Implementing Profit First for Business Growth | Karen Hite

PROFITABLE TALKS...

In this episode of the Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim interviews Karen Hite, founder of Hite Digital, who shares her journey from Nicaragua to running a successful digital marketing agency in the U.S. Karen discusses the importance of helping others succeed, the implementation of the Profit First methodology in her business, and the significance of understanding key financial metrics. She emphasizes the need for business owners to be intentional about their growth and to seek knowledge to avoid painful lessons. The conversation also touches on the importance of tracking financial performance and making informed decisions based on data. In this conversation, Christian Brim and Karen Hite discuss the intricacies of running a business, focusing on labor efficiency, the impact of AI, and the challenges of hiring and firing. They share personal experiences of starting a business with little to no savings, the importance of faith in their journey, and the lessons learned from navigating difficult times. The discussion emphasizes the need for operational efficiency, the balance between growth and sustainability, and the significance of trusting the process in entrepreneurship.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

• Karen Hite runs Hite Digital, focusing on helping others succeed.
• She emphasizes the importance of being a seeker of truth in business.
• Profit First methodology has been crucial for her business operations.
• Understanding key financial metrics is essential for growth.
• Many business owners lack awareness of their financial numbers.
• Karen's journey includes starting a business while pregnant.
• She believes in learning from others to avoid painful experiences.
• Tracking expenses and profitability is vital for business health.
• The transition from self-employment to business ownership requires a mindset shift.
• Networking and mentorship have played a significant role in her success. We have a lot of control over our labor.
• Hiring should be based on clear profitability paths.
• AI can help reassess business efficiency.
• Consolidation of teams can lead to better profitability.
• The mission of creating jobs can conflict with operational needs.
• Operational efficiencies are often addressed out of necessity.
• Faith can guide business decisions and provide strength during challenges.
• Lessons from past experiences shape future business practices.
• Trusting the process is essential in entrepreneurship.
• Seasons of business require adaptability and gratitude.

Ready to turn your PASSION into PROFIT?!? Let's get CREATIVE ➡️
https://www.coregroupus.com/profit-first-for-creatives

Transcript

Christian Brim (00:02.358)
Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. A special shout out to our one listener in Tokyo, Japan, Domo Arigato. That is the extent of my Japanese. I don't even know what that means. Joining me today is Karen Hite of Hite Digital. Karen, welcome.

Karen Hite (00:28.273)
Hi, thank you for having a Christian.

Christian Brim (00:30.754)
I'm very excited to have this interview with you because I find you fascinating. Maybe I'll learn that you are fascinating or I'll be disappointed and you won't be fascinating, but I think it'll be the former. So for our listeners, give us the short bio on who is Karen Hite.

Karen Hite (00:49.519)
Yeah, currently run our business is mainly focused on helping others succeed, whether it's through digital marketing services or our coaching programs, mentorship programs, or our yearly events, and even some quarterly events that we host. So my job right now is just helping others, which I think is a huge blessing. I see it in that way instead of just like, what do I do in my day to day basis of helping business owners?

through operations and all this craziness things that we do. I like to see it that way because I think it's just like a lot more inspiring for me to wake up every morning thinking how can I help somebody today? So that's what I do. We've been blessed to have, I think we have about six businesses today, but one of them specifically, we started six years ago, our first, first, first one. And...

Christian Brim (01:28.046)
Sure.

Karen Hite (01:43.666)
Through that, we've been able to get to the Inc 5000 list three times in a row, create over hundred jobs actively today. And like, think over 300 jobs as a whole in the six years. So it has been really, really cool experience. We started it from Latin America in my hometown in Nicaragua and servicing the U.S. and it's a digital marketing agency. So when we first talked and connected, I was like, my gosh, this is so cool that you're focusing.

on creative businesses. So anyways, that's a little bit about me.

Christian Brim (02:18.038)
Well, I'm going to dig further. So you are from Nicaragua. How did you end up marketing to the United States?

Karen Hite (02:24.378)
Yes.

Karen Hite (02:29.775)
Well, very interesting. I actually got a scholarship to come to the US. First of like, how was my connection from Nicaragua to the US? Got a scholarship, full ride, given by Walmart. Shout out to Walmart. They're not sponsoring this ad, should. Got the scholarship, came to Arkansas from all places. That's a funny story too, because I thought the US

Christian Brim (02:33.11)
I know that's why I asked the question.

