¶ Leadership and Pursuing Happiness
Welcome to Evoke Greatness , the podcast created for those who , like me , are driven by their curious nature and fascination with the champion mindset .
If you have an insatiable hunger for growth and knowledge , you won't want to miss the stories of myself and others and how we have navigated this journey toward greatness , all while stumbling through valuable lessons along the way . I'm Sunny , your host . I'm a huge book nerd and a wee bit of a control enthusiast , with an obsession for motivational coffee cups .
I believe that a rising tide raises all ships and I invite you along in this journey to Evoke Greatness . Welcome back to another episode of Evoke Greatness . My guest today is Hampton Dorch Hampton .
For anyone who is alive and has a pulse and has been on LinkedIn knows that Hampton is a LinkedIn maven who happens to also work for this incredible company called WildSpark . I think in your spare time you do that when you're not posting . I want to give a warm welcome to Hampton today .
Sunny , thank you so much for having me . Yes , I'm a part-time employee of WildSpark , but I'm not posting on LinkedIn . I'm kidding , wildspark is my full-time job , but I am a big LinkedIn guy .
The nice part about LinkedIn is we've made some really incredible connections . You and I connected on LinkedIn and it's really cool to see things flourish from there . Great work on all those . I think you said one time you post a fifth grade girl .
Yes , it's kind of my way of making light of it . Linkedin has led to some incredible opportunities , but before I really understood . Craig Grishel says people criticize most what they understand least , and I did not understand LinkedIn and why people posted on it . I used to make fun of people doing it , but now here I am posting a fifth grade girl on TikTok .
I'm not going anywhere , so don't follow me if you don't want to see me show up .
It's really awesome content . I was doing a little bit of my homework on you and somehow I found myself even more impressed than I started out with . We're going to take it back a minute . In high school , I see your eyebrows raised . In high school you were a soccer extraordinaire and you do one heck of a rendition of Seven Bridges Road by the Eagles .
Oh my gosh , you Googled me , didn't you ?
I Googled you .
And you saw the long greasy hair too .
As young as you are . Your whole life is probably online , just because when I was a kid when I was younger , thank God we didn't have access to post everything , but anyway , no , by the way , great singing Seriously .
I was quite impressed , you're welcome . Thank you . Yeah , choir was . That was a big part of my life . I have a lot of people in my family that sang and playing sports . Growing up , I was always afraid . I was like I don't want to sing . That's kind of weird and my parents pushed me to do that and so it was so much fun .
I mean , I'm not a big solo guy , I'm not about to just bust out in song right here , but if there's a couple people who want to sing and harmonize together and stuff , that's probably my favorite thing in the world .
Yeah , no , I was very impressed . And then in college you were the president of Sigma Chi fraternity at Samford University . So there was so much that led up to the version of Hampton that you are today . But I want to hop into a time machine and have you take us back a little bit to growing up in the Dorch family . What was that like ?
Oh , it was so much fun and I think one of the greatest blessings of my life has been my family . Both my parents have been incredible , probably too kind to me . I just continue to give me grace over and over again as I messed up a lot . I have two sisters . I'm the middle child .
I've got an older sister two years older than me , one two years younger than me , and so I got a lot of attention , being the only boy , the only one that was really focused on sports and everything .
But my parents helped instill a great foundation in me , whether it was through sports or spiritually at church or just watching my dad , the way that he led my mom and our family , and some of the lessons that I heard from my mom and I'm often .
Actually I get emotional at times because what's really cool and this is a lesson I've learned about parenthood , for when I have a kid one day , lord willing is so much of the seeds that were planted when I was five to 20 years old . I started seeing them pay off at 22 . And so I mean , of course they paid off along the way .
But to you who has some young boys right now , I like to encourage moms who maybe when they get into that teenage rebellious phase hopefully it doesn't happen with yours , but I'm saying , hey , the key to their heart is just giving them food and making jokes and stuff . So to my parents it's just a lot of .
When I became 20 , 21 , 22 , a lot of what was in my head moved down to my heart , if that makes sense of what I learned foundationally . So very , very thankful to be a part of the George family .
Oh , I love that you talk about maybe the grace they had with you or that they were too good to you , but which I doubt . What were some of those major lessons ? Or maybe a lesson that was hard growing up , that they had to instill in you ?
There's a let's see what's appropriate for the podcast . It was funny because I think my mom , if it were up to her , probably could have locked me in a room handcuffed for the entirety of high school , and my dad might have let me go too much and I'm exaggerating on both ends there .
I think , if you ask them , one of the hardest parts of their marriage honestly back in 2013 to 2016 , and maybe even been me because I was just like I wasn't super wild or anything , I'm exaggerating some , but it was really just cool to see how they love me and they pursued me , no matter what One that just came to mind is I was a really big runner .
I loved playing sports , but I quit everything for track at one point , like my freshman and sophomore year of high school , and was potentially on my way to run in college at a decently high level . But it got to a point where I didn't love it anymore and I felt a lot of pressure to keep going because that's just what I was good at .
But I recently heard a quote that said there are many people that spend their entire lives doing something they're good at but drains them , and so a strength is defined as something that gives you strength and at the time that wasn't really giving me much strength and I have a lot of friends whose dads were really hard on them in sports growing up .
But I remember my dad looking at me and saying are you having fun ? And I said not really . And he goes you can be done if you want to . And I said really , and he was like , yeah , go play soccer .
I know you love doing that , and so that's when I just the kindness and awareness that my dad was like , hey , you don't have to go after that college scholarship , you can do what makes you happy .
That's one thing that just sticks out to me and it was very empowering for him to do that Absolutely yeah , because I think sometimes nowadays especially , people get really wrapped up in that and they want to think that their kids , in all fairness , they want to think their kids are pros at seven , eight , nine , 10 , into high school .
And the amount of pressure that that puts on these kids at a time when just so much is happening in the world and they're trying to figure out who they are and what they want to be when they grow up , I think sometimes that puts an unfair amount of pressure on them .
And so I think that's great that he recognized to have the awareness to say if you're not enjoying this , do something that you do enjoy .
Yeah , it was awesome .
How did leading in college set you up to be able to do what you do today ?
Oh , that's a good one . My mom used to tell me growing up this is another thing . Back to your first question . She said , hampton , I heard this kind of a whole life and this is not to sound arrogant , it's just there's a lot of weaknesses I have . But one thing that was told to me is you're a natural born leader .
A lot of people would tell me that a lot , and my mom would say , hey , hampton , people are going to follow you and it's your choice which direction you want to bring them . Like . Are you gonna lead them for good or you gonna lead them for bad or for yourself ?
And so when I got to college , I went to Stanford not Stanford Sanford University , small private Christian school of Birmingham , alabama , go Bulldogs . I was instantly given a lot of opportunities to lead and I actually made it my entire goal to what I call , looking back now , build my own kingdom .
I went for every role and title that I could possibly get , whether it was in my fraternity , on campus , in campus ministry , whatever it was , and I actually got a lot of those things . I was granted a lot of opportunities there and learned a ton about leadership .
But what's really interesting is I spent the first two years of college getting everything that I thought that I wanted , like I had all these different titles . I had the girl that I always wanted , which is now my wife . We had lots of peaks and valleys throughout college , but we were able to date through all that .
So I said , wow , like the whole world that I thought that I wanted in college , like I have , and I'm actually not that happy . I came to realize that in building my own kingdom and living for myself , you run out of joy pretty quickly and you're always looking for the next thing .
And there was a time , a little bit past midway in college , where this is where my faith just became a huge part of my life .
But I realized , oh , wow , there's actually a lot more joy to be found when you're living not for you and your identity is not in the things that you are and you're actually loving other people and being others focused , and leadership is about empowering and developing other people .
And so I got to do that primarily on the back end of college , in my fraternity and in campus ministry , with some younger guys trying to teach them the lessons that I ended up learning , and the coolest part about it is being a 24 year old now . I've gotten to start over .
So my whole life I've had these leadership opportunities and positions and you're in college and you have all these titles . All of a sudden nobody cares anymore . I mean , you finish up school and you're just trying to find a job .
And try doing that in the middle of a global pandemic and praise the Lord that I was able to find Wildspark I happened to be interning there my senior year of college . But what's prepared me for now is I don't have a leadership title . I've never had a formal leadership title in the business world .
I've only been out of school for two years of learning these lessons of you know , and I'm going long here but as everyone is a leader , you know , you don't have to have a title . And it's been this sweet spot in my life where I do believe , just based on what's happened over my life , that I will have the opportunity to formally lead potentially soon .
But it's been this really sweet gap in time where I'm not really responsible for anyone but myself and my wife If you got out of work , but it's . It's given me an opportunity to meet people like you and invest in myself so that I'll be ready when that formal title comes .
And so all of the talk on LinkedIn and everything like that , that's not me trying to be Lindsay O'Neill or Simon Sinek or Brené Brown . That's me taking what I'm learning from the leaders around me and saying , hey , look what happens if you pour into and develop your high potentials before they even have that title .
They're going to stay with you and you're going to be able to launch them into whatever is next . So that's my long way of saying like sort of leadership background .
And then where I am now , Well , that literally is like a segue into three different questions and I'm like dang , which one do I do next ? You know , I think probably more than anything , we've had a lot of conversation just online , offline , about faith , and so I'm curious , you know , what role does faith play in the foundation of your life ?
It's everything and ask my wife , ask my friends , ask people I work with . You won't because of my shortcomings and my sin . You won't see that every single day and I hate that , but I'm striving to become more and more like Jesus every day , because he is the best leader that there ever has been and will be .
There's this song recently that says God , there's nobody like you , god , there's nobody like you , god , and there will never be . And I know that . And so I can look at God , who sends only son Jesus to live the life that I couldn't live , the perfect life , and die the death that I deserve so that I could build my own kingdom .
No , so that I could show that other message to other people and say what does it look like to move through life at a slow pace and to have eyes for people that are struggling ? And so it's really
¶ Multiplying Leaders and Faith in Business
my everything . And even at WildSpark , like if you're going to be in a client listening to this , we're not going to like , push that on you , but that's our mission , that is our vision as an organization .
We want to glorify God by building multiplying movements of multiplying leaders in the for-purpose marketplace and another way of saying what is a multiplying leader .
It's discipleship , and so what Jesus did with his 12 disciples is the reason that me and Sonia are here talking today about him , because it multiplied , and so that's what we're trying to do through leadership , because leaders develop other leaders .
So all of this multiplication talk , that's really about looking at the life of Christ and seeing what he did with his disciples .
Reminds me of two things , so , one of which is Ed Milet . And Ed Milet , you listen to him at all .
I've heard his name , but I haven't .
I need to when you , when we get done with this episode , make sure to go follow him . Not only is he an incredible businessman , wise leader , he is a man of faith and and you see that and you hear that clearly , and everything he says but what he talks about is that God doesn't call the equipped , he equips the called .
And he talks about , he has this thing that he says and he says when my whole Mission in life is that the day that I leave here and that I go to my eternal home , I will work with everything in me to empty out my tank , to make sure that when I stand in front of God and he holds Up a mirror and says in this mirror is the reflection of everything I
created you for , but I will see my own reflection and not someone that I don't even recognize . Hmm and I'm just like , oh , holy cow , and that's really what that makes me think about is , yes , we're all centers saved by grace , right ?
I mean thank goodness , thank goodness , that's all I have to say , because , to your point , we wouldn't be sitting here today , you know ? And oh , we also don't have to be held captive by that thought because we are forgiven .
Yeah , you're exactly right in the freedom in which you can live your life when you know that you are forgiven and that you were created by God to To go and make disciples of all nations like you find so much joy because you're not always trying to figure out what's my calling , what's my cut .
Just live for Jesus and and I think the rest will , will figure itself out If you just go into life with an available heart .
Absolutely . And then Jake Thompson , with compete every day phenomenal guy .
He and I did a podcast together , episode together , and he shared that Originally he was going to be up , he was gonna make his company a faith-based company and he had a buddy who took him out to coffee and he said look , I'm not discouraging you from this , but I want you to think about something .
