Kara Smith Brown: 10:06
Yeah. Well there’s a story in it. Like, have you ever seen the TV show about WeWork? Like there’s a story that you tell about how the business was founded and what the market is like. So this was my job was to, like, craft this.
I was the marketer to craft the story. But it was really funny because I was like, I walked to Barnes and Noble at Clark and Halstead because I’m that old, that it was still there. And I bought the book Stock Investing for Dummies. And I went home that night, and I read the book cover to cover, and I came in the next day and I was like, all right, I know all about the stock market. Let’s go.
And my boss was like, thanks for your enthusiasm. We have bankers like, you’re going to be on the team. But thanks so much for wanting to be involved. So that was a great experience. My name is on the IPO press release from 2009, which was super cool, and I got to be a part of that.
They let me be a part of it. I’m super grateful I got picked up out of there by an air freight forwarder, and then I went to another contract logistics company. So I’ve been in the freight supply chain for my corporation for most of my corporate career, and then ended up in Atlanta working for a garbage company. Actual garbage like trash. And when I exited that, I realized that I really wanted to sort of do my own thing.
I kind of started it when I had babies, and I learned the statistic that less than 2% of female founders will break $1 million in revenue. It’s like, all right, hold my beer. So we did it, it took us eight months. We were really in and out really fast. It took us eight months.
And we did it with an all female team. So that was really fun. And then the next statistic is the number of women who break 10 million in revenue is statistically irrelevant. It is so small that it is just a list. They don’t track it, so you can imagine the next goal.
We’re nearly there. It’s pretty exciting.
John Corcoran: 11:52
Oh. That’s exciting. What? Why? So we’re getting back to we were talking about kind of personalities and, you know, fitting in in other companies and stuff like that.
Why do you think that you had a good run with that company, Echo Global Global Logistics.
Kara Smith Brown: 12:07
Oh, gosh. I was willing to do anything. I’m actually reading this book. I wish I could remember the name of it because it reminded me so much of myself. And oh, a Likable Badass is the name of the book, and she talks about just being the girl that can get stuff done.
And that was me . No one really knew what to do with me, but they really liked me. I had a lot of energy. I was training for an Ironman. I was full of energy and piss and vinegar, and I was, you know, in charge of culture. And I was willing to staple board books and do PowerPoint decks and kind of willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.
And I think every company, specifically a startup needs one of those. Everyone needs just a gopher that can just get things done and go figure it out. I think the other thing that impressed those guys, and this was, gosh, like 25 years ago, was that I was just willing to kind of go figure it out. Like, it wasn’t gonna I wasn’t going to say, oh, that’s not my job or I don’t know how to do that. This was long before ChatGPT, but I was going to figure out how to get it done.
And they can always count on me to at least, like, give it a try.
John Corcoran: 13:14
These kids today. I mean, jeez, they just go run it through ChatGPT and then they get an S-1 spits out in seconds, right? You know, they got it so easy. We had to go to Barnes and Noble.
Kara Smith Brown: 13:23
We had to actually walk to Barnes and Noble and read things. We had to, like, ingest information and then make our own decisions. Yeah, it’s a different world.
John Corcoran: 13:31
I want to ask some more about the personality piece because, you know, my father was a stand up comic. And so I feel like I always have had an appreciation for humor, wrote for humor, wrote humor in high school and college and stuff like that. And, you know, I went into a very stuffy profession. I worked in government and politics. My first job after college was working in the Clinton White House, and I was around all these lawyers and I tried to be kind of stiff, you know, kind of serious.
Kara Smith Brown: 14:00
It’s not funny. There’s nothing funny about the government.
John Corcoran: 14:03
Right, right. Exactly. Yeah. And it took me a while to embrace the aspects of my personality that were quirky and, and more, you know, personable and stuff like that. And actually, I had a boss after that when I worked as a speechwriter in the California governor’s office who had a law degree and yet was always joking with people, was always like, you know, had his personality out.
And it liberated me to realize, oh, okay. You know, maybe that is a superpower. Like I should embrace my personality rather than suppressing it. Did you ever have, like, a realization like that, or did you ever go through a phase of suppressing your personality? Or have you always kind of been in touch with who you are?