Karen Hite (02:59.311)
the whole US looked like New York just from TV because I had never been here. Exactly. So there was a little bit of like a different reality there when I first came in. So spend four years here. And then part of my scholarship was as I graduated, it's full ride, amazing opportunity, but I had to go back to my country to at least give back for four years. Right. So went back to my country.

Christian Brim (03:03.662)
Yeah, Arkansas not so much.

Karen Hite (03:28.689)
went into just getting the first job. My first job paid $300 per month. So was kind of like a shift. I came from this awesome reality, know, like the US and all my classmates were getting all these jobs in the US, right? Like, getting all this, I was getting $300. So that brought me to like, I cannot stay here just because I think that's really cool about having different experiences in life and putting yourself in different

Christian Brim (03:35.694)
Nice.

Karen Hite (03:57.987)
environments, once you have tested something and you have lived something, you want more, right? And like, I'm not saying from like a pride or just, you know, like just wanting just prideful things, just like you want to be more and you want you know that you can be more, you know, you can do more. So that got me to just apply to different jobs, I ended up working at an agency. And then in Nicaragua,

Christian Brim (04:04.717)
Yes.

Christian Brim (04:16.371)
Mm-hmm, right.

Christian Brim (04:23.566)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Hite (04:26.277)
that served the US. So that was my first experience in the digital marketing. I was a sales operation manager, moved up in the company to actually lead the integration from Hopspot to Salesforce back in the day. That got me really interested in operations as a whole. And then my husband actually started working in the same agency. We got a minority ownership. So it was kind of like a whole thing. We ended up parting ways.

because we didn't align in terms of values with that business and starting our own.

Christian Brim (04:58.798)
Not you and your husband to clarify this is the agency. Okay

Karen Hite (05:02.221)
not me my husband, parting ways with the business because we both worked there. Needed to, interestingly enough, that's another twist in the story, I was seven months pregnant when we decided to make that shift. Perfect timing, I know, we're all about perfect timing. Seven months pregnant, we didn't have any savings because a lot, look, we also had a part-time business that we were pretty much funding through our salaries.

Christian Brim (05:14.84)
Perfect timing!

Christian Brim (05:29.506)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Hite (05:30.779)
So that's why it's so important, profit first, you know, it's just very important thing. We can talk so much about that, that we learned. And anyways, we needed to figure out something. The baby was coming in three months, so there was a deadline, there was some urgency for you to like make it or break it. And we needed to start something that would allow us to pay for the delivery in Nicaragua for our baby. that's all we knew, digital marketing, right? So we started from scratch.

Christian Brim (05:33.016)
Yes? Yes? Yes?

Karen Hite (05:58.243)
And that's the business that six years later, we've been very blessed. Lots of ups and downs, but I will say totally worth it.

Christian Brim (06:09.262)
Okay, there's so much there to unpack, but I'm gonna pull on the thread of ProfitFirst since you mentioned it. So, have you read Mike's book, ProfitFirst? Okay. How have you, if at all, have you implemented ProfitFirst in your business?

Karen Hite (06:10.608)
I know.

Karen Hite (06:15.505)
Do we?

Karen Hite (06:19.823)
Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Karen Hite (06:31.483)
So funny enough, when we started the business, didn't know anything about, I actually met Mike through Clockwork, one of his later books, right? We just got to see him, or we actually did a podcast together with Mike on the whole profit first Clockwork, like all of these different systems. I think what we have implemented characteristics of it, just because we have already been running the business.

for a while, but one of the things that we definitely wanted to make sure that we focus was on having, like what's our most important numbers, like being able to track very well. I think that was like a big thing for us. And tracking has allowed us to like be able to forecast better, has allowed us to be able to, what do we put in our, we have this thing that we call get small budget as well. So like when COVID happened, we knew exactly how much we needed to have.

Christian Brim (07:08.951)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Hite (07:27.861)
as, as savings, right? And so like we implement the three months of savings. We implement a lot of things that are maybe not exactly profit first, but like similar, similar notions of it. Right. But I think overall, something that has been really helpful has been to always have numbers as the base of our decision-making our day-to-day that we understanding very well. I see so many businesses today that you asked them like, Hey, what's your turn? Like, or, you know, how, how many clients are you projected to have?

what's your average revenue for the business? And they pause and they're like, so like you can tell that they're making up the numbers as you're talking to them, right? Like that's not top of mind for them. But then we ask ourselves like, then why are things not working? Well, if you're not intentional about how you're growing your business, then how can you even make the right decisions? You don't have the data to do that.

Christian Brim (08:08.578)
Right.