If you make this a faith-based company , know that that's gonna drive everything right . So that could turn some people off . That could do this , that could do that . And he said what I ended up doing was making sure that I was the salt , so so I'm the one who's able to have conversations about it .
And I just thought I said you really surround yourself with wise counsel to think about that right , because then you can always have that conversation and be the salt to others . And I just thought that was a really interesting way of going about his business .
Yeah , absolutely . I think that's that's , that's wise and , you know , wild spark . It's like you're not gonna see on our website like scripture everywhere or anything like that , because , like we , you know , we never want to push that on on anybody .
We know that it is , we believe that it's it's God that that opens the eyes of our heart , and so we , we want to be bold , but we want to trust God for when the opportunity is to share what we're really passionate about , which is which is a layer deeper than than leadership .
But I think you , some of the best opportunities I've had to share my faith have not been because , up front , I've said , hey , like x , y or z , I've just built a relationship with someone which , not that evangelizing is sales .
But for all my sales folks out there , it's like you don't just go straight for the message and say , hey , do you want to buy my thing ? Be interested in that person , learn about them . Here's some of their story and then you'll be amazed at some of the opportunities that come from there .
So I know the story , but I would love for you to share how you got your start in wild spark .
Oh Okay , this is good .
¶ Sales Philosophy and Strategies for Success
So I was interning at WildSpark my senior year of college , which just so happened to be in the middle of the global pandemic of COVID . So I started there for like a month and a half . My sister works for our sister company , fire seeds . They do executive To director level recruiting . So for all your recruiting needs , shout to fire seeds .
You can talk to my sister if you want to . Her name is Arden long , but anyways I she said , hey , you should come intern at WildSpark , they do all this leadership stuff . And I was like , sign me up . So I grew up in in church actually with quarter CEO , and so I kind of pulled that card and he took me to lunch .
He said , sure , come into her intern for me . Well then , two months in COVID hits and so I'm sort of remote . But I'm about to graduate college and I'm trying to get married and so I've gotten engaged and I put all my eggs in one basket for WildSpark . I actually didn't apply I really anywhere else and I was like I've got to work here .
And so Josh Etrus he was a guest on one of my podcasts and I highly recommend for a vote . Greatness as well .
He was our VP of sales and client success at the time , and Because WildSpark , especially two years ago , was a little bit more in the startup phase , with only a few employees I'm not knowing what was happening during COVID they couldn't afford to bring somebody on full-time or they could afford it , but they just didn't know at the time .
So he said Hampton , how about we make you an extended expanded intern ? And that's when I asked well , what's an extended expanded intern ?
And now , knowing him and being friends with him , he's making this up basically on the fly , but he goes well , we'll give you a jersey and a locker and a pair of cleats , will call your name when the game starts , but you'll get paid ten bucks an hour , if that's okay . And I was like I Sign me up , I'm ready .
So for 90 days I did that and then , a few weeks before I got married , my wife and I were very happy for when I got the full time offer to formally be a part of the wild spark team , and I've been there ever since .
That is , that's great and that's actually well . Kind of leads into my next question as well is you're in sales from a professional perspective , right , but I think really you strike me as someone who is anything but sales at the end of the day , and so I'm curious what is your sales philosophy for those sales people who are like I can't close a deal ?
I , you know , keep striking out what are what's , what's your philosophy and what some advice and tactical steps for them To be more ? Hampton ask .
Sunny , you need to plug your ears for the same , because I'm gonna use you for an example here . So Sunny is probably the first use case of something like this and I've been able to do this at a large level since then . But I came across sunny on LinkedIn . I started following her and I learned a lot about her and was just fascinated .
What about what she thought about leadership and and culture and empowering other people ? I saw her post about her family . She had a podcast and so I just this might sound weird , but I like studied sunny for like a month . I said I'm gonna click the bell in a LinkedIn profile , I'm gonna follow her and I learned all this about her .
And so step number one if you have a dream prospect and I hate the word prospect , but some are trying to reach out to I dare you to follow them for a month without even sending them a connection request or a message . Just learn about them and then from there , for example , sunny made it easy .
