High Profile: Stephanie Funk McCratic

She experienced the fragility of life first-hand and is squeezing all she can out of her roles as mother and entrepreneur.

“I have an understanding of mortality that I think a lot of people don’t have.”
“I have an understanding of mortality that I think a lot of people don’t have.”

BENTONVILLE -- Eight years ago, Stephanie McCratic was newly married and going slightly stir crazy in a new town, Prairie Grove, in west Washington County.

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“Her business is something that’s truly unique, and she’s going to take this business to somewhere none of us ever probably imagined it could be.” — entrepreneur Ann Bordelon

SELF PORTRAIT

Stephanie McCratic

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: Aug. 26, 1976, Little Rock

I RELAX BY sleeping, and when that’s not possible I get a massage, and when that’s not possible I have a nonwork conversation with the nearest warm body.

MY HUSBAND THINKS I’M overextended.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE IS: Steel Magnolias (“The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize.” — Clairee Belcher played by Olympia Dukakis)

MY SCARIEST MOMENT WAS making the decision to turn off life support for my first husband. He’d been in ICU for 16 weeks, and even though he fought hard, his body could not pull through.

MY HEROINE GROWING UP WAS Maya Angelou. The courage she demonstrated in writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings had me hooked. By the time I got to Phenomenal Woman, I’d had a spiritual awakening.

I WON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT my sunglasses. Ever.

BEFORE I DIE I will have a home in Los Angeles with a beautiful ocean view (even if “beautiful” means a single-wide trailer).

PET PEEVE: left-lane drivers who aren’t passing anyone

GUESTS AT FANTASY DINNER PARTY: Miley Cyrus, all of the Kardashians, Maya Angelou, Brene Brown, Ellen DeGeneres, Jimmy Fallon, James Corden and Adele

ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE ME: hustle

"It was delightful, but very small," says McCratic, who grew up in Little Rock. "I thought ladies would come out with a welcoming committee. That doesn't happen. I felt very, very isolated."

So McCratic began writing a blog and soon found an online community that stretched across the country. That led to a job, and that led to her starting an internet-based marketing company. Today, she and others believe that business, Acorn: The Influence Company, is on its way to becoming the biggest of its kind in the United States.

If the sequence of events seems a bit fast, it's because the 40-year-old McCratic doesn't believe in putting things off.

"Her success hasn't surprised me a bit," says John James, the founder and former chief executive officer of Acumen Holdings, parent company of Country Outfitters. He now leads Hayseed Ventures in Fayetteville. "She just runs through brick walls. She's never taken a challenge she couldn't handle."

Her husband, Steve, says McCratic "is never resting. Whether it's working on something for Acorn or just coming up with ideas to better the house and our lives, she never shuts off."

McCratic says the Dickensian twists of her past taught her that the things and people we take for granted may be gone tomorrow.

"I think it's an important part of who I am. I have an understanding of mortality that I think a lot of people don't have," she says.

McCratic spent the first six months of life in a house trailer in south Little Rock. She has been told she was "a little malnourished" by the time she was removed by state child welfare workers. Her parents, McCratic says, "were just not ready to be parents." Legally a ward of the state until the age of 18, she and her sister were brought up by her paternal grandparents, Jack and Pat Funk. She smiles whenever talking about the couple, who she says are still active in their church.

"The people who love you and raise you are your parents," she says.

McCratic's biological father was around for part of her childhood. She remembers him as "the coolest guy," a fan of honky-tonk music and big trucks, before he was killed in an accident in the 1980s. More recently, her birth mother tried to make contact. "We may meet someday but it's not going to be through Facebook," McCratic says.

McCratic graduated from Mount St. Mary Academy and was active as a Young Democrat as a teen. At the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, she majored in advertising and public relations. She credits Gerald Jordan, a journalism professor at the UA, with telling her she had a gift for writing and should do it for the student newspaper, the Traveler.

"I didn't know that about myself," she says. "I didn't think I wrote any better than anybody else."

After college, McCratic worked as a producer for Waymack and Crew video production company in Little Rock until 9/11 put a serious dent in the advertising business. McCratic scraped by as a freelance writer and waitress.

"I would tell my tables every night it was my first night so they'd feel sorry for me," she says. "I was terrible, literally."

She also contacted a staffing agency, Premier Staffing, but it didn't know what to do with her until she took a job with Premier itself. She turned out to be good at matching people with jobs.

Recruited away by Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield, she helped the massive health insurance provider hire 1,000 people to work with the elderly on Medicare. That's where she was when her first husband -- Marshall Johnson II -- collapsed with juvenile diabetes. He was 29 years old and the couple had been married less than two years. Johnson, who'd been on a list for a kidney transplant, spent 16 weeks in the intensive care unit after that organ failed.

"I could see him at 10, 1, 4 and 8 every day," McCratic says. He died in July 2006.

EVOLVED PROFESSIONAL

McCratic's next move seemed as random professionally as her venture into the staffing business: She took a job selling tobacco for Philip Morris in central Arkansas, a well-paying but "down and dirty" occupation.

"You had to hustle. I was in and out of liquor stores and convenience stores all day. You had expectations to meet sales goals."

"By this point, I'm like 'Who am I?' But it all adds up to who I am now."

McCratic says anybody who builds a business has to understand sales. She reconnected with a college friend, Steve McCratic, who lived in Northwest Arkansas. As their relationship progressed, she decided to join him in Prairie Grove. They married in 2008 and had their first daughter, Charlie Grace, now 6. The family now lives in Bentonville.

Being pregnant filled her with fear. At one point she wondered what nursery items she needed so the state "wouldn't take my baby away."

"I think every mother has fears but I had this history. I had very serious concerns because my biological mother had not been a good mother," she says.

It was Steve McCratic who suggested she start a blog, which she called "Evolved Mommy."

To differentiate herself in the already crowded blogosphere, McCratic focused primarily on technology that families could use. But she also wrote about herself, her family and life in Northwest Arkansas.

"It was really popular," says fellow blogger Amy James, who is married to John James. "Among early bloggers, she was kind of a goal we all looked toward. It was informative, it was funny and it was real."

Steve McCratic says his wife "can sit down and turn out however many words on just about anything."

Stephanie McCratic's blog, Twitter account and other social media platforms eventually attracted tens of thousands of views each month. That led to advertising agencies pitching their clients' products to her to write about. But, McCratic says, many agencies couldn't hide their contempt for "mommy bloggers."

"They were all so condescending," she says. "They thought we were simpletons."

It was another lesson she filed away.

BIRTHING A COMPANY

McCratic had become interested in search engine optimization, or SEO, which is the process by which marketers and promoters of websites try to increase the number of people who visit them. She attended a presentation on the topic by John James, who was then leading Acumen. "He knew the truth about how SEO worked, and he was willing to share it," McCratic says. "I thