Kathryn Korostoff is the President and Lead Instructor at Research Rockstar, which provides training and staffing for professionals pursuing market research excellence. With over 30 years of experience and having conducted over 600 primary research studies, Kathryn remains passionate about driving business innovation through fresh, objective customer insights. A key focus of her work is promoting ‘data fluency’ to help research and insights professionals adapt to the rapidly evolving landscape of market research 3.0. In addition to her work at Research Rockstar, Kathryn hosts the video podcast series Conversations for Research Rockstars, where she shares her expertise and insights with a broader audience.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [01:49] Kathryn Korostoff on how babysitting jobs shaped her understanding of client service
- [02:32] The inspiration behind the hot sauce business and the potential of niche market endeavors
- [04:07] The importance of curiosity in market research and how it fuels excellence
- [05:39] Kathryn’s impetus for starting Sage Research
- [06:49] How Kathryn survived the dot-com bubble
- [08:09] How has online surveys and the Internet revolutionized the market research industry?
- [10:01] The challenges of the post-9/11 economy and the importance of frugality
- [12:57] The role of EO in Kathryn’s business journey
- [15:55] What led Kathryn to start Research Rockstar?
- [18:56] The importance of cross-selling between her training and staffing services
- [28:48] Potential for AI to transform the training and practice of research interviewing
In this episode…
Businesses today face the challenge of staying competitive in an increasingly commoditized market, where services and products are often indistinguishable. Many companies feel compelled to lower prices due to commoditization, leading to shrinking profit margins and a loss of value in specialized expertise. In such an environment, how can service-based businesses that rely on unique insights and skills continue to differentiate themselves and thrive?
Kathryn Korostoff, a seasoned market research expert, tackled this issue by selling her first company, Sage Research, when she recognized the growing commoditization in the research industry. Kathryn understood that as the barriers to entry lowered and competition increased, maintaining profitability and standing out in a crowded market would become increasingly difficult. To address this, she transitioned from running a traditional research agency to focusing on training and staffing solutions through her company, Research Rockstar. This shift allowed her to leverage her expertise in a way that added value beyond commoditized services, offering tailored solutions that met her clients’ evolving needs.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Kathryn Korostoff, President and Lead Instructor at Research Rockstar, about leveraging research and curiosity to drive business success. Kathryn discusses the importance of adapting to industry changes and how promoting data fluency can help professionals. They also discuss the decision to sell Sage Research, the implication of frugality in business, and the potential of AI to transform how businesses operate.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Kathryn Korostoff on LinkedIn
- Research Rockstar
- Conversations for Research Rockstars
- Bob Stearns on LinkedIn
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization
Quotable Moments:
- “Curiosity is key. Some people have it naturally, asking all the right questions, while others just don’t think beyond the surface.”
- “AI makes it easy to learn about AI. It’s the technology helping advance the technology.”
- “When running a services business, the people are the product. If clients love you, why not go out on your own?”
- “The pandemic showed us that employee engagement is crucial. eLearning became a tool to keep teams productive and connected.”
- “I’m excited about AI, because it offers so much potential, and it’s remarkably accessible to anyone willing to explore it.”
Action Steps:
- Seek out mentors who can provide hands-on experience and challenge you to grow professionally: Mentors like Bob Stearns can propel your career forward through practical learning and astute career guidance.
- Utilize professional networks to open up new business opportunities and avenues for growth: Leveraging professional connections is instrumental in launching and scaling businesses.
- Embrace technological advancements like AI to stay ahead of the curve and improve your services: Kathryn’s excitement about AI demonstrates the importance of innovation for business evolution.
- Develop multiple business lines to weather economic fluctuations and tap into various markets: Having different business services provides stability during market shifts.
- Always maintain a learner’s attitude to keep up with industry changes and personal development: Early work experiences and an attitude of curiosity are key drivers for success.