A lot of executives sometimes are active on LinkedIn which , by the way , you should be Sunny can talk to you about that but but no , if you should be , you'll have people probably tactically reaching out to you , like I am , but anyways . So I listened to her podcast , listen to a few episodes .
I left a review on her podcast and all I did was I sent her a message on LinkedIn , a voice memo , and said , hey , your podcast is amazing , it inspired me because of X , y and Z . I left your review thankful to be connected to you and excited to learn that's all .
And then , like Two weeks later , I think I may be sent like another follow up message , just like saying , hey , your most recent podcast was good . And meanwhile I'm commenting on her post every day . And then finally I said , hey , look , you have said this , this and this about why you care about leadership and wildspark solves .
We have a consistent , intentional , engaging strategy to develop your people as leaders and I really think this , this might be worth learning about . And so , from then , sunny said you know what ? Sure , so . Then we met from there . But then it didn't stop . And sunny , I hope this isn't ruining like , not that , I'm fully trying to .
I hope you don't feel like , wow , hampton is just selling me the whole time . Now I'm telling the story , but along the way it's like I'm sunny got a dog and she posted about her dog and I got our personalized dog color and it's like if you're not genuine along the way with any of these , it will not work . So that you have to be genuine .
People get thousand dollar gifts all the time from sales reps but it's not relevant . So you gotta make sure it's relevant . But all that to say and of course this isn't when she was at Bristol hospice and she's not there anymore . Anyways , all that to say like that got us to here today . Then I got to be on my podcast .
Now I'm here and so I know a lot of you . Volume is the game and , granted , sunny was a high level executive at a large company and so like it's going to take more time with that . But just be relational of her transactional .
You don't have to do exactly those steps , but when you are truly relational and you care about the person , you study them and what you reach out with is relevant . Not , hey , I saw you went to Arizona State University . Do you want to ? Do you want to have a meeting ? Like just be relevant and be relational and be patient .
Excellent .
So for any sales people , go back and rewind this about two and a half minutes and replay this every day when you get up in the morning , over and over and over , because I tell you what I probably know less than five sales pitches a day , connect and , you know , trying to sell you in your inbox , and there is nothing like at this point in in the world ,
like there's nothing more laughable than when someone does that . It's almost just like , seriously , has no one taught you anything ? Have you not opened your eyes , or like opened a book or Google that you know how to sell something on YouTube , because it's all about that to personalizing things to your point .
You mentioned a couple of things that I was thinking about when I thought about these questions , and that's the voice memo , that that is something that not everybody does , and when you get these things pop up , it's very different , makes you very curious when you get this , when you're like , oh hey , I want to listen to this .
There are so many tools , though , that can personalize the process , or you know just a little bit of time and effort , but you do it really , really well , and there are literally two people that stand out to me in sales in and I've been in healthcare for 20 years . Two people stand out sales .
You're one of them and we met probably what , maybe six months ago , and the other one is a lady named Malia Crusor , and same thing . She built a relationship with me prior to just trying to go in for a sale and it's like God .
I wish that more people pay attention to really successful people who take the steps that you do , and I don't think of it like selling me . I think of it like this is your job right and so you're really good at your job .
Thank you , that that means a lot and for those of you listening to this that I have connected with an , immediately send a message to , because I was like two months into my sales job I didn't know what I was doing . I am sorry and delete that message and let me start over and try again , please .
¶ The Impact and Importance of LinkedIn
You're super active on LinkedIn , obviously , regularly posting , regularly engaging . We talked about , kind of how you personalize some of these things . What's been the biggest surprise to you since becoming so engaged ?
Less than one percent of people who have LinkedIn accounts are active on there , and so there's a great opportunity to grow and develop in audience and meet people through LinkedIn . I think , the further and further in time we go , having some sort of personal brand I don't really love the term , but having that is going to be valuable .
I have gone through a time over the last few years where I thought all social media is evil , because I just think there's a lot of talk to things that can come from it , linkedin included . However , I don't see myself stopping anytime soon . With LinkedIn , I mean one .
It is an opportunity for me to practice consistency , which , if you're trying to learn how to do something or have any success in life , consistency is probably the answer . So you probably won't Do super well on LinkedIn as far as building following whatever if you're not consistent . So that's when I get to practice that to .
