Pivot for Success. Amy S. Hilliard
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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 learned from the White Rain Shampoo experience, I leveraged Finding My Purpose and called a meeting with all the subject matter experts and asked them what we could launch quickly. A similar process happened. The head of R&D had a product he was convinced would beat the most popular oil moisturizer on the market. He'd been working on it for years, but the owners didn't see it as a priority. The manufacturing and packaging teams could produce it with no problems. I came up with a name on a flight back from Boston and legal cleared it. The advertising agency knew the power of radio and came up with a brilliant creative strategy to drive distribution. The team was inspired to make it happen and happen it did. When the radio ads broke all over the country, they were so successful that consumers were in stores begging for “Moisture Max.” We met our sales and distribution goals, and Gillette was pleased. I was super proud of the Lustrasilk team and, importantly, they were proud of themselves. Finding and using my Purpose was a unique way of inspiring others, and it was transferable. It was another important lesson. Fingerprints are indelible—something else to remember.
Align Your Purpose with Your Values and What You Enjoy
Another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes the gift of your Purpose may not always work as you expect. Even when you have Found Your Purpose, the timing and circumstances for using it needs to align.
As time went on at Lustrasilk, Gillette decided to close the Lustrasilk plant and move production to a nearby large plant they owned in St. Paul, Minnesota. I was against this move, as it would eliminate a key factor in Lustrasilk's success—just‐in‐time manufacturing. Gillette's large systems required six‐month lead times. The sales team and I at Lustrasilk could literally ask the VP of manufacturing to close down line 7 and bring up line 11 to produce a big order that came in that day. The plant move meant all that flexibility would go away. Well, the president of Lustrasilk, the VP of sales, and I—all Black and Gillette veterans—got together and decided we were going to buy Lustrasilk. Now, part of my Purpose worked, as I was able to inspire venture capitalists to raise $75 million to buy Lustrasilk. But I couldn't inspire Gillette to sell. We tried hard. They said no and decided to move all other company operations to Boston. Closing the Lustrasilk plant was one of the hardest professional things I've ever had to participate in. Those people gave their hearts and souls to make the company work, and I had to hand them a “Thank You” mug and shake their hands good‐bye. As I did not want to return to Boston, I made the decision to leave Gillette and look for another career move.
My sister, Gloria Mayfield Banks, was just starting her career with Mary Kay Cosmetics around this time in 1989. She recruited everyone in the family who could walk, talk, and chew gum to become a consultant on her team. She is now, by the way, the #1 Executive Elite National Sales Director for all of Mary Kay Cosmetics. But I digress. I had a severance package from Gillette and had enjoyed sales while I was there, so I decided to give Mary Kay a try. I was in fact considering sales as a next move because I really enjoyed it. While at Gillette, they required marketing people to take a sales territory for six months, and mine was in Dallas, Texas, and up to Oklahoma. One of my best accounts was a small warehouse right on the state border. The buyer had a shotgun on the wall over his head and a spittoon next to his desk where he chewed tobacco and spit it out during my sales calls. Talk about Finding Your Purpose and using inspiration! I was determined to make my numbers. I didn't let him throw me, and we got along great. He ended up buying a ton of Right Guard from me. I figured if I could inspire him, I could motivate women to buy a lot of Mary Kay Cosmetics, and become members of my team. And I was right.
But here's the lesson. Even though I was using my Purpose of inspiring others, the job of recruiting women to sell cosmetics was just not for me. The lesson here is that you use your Purpose in endeavors that work for you. It's important that there are other aspects of your job, business, nonprofit, or wherever you invest your time mesh well with what you value, enjoy doing, or move you forward so that you can Hone Your Vision, Shift Your Energy, and Make Your Move. The three‐step Strategic Process is a powerful prism to use as you utilize each of the 10 Pivot Points to keep you focused on where you would like to pivot next at any given stage of your life.
There I was, doing well in Mary Kay, but knowing that I needed to pivot to more fully mesh my Purpose and values. As a woman of faith, I was able to utilize another Pivot Point, and Have Patience, and wait for the right opportunity to surface. Granted, as a Type A person, I didn't just sit around and wait, I explored different ideas and dreams. Always a foodie and having a long‐standing dream of owning my own restaurant someday, I used the time to research starting a soul food restaurant in Minneapolis called “Porches.” There wasn't a good upscale soul food place in town, so I delved into that prospect as I also awaited the birth of my second child.
As it turned out, my Gillette mentor, Linda Keene, had also relocated to Minneapolis as a VP for the Pillsbury Company, in the Baked Goods Division. She called and let me know they were looking for a Director of Multicultural Marketing to help grow their business, given the 1990 Census was charting dramatic growth in consumers of color. Now, that touched directly into my value stream: inspiring others, especially corporations, to recognize, respect, and relevantly approach consumers of color. Honing my vision, shifting my energy, and making my move, I pivoted; I interviewed and got the job. The position made more sense for my growing family than starting a restaurant, but it was still in the food business and would consistently honor my Purpose.
I had the new job, new title, new office—and no budget. I was told to make the case to the three division VPs as to why they should fund a multicultural initiative. When I met with each of them, two of the three were willing to listen. However, the VP with the largest product portfolio, Refrigerated Dough and the Hungry Jack Biscuit Brand, promptly and politely told me that he didn't need my help. “Our sales are strong, and we already have lots of Black customers,” he said. I had some inspiring to do for sure.
It's a lesson I had learned many times over: when your gift isn't working directly, look for another way to apply it. I knew I had to have his support. So, I asked him, “Since you are doing so well, may I shadow you on a few field trips to learn from you and find out why?” Those trips gave us a chance to get to know one another and for me to share some important knowledge about growing his core audience further as we went to different sales regions. I worked with the AC Nielsen research teams to uncover sales data to show that sales were higher in areas of concentrated ethnic demographics. The data was there, but the VP's team hadn't looked deeply into what the scanners were capturing. Inspiring the subject matter experts to be part of the initiative was helping to build the case. Yet I needed additional allies in the quest for budget dollars.
The Pillsbury Kitchens were run by Sally Peters, a consummate food professional with a Scandinavian background who ran the famous annual Pillsbury Bake‐Off Contests and tested all the recipes that used Pillsbury products. I met with Sally and explained that she needed to understand that ethnic consumers may buy Pillsbury products, but would use them differently based on their culture. I convinced Sally to take a trip with me to key cities with African American populations and great soul food restaurants to taste cultural dishes. As we talked, we came up with a plan for her team to also select five families in key Latino cities, send them boxes of Pillsbury products to fix meals the way they liked,