Kara Smith Brown: 14:44
I have gone through phases where men, always men, have asked me to suppress my personality for sure.
John Corcoran: 14:52
Yeah. What’s that like? I mean, what do they say?
Kara Smith Brown: 14:56
The word they used in corporate America was filter. You need a filter. So we’d like you to have a better filter because I am willing to call people out. I’m willing to hold people accountable. If you work for me, you’re held accountable pretty regularly.
And that’s not okay in some very specific corporate environments. I’ve worked for enormous companies, like humongous companies, where holding someone accountable in a room full of people isn’t sort of the culture. And I am not good at politics. And like my husband, actually, he’s a nuclear engineer by trade. He is so good at corporate politics, like, knows who to talk to, when, how, who to take to lunch.
Like, he can kind of navigate those waters. I fail, I just fail. I don’t have a very low EQ. I can’t really tell what’s going on around me. And and so, yeah, I’ve been told more than once that I need to filter. And I finally just decided, like, I’m going to stop having old white men tell me to have a filter and I’m just going to start my own thing.
John Corcoran: 16:04
It’s crazy because there’s so many boring people in this world. And so for you to be born with this personality, right, that’s vivacious and infectious and people are drawn to you. It’s crazy for you to spend a career, even a portion of a career, in a place that wants you to suppress that superpower.
Kara Smith Brown: 16:25
You know, it’s so funny. I had not connected this until just now. So I thank you so much for saying it is. I ended up in an industry that absolutely loves big personalities. I ended up in freight.
I did not end up in banking. I didn’t end up in government. I didn’t end up in, you know, healthcare. I mean, I ended up in and maybe this is why I love freight so much, because freight really does let me be who I am. And you can be kind of crazy and you can be kind of dumb and you can crush it in freight.
So I think there’s a lot of crazy big personalities in the space that have chosen to be in. And so maybe I’m just one of them. I’m just one of the big crazy personalities, right? And so it’s really interesting that you say that because I had never really connected the dots on why I fell in love with supply chain and specifically freight so much? And I think it is because this is an industry that lets me be exactly who I am.
Freight brokers are the most aggressive, the most dynamic, the most challenged, the most Competitive of any industry I’ve ever met. And I think being a woman in that space in the supply chain, I have to do something to stand out. And so being sort of an aggressive woman has let me sort of rise to the top a little bit. And I think having a very specific point of view is also part of that. Right?
It’s not just that I’m an aggressive, you know, loud woman, but I’m also like, this is very specifically what we believe, and I’m willing to put some math behind it.
John Corcoran: 18:05
Yeah. You mentioned that you were after taking this company public, you had a series of jobs. You were fired from a couple of them. So setbacks along the way on the route to eventually starting your own company. What were those setbacks like, especially in comparison to that rough conversation you had with that vocal coach that was such a setback for you earlier in your life.
Kara Smith Brown: 18:31
You know, Every time you get fired or laid off. Like it feels like the end of the world. And I have such empathy for people that I have had to let go in the business, because I have been on the other side of it so many times. And I think every time it’s happened to me, I have come out on the other side so much stronger and so much more aware that it just wasn’t the right place. I used to think back in my 20s, when I was going through careers and trying to figure out who I was going to be.
Everything that when people said like that wasn’t the right place for me, that it was like a cop out, like it was an excuse for not doing a good job, or it was an excuse for not being able to make it. And now I really do believe it. I do believe they.
John Corcoran: 19:15
Were right and it was the wrong place for.
Kara Smith Brown: 19:17
Me. Yeah, that there are places that are just not the right fit for some people. And so, you know, I’ve learned a ton. I also got like this personality, this amount of confidence got me a little over my skis early in my 20s, I was in jobs that were too big for my skill set because I’m a great salesperson and I just sold the hell out of myself. And I ended up in jobs and people were like, oh, you’re going to go do the job now, right?
And I was like, I’m not really sure what this job is, but I.
John Corcoran: 19:49
Yeah, yeah, I’ll figure it out.