I get to practice putting myself out there . Approval has been an idol of mine in my life , and there are some people that maybe like what I do and some people in college and high school friends that are probably confused . They're like what are you doing ? So I am canceling the idolization of approval in my life , which is a huge opportunity .
There three , it's helped me learn what do I really care about , because if I'm posting something every day , I have all these thoughts in my mind , and so it's helping me form you know what I really do care about .
Now that I'm starting to learn that you get in this rhythm about the message that you want to share , and so I think I've been able to open some people's eyes to say like , hey , leadership development is really , really important , and I'm not telling you that because I have 20 years of leadership experience .
I'm telling you that because I am the college grad that's getting developed at a really high level and I have no intention of going to any other company anytime soon because I'm so bought into what they're doing with me why don't you try it ?
And if you want to try it by WildSpark for me , I say that because we do WildSpark internally and so it's just been a huge impact on me . And then and then finally , I am on this conversation because of LinkedIn . There are so many people to meet from there . It is a global network and my whole life people talk about .
It's not what you know , it's who you know , and I have a list on LinkedIn that just says good connections , that has about 25 people on it , sunny being at the top , but just of if something goes south .
I'm calling this person and I did not have that before and it just expands outside of your city and in the digital age that we live in , I mean , if you add to , you could likely work remote from wherever , and so the opportunities are endless . Of course , it could be toxic , it can feel like a chore , you can get addicted to it .
Advice I've gotten is never be better at LinkedIn than you are at your job , which was convicting to me . So there , I mean there's pros and cons to it , but I mean I could talk about this for a long time . I've learned a ton about it .
Yeah , well , but your why is in your paying attention to the value that it has ? And I think what's fascinating for me is following businesses or influencers of whatever sort , like in the coaching industry or self-improvement industry is .
People are really big on TikTok on Instagram and what's funny is , even with the success that some of them have had , they're not on LinkedIn and I'm like holy cow , here is like this gaping opportunity that you haven't even recognized yet at this point , and so and I'm not overly active on other social media , but because LinkedIn has kind of become my jam as
well and so not posting like fifth- grade girl but you know .
Yeah , that's funny . Yeah , it's cool because LinkedIn , the magic is that five , six years ago I'm in a class World of Business , one of my business classes . In day one , the teacher says OK , there's this thing called LinkedIn and you're going to want to download it and we're going to help you build your resume and you're going to put your resume on there .
And every time you meet someone at a networking event , send them a personalized note and thank them for meeting you and maybe one day you'll get a job through LinkedIn . And I was like that's boring . I forgot my password for like three years and no knock against my school and advising me to do that . I'm glad they had me made the account better than some .
But what's cool is everyone has a LinkedIn . I mean , most people have one , and that's what's different about other social media . It's like a lot of people may not have TikTok or whatever , but everyone has LinkedIn . But nobody's really active on it except for saying we're hiring or I'm excited to announce that , which there's no shame for any of that .
But there's just a sea of opportunity there . And I think one day in a few years in that class where I learned , hey , get a LinkedIn and put your resume on it . The teacher is going to be saying , hey , get on LinkedIn and start sharing what you're learning in class and what you're passionate about .
And , granted by that point , in five years from now , it's going to be overwhelmed like Instagram and it's going to be too late to build some sort of following or anything . So start now .
Start now absolutely Well . Another LinkedIn thing that you do is you do Friday fail posts , which I love , but you have really brought this sense of normalization or humanness to failure . And so where did that come from ? What gave you the thought of I'm in a post ? There's one in particular that stands out to me .
That was you in a gym and I was like my freaking day is made Like . This is awesome . First of all , I can't believe you posted it in the most positive way , because do you know how many times that's happened to somebody else ? And they were like , oh my god , I just hope . I hope someone didn't see this , and of course , everybody saw it .
But you bring it , you put humor into it and you normalize it , which I think is really freeing for some people who are caught up in being terrified of failing .
It's been fun I don't know where . Fail Friday that just popped into my head one day and I said , hey , I'm going to do this .