Christian Brim (08:18.744)
So, you you came from an operational background, so it sounds like maybe you had a better grasp of the importance of numbers, but working with other agency owners and other creatives, you find that that aspect of just measurement in general, whether it's financial or not, is missing?

Karen Hite (08:42.609)
100%. I think a lot of it depends on how the person started the business. Most of them started because it's an easy entry, you know, to like start a digital marketing agency. Or maybe they just like are really, they're really focused on the the execution part, you know, so like doing the website, running the ads, like the labor of it that they end up creating.

a job for themselves. They're literally the definition of self-employment, right? Like they created a job for themselves. They're not thinking as a business owner. So a business owner has to have all this different pillars of the business in check or be aware of like where everybody's standing so that it balances out, right? A freelancer, a self-employed person, right? They're just focusing on like, okay, I'm executing, how much am I charging for that? And what's the time frame that I need to deliver that in?

Christian Brim (09:11.672)
Right.

Christian Brim (09:15.565)
Yes.

Karen Hite (09:35.537)
They're not focusing necessarily on deficiencies, like delegating necessarily. And that's what I see in a lot of people that are trying to break from 20K plus in the agency space, they get to 20K easily because yeah, they can like hire some people, but not to fully delegate, just to help them with some of the stuff that they don't necessarily want to do. Moving from that 20K plus, that requires a different type of brain. It requires somebody that is focusing on their numbers, that is focusing on taking things out of their way.

that is focusing on branding and all this stuff that we, that you and I probably know, that is not the easiest thing, you know? So it really depends on what was the intention behind starting the business? Did it just happen by accident or are we intentionally wanting to grow a business?

Christian Brim (10:20.598)
Yeah, I have a colleague of mine that describes that as the entrepreneurial inflection point. And there are several in the entrepreneurial journey, but it's the point where you realize that what got you from point A to point B will not get you to C. And it's a very uncomfortable place to be because you've learned these things that have got

that have given you success. And then you've got to not necessarily throw them away, but you've got to modify them significantly and learn a new set of skills. And I can tell you from my own journey that that transition, because it's not just about learning new skills. A lot of it is around changing your mindset. And that requires personal growth.

Karen Hite (11:10.458)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (11:20.206)
And that can be extremely challenging. And I can tell you my inflection point and transition actually took me several years. And it was harder than starting the business. mean, it's hard for me to remember what it was like when I started the business, you know, 27 years ago, but it feels, it felt harder.

Karen Hite (11:48.239)
It is hard. I think one thing that was very helpful for us, the fact that you mentioned like that, just like shift in your, in how you're leaving the things that you thought for the longest time that were your truth and then figuring out, know, what is really the truth in the business? We've always wanted to be seekers of truth, know, like seekers of knowledge. And that has been the one thing that has prompted us to do this event.

Not necessarily because we thought, that sounds like a really cool thing to like sell tickets to people and, you know, go through that whole stress. Events sucks. Like hosting events really sucks. But you know what? When I think about the knowledge that I've gained, not only at the event, but through the connections and talking to people, I'll tell you this. One of our events we had John Maxwell, if you know anything about leadership and yeah, just for everybody listening, John Maxwell.

It's amazing, right? terms of like leadership, self-development, all this stuff. He did a whole VIP day for us for one of our events. He did another session. He ended up coming to pray for us before the event started. That was amazing. But what led from that was just this interaction with him. He then ended up mentoring us on a monthly basis for a whole year. And some of the stuff that we shifted from, and that year was a big transition for us.

Christian Brim (13:04.174)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Hite (13:13.253)
He said some of the stuff that he has been coaching other people through different scenarios that I'm not even aware of the pain that they're going through, yet I'm getting all these lessons from there. So if you're smart enough to want to save yourself some time, and I'm here thinking about efficient, how can I get to this point that I want to be in? How can I make the impact with less pain? I don't want to feel pain. Nobody wants to feel pain.

Christian Brim (13:24.334)
Mmm.

Karen Hite (13:41.743)
we don't put ourselves in the right scenarios and environments where we avoid that pain. And to avoid that pain, it's not just not do the thing or just to keep doing the thing. No, it's to be intentional about preempting what is going to generate that pain. So finding that knowledge from others, like whether it's like an obstacle that they have faced or just being able to like be in other environments that I haven't been into. So that has been the one thing that, you know, just because you mentioned that has been a huge part of our growth.

in understanding, you know, we understood the fact of that we needed to be wise with money from a previous experience where we were not very wise, right? We ended up losing 49 houses at 24 years old. That kind of hurt, you know? If I had known what I should have known back then, I would have 49 houses today. I'm 34 years old, right? Like 10 years of that, like.

