Meet Liz Lathan- Co-Founder and Chief Experience Officer at Haute Dokimazo, a creative agency for brands across the world.
Liz identifies herself as a B2B Event Marketer who is passionate about creating profitable relationships through conversations that have the potential to convert. Growing up in an entrepreneurial family surrounded by business associates, she was brought up with the spirit of being an independent individual. She fulfilled this through travel and making global connections with incredible people in her later life.
She believes that she always was (and still is) a corporate event marketer. She thrives on the controlled chaos of events and creating memorable moments that serve a business purpose. From leading global teams and programs at Dell, IBM, and other tech companies before jumping into entrepreneur life, she has had a dash of confidence in her every time she decided to commence with something new and challenging.
About what led her to start her own venture, she says: “I believe corporate events are broken. They put too much money and emphasis on the wrong things for the wrong reasons. People just want to connect, learn, share, and solve problems. We created an event that let people do that and it was a great success! We didn’t create it to make money – it was just a hobby – but today it has grown into 5 companies with over 100 employees in the last 3.5 years.”
Haute Dokimazos is a creative agency that pushes brands out of their comfort zone so that their incremental investment can create exponential results. Liz and her team help them create shared memorable experiences that elicit an emotional response to build meaningful relationships that drive business. It can range from anything including events, virtual experiences, media, podcasts, or even incredible branded gifting programs. However, not everything is as smooth as it appears on the outside- she faces her own set of struggles internally.
“I struggle with speed – I want to go faster. I hate it when things take too long. I can’t understand why they take so long. The risk for me in my speed is that I make mistakes when I go too fast. For my company, the challenge is that we have a LOT of projects and a limited number of resources to accomplish everything, so things sometimes NEED more time in order to be amazing. Being willing to slow down to do things right and not kill everyone in the process is the hardest part for me,” says Liz.
In the meanwhile, her business has continued to taste continuous success. What started as an office for 3 people in an apartment in the January of 2018 has come over to having more than 100 employees across 5 businesses in June of 2021. Following her hard work and dedication, Liz was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year by Smart Meetings Magazine in 2019 and has been featured in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal for organising the World’s First Secret Business Trip and Virtual Adventures.
To date, Liz is not able to believe that she had the ability to inspire so many companies to take the kinds of content risks she has taken and give their customers and employees the gift of adventure while they were trapped at home throughout 2020- all thanks to the Virtual Adventure programs. She feels absolutely grateful and humbled to feel all the love from doing something that she enjoys that maximum.
To all the aspiring female entrepreneurs of today, she suggests: “In this crazy world that we live in right now, there are no experts- there are just people who are a chapter or two ahead of you. Don’t wait to become an expert to share your expertise – someone already needs you. Make that post. Host that event. Start that podcast. To quote Anna from Frozen, Just do the next right thing.”