Today we’d like to introduce you to Lilli Izumi.
Lilli, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ve been in marketing for almost a decade now, which is just as scary to say as it is exciting.
I cut my teeth in the industry while working for a boutique menswear company called life/after/denim. Ironically, the company was run entirely by women and to make things even more confusing, they didn’t sell denim (it was everything but). I was brought on, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at age 22 to establish their social media presence. The company essentially had no marketing department in place, and at the time was hosting their e-commerce site on a WooCommerce site that their warehouse set up for them for free. By the time I left the company (5 1/2 years later), I was running their entire marketing and PR departments, had migrated them onto Shopify, was managing a full-time coordinator, a rotation of interns, and serving as the point of contact for the company’s web dev team, outsourced PR agency, Facebook ads agency, SEO agency, and a handful of freelancers. In addition to that, I was creative directing the photoshoots, designing the look books, and was in charge of all DTC operations. To say I wore many hats would be an understatement, but the experience I got from leading a marketing department at such a young age was priceless.
From there, I joined the incredible team over at MVMT and served as their Senior Manager of Women’s Brand, Retention, and PR for a little over three years. I was actually hired to manage the company’s retention marketing efforts (mostly email, direct mail, and the customer journey), but because of my experience with brand and PR, I eventually brought those channels under my umbrella as well. My boss at the time knew the men’s brand inside out, but there wasn’t really someone who was dedicated to the women’s side of things. This is where I stepped in and what I’m most proud of from my time at the company. I made it my mission to 1) unify the women of MVMT, get their perspectives on things, and create an environment of collaboration amongst our team 2) learn from our customers themselves to better inform our marketing and brand decision-making and 3) shift the narrative to be more story-driven, human, and truly representative of women around the world. Along with this, my other heart-swelling achievement at MVMT was leading the conversations for the brand’s first-ever charitable partnership with 1% for the Planet and the Surfrider Foundation. Over a year later, and I see that the company is still giving back to the organizations (and more), and it makes my heart so happy.
I eventually left MVMT and joined a yoga apparel company as their Director of Retention Marketing. I was stoked for this move because I had been a customer of theirs already and teach yoga on the side, so I was already familiar with the brand. I was excited to join a company that already championed things like diversity and representation, female empowerment and were active and vocal about important social justice issues. I made this move in the midst of the pandemic (around August 2020), and for anyone else who joined a new company during this time, you’ll understand how difficult a situation that can be. It was likely partly this COVID work dynamic and partly (ok, mostly) the toxic work environment I very quickly realized I had joined that had me yearning for change.
I knew it was time for a change when I started to see my stress and anxiety manifest in physical ways. I was hardly getting sleep (I would have very real Sunday scaries and have to rely on sleep aids before the start of the week), my hair was falling out by the fistful, I developed numbness and varicose veins in my legs from not being able to get up from my desk for hours on end, and found myself in tears more often than not. As someone who typically prioritizes my mental and physical health, this was not ok.
Serendipitously, a friend of mine happened to reach out at the end of the year about a few different freelance opportunities. She had been doing freelance email marketing but had just landed a full-time job and didn’t have bandwidth to do it all anymore. I had always wanted to have my own business and dreamed of being an entrepreneur since I was young, but never felt like I was ready or had a ‘good enough idea’ to do so. Fast forward a few months later, and I found myself with four freelance clients, working till 2 or 3 in the morning and waking up at 6, grinding on the weekends, to try to stay afloat, all while still maintaining my full-time job (which I often wasn’t logging off of until 8 or 9pm). Did this help with my anxiety? In the short run, no. But it gave me something to work toward, a light at the end of the tunnel, and a path toward freedom from a job that was making me miserable and the prospect of a business of my own.
It was a no-brainer when the time came to put my notice in at my full-time job. After just a few months, I had started making more than my monthly salary and decided to take the jump into pursuing my freelance business.
Now, I’m running my namesake brand and digital marketing agency, IZUMI Agency, full-time. I offer brand strategy and retention marketing support for businesses of all sizes (from fledgling startups to multi-million dollar). Most of the brands I work with are mission or impact-driven, female-founded, and/or BIPOC-owned and operated, which is something I told myself I would prioritize. I just hired a freelance graphic designer and a freelance copywriter to help support my business, and am excited to bring on my first full-time employee hopefully sometime next year! I have been blessed with the best clients so far and have loved working with each and every one of them. It feels great to be able to support individuals and businesses you genuinely love and believe in – just real good humans doing real good work.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I’ve ridden the struggle bus many-a-time throughout my career, that’s for sure. But I still feel incredibly grateful and blessed for the experiences and challenges that helped shape who I am today.
For parts of my career, I’ve often been the only woman, let alone the only woman of color, in the room. Especially as I joined senior leadership meetings with companies run predominantly by white males, the differences in perspective became glaringly obvious pretty quickly. For much of my life, I’ve been pretty soft-spoken. This is likely due to the way I was raised (my Chinese mother always taught me to be polite, demure, to not talk back). So, this bled into the way I interacted at work for many years. Eventually, though, I found that my opinions and disagreements could actually be beneficial for the companies and teams I worked with…so I began to speak up. I’ve always had an opinion, but once I started voicing them, I realized the tremendous impact I could make.
At one company, I wasn’t happy with the lack of diversity in the brand’s content and marketing. I didn’t see myself (or any of the company’s very diverse team) represented in any of the images, influencers, or marketing materials that we were putting out. So, I spoke up. I rallied the women in the company, ran interviews and surveys, and hosted in-person events with customers to gather enough data to present to the team. This resulted in a shift in the women’s brand marketing – from the way we spoke about the brand and to the customers to the content and types of faces that were shown across different channels and media. It wasn’t a smooth road to get there, but we got there. And today, I’m so proud to see the continued representation and commitment to this shift.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
IZUMI Agency is a mindful marketing agency that takes a data-driven yet humanized approach to empower brands to scale efficiently and intentionally. Having worked with various freelancers, consultants, and agencies in the past, I know how frustrating it can be when a third-party company doesn’t *really* get it. In all that I do for my clients, I take a human-first approach to things, meaning I consider if what they’re going to put out into the universe actually provides value for the customer and how that will affect them. For the most part, I work with individuals and brands that are inherently mindful themselves, so it’s been really wonderful having this synchronicity. I try to work with companies that are either mission-driven, female or BIPOC-owned, or sustainably-minded in some way. I’m a little scarred from years of peddling consumerism, so this is my way of regaining some of my soul.
I’m a one-women agency at the moment, with newfound support from a few incredibly-talented freelancers. I offer brand strategy and retention (email marketing, SMS marketing, customer journey mapping) support for brands of all sizes. I’ve grown once-wholesale-focused business to DTC success and have had experience managing multi-million dollar marketing budgets at DTC giants. What I’m most excited to do, though, is connect with humans who are looking to do something good for the planet/humanity. The world needs more of you and I want to help you grow your business so it can succeed!
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
A few books I just read/am reading: The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, The Alchemist. I try to stay relevant/up to date on the world’s happenings through The Daily podcast and my CNN app. I was using an app called Habitica for a while for daily task management. It gamifies otherwise mundane tasks by giving you points for each task you complete and allows you to buy little trinkets for your pixel avatar. It’s silly, but whatever helps me stay on task + makes it fun, I’m down for.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: https://izumiagency.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/izumi.agency/
Image Credits:
sundays, Faherty, MVMT, LESSE, Tony Moux, life/after/denim