Christian Brim (14:24.494)
Watch.

Karen Hite (14:36.719)
I don't even think about that. It's painful. But it allowed us to have the knowledge to as we were starting our business to say, hey, you know what? We don't want to go through that pain again. So either gain that pain through experience or through others. And I much rather do it through others.

Christian Brim (14:54.988)
Yes, I would agree with that. Although certain people, we won't mention any names, are very stubborn and have to learn their lessons the hard way. But yeah, if you can learn lessons off of someone else's experience without having to experience that pain, it is a much better deal. Going back to your, I'm going to,

use the word dashboard, key performance indicators, whatever you want to call them, metrics. When it comes to financial metrics in your business, what are the key ones to you?

Karen Hite (15:36.571)
Yeah, we actually have this template that we follow every month, right? We want to make sure that we understand that there's two key numbers that we try to focus on, right? Like how profitable we are. So like what's the profit that can always be changed based on other numbers that you're measuring. And then what's our growth, right? Like what's our percentage of growth in there? From there,

Christian Brim (15:49.934)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (16:00.395)
Okay.

Karen Hite (16:04.687)
We always measure like on a month to month basis, like how many clients are we bringing in? How many clients we're losing in a financial way? I think a lot in our industry talk about churn a lot and I've seen people measure churn in different ways. It's not the same to lose one client than to lose a client that's $25,000, 25 % of your portfolio. So that is very important. Also, it's not the same to lose.

Christian Brim (16:24.045)
Right.

Karen Hite (16:29.201)
I hear a lot and I have this whole interview process when we're talking about events or a master one, whatever. And I go through the process and I always ask, okay, what's your turn percentage? And they're like, I never lose clients. Really? But you have been in the business for seven years, yet you only have this. So either you really suck at sales or you're not telling me the truth and there's some loss there. There's something here. And so they're like, well, I...

Christian Brim (16:53.763)
Right.

Karen Hite (16:58.673)
They will go from like one of our biggest package, but then they will go into a hosting. So we really never lose clients. Well, that's why we measure the financial churn because that truth, is true. You know, that client is still in your, in your, you know, like Stripe account, right? You're still receiving money from them, but that churn changes month after month. And so, just components of that as well. then we are things that we measure, right? If we're thinking about profitability, what is our expenses? And I mentioned earlier, our get small budget.

Part of that always has to be in that expenses. We're always have top of mind, especially since COVID, right? What is the minimum that I have to have in terms of my business that I need to have? And then the last thing that we track in that template is our months of savings. I'm not so focused on revenue that I have per month and how much profits I've gotten that month, but how many savings I have in the business.

Christian Brim (17:37.752)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (17:52.334)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Hite (17:53.851)
COVID happens again, something like that happens again. I wanna have at least three months of like, I can reassess where I'm at, take a breath and make decisions based on that.

Christian Brim (18:05.198)
I think those are all great key metrics and they're similar to ours. So like when we're looking at our key financial metrics, one is a dollar growth rate. So not a client count. We look at gross profit, which is the revenue minus the direct costs.

So in your model, would be like ad spend that you're managing for a client would not be, that would come out to get you your gross profit. And the liquidity is a key metric that we look at, like how many months worth of cash flow we have free. And there's one thing you didn't mention that was, I was,

exposed to probably again, I probably had learned it many, years ago, but saw what was engaged with Greg Crabtree, author of Simple Numbers and Simple Numbers 2.0. And that concept is the direct labor efficiency. And I think in any service-based business, that is a key metric to fall to.

to track. Do you track any labor efficiency numbers?

Karen Hite (19:38.383)
Yeah, so in our expenses, have, we can even detail it per role, right? And so like we have our art chart and so we define what is really the percentage of the expenses per department as well. So yeah, I think we do a version of what you're mentioning and we're really focused on making sure that everybody, we want to make sure that our expenses are obviously.

Christian Brim (19:43.576)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Hite (20:04.699)
kept in check all the time because that allows us to have just like the profitability. So yeah, we do keep track of that. I'm not sure if you're meaning like per hour, so I would be.

Christian Brim (20:13.154)
Well, no, no. So the direct labor efficiency is simply your gross profit, that number we just computed divided by your labor costs. And you can do that. We just do it at the company level. You could do it at the department level. That's fine. But essentially what that number is telling you is how much gross profit you're making for every labor dollar you spend.