Sponsor: Rise25
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Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
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Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Episode Transcript
John Corcoran 00:00:00
Today we are talking about how to be a research rock star and how to leverage research in your business so you make smarter decisions. My guest today is Kathryn Korostoff. I’ll tell you more about her in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro 00:00:14
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders and thought leaders, and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran 00:00:31
All right. Welcome everyone. John Corcoran Here, I’m the host of this show, and you know because you’ve probably listened to previous episodes that every week I talk to smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of different companies, especially inside of Entrepreneurs Organization, which is how I connected with today’s guest. But we’ve had Netflix, Kinko’s, YPO, EO activation, Blizzard, GrubHub, LendingTree, go check out the archives. Lots of great episodes for you in there. And of course, this episode brought to you by Rise25 where we help B2B businesses get clients, referrals and strategic partnerships with done for you, podcast and content marketing, and you can learn about what we do and how we do it at Rise25.com
All right, and my guest here is Kathryn Korostoff. She is the President and Lead instructor at Research, Rockstar Training and Staffing. She’s got a couple of different companies, exited one business, got another one. Now we’re going to talk about her background over the last two decades of working within the research field and helping to provide people services to companies in different ways, we’ve got some interesting metaphors for you and Kathryn, I love to start people off by asking them a little bit more about what they were like as a kid. And you said that you didn’t do lemonade stands or paper routes, but babysitting nanny jobs, that was kind of what you fell into as a kid in order to make a buck. So tell us about it.
Kathryn Korostoff 00:01:49
Yeah. I mean, that was definitely my low hanging fruit as a young woman, you know, being, you know, starting probably from age 10 or 11, started with the babysitting jobs. Ended up getting a couple to live babysitting, kinds of jobs during summers, between school. I don’t really think of it so much as entrepreneurship at that stage, only because I think at that point in time, it was more just like how to get spending money. But it was definitely a good experience, because any kind of work experience starts to get you skilled in how to serve your client and how to keep your client happy. It’s just that my clients were the parents.
John Corcoran 00:02:22
Now, not all that early experience was boring. It’s gonna get a little bit more spicy, pun intended, because you started a mail order hot sauce company after that.
Kathryn Korostoff 00:02:32
No, I didn’t actually start it. It was one of my first concepts that I tried to develop, but I never actually executed on it. I was one of those people in high school and college who was just always dreaming about business ideas. I’d see a need, or I had a need, and I was always like, somebody should have a product that does this, or maybe I can have a service that does that. And I became obsessed with hot sauce. I still love hot sauces. And at the time, this is going back a lot of years now.
John Corcoran 00:03:02
There are a lot more choices in hot sauce now than we did even 20 years ago, right?
Kathryn Korostoff 00:03:06
Yeah. And now there are all these websites now where you can go, where they have hundreds of times back then you couldn’t.
John Corcoran 00:03:11
And then you live in New England also, too, which probably I imagine, that you didn’t have as many options for hot sauces. Yeah.
Kathryn Korostoff 00:03:20
I mean, definitely, back then, you were a little bit more restricted in your geographic area, and when you wanted to sell, it was all mail order catalog. You know, that was, you know, we’re talking about the 70s, and that was all mail order catalog businesses. That’s, we used to get the giant Sears catalog a couple times a year.
John Corcoran 00:03:35
They have a hot sauce section. I don’t remember one, no, but just about everything else.
Kathryn Korostoff 00:03:39
Yeah, that’s true. They were like the amazon before Amazon.
John Corcoran 00:03:44
I gotta find one of those on eBay and give it to my kids and be like, This is what the internet is before Amazon. This is what we had. It would come once a year, and that’s what you got, yeah? So I can see how you were drawn to a profession where you are compensated for researching because you just have, like, a natural curiosity to you. Is that accurate?
Kathryn Korostoff 00:04:07
Yeah, and I love that you picked up on curiosity because it’s interesting. You know, now I’m running a company where we’re, you know, working very closely with the people who are leading the market research and customer insights teams, very often in Fortune 100 companies. And when I talk to those team leaders about what are the skills they need for their team members, you know, a lot of the basic hard skills are obvious. You know, they have to know statistics, or they have to know about how to conduct qualitative research interviews, or they have to be able to write or present. But it’s those, some of those softer skills, like instilling curiosity.
That’s really what makes you excellent at this kind of work. And some people have it, and some people just don’t. They just don’t think of all the questions that might come up. Somebody gives, you know, states, an observation about the market, or the target market, or product trends or whatever. And you need to be the person. Person who’s saying, Hmm, I wonder what’s really driving that. Or I wonder what you know, what levers I can pull to see whether or not you know that really is true, right?
John Corcoran 00:05:09
And so you didn’t launch the hot sauce Company, but you did launch sage research, which was started in 1993 an interesting thing about this, your first real company was one how you started it, which is similar to how I got into entrepreneurship, which was that, you know, I looked around I was doing, was working within another law firm in my case, and I was like, well, I could do this on my own. I don’t need to be doing this for them. And that’s what happened with you. Yeah, absolutely,
Kathryn Korostoff 00:05:39
You know, that’s something I hear from a lot of people who go into services, especially like I’m in B to B services, or legal services, you know, professional services. Because when it comes to services businesses, we are the product. The people are the product. And so if you are working in a services business, and all of the clients are loving you, and you’re busting your butt and you’re working a lot of hours and delivering the most excellent product, but somebody else for the entity is getting most of the profit and most of the recognition that that definitely is enough to make somebody say, Hmm, I think I’m going to go hang out my own shingle and see if I can do this on my own and following my own, you know, decisions about what I should be investing in and the best use of my time.