Kara Smith Brown: 19:50
It’s out. Yeah. So it probably took me, you know, the last, the better part of 20 something years to figure out what that job should be, right? And then once I did, I literally wrote a book about it because I wanted the women who were coming up behind me, specifically in the supply chain. But any B2B community where there’s a marketing girl, right.
There’s just one girl who’s doing marketing. I wanted her to have a playbook to say, hey, boss, this is what we’re going to do. Like, this lady is pretty smart. We’re going to follow this playbook. And then if we get half of this right, I think we’re going to be good.
And him to be like, okay, great. And so it’s taken a really long time to get here, but I’m really proud of how it’s all kind of coming together at this moment.
John Corcoran: 20:27
So when you start your company, You know, when you start a company, it can be very different from being an employee previously. In some ways it’s better. Some ways it’s worse. You said you went to a million bucks within eight months, which is just insane. Why do you think that you were able to, you know, get to that point in such a quick period of time?
Kara Smith Brown: 20:53
I have pretty incredible cojones. And I asked for outrageous amounts of money from people, and I still do it today. I still think I figured out how to use what I got, and I ask for crazy amounts of money. Our average deal size is close to a million bucks. We’re a service provider.
We don’t do project work. We only do annual retainers. Our contracts have an automatic renewal, so they never do. Essentially, when you sign up with us, you sign up in perpetuity. We have really long standing relationships with clients.
They last a really long time, like we’ve had clients that have been with us since day one, and I think going from 0 to 1 million that quickly was just having the balls to ask for enough to get me there in eight months. And the opposite way to ask that question is like, how do entrepreneurs that start out today take so long to get to $1 million? And I think it’s you have to, you have to really be able to ask for what you know you’re worth and then be able to say no. And the hardest still today, I have a hard time saying no to companies that really want to work with us, and they just can’t afford us. And I’m like, I’m really sorry.
Our minimum retainer is $30,000 a month. And some people are like, we really want to work with you, but we can’t do 30. And I’m like, let me know. Let me know when you can. Like, we’re ready for you when you are right.
Yeah. Because we have other clients that pay us like 80 or 90. And so we have to free up the capital. We got the human capital. We got to free up the resources to make that work.
John Corcoran: 22:33
Did it take you a while to figure out what was the right team around you that would compliment your skill set and that would, like, fulfill all this work that you’re generating? You do the sale and then, you know, turn it over to the team. Did that take a while because you’re running your own company at this point.
Kara Smith Brown: 22:49
We’re nine years in and I’m still figuring that out like that. I don’t know that ever. Yeah. I don’t know any entrepreneur that’s like, oh, I have the perfect team today. And this very specific team is going to be the team that’s with me in five years.
Yeah. I will tell you that the team that was with me from 0 to 3 were wonderful women. There was an all female team, and I would not have been able to do it without them. And when they left, they literally broke my heart. Like, I was so, so, so sad that they would not fit on the team that I have today.
And so what got me from 0 to 3 is not what got me from 0 to 8 to almost nine and it’s not going to get me. What’s, you know, going to go from 9 to 20. And I think that’s a really hard lesson for some entrepreneurs to learn that these aren’t your family.
John Corcoran: 23:37
Yeah. This is not your besties that are going to be there the whole time. Yeah. Particularly if the because it’s a totally different business at 20 as it is at one or 2 or 3.
Kara Smith Brown: 23:47
Yeah. Yeah. And you’re solving different problems and you need different skill sets. And if someone stays with you the whole time like that’s amazing, right? Like, I have a woman who’s been with me for six years, like, since she was, like 19.
She’s still with me, and she is my ride or die. I think she’s amazing. But her job has changed tremendously. The business has changed tremendously. And I think the hardest part for me, I don’t know if this is for you too.
The hardest part for me is for me to keep up with my personal growth as the business grows, because the one thing that hasn’t changed is you.
John Corcoran: 24:17
And you. Yeah. But you. But you need to change, right?
Kara Smith Brown: 24:19
Like I have to change. Like me. Human beings haven’t changed. But me as a human, I would like to believe that I have changed. That I have matured.
