Pivot for Success

Hone Your Vision, Shift Your Energy, Make Your Move

Amy S. Hilliard

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781119780984
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Inspiring stories and success secrets from business leader and entrepreneur Amy Hilliard

Pivot for Success tells business leader and entrepreneur Amy Hilliard's stories of success, struggle, and sustainability to inspire you to become resilient. Hilliard offers her hard-won perspective on what it takes to "make it" in American business and in life. She talks about the tough stuff, the stuff that most people who rise to her level of accomplishment aren't eager for others to know. Few women, and few women of color, have created multi-million-dollar brands in senior corporate positions, legendary entrepreneurial environments, and start-ups. Hilliard's fearless honesty in revealing her experience can help you find your way forward, even if you face obstacles in today's business environment.

While Hilliard is a Harvard Business School graduate, Pivot for Success contains lessons not taught in school. Her perspective on success and the failure it often takes to succeed are invaluable. In this book, you will learn the 10 Pivot Points that have led Hilliard to where she is today, including Purpose, Passion, Perseverance, Positivity, Priorities, and more.

The 10 Pivot Points you'll learn in Pivot for Success have been tried and tested, and even endorsed by Michelle Obama. In this book, Hilliard shares her impactful life lessons. No matter who you are or where you are in your life's journey, you'll need to gain vision, shift your energy, and make moves in order to get where you're going. Through Pivot for Success, you'll find that you can succeed, even when you think you've lost it all.

• Gain inspiration from Amy Hilliard's rise and resilience to multi-million-dollar success
• Leverage the 10 Pivot Points to best fit your goals in business and in life
• Learn to recognize when you're on the right track or bounce back if your situation calls for a change of outlook and strategy
• Build the courage to take risks, shift your perspective, and discover new opportunities

As the owner of three businesses, Amy Hilliard knows what it takes to hustle and get there. In Pivot for Success, she shows you how.

Part I: Hone Your Vision

Pivot Point #1: Finding Your Purpose

Pivot Point #2: Believing in Possibilities

Pivot Point #3: Defining Your Priorities

Pivot Point #4: Envisioning Prosperity

1
Finding Your Purpose

Just as your fingerprints leave a unique mark, so does the gift of your purpose.

WHENEVER I'VE GIVEN a speech, and people come up to me afterwards to thank me for inspiring them to pursue their dream of starting a business or make a strategic move, it gives me a feeling of deep satisfaction. The same is true when I've helped someone with a career decision or business issue. Marketing is my expertise; I have decades of professional experience and I've taught marketing at the university level. Inspiring others is like teaching. When the lightbulb comes on in a student's eyes, and they “get it,” their excitement becomes real. Suddenly, a pathway, an example of something I showed them, or how I did it has opened the door for them and, boy, that's exciting!

The same feeling sweeps over me when it comes to helping others maintain a healthy lifestyle as we age. When I turned 60, I created a blog—Sizzling After 60—to chronicle my journey to thrive at every stage of life; I present my journey as a blueprint for others to follow. Over the years, I've realized that inspiring others is my purpose. In a way, it is my ministry. It is what people come to me for and have for years. It makes me feel good that others are able to move forward positively thanks to what I've been able to share with them. It's my unique fingerprint, and I believe that in its own way, it helps the world. #inspiringothers

Finding Your Purpose Can Serve Others and Move Mountains

That's what Finding Your Purpose can do. We all have a purpose—that unique gift that we can each share with others to positively help a business, your community, and the world. For example, the COVID‐19 pandemic moved the world into a new normal. As such, many of us had to make significant changes in our lives—often suddenly and unplanned. In doing so, Finding Your Purpose and using it may have had to fall by the wayside as bills needed to be paid. I urge you, however, not to discount the power of purpose in challenging times. It is what we all are gifted to do. Finding Your Purpose is listed as the first Pivot Point because I believe that operating from a sense of purpose can be the foundation for so much of what you do in life.

