Dave: Hey everyone, Dave here with another episode of the Philly Tech Connect podcast. Today, I’m speaking with Stephanie Smith. Stephanie has nearly three decades of corporate experience as well as stints in the nonprofit and startup worlds. Most notably, she spent many years at IKEA. She saw a gap in many companies’ top funnel strategies and sought out to help these folks improve. Throughout her journey, she has created a core process that we’re going to be talking about today. Stephanie, how are you doing?
Stephanie: I’m well, how are you? Thanks for having me on.
Dave: It’s great, no, it’s a pleasure to be here. I really appreciate how involved you’ve been in the community. You’ve been to several of our events, and we’re talking about planning our own session specifically around go-to-market strategy. That level of above and beyond commitment is always really appreciated in the community. I know three decades is a lot of ground to cover, but give us some of the highlights and maybe lowlights of your history.
Stephanie: Yeah, sure. I think my history is really interesting and unique. It was almost three decades, 26 years in corporate, but it was a very different kind of corporate. So, I joined IKEA in the US when the headquarters were here. The corporate headquarters were at a point where they were still finding their footing in the country, and it’s very Scandinavian-inspired. It was a very flat organization, and you could fix anything you saw broken as long as you came up with a plan and pitched it to senior management. It was fantastic. Some of the things I’ve had access to are unparalleled. When I was two years into the job, I trained a group from Singapore, which is now the Chinese distribution organization. I launched the first American-based warranty program for cook shop products in the States because I was pulled into a sales role from a supply chain seat and said we have to have a warranty to sell cookware. And they said, “Okay, do it.” So, it was that kind of freedom that I had.
Dave: That’s amazing. I say that I’m a sales and marketing professional with a heavy operations throughline. One of the things I did with that freedom was edit a business planning process that came from Global but was way too heavy for retail store managers. Retail store managers are like startup people; they don’t want to sit at a desk, they want to move, they want to create things, they want to try things. So, telling them, “Here’s an eight-month process with 300 documents in it, go for it,” is a losing proposition from the start. Why that’s important to this conversation is from that experience, I created the core process that I use with creative entrepreneurs and startups.
Stephanie: Interesting. Okay, well, we’re going to get into the core process. But that is very unique because a lot of times when you hear the word corporate, you associate that with inflexibility, things being kind of set in stone, and a narrow-minded approach to change. But it sounds like IKEA wasn’t like that. Just a combination of the timing when you started there, their kind of newness in the market, and the fact that there was a bit of a different culture—they just kind of approached things a little differently. Is there anything you can say about the difference between a Scandinavian approach to corporate culture versus a more traditional American approach, if you had that experience as well?
Stephanie: It is very, very different, particularly when they started. I think American corporations are getting closer to the Scandinavian model, but I don’t think I was ever more than two seats away from the CEO. It is a very, very flat culture. There are some strengths and some weaknesses to that because you have to talk someone into your idea. There are very few people who can make two departments have to do something. So, throughout your career at every level, you’re collaborating, you’re creating with another partner, and you’re figuring out, you’re solving your own problems. No one ever went to a manager and said—well, not ever, but rarely would a manager hear you say that so-and-so’s not doing their job. They were like, “Well, go figure it out.” I mean, that is a fantastic experience. It could be frustrating, there’s no doubt, and it definitely can add speed bumps to the process.
Dave: Really interesting. I worked at Capital One for a couple of years—maybe more traditional, like American style. So, at some point, you developed this concept you call the core process. Sounds like it derives from some of the work that you did. Tell us more about what this is, who it’s for, and what problem it solves.
Stephanie: I’ll start with a smidge of backstory. In 2018, I got really close to my yoga community here in Chester County. It was full of people in health and wellness areas like yogis, therapists, witches who were starting to do things differently and creating different programs. They had a lot of support in the middle of the funnel, as we say—websites, Google ads, Facebook stuff like that—but none at the strategic level. So, I would just sit and talk to them and ask, “What are you doing? How does that work? Who’s it for? How are you going to make money from this thing?” It was the first time someone had ever asked them that. From that point, I created this business for founders and entrepreneurs without business backgrounds. So, I’ve worked with educators, artists, engineers, therapists, yogis, and other wellness practitioners. If I had handed these people the thing you’d see in corporate—“We’re going to do business planning, and it’s going to take us eight months, and here’s a gigantic deck we’re going to go through”—they would have stabbed me. They’d be like, “There’s no way I’m doing that.” So, I had to pare it down, without jargon, to be very simple but also teach them how to do it along the way.