That is the way that I approach problems has changed the way that I think about. And this is just almost 100% through what you and I are going through together, through the entrepreneurial master’s program, through learning. I’m going to a conference next week. We were just talking about it like the constant self improvement has to happen, because if me from five years ago were running this business today, it wouldn’t work. It would fail, right?
John Corcoran: 24:52
Let’s talk about the book. So you talked a little bit about why you wrote the book, but let’s talk a little bit about what’s in the book. You mentioned you’ve got a couple of stories in there, like your husband’s story about your husband, which you somehow relate to freight. Yeah. Let’s go and get into the book a little bit.
Kara Smith Brown: 25:10
Yeah, the book I’m super excited about. It’s called The Revenue Engine, a B2B by building a B2B high octane pipeline. And it’s really a nine step process. So we have a methodology which is to share good news. Track interest, follow up.
We have three funnels, so we split the funnel into three. We have a prospect funnel which are really strangers. The nurture funnel, which are folks who haven’t paid you money yet but you’d like them to. And then the customer funnel, which is cross-sell and upsell. And then most importantly to me, I wish it wasn’t the last one, but it is how you measure.
And we measure volume, velocity and value. So we have a whole third of the book just on measurement inside the B2B engine, which I think is super cool. We have a whole chapter that was approved by Gartner. If your listeners aren’t familiar, Gartner is a third party research analyst firm. They’re a really, really big deal in the supply chain.
So getting Gartner to give us a chapter on how to manage Gartner relationships or analyst relationships was really cool. We have a chapter written all about ABM. We have a chapter on AI and what’s coming, chapter all about paid media. So it was really a work of many, many humans that came together to help with this book. And it’s pretty well resourced and it’s real.
It’s like a real book. It’s 250 pages long. It’s not an e-book. It’s real.
John Corcoran: 26:34
Yeah. And share some of the humorous stories that you put inside of it.
Kara Smith Brown: 26:38
Oh, gosh. So the best one is how I got my husband to marry me, how I trapped him into marrying me. So I did Iron Man in 2009, and he told me we were dating at the time and he said, we will get engaged after Iron Man. So in my 26 year old brain, I heard at the finish line of the Iron Man, right? So I finished Iron Man and there’s no ring.
So I’m immediately disappointed. And two weeks later I do an IPO. So now I’ve done an IPO. I have a great career, I own a house, I’ve done an ironman. I am a ten out of ten.
John. This is how it equates to the funnel. And the Chicago dating scene is a ten out of ten. And I work at a freight brokerage which is full of 22 like 12 22 year old boys, right? So if it’s not him that wants to buy this ten out of ten package, it’ll be someone else, right?
So basically, I ride him real hard and he’s like, okay, okay, we will get engaged. So I did what any girl would do, and I booked the church and my and my parents’ priest was like, congratulations. And I was like, we’re not engaged. If it doesn’t happen, you can keep the hundred bucks. But I booked the church.
And so I got the receipt, the eight and a half and 11 piece of paper, and I put it on my refrigerator in the house that I owned. And I took all the magnets off the fridge. And he comes over one night and he says, hey, what is this on the refrigerator from the church? Like, this is weird. What is this?
I’m like, oh, I forgot to tell you. I booked the church for my wedding. And he’s like, what wedding? And I’m like, my wedding in 268 days. And he’s like, wait, wait, we’re not engaged.
I was like, you’re right. But this is a ten out of ten and I am not waiting for you. So if it’s not you, it’s someone else. You decide. Two weeks later, I had a ring.
Yeah, but we talk about, like, the hard clothes, right? Like, I had a hard time. It was hard. The hardest, best hard clothes in my life were shit. I get off the pot, right, like, we’re gonna do this or not.
And I think, like dating in Chicago. The other thing that we talk a lot about in the book and how we equate it to the funnel, is the opportunity cost of the other men that I dated in Chicago before I met my husband, and how disqualification is just as important as qualification in the marketing funnel. And the more you can disqualify a prospect before you waste time and energy trying to sell to them is just like dating in your 20s. I haven’t dated in a really long time, so it may be different now with technology, but when I was dating.
John Corcoran: 29:01
Yeah, right.