It's probably because I have a lot more failures in my life to count from than success , and sometimes they're a little bit more serious failures I'm sharing , and sometimes it's a little more lighthearted , but I think , just as a person , as a leader , as a friend , people connect over brokenness , and so when you share like , hey , I don't have it all together ,
I'm just figuring it out , I'm winging it . People resonate with that . They don't want to hear about all the successes that you have in your life , and so I think it's just been a cool opportunity to share about some of those failures .
I will caveat that with something that my mentor , matt Latterno , ceo of Never Thirst , their nonprofit in Birmingham , shout out to them Amazing company . But he said something that was a little bit convicting the other day . It's really popular now .
It's getting popular to talk about failure and saying I failed , but then look what I did , and I think it's so great to learn about our failures . But sometimes I want to hold myself accountable by saying this in public that I never want the failures that I share , to be like , hey , I failed , but look what I did , like look what I figured out .
I just want to say , hey , I actually messed up and maybe I learned something from it , but I am a human and I messed up and sometimes that's it . There doesn't have to be this huge oh yeah , and I'm way better now because of it . I think that's a great message to share .
But I think sometimes the focus is like look how good I am for figuring out this failure . And sometimes I think it's just a good message to say that , yeah , I failed and I'm going to try to get better .
Right . No , totally agree 100% , because it's not about elevating yourself as a result of it . It's really about sharing the humanness of it and I think , in the way that you put things , really comes across that way .
And so , like I said , I think the very first one I saw was the one in the gym and I was like , oh my gosh , this is hysterical , but I think it's valuable lessons and I think others to your point earlier really resonate with it .
Well , it's been a lot
¶ Career Growth and Organizational Impact
of fun . Check out Fail Friday .
What do you hope to do ? So you're at WildSpark today . You're doing sales . What does the all grown up Hampton want to do from a career ? But it and also an impact perspective .
So right now , wildspark really is growing , and so it is so much fun to be a part of it . Some of the advice I got when I graduated was where are you going to grow the most ? Go there , and WildSpark is 100% that . Because I'm learning about sales how to do it right , like we talked about earlier .
I'm learning about leadership development because that's what we do , and so we're doing it internally and I'm being poured into . I'm learning how to build a business , because I've watched this grow from like 8 to 20 over a quick period of time and now we're having to practice what we preach , because our CEO isn't leading everyone .
We've got different layers now , and so I'm just learning and learning and learning and learning , and so I don't look horribly into the future right now .
Some big things with WildSpark and don't hold me to accountable to this , because I'm not the one that makes the calls but something we've been talking about recently is something called like WildSpark 1 , where we provide something more for the individual , because a lot of organizations , unfortunately , aren't providing leadership development opportunities to their people , and
so we want to give something to other leaders that say , hey , I want to learn , I want to grow . So I would say like . The impact that I want to have is I want organizations and leaders of organizations . I want their first question when I tell them about what WildSpark does is not to be well , what's the ROI ?
I want them to just say , yeah , we're in the business of people and we do it through chicken sandwiches like Chick-fil-A Like Chick-fil-A is our largest client and they just get it . The sales process is I'm going on in a tangent , but I have to do this the sales process at Chick-fil-A is a quarter of the time it is with anyone else .
Here's why I don't have to start with convincing them that investing in their people is important . They say our business is investing in people and as we invest in them , the chicken sandwiches take care of themselves . We invest in people first , and maybe WildSpark's the way that we do that , and so we're grateful that hundreds of Chick-fil-As do that .
But on all my other calls , it's well . We care about our clients , our shareholders , our community and our people too . We have that on our website and our wall , but it's Simon . Sinek says care about your people first , and then everything falls into place .
April's friends , generosity , culture , people born to your people , your clients and your community In that order . So start with your people . So number one impact right now is get that message out more . Invest in your people .
Long term impact is getting the message out to people like to younger folks my age of saying hey , don't wet on your organization to do this , though , like there's a lot of opportunities for you to do it yourself , and ideally there's both opportunities .
I love it . I love it Makes me think about a group that I joined called Talent Champions Council . Well , it was formerly Talent Champions Council , now it's the Outlier Project , and so we're all trying to get used to the name change .