Dave: Yeah, I see tremendous value in that. We’ve hosted pitch competitions at Philly Tech Entrepreneurs, and I’ve also just had a lot of conversations. Often, I am kind of left a little bit confused. I’m like, “Am I stupid? I just don’t quite know what this person has been talking about for 15 minutes. I’m still not sure what they do, who it’s for, what problem it solves—really basic stuff.” I don’t know, maybe I am stupid, but I find myself in this place quite often. I feel like business plans, maybe in the traditional sense, have fallen out of vogue. It used to be a process for getting a loan from a bank, but now, to our benefit, the barrier to entry to start a business has never really been lower. Anybody who wants to can just put up a website and sell services. That’s nice, but it’s allowed people to skip that planning step. What we have is sometimes this concept, this idea, but they haven’t really thought about positioning, analyzing the market, or developing an ideal customer profile. It’s just lacking the basics. It sounds like that’s where the core process fits in.
Stephanie: Yeah, and if you didn’t grow up in a business like I did or you did or didn’t go to business school, there’s no reason you would know these things. We got it from osmosis in large part or we’ve been interested since we were kids. The business planning part is really funny too. The process is just five steps. The weightiest one is getting clear—it’s five questions: Who are you? What are you doing? Who’s it for? How does it work? How do you make money? And why? Why is both why you and why you are doing this. Then I try to get people to dig down another layer: understand yourself, understand the market. At pitch competitions I’ve been going to lately, I think people are grossly underestimating the amount of competition in the market, whether it’s direct or indirect. It’s fascinating to me. So, that’s part of it.
Dave: Doing some…
Stephanie: You can’t get away from some things. I bring a SWOT analysis in—it’s basic, easy to do, and we don’t get overwhelmed. Then making a plan is the hardest thing for people. I’m just talking small business goals, small sales forecasts. People get really overwhelmed. More often than not, I have to back into it. Like if you’re charging $300 for your unit, whatever your unit is, how many units do you need to make $5,000? How many units do you need to make $10,000? Eventually, I want to transfer them to a proper spreadsheet, which we can’t avoid because your investors will want that. But I start backwards and back into it. Then creating marketing communication—lots of the people I work with already have that, but they really need to go back to: Is this the right messaging for your audience? Is this their problem? Do they understand what this means? And then I’m starting to lean into fundraising, which is an area I know very little about, but those conversations have been fascinating with my target in terms of their expectations and what they’re willing to do to get that result.
Dave: I love the financial planning and forecasting. A lot of people haven’t actually put out the numbers. I know it’s an estimate, but sometimes even with an estimate, you can kind of see the gaps and holes in the plan. How much money is this actually going to make you? How much are you going to be required to sell to hit your goals? Like, “Oh, actually I need to sell a lot of these units.” The competition point as well—I see that all the time, that maybe the market is a lot more saturated. The investor wants to know, “Why are you different?” We have to be clear on those things. It is maybe surprising how many of those foundational questions aren’t fully addressed. Your process brings all of that into account. Now I understand a little bit about what the process is, the five steps that you mentioned. Tell me, what’s next for you? What’s next for the core process? I know you’ve got a website. How are you getting people to know more about what it is and how you can help them?
Stephanie: That’s the weakest area of my business. But right now, I’m still doing workshops on the cheap because I’m collecting data and trying to refine what works and what doesn’t in different target markets. My current workshop, which I do for free or $50 to $100, depending on where it is and what group it is, I’m actually redesigning as a modular series of workshops so that the people I target can pick and choose what they want to work on, go to that one, but I’ll still have that full one available. The next step is creating an online course or online program. But the immediate next step is putting together some pitch decks and start the funding process. It’s a program that works for everyone because everybody needs this, even if you grew up in a business. And a lot of people want to be entrepreneurs now. I see a lot of intrapreneurs—people who are trying to make their way through their corporate job and not jump out on their own. It’s an interesting way to use this process too. So, I’m trying to hit different segments and make sure the process works in all of those segments.
Dave: That’s cool. It sounds like the workshops are a great way to start collecting that feedback and iterating on the process. Well, if you’re interested in learning more about Stephanie’s work or attending one of her workshops, you can find all the details at her website, stephaniesmithcore.com. Thanks again, Stephanie. We’ll talk to you next time.
Stephanie: Thanks, Dave.