Kara Smith Brown: 29:02
Yeah. When I was dating, you had to spend time with someone before you could disqualify them. So the idea that you have to spend time with someone to disqualify them and then really disqualifying them is a huge part of the sales and marketing process. So, yeah, the book is super fun. It’s got these kinds of silly stories, lots of case studies around the same thing.
John Corcoran: 29:20
How did you tackle the chapter about AI, given how fast everything is changing in that area?
Kara Smith Brown: 29:26
That is literally the first paragraph. It’s like, listen, like this is written in, you know, 2024. We’re doing what we can. It gave, I think, 4 or 5 different like very specific pieces of technology that as of today, I think are the cool things happening. AI understands that the book will be dated in six months because it’s AI.
But in full transparency. Forbes, who published the book for me, told me I had to have a chapter on AI. I wasn’t going to do it. I wasn’t really my jam. But they were like, you really have.
To this day, it really is.
John Corcoran: 29:57
Affecting, affecting your field as well, right?
Kara Smith Brown: 30:00
For sure. Yeah. For sure. And so we use Jasper. I think Crystal knows I think is my favorite creepy tool.
John Corcoran: 30:07
Oh, interesting. I’m a big fan of that too. Yeah. So creepy.
Kara Smith Brown: 30:10
It’s the best tool.
John Corcoran: 30:11
For those who don’t know what that is. Tell them what it is.
Kara Smith Brown: 30:14
Yeah. Crystal knows is a psychographic profiling tool that uses your activity on LinkedIn and Google to give a Disc profile using nothing more than your login to LinkedIn.
John Corcoran: 30:26
So I think it’s interesting that it does Google. Also, I thought it was just your LinkedIn profile.
Kara Smith Brown: 30:32
Yeah, LinkedIn and Google. So it can kind of get anonymous, you know, how many emails do you write? How fast do you type that kind of thing? And so I can go to John John at Lee Covert or John at, at LinkedIn. And I can click on my, on my Chrome extension and see your disk profile before we meet.
Yeah.
John Corcoran: 30:55
It’s fascinating because you can, you know, how to talk to them, you know, do I need to give them a lot of data or not a lot of data? Or are they going to take a long time to make a decision? Do they, you know, all these different things?
Kara Smith Brown: 31:05
It’s wild. And I think that’s only going to get more and more creepy as we have, because people just have so much data online and you can see it all. We spend a lot of time talking about intent data. We spend a ton of time talking about business to business intent data. And I think the idea of ABM or account based marketing, sort of as the Halo words that we use around intent data is, is a really big piece of what’s happening in B2B demand.
Gen I sit at a really interesting point, John. So I sit in between all the really cool tech that’s happening in martech, edtech, fintech, right? All these cool SaaS companies and supply chain and supply chain historically is not an early adopter, not as tech savvy.
John Corcoran: 31:54
Right? Right.
Kara Smith Brown: 31:55
So I’m kind of the conduit like I get to bring you’re the kind.
John Corcoran: 31:59
Of the magician like, oh look at these little tools.
Kara Smith Brown: 32:01
I am. Yeah. And I’m like, and I got this big personality. So I get on stage and I’m like, hey, guys, like, look at all these cool tools that your sales and marketing teams should be using. This is what the martech teams are using.
This is what the go to market teams in fintech are using. And let’s give you guys like 10% of this because they can’t handle that. But like, you know, here’s a piece that makes sense for you. So I kind of distill what’s happening in SaaS. And I bring it back to the supply chain market.
And it’s been a really interesting niche for us because I think people really do appreciate it.
John Corcoran: 32:29
Have you learned that one through the process of elimination? Like you said, you use maybe 10% of it. Did you try some cool tool with these clients and realize, oh, this is way too advanced for them? It’s it’s it’s scaring them. And you know, I can’t use this with these guys even though it would be effective.
Kara Smith Brown: 32:47
Yeah. I mean, the real answer is yes. Yeah. They’re pretty old school, right? Like the freight, the freight community in general is pretty old school.
They like to make phone calls. They like to, I mean, literally some of these guys still use fax machines. You would not believe it. I had one.