Karen Hite (20:23.269)
Yeah. OK.

Christian Brim (20:40.81)
I think the, you know, the way grab, crab tree discusses it is, labor people decisions are pretty much all we have. Well, not all we have. They're the majority of the control that we have in the business, right? you know, we can't really control our vendor pricing and, know, of course we do marketing, but we can't really control what our clients or customers do.

But at the end of the day, we do have a lot of control over our labor. And the idea in a service industry that that ratio should be north of two to one. So if you have a $50,000 employee, and that's all their labor costs, the taxes, the benefits, et cetera, they should be generating a $100,000 in gross profit. Now,

I don't do that calculation at a individual level or even a department level. I look at it at the company level. But as we focused on that number and started measuring it and trying to improve it, all kinds of crazy things happen. Not the least of which is your profit goes up, your bottom line goes up, and your liquidity goes up. And I know that's a question that a lot of creatives come...

Karen Hite (21:39.161)
it.

Okay.

Christian Brim (22:04.664)
come to me with is, okay, I think I need to hire a person. And the thing I come back with is, okay, do you have a direct line? Do you see a path where that person is gonna make you twice as much as you're paying them? Do you have a similar thought process or experience with hiring or firing?

Karen Hite (22:11.099)
Hmm.

Karen Hite (22:32.879)
You know, we have been in the last year in a reassessment of the structural foundation that we want for our business. So for the last, I want to say four years, you know, we've been in this huge growth, right? And, and, and that growth man hiring people to be able to supply for that demand. Now, when we started looking at all of this AI efficiencies and things that you can do, we started to like also, and I think

Christian Brim (22:51.126)
Mm Right.

Karen Hite (23:01.105)
for some reason, I think it was like either a Q4 last year, a Q1 this year that also pushed us like the sales were not that great. There was a quarter that was really hard for our industry. And I don't know if you saw, it was like a Q4, a Q1, I cannot remember. But that also, I think it's out of necessity, right? Sometimes you're like, okay, we're not bringing in as much income or revenue into the business, yet we still have this like expenses because we're...

Christian Brim (23:08.866)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (23:21.452)
Yes.

Karen Hite (23:29.457)
to supply this demand, there's an imbalance there that we had to readjust. And with AI, then we were just, okay, like think this is the perfect moment for us to like understand, are we standing in the right place? So that's when we started doing a little bit of reassessment and consolidation of teams earlier this year. And one thing that outside even of just like the expenses and just like the profitability per department and just the company as a whole,

We also started asking ourselves, it's easy I think, when you're in this growth kind of wave, you're hiring and that's a mistake that I think a lot of us make. Like, okay, yeah, money's coming in, it's cool, we have, but then what happens? We were in our, I think our fifth year when this started happening and a lot of the people that retain our talent in a good way and so a lot of people that had been with us had been for over three years at least.

guess what happens with that too? Well, they also want some races, you know, like if inflation is happening, they also need more, right? So all of these things, I think created a perfect storm for us to like, okay, we need to like reassess if like we are efficient where we need to be, if we are forecasting in the right way and what's gonna happen. And so that create a whole consolidation plan for us.

Christian Brim (24:30.262)
Right. Right.

Karen Hite (24:52.761)
And we started also like shifting from a white label type of perspective of model to a direct model, which also made things very interesting in that yearning as well, because now I don't need that many people to serve a direct client that pays me more. The real plot twist here is our mission is create a thousand jobs. So that I think is the most difficult part of doing this exercises of.

Christian Brim (25:02.7)
Yes.

Karen Hite (25:21.115)
Do I hire? Do I fire? Because I always want to hire. And I rarely want to fire if that's my mission. And so we needed to understand, how do we go about this while still, this consolidation exercise, while still remaining true to ourselves and the mission that we want to have and the mission we want to do. So anyways, a lot has happened. I'm not going to go through the whole thing because I think it would be more than this podcast hour. But yeah, we've learned a thing or two this year. Every year, you learn something new.

Christian Brim (25:24.333)
Right.

Christian Brim (25:52.216)
Well, you should be if you're not you're you're you're going backwards. Yeah, I think that whole idea of just throwing bodies at it, especially if you're if you're growing is is a common problem because you're I think at least my experience is you don't you don't solve operational efficiencies until you have to. Right. And so and if you're if you're just throwing bodies at it, you don't you don't ever come up.

Karen Hite (25:53.553)
It should be. Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Brim (26:21.172)
up against it and say, okay, we got to figure out how to do this with, you know, more efficiently.