As I shared in my book Tap Into Your Juice, nature provides some wonderful examples of purposeful existence. Everything in nature has a purpose. Birds fly, flowers grow, and the sun can't help but shine. They each do what they are meant to do. It's the same with us, when we discover our purpose. I love how purpose is often described: purpose is the reason something or someone exists. It can also be how something is used or made—which leads to an intended goal or result. Once you discover what your gifts are, you can pivot toward endeavors that use them with determination and resoluteness in your life choices and in service for others. I've found that serving others provides important balance with your values. Finding Your Purpose and using it in your daily life is great for your health, reduces stress, and is an amazing personal superpower! When you use it, particularly in challenging times, you'll find motivation when you need it and the ability to Hone Your Vision, Shift Your Energy, and Make Your Move.

What's interesting for me is that inspiring others doesn't mean that I'm always sharing stories of triumph or of “knowing it all.” Not by a long shot. In 1986, when I was a relatively new product manager at Gillette, I was given the job of managing two of the oldest brands in the Personal Care Division, Adorn and White Rain Hairsprays. I guess they figured I couldn't mess up those highly profitable brands—just keep shipping them, right? Well, obviously this was before the days of social media, and I was getting about 10 letters a week from customers who remembered the old White Rain Shampoo that Gillette marketed in the 1950s and 60s. I couldn't believe it. I figured if that many people were taking the time to write to ask a company to bring back a product, lots of customers might want it to come to back. Gillette had tried a “new and improved” version of White Rain Shampoo in the 1970s; it was fruit scented in various colors and didn't do well. These customers wanted the original, crystal‐clear version back. So, I had to inspire my management to let me bring back this product. It was a process, and I needed to draw on my Purpose to carry it out.

Using your Purpose can be spontaneous and it can also be strategic, or a combination of both. I used a combined strategic and spontaneous inspirational approach I call “Hallway Management” for gaining approval to relaunch White Rain Shampoo at Gillette. What's that, you may ask? Well, whenever I saw my boss, the VP, or the president of the division at the water cooler in the hall, I'd tell them about all the letters I received asking to bring back the original White Rain Shampoo. It was a casual, excited, but determined and purposeful way of inspiring them to see the potential in bringing back that product. Finally, after several hallway encounters and additional mentions in more formal meetings, I was given the green light. I was told I could launch the product with the following parameters: I had a six‐month timetable and no increase in my budget. I had inspired a “yes.” Next, I had to inspire the team to make it happen.

I had assisted on new product launches at Gillette while climbing the ladder, but those were well supported with major budgets and long planning times. This was very different—I was now the project lead with a super short planning window. I knew it was a major career risk, and we had to make it a success. Knowing I had to light others up with the idea, I called a meeting of everyone who would be involved to jump‐start the project—Manufacturing, R&D, Packaging, Sales, Market Research, Advertising, and Art Design. When we were all in the room, I told them, “Congratulations! I've been getting a ton of letters from customers asking to bring back the clear White Rain Shampoo. Management has just given us the green light to relaunch it! I'm not sure how to do it. But I know you all do. I want to hear from each of your areas how we can do it fast and profitably. We only have six months to get it out the door on and on the shelves. So, let's get started!”

The team sat in stunned silence at first. Marketing had never called a new products meeting like that before. Usually, Marketing came to the subject matter experts with a concept fully planned out, and their job was to execute it. They were not in on the initial planning stages. Well, let me tell you. Within minutes, that team came forth with incredible ideas. “We have a shampoo bottle that works with the line that's already tooled, and production line approved,” said Manufacturing. “We have a wonderful clear shampoo formula and fragrance that beats Suave, and has been sitting on the shelf for a while,” said R&D. “We can turn the hair spray graphics into shampoo graphics that will fit that bottle,” said Art Design and Packaging after they huddled together. “I think we can do a tag on our regional advertising media flight,” Advertising chimed in and Market Research agreed they'd look into that also. After a while, I had to slow everyone down so my assistant product manager and I could capture all the notes! It was just amazing and taught me very valuable lessons about Finding Your Purpose and using it. I knew I could inspire people, but respecting others, being transparent, vulnerable, and authentic in the process is what can galvanize and motivate people to take action. Being perfect is not important. Being real is.