But Scott McGregor started this and it was really about people over everything and like , just that basic philosophy resonated with me as soon as I saw it . Then it's you know , it's people like Dana Cavalier , it's people like April Sprintz who are part of this , that even drew me more to it .
But that's really that foundation is how do you put your people over everything ? It's not like from an HR perspective , like , okay , you know our benefits . No , like , how do you take your people and really put those over everything ? Right , because the end of the day , you don't build a business . You hire incredible people and they build your business .
And so if you start with the people principle , no matter what you do , you know that'll , it'll pad your bottom line it'll , your performance will peak , like all of those things , you take really good care of your people . So if you haven't , checked that out , haven't haven't gotten to be a member of that .
They do some really , really cool things , and so I think that that would add some value , additional value to all the things that are being poured into you .
Yeah , absolutely . April was telling me that I need to join that the other day . I'm definitely going to check it out .
Awesome , Perfect . And I'm curious how is greatness defined by you ?
Greatness , success , impact ? You know , I think that that's an answer that we hear a lot , but it's who is impacted around me . And going back to my story , is greatness I achieved all of these things , or is it like at the end of my life ?
I want to say God opened up X , y , z doors for me and I went through them by having an available heart and mind , I did what he called me to do and I believe that , no matter what it is that's going to be focusing on other people and trying to impact other people .
So , greatness , it's tough because , like sure , I want to be great , like I want to do something that people say , oh , that's greatness . But at the end of the day , I always want to be able to point that back to my father in heaven , who loves me because , like all my own , I just I only have so much to offer .
And like I ask my wife and my friends , people I work with , like , when I'm not aligned with the Lord and is calling on my life , I can be selfish really quickly and there's a lot of people in the world that accomplish what look like great things , but at the end of the day , people find out if they were others , focused or not .
My mentor told me this recently . He goes , people will know if you were caring about impacting other people and it actually sometimes might be after you're gone but they will know at some point and I hope that when people look at me they say yeah , he was doing it for other people , whatever it is .
Oh , I love that . That is powerful . So , as we wrap up , I just want to , I want to acknowledge you , you know , for being somebody who is and I'm sure you get this a lot your age .
You're young , you're 24 years old , but for somebody your age and just really you showing up every single day , not just on LinkedIn , but when we've , you know , touched base or gotten on a call offline , you are congruent with who you are and showing up and you're just you're a dynamic human .
You're doing really , really good work , and all that you do whether it's the engaging piece , whether it's the leadership piece , without a title or with a title , doesn't matter , right , it's the leading piece that you're doing , and I just you know , I think you're going to do some really , really big things in this world . And so , watch out , world .
You better hang on to your socks , because Hampton d'Orch is coming . Thank you so much yeah , I appreciate you as a in what you do and I appreciate the relationship that we have , but I also appreciate you as a human .
That means a ton , especially coming from you . Thank you so much . And yeah , I'm already doing big things because I'm on the evoke great podcast with Sunny Linebarger , so thank you Seriously . Thank you so much for having me . This is awesome .
Oh , absolutely so . Make sure , if you haven't connected with Hampton on LinkedIn , make sure to follow him and hit the little bell so you get notified when he posts . And then I have been binge listening to Hampton's podcast , which I had the honor of being on recently . It's called the wake up and lead podcast . Make sure to check it out .
He does a really , really great job . Again , you wouldn't guess that this guy is the age that he is , just with all the wisdom and kind of old soul lens that you've portrayed the world in . And so thank you for being on . I appreciate you and I hope you guys all have thoroughly enjoyed this as much as I have . Thanks for listening .
I hope you'll stick around .
¶ Feedback and Advice for Podcast
If you liked this episode , please take a minute to rate and review the podcast or share it with someone you know who may need to hear this message . If you have comments or ideas about a future episode , you can leave me a voicemail directly .
If you go to my website , evokegreatnesscom , and go to the contact me tab , you'll just hit the orange button and leave your voicemail . I love the feedback and comments that I've been getting , so keep them coming . I'll leave you with the wise words of Dwayne Johnson , success isn't always about greatness . It's about consistency . Consistent hard work leads to success .
Greatness will come .