Karen Hite (26:27.365)
Well, keep in mind, and I think it's very interesting as you're doing your numbers, a lot of agencies are moving more to a outsource from different countries. We were in Nicaragua, so our cost of hiring somebody was cheaper than probably having to implement some of the systems and processes that we needed to have. Although we're very process driven, we have been in Salesforce since day one. So that comes with...

Christian Brim (26:38.338)
Right.

Christian Brim (26:48.12)
Sure.

Karen Hite (26:55.377)
and understanding of processes. You don't go into Salesforce unless you want to create a beast. I wouldn't recommend going into Salesforce. Yeah. So with that, think now that we're seeing more agents, especially since the last year, not, and I'm not saying Philippines, because Philippines, think a lot of people have been hiring them for a while, but even in Latin America, that's where the market is shifting now. You still have to like,

Christian Brim (27:01.27)
Yes, I would agree with you.

Christian Brim (27:19.522)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Hite (27:23.343)
be mindful of the people that you're hiring and just not putting more bodies into that. It's very attractive because you can do it quickly. And if you're focusing on growth, sometimes having that problem solved by somebody instead of dedicating the time seems very attractive, but you're just creating yourself a problem in the long run.

Christian Brim (27:42.15)
a hundred percent. Okay. So I want to go back to, when you decided you and your husband decided to start your own business and you're seven months pregnant and no savings. well, it reminds me of, my starting because, I started the business when I was 27. had two young children and my wife did not work and I

Karen Hite (27:54.545)
Yeah. Fun times.

Christian Brim (28:10.754)
I told her that I was going to start a business and she literally cried like this sounds awful. but you're, you're what, what the interesting thing is, is that first year, I, I was very successful and I think it was because I didn't have a choice. Like I, you know, and I, I tried to put myself back into that mindset and like,

try to understand what the hell I was thinking to do that and take that risk. And I can't really get my head back to it. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't take that risk again. So talk about that decision and what kind of things you had to work through.

Karen Hite (29:02.735)
We talk about it often because we also go through that exercise. What were we thinking? Why didn't we just get a job? know, why didn't we just like, no, instead we decided to, like we didn't have savings and we're in three months. We know that we have to pay at least 5K. It's a little cheaper to get out. Well, you don't still deliver a baby, but at least 5K in a private hospital to be able to deliver the baby. Why didn't we just move to the U S you know, JC could have said, Hey, I probably can get a better job.

Christian Brim (29:08.227)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Hite (29:31.701)
and we'll get insurance and we'll be able to do that. We, and I think you know this about me, if you have been following in a little bit or, you know, connect there for a little bit. We're very faith driven. And I think for us, we felt that I think God was blinding us. I think there's things that if I look back, there's no, if I look back, there's no reason why I wouldn't do that again. There's no, it's just like, wouldn't, we were, just to give you an idea.

Christian Brim (29:50.958)
Hmm.

Karen Hite (30:01.837)
Why did we quit our jobs? We were both making really good salaries in Nicaragua. Really good salaries. I not only were we paying for, we had a car, we had a house, we had insurance, all this stuff. And through our salaries, we were supplying a job for, I want to say, like there were like at least seven people at that point in that other company that we closed. Like we were doing like a little bit of an exercise. So that's a pretty good salary. We were living a really good life and creating

Christian Brim (30:24.142)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Hite (30:31.043)
seven jobs back then. And we decided to leave all of that. And I think there's only, I think there's moments in your life where we call it, know, like God blinding us. I think there was different beliefs probably from the people that are listening to this and you will call it probably something else, divine inspiration. I don't know what it is. But I think for us, it was just something that we needed to do that. And through that, you know, I think

our impact has been much bigger. When we created this agency, and we have moved remote since then, about two years ago, we decided to move remote. But when we had the office, we had a nursery at our office. So every mom could bring their babies. Because back in Nicaragua, you can only get three months of maternity leave. I went through that experience. think sometimes you have to go through things so you understand what you.

Christian Brim (31:21.879)
Right.

Karen Hite (31:28.475)
can do for others as well. It's kind of like a thing in life where like the challenges that you're facing today, they're not only for you, they're for the next person that you can make an impact on. That's what I believe. And so for me going through having to be a maternity leave and only being able to take a week, a week without payment, right? Because I was working as a contractor for somebody else while we were building our business. I knew what it was to have to, and thank goodness I was working remote, but I knew what it was.

Christian Brim (31:30.23)
Hmm. Yeah.

