ERIKA LYREMARK

Hi! I'm Erika Lyremark (Lira*Mark).

I started my career in a rather unconventional place.In the 1990s, I spent nine years as a 'midnight ballerina'. I learned a ton about sales, and about talking to all kinds of people—how to hold their attention, how to handle rejection, how to walk in with confidence no matter who was in front of me.It was an education I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. And frankly, it was an excellent education.Eventually, I turned those lessons into Think Like a Stripper, a book about sales, confidence, rejection, and entrepreneurship, published in 2013 by Bascom Hill.The book was endorsed by Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran and #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel H. Pink, author of To Sell Is Human and Drive. A second edition of the book is currently in the works, incorporating another decade of experience and perspective.My work and ideas have also been featured in Entrepreneur, SUCCESS, and Forbes.After I left the world of exotic dancing, I spent 10 years co-creating a privately held commercial real-estate investment company specializing in industrial properties. We grew the portfolio from approximately $1 million to $25 million in real-estate assets, with annual revenues of more than $2 million.I was involved in everything: acquisitions, financing, leasing, renovations, tenant relationships, marketing, and the daily business of running the portfolio. I also held a commercial real-estate broker’s license.In 2006, I founded my mentorship and consulting business, working with business owners in sales, marketing, positioning, offers, mindset, and business strategy.Over the years, I’ve taught thousands of entrepreneurs through courses, workshops, and group programs.I’m a creative director by training and temperament, but I’m also extremely commercially minded. I love seeing how creativity can make a product or service more distinctive and, ultimately, more marketable. Nobody craves the ordinary.I love rolling up my sleeves, getting inside a business, and figuring out how to make the pieces work together.My academic background explains some of that.I have degrees in Apparel Design and Women Studies, with an emphasis on China Studies.Apparel Design taught me how to take a creative concept and turn it into something structured, considered, and beautifully executed. Creativity gives you the idea; design gives it form, function, and coherence. Without the latter, creativity can be one hell of a mess.I still think about business that way.
Change the offer, and the sales process will need to change. Update the positioning, and suddenly the website, messaging, and customer experience will need to change as well. Everything must fit together like a perfectly constructed puzzle.My mentor and professor, Tani Barlow, trained me to look for patterns, question assumptions, make unusual connections, and develop my own interpretations rather than simply repeat what everyone else was saying.I’m particularly proud of my thesis, which examined gender and Western ideology in Chinese Cultural Revolution memoirs written in the 1990s. It was unusual work and required me to look at familiar ideas from a very different cultural and historical perspective.I’m also a huge storyteller, which probably explains why I eventually wrote a book called Think Like a Stripper.On TikTok and Instagram, I share stories from my midnight ballerina years: the people, the ridiculous situations, and the business lessons I learned that helped me go on to build successful businesses. I’ve always believed a good story can make an idea stick in a way that an ad never will.I love rolling up my sleeves and working with founder-led companies, skincare and beauty brands, luxury, and companies that value luxury, exceptional design, and impeccable customer service.When I’m off duty, you’ll find me watching reruns of the original Gossip Girl or texting the Bugatti headquarters with suggestions for their next sports coupe—(the Lyremark, obviously).