves in that organization of this business that we just try to just start. So how do you give that gift to the people who deserve it and who can use and value the most from it? You have to make sure that you are aware of who that is and what exactly they're looking for, how you're packaging it, and doing all those things. So I love that you bridged that gap between somebody who has that gift and somebody who can value that gift.

[00:08:04.39] – Lori Hamilton

Right. And the the hard part about it too, and this is kinda of why we all need each other. Whatever you're best at, you have almost no awareness of as a company and as an individual, because your brain doesn't have to pay attention to things that come easily to you.

So for example, we work with a company that's very, very high-tech, does super amazing programs, and all they wanted to talk about was all their program development and their security and their software. And I talked to their clients, and they're like, they process medical claim exceptions. What they do is they save time and money and get cancer treatment to little Mary, you know, Mary Sue when she needs it. That's what they do. The fact that they do all this technology is how they do it, but what they do is something very different from what they were talking about, because they just took that for granted.

[00:08:51.70] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And that makes so much sense. And I think a lot of times, as you said, you know, so well, sometimes you're so close to it, it becomes really hard to do it or you're so locked into one or you're so locked into how you do it rather than the value that you're presenting or you're showcasing and and and trying to communicate that is usually where people fall flat. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So would you consider that to be, what I call your secret sauce, the thing you feel kinda either sets you or your business apart and makes it unique? Is it that ability to be able to see that but also communicate that, to the clients that can need it?

[00:09:24.20] – Lori Hamilton

I went to, a motivational, like, meditation seminar several years ago, and the guy said something really profound. Whatever you were deprived of often becomes your gift to give to the world.

[00:09:37.20] – Gresham Harkless

Mhmm.

[00:09:37.79] – Lori Hamilton

And, for me, my mom's nickname for me was the child who ruined my life, because she got pregnant with me and didn't really wanna be. And, so, that's a gift to me because it made me aware of everyone else in the world, and it made me want to tell a positive story about other people. There was one day we were doing research, and one in the morning, we were in a multimillion-dollar penthouse apartment on Lake Michigan in Chicago with literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of artwork from all over the world. And that afternoon, I was in a creaky falling apart double-wide trailer.

And I love telling stories about real people in a way that someone in power can see the beauty, the honor, the grace, the goodness, and make that person's life easier. And I love telling an executive, no. You're not doing insurance. You're closing the wealth gap in the United States. Isn't that cool? How much fun is that? Like

[00:10:34.70] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That's fun. It's like the ability to be able to kinda translate, you know, for the people so that other people can understand exactly what they do. And I'm a big believer in I I call it I call it binaries. This is my coin term, but I almost feel like a lot of times, as you said so well, you sometimes will experience, the opposite so that you can step into your call and step into the thing that is your gift or your zone of genius or your secret sauce, whatever we might call it. But a lot of times, those experiences are the exact opposite because it's having you appreciate. It's having you understand the other side of the coin so that you can present that to the world. Yeah.

[00:11:09.00] – Lori Hamilton

And I'm glad you said that because that's why my company is called Prosperity Productions. When you do this right, it's one plus one equals ten because the energy of everyone goes up because everybody feels heard and understood, and valued, and you tap into the best of people.

[00:11:23.60] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And you get to reach another level where sometimes we can't figure out what's exactly possible. So I love that you're able to bring that out, amongst, you know, people, the organizations, and all the gifts that they have. And so, I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:11:45.00] – Lori Hamilton

I'll give you two. One is a book called First Break All the Rules. It is a quantitative study of what makes a great workplace. And you would think it would be different by industry or by role. Uh-uh. Around the world, ten things make a great workplace. And I go back to this again and again. It's things like, do you know what the higher purpose of your job is? Do you have what you need to do your job?

Is your job clear to you? Do you feel like somebody at work cares about you as a person? And I go back to that and double-check all the time. Am I offering that to my team? That's kind of it. There's that. There's another book called Good to Great, which is especially appropriate in this particular day and age. And what they did was they checked CEOs for financial performance and what they found was that leaders who are about their team who give away all of the credit and take all of the responsibility, who focus on giving their team what they need to succeed, are by a huge measure, financially more successful than those who are going around going, oh, I am the smartest person in the room. So those are two books.

[00:12:53.39] – Gresham Harkless

Love that hack. And, I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business

[00:13:04.89] – Lori Hamilton

self. It's not about having the answers. It's about having the questions. I always say I have an amazing, amazing team. I mean they all think differently than I do. I have a hundred percent of me a hundred percent of the time. I have a full supply. I don't need any more of that. I need other people. I love being proven wrong by someone giving me a different perspective. I always, especially in this day and age, we're all working so quickly. When you're working quickly, when you're under pressure when you're in the middle of it, you are going to have blind spots and you are going to make mistakes. So find other people who see things you don't see and then give them the floor. Ask a question and you'll be amazed at how much you can learn from that.

[00:13:50.50] – Gresham Harkless

Well, I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping that different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Lori, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:14:00.39] – Lori Hamilton

Being a CEO is not important. Being a leader is being important.

[00:14:04.39] – Gresham Harkless

Appreciate that, Laurie. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all awesome things you and your team are working on.

[00:14:17.20] – Lori Hamilton

Yeah. I mean, first of all, you can get you can get in touch with me at prosperity productionsinc.com. I have a monthly newsletter. And, in February, I'm launching a year-long program that's almost like an outline of a book on business transformation. So every month we give away stuff that's for free, and we give away things like five-minute hacks and things like that. I'm I'm just, my friend, said to me about COVID.

She said it's a time of abundance. And I was like, what? She said, whatever you have an abundance of, that's what you give. So my newsletter every month is trying to give back, you know, to people. And people are like, Laurie, how are you so smart? I'm like, well when you make a lot of mistakes, they give you the wisdom for free. I share a lot of the stupid stuff that I did. And the thing is, I guess the last thing I would say is to know what you know. Going back to the near star. Every crime show, every, white collar thing, every problem with a product, or terrible ad, somebody's like, Yeah, I kinda knew that was a bad idea.

But, I didn't wanna say anything. You know what you know. If something doesn't feel right to you, sit with it and figure out what's going on. If something does feel right to you, particularly if it's for no reason, go explore that. All of that stuff is there's parts of our brain that there's a woman, named Joe Bolte Taylor. She had a terrible stroke and lost the ability to feel separate and had all this intuitive stuff. So that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do it. I'm trying to do it. I'm trying to do it. I'm trying to do it. I'm trying to do a stroke and lost the ability to feel separate, and had all this intuitive stuff. So, that's in our brains all the time. We just don't always focus on it. So, when you're in that seat, no matter what your position, know what you know. It's true. Nobody else may believe you, but you know what you know when you follow that.

[00:15:54.10] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. I appreciate that. We will have the links and information in the show notes. I love that last reminder because I think so many times we we know what we know, but sometimes we don't act on it or we ignore it or we we shush it. But I think that's, you know, sometimes where those opportunities, that vision, those great innovations happen when we're paying attention to those things and we're taking action related to that. So truly appreciate that again, Lori. Appreciate your time, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:16:18.79] – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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