Christian Brim (31:37.239)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Hite (31:56.965)
to have to go back to work when I was not ready. To have to not be, think about work stuff instead of like, how can I spend more time with my baby and enjoy them right now when they're small? And those challenges, will never, I think we never forget that. And that's why we have done things like that. Another thing that we started since we created our business was we give scholarships to all the kids. So all of our teammates, some teammates make more money in scholarships because...

Christian Brim (31:58.67)
Right.

Christian Brim (32:08.504)
Yeah.

Karen Hite (32:24.761)
We, by the way, don't hire people over six kids. Just kidding. No, we do. But it's just, we wanted to create that. so today, to this day, even though we're remote, we do the scholarships. We don't have the nursery because we don't have an office anymore. And just people prefer working remote these days, but being able to provide that flexibility. So I don't know. think, I don't know why that was in us at that point. It doesn't make sense.

And I still, we still talk to the day like, it just doesn't make sense. But I think in a way, at least for God, God was working through us on giving us a mission. And I think going through those experiences that were really hard of losing it all, well, we became wiser with managing money of, you know, like going through this rough times as parents. Well, you know, we understand what parents actually go through. So when we're hiring and giving benefits, we focus on benefits that would actually make an impact instead of a Christmas party. We love Christmas.

Christian Brim (33:22.285)
Right.

Karen Hite (33:22.801)
parties, but you know what mean. So I don't know why, but I do think that nothing is wasted. And even if you're not successful in the business that you're in, because we've been not successful in the business that we've created, right? It doesn't always turn out into this amazing business. I don't think anything is wasted, and I think there's always a lesson, and it's always something that you can either do for the next person.

or for the next business that you're doing. It just makes you wiser.

Christian Brim (33:55.918)
I would agree with everything you said. I do think that God doesn't show us a clear path forward oftentimes to protect us because I don't think we could handle it. Like if you knew that you were gonna go through those things, would you still move forward? And you know.

God understands that we're not capable of dealing with that. So that he doesn't show us that

Karen Hite (34:29.593)
We talk like this exact conversation. We like talk all the time, JC and I, and we make the references like, you know, Moses, for example, or even Joseph, you know, like just all these characters of the Bible, right? Like we're getting into the Bible here, but all these characters that I think everybody can learn. If you don't believe in it, you can still learn of that, right? We believe in Santa. We can learn from somebody in the Bible. But all these characters, like they went through massive craziness.

And if God had shown them all the tribulations that they would have, like, I don't think they would have decided to go through that. Right?

Christian Brim (35:07.766)
No, no, no, 100 % wouldn't. you know, you think about like the Israelites in slavery, know, horrible conditions in Egypt, and God leads them out, but he didn't tell them about wandering in the desert. He didn't tell them about all of the physical conflicts that they had to have to take possession of the land. He didn't tell them all that upfront because I don't think that they would have

So, you know, maybe staying here in Egypt, didn't so bad, right? You know.

Karen Hite (35:42.385)
Yeah, I don't think we can handle. I think our hearts and our minds are not developed to the level of faith that we probably should have, you know, to be able to have the full plan. And if anything, I think it just showcases more of like how powerful he is and how honestly, like, I don't want to, I am not in control. And I think it's a good reminder when we go through the seasons of, I was just thinking about this yesterday.

Christian Brim (36:06.207)
No.

Karen Hite (36:11.301)
You know, whether you're up in the business and you're doing amazing or you're down in the business, God is still using you. Right? Like when, when we were down in the business, we had a need that somebody else helped us with. Right? Like we had people showing up that only it couldn't be unexplained only by miracles. Right? Like I remember us not having the payroll for the next day and it was the next day. And we had like, I remember crying and just like,

Christian Brim (36:30.83)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Hite (36:38.767)
like just feeling devastated because I was like, I cannot, you know, like we had money to like eat pupusas, which is like a tortilla with like beans and Nicaragua. And like that was our dinner. We were splurging. And he still came through, like somebody like owes money and decided to pay us the day of like the payroll. Like how crazy is that? Nobody decides to pay on those days, right? Like they have their own things. And it's just showed us how little control we had in our lives.

and how much we needed to rely on him. And there's just like, that is constantly in our lives. I feel like constantly in our lives, he's like reminding us because we can get prideful so quickly of things that are not even are doing. We can get so boastful of things that are not even are doing. we're amazing, and all this stuff. And I'm like, no, I love when I'm down in those seasons when I'm down because I'm reminded that

God is like in control. And when I'm up, you know, when I'm like in those like moments of success, I always think about those like down times because that means that somebody helped me then and God can work through me to find and seek those people to support them. And yeah, I think it's just it's a it's a good reminder to have and it makes honestly this journey of entrepreneurship so much easier.

because you know that nothing lasts forever. There's a season, right? And there's a season to be down, a season to be up, and those seasons that you're up, just, you know, just like be grateful. I mean, I'm not thinking all the time of like, crap, I'm gonna lose this, right? You know, like this is it.