John Corcoran: 33:03
Call. Yeah. Go ahead.
Kara Smith Brown: 33:05
I had a call last week with a $3 billion company. And this is not a joke, a $3 billion company. And we were. We’re a HubSpot implementation shop, too, like part of what we do. And we were talking about doing this HubSpot install.
And this guy said to me, what are we going to do about the CSV uploads? And I looked him dead in the face and I said, well, we could, you know, pretend like it’s 2024 and we could do an API instead. And I don’t think he appreciated my joke, but like, who is doing CSV file uploads like this is bananas. These people are so backwards. Like it’s literally 1995.
And so you can’t introduce things like crystal nose or sixth sense psychographic profiling to someone who is literally using Excel spreadsheets and uploading CSV files.
John Corcoran: 33:53
So let me ask you this. So if they struggle with the idea behind it, how do you sell it in a way that conveys its value? You’ve got these tools like these Crystal knows that you want to use with these clients, but they’re so slow to adopt these new technologies and it’s kind of frankly, intimidating. So how do you charge the premium that you are without like scaring them off with the tools you’re using.
Kara Smith Brown: 34:22
Case studies showing them, their competitors or their compatriots or folks that are ahead of them in the market and the outsized impact that we can make with these tools. And then they say, okay, I want that. And I say, okay, I hear that you want that. There are five steps between where you are in the CSV file and where they are in the API. Right.
Like we’re going to get you there, but it’s going to take a minute. And so and so we’re very clear in how we do it. I think one of the things that I’ve learned is that the riches in the niches are so true for us. It’s not true for everyone, but it is so true for us. The credibility that I bring when I talk to a freight broker or a freight forwarder or freight tech company is outsized.
And so part of the reason I can charge a premium is that I can tell them exactly what’s working in our space, not what’s working in marketing, all, like all over the place. Yeah, but what is working very specifically for the freight community and how does it impact carriers, brokers, shippers, warehouse providers, etc.. And so that’s really helpful for them to see that, like really committed that commitment to the industry. They really appreciate that.
John Corcoran: 35:38
Kara, I know we’re running a little low on time and I love talking to you, but we’ll wrap up with our gratitude question. So I’m a big fan of gratitude, especially expressing gratitude to those who have helped you along the way, mentors, peers, contemporaries, that sort of thing. Who would you want to acknowledge?
Kara Smith Brown: 35:54
You know, I am so glad that you mentioned this question earlier because I have been thinking about it, and I think I am. I’m so grateful for my girlfriend. Her name is Kristen Ojha and she’s also an EO. She was in my forum for a long time and she is on the same track with me. And I think when you find someone who is a compatriot in age, gender, size of business, career, right, etc. her husband also works with her in the business like mine does in mine.
I think it’s a really special relationship that you can have with someone because there’s so much to share. And yeah, so I’m super grateful for Kristen. I think she’s really special. She also runs a functional wellness company called Stat Wellness Stat, and she gives me IV fluids when I need them, which is very helpful.
John Corcoran: 36:45
Like after a triathlon or something like that.
Kara Smith Brown: 36:47
Yeah, like or like after being really sick, you can like to give her a text and hop in and like, get a bag of IV fluids. Yeah. She’s also just absolutely brilliant. I think there’s something so fascinating, sexy, etc. about someone, anyone, but specifically a woman who is so incredibly passionate about what they do every day, all day. And this is Kristen Ojha.
I went to see her for a functional wellness day. So it was a whole day in her space. And she talked about, I’m not joking, John, that I am not exaggerating. She talked about the gut, like in the stomach and the digestive tract for three hours straight. Wow.
And everyone was riveted. It was not boring. She is just incredible in her delivery. And so I think when you can find someone who’s so similar to you like that, I think it’s really special.
John Corcoran: 37:38
Kara, this has been great. Where can people go to learn more about you and about the book?
Kara Smith Brown: 37:42
Yeah, you can find me at leadcoverage.com. I’m also all over LinkedIn, so you can find me at Kara Smith Brown on LinkedIn.
John Corcoran: 37:49
Awesome. Kara, thanks so much.
Outro: 37:53
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.