CO+HOOTS Member Profile: Hello Promo and its problem-solving productions
Hello Promo greets entrepreneurs with a promise that money and big city backgrounds aren’t prerequisites to successful startups.
The journey toward Hello Promo began with a $200 investment from third generation Arizonan Jamie Moore, who committed her problem-solving passions company alongside co-founder Stephanie Taylor in 2014. Today, the company helps businesses across the nation create unique promotional products for effective brand images.
“We want to save companies from stress balls, meaning that we want to do really cool branded, fun stuff that represents their company,” Jamie said. “I really try to steer people away from just buying everything. It’s a waste of money and it doesn’t mean something. When they can give something out that really says something about who they are as a company, then that’s a success.”
Jamie emphasizes the importance of looking beyond a product’s physical appeal, explaining that a proudly sustainable company should always promote with recyclable, sustainably sourced items. While this may be a handful for entrepreneurs to manage, Hello Promo was created to help from start to finish, or anywhere in between.
Hello Promo’s involvement in a Kickstarter campaign for Fox Point Pickling, a pickle company in Rhode Island, is a perfect example of the company’s attention to detail and strong execution. By creating useful items that matched their client’s vision — pickle-shaped jar grippers, branded t-shirts and recycled cotton tote bags — Hello Promo saw its products heavily showcased on a news broadcast about Fox Point Pickling.
“I liked that experience because we got to partner with somebody to work together,” Jamie said. “It wasn’t just somebody picking stuff out on a website. We got to build a little program and it was a really successful Kickstarter. We raised twice as much as he was aiming for.”
The results of Fox Point Pickling’s campaign proved that Hello Promo’s success is contagious. When Hello Promo scores a client, they don’t greedily hog the advantage. For Jamie, it’s about empathetically giving back to other small businesses that need long-term benefits through the often expensive avenue of promotion.
“Just being a small business and entrepreneur, I can relate to a lot of the restrictions,” Jamie said. “I’m always a lot friendlier to people who might not have a big budget or who might not have a lot of time to devote to something. I get help all the time from people, so I try to give it back and pay it forward when I can.”
Being a small business owner, often utilizing CO+HOOTS for its web of like-minded community connections and productive environment, Jamie understands the hardships of entrepreneurship. At the same time, she recognizes the best gifts that running Hello Promo gives: the ability to determine her own schedule and an abundance of challenges to solve.
“I like the flexibility and I love learning new stuff,” Jamie said. “My favorite thing ever is to solve problems, so whenever we have a problem, it’s initially a huge headache, but then digging in to figure out what we need to do to fix it is usually where I excel.”
With Jamie’s exemplary problem-solving superpowers, the business has never gone in the red in over two years of operation. This makes Hello Promo as worry-proof as any adventurous entrepreneur could hope for a company to be.
“We’re not rich or anything, but we still eat every day,” Jamie said. “We’re able to get stuff done and get the bills paid and pay the employees. That’s pretty good for a $200 investment.”