White Rain Shampoo was relaunched in six months with much success and went on to help grow the White Rain franchise from $25 million to a $100 million business. I was asked to write up the launch process we used. The New Products Development process at Gillette was changed: starting with bringing the subject expert teams together at the beginning of the process instead of much later on. In addition, the work of my team to get this done was chronicled in a case study for the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.

My 10 years at Gillette were a pivotal time for me and provided incredible opportunities to use Finding My Purpose as I developed in my assignments there. I say this because people often think that you need to be working in your purpose as the total sum of your job or career. For some, that is possible. But as long as you can use your purpose consistently within your endeavors, it can still provide major satisfaction, and steer you as you pivot forward. This worked for me at Gillette.

Coming from Detroit I saw Black entrepreneurs all around me—all with Purpose—including Berry Gordy, who built the Motown music empire within walking distance of my home. I grew up with a profound respect for Black entrepreneurship and Black representation in business. I saw firsthand what it took to be successful, including watching the Supremes in green sequined evening gowns singing their No. 1 hit at the Michigan State Fair while the pigs oinked loudly in the background. Nothing stopped them! As a teenager I saw my mother cut up her Saks Fifth Avenue credit card (I begged her not to do it) and send it with a letter to the President of Saks saying she would no longer shop there until they put Black models in their catalog—and he wrote her back saying they would! So, when I got to Gillette and saw that there was no advertising in Black magazines like Ebony, Jet, and Essence, I decided I would raise the question as to why not every chance I respectfully could. I brought it up in meetings with management and the advertising agencies. I would ask, “We use shampoo, hairspray, and deodorant. These magazines reach millions of consumers and they have billions of dollars to spend. Why aren't we going after their business?” My goal for using my Purpose of inspiring others was clear and strategic. Over time, Gillette's Personal Care Division started advertising in Black magazines on a regular basis. I was deeply satisfied when the cofounder of Essence magazine thanked me personally for one of the ad spreads from Gillette that helped him during a challenging time for his business.

This advocacy led me to a career pivot I never envisioned. By Finding and using my Purpose to inspire others, I was instrumental in helping Gillette recognize that the Black hair care market was exploding, and they didn't have a piece of it. A couple of years later, they asked me to be a part of the acquisition team to acquire a Black hair care company. Although I took a finance course at Harvard Business School and liked it, I was not schooled in acquisitions. But the next thing I knew, I was flying all over the country asking the premier owners of Black hair care companies if they wanted to sell to Gillette. In many cases, it was just me. And them. Over lunch or in meetings in their offices. Or in one case, at the Lustrasilk Corporation, over dinner with the owners, and then during a tour of their state‐of‐the‐art manufacturing plant while it was closed so the employees would not know of our discussions.

It was a heady time, working with my mentor and boss, Linda Keene, on the team when Gillette ultimately acquired the Lustrasilk Corporation. Interestingly, Lustrasilk was never owned by Black entrepreneurs, but by a German former piano salesman and a Mexican former chemist from 3M who developed a product that would straighten sheep's hair. They figured there were a lot of people in the world with woolly type hair and built a $50 million business on that idea with products to service them. From my work on that project, I was promoted to Director of Marketing for Lustrasilk and moved with my family to Minneapolis.

While the Lustrasilk plant was state of the art, the bookkeeping and sales data were not. The books were kept by hand, as was the sales data. I literally spent weeks inputting sales data unit by unit into a computer so I could track trends and begin making future plans. In the meantime, Gillette was pressing for new products to boost sales. There was no brand management team, just the loyal team at Lustrasilk. We had to move fast to get things going with new products. Based on what I lea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Part I: Hone Your Vision
• Part II: Shift Your Energy
• Part III: Make Your Move
• Epilogue: Pivot for Success
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Index
• End User License Agreement