Christian Brim (38:16.91)
Right. Yeah. And I think that, you know, and you've seen this with people that have had early success without those trials and tribulations. I mean, you can just look at, you know, say lottery winners and what happens is they lose it all. And I think it's because those trials, those hard times,

are what developed the character that allows you to use the success wisely. One of my favorite quotes from Hosea is, and I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember it exactly, but it was like, you know, they were hungry and then they got fed and then they forgot God.

And that's what happens when we feel self-sufficient and in control, then we say, we don't need God.

Karen Hite (39:31.215)
It's an interesting lesson that we always, you know, it's just like every, we're right now working on getting a house because we just moved to the US a year ago and we were not sure if we were going to stay here for a while or not. So we just started looking at houses and there's this house that we really, really wanted. We made the offer. We rarely go like in the number just in the market that we're in that's not very normal. You like have some wiggle room.

We went in with the number that they wanted to ask in prize and then they still didn't want to like when we had another offer. I'm like, God, what are you trying to tell us here? You know, like, is this not it? But I'm like, you know what? And like the preaching of that weekend was about like the mustard seed and the humble beginnings and, you know, just like where you're what you're at. And I was just thinking about like all the seasons in our businesses when we started, we started from nothing. We never took pictures of those times, you know, like we never like

Christian Brim (40:14.606)
Mm.

Karen Hite (40:26.907)
So those times as like, this is the beginning, this is, and so I, after that preaching, was like, you know what? I am going to be, we're in a tiny home. My mom lives with us. My sister lives with us. Cause like we brought the family, we're Latin family. You know, my husband is from Arkansas, but he's pretty much Latin by this point. So it's kind of like, we need a little bit of space. Like we've decided to like, and so I'm like, you know, that just like reminded me of like, you know, just like.

Be okay where we're at right now. Still work towards getting obviously a bigger house, but honestly, at the end of the day, I don't know where God wants us to be. It might not be here. might be to go back to Nicaragua. I don't know. And so I'm just like, you know what? You're in control. I didn't want that house, but maybe that house, maybe, I always believe that he has something greater for us. That wasn't it, obviously. That wasn't it, right? So just trusting and working hard and trusting in him.

Not today.

Christian Brim (41:25.716)
One of my friends who's passed on his favorite phrase was grow where you're planted. I'm like, yeah, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. So how do people, yes. So how do people find out more about height digital and Karen?

Karen Hite (41:35.057)
That's a good phrase. I like that. Girl, what are your plans? That's a good phrase for me.

Karen Hite (41:46.361)
Yeah, yeah, you can go and check out our website, the heights.com H I T E S. That's where we have sort of try to summarize all the things that we do and how to contact us. Because we do have our yearly events or mastermind our digital marketing agency and other businesses that we do on a day to day basis. All focus on helping businesses grow right? Like that's the only reason why we do this. So yeah, you can go to the heights.com. We have events happening.

Two yearly events. We have a new event in April that I know if I talked to you about, but I'm sure we're going to talk about it when we see each other. We're really excited. It's going to be in Arkansas. It's going to be our first event in the US. We have people like Damon John coming from Shark Tank, Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank, Dr. Gary Chapman from Five Love Languages. I don't know if you read that book. Yeah. We're going to go and I need to send you that.

Christian Brim (42:35.918)
I've read his book, sure.

Karen Hite (42:42.711)
link to to go on that live with me. That would be fun for you to join me today. We're doing an interview on marriage and business with Dr. Gary Chapman, which is going to be cool. But yeah, we're going to do that event. It's going to be in April. So yeah, go to the heights.com. You're going to be able to see a little bit of what we have going on. But we're very active in social media. So just reach out to me on Facebook. That's where I'm normally living my day to day basis. And yeah, happy to connect with anybody.

Christian Brim (43:09.048)
Well, I appreciate your time and your experience here. I am looking forward to going to your home country and seeing you in a few weeks. I've never been to South America, so I'm excited to visit. Listeners, if you like what you hear, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like Karen and me, shoot us a message and we'll try and find some replacement.

Until then, ta ta for now.