John Corcoran 00:06:23
Yeah, and you started this in 1993 and had it for about 12 years. And naturally, you started at that time because you saw there was this big.com boom that was swinging upward. I’m joking, of course, like no one could have seen exactly how big it was, but it was amazing timing. You’re starting it just during this swell, the GO, GO 90s of you know, companies are hiring and this whole.com boom was happening.
Kathryn Korostoff 00:06:49
It was dumb luck, John, it couldn’t have been. I mean, it was ridiculous how dumb luck it was, because my early career had been in market research for tech companies. So I was doing market research in the telecom world. This was before the internet, so I was doing market research on things that you probably haven’t even heard of, like x25 and Frame Relay and ATM and so. But that got me in the right neighborhood, because all of the companies and the thought leaders that were in those spaces were the ones who ended up being the thought leaders and the leaders in the initial, you know, launch, frankly, of the whole internet industry.
So I was really in the right place at the right time, and also nobody was bringing in my two areas of interest when I started my company, Sage research, as a full service research agency from the get go, was specializing in serving tech companies, telecom companies, especially nobody else was doing that. Most market research companies at that time were really focused on serving CPG companies. They were doing market research on shampoo, not on data centers, and IT trends, yeah.
John Corcoran 00:07:54
Now at what point did the actual tools that the internet provide change the way that you did the research, because I think a lot of those tools didn’t develop for a while and and in many cases, many years later.
Kathryn Korostoff 00:08:09
Yeah, that’s absolutely true when I was when I first had my agency, believe it or not, back then, a lot of our data collection was by paper, literally sending out letters, having people complete surveys and mail them back to us in a, you know, you know, stamped envelope that we provided, and also, of course, by telephone data collection. And there were focus groups and in depth interviews and qualitative research too. But a lot of the bigger business was, frankly, in survey research. And so when the internet came out, and now we could do online surveys, of course, that changed the industry fundamentally.
And there are definitely there are definitely parallels between that revolution and now the revolution with AI, you know, because in both cases, the technology came in that was not only automating certain things and streamlining certain things that had been part of the process for a long time, but it fundamentally changed some of the cost structures of running those types of businesses. So it was a very, very fundamental change. But it was interesting. I mean, there were definitely, you know, whenever there’s a new technology trend, there were a lot of my competitors who were kind of hand wringing and worried about, you know, oh, this is going to, you know, ruin market research. Now that there’s online surveys, there’s going to be what’s going to ruin market research? And there were certainly some legitimate initial concerns, but I don’t know. I’ve always been sort of like, I always want to see what’s next.
John Corcoran 00:09:32
I know you’re, you’re really excited about AI now, so I imagine that was your same approach to the Internet back then.
Kathryn Korostoff 00:09:38
Yeah, yeah. We were absolutely so even though we were a fairly small research agency, I think at the largest I had 16 employees, we were always like the first ones that were using the latest software.
John Corcoran 00:09:51
Now, during that time period, of course, we had 911 we had the bursting of the.com Bumble bubble. What was that experience? For you and for your company.
Kathryn Korostoff 00:10:01
It was definitely a change. We were somewhat in good shape because of some of our we just had some amazing clients that were really, really large that I don’t want to say that their business hadn’t been affected. But I think that if I’d been doing it if a lot of our clients had been smaller businesses, it probably would have affected us more. And you know, I definitely know a lot of people who were in B to B services whose companies merely or entirely went out of business during that time period. I was very lucky.
I had some amazing clients who are very loyal to us, who are giving us very big contracts, and that helped. The other thing is that I am just frugal by nature. So during the boom, some of my competitors were signing these huge, you know, lease contracts, and they were decorating their offices, and everybody was getting the fancy $500 office chairs and getting art, like real art for the walls and all of that. And I never drank any of that Kool Aid. I just was like, you know, I’m not spending my money like that. So even when things did tighten up a bit, we were in a great position, Cash Wise, yeah.
John Corcoran 00:11:11
And then eventually you sell the company to another company that wants you for your technology practice. So were you burnt out? Or, how did you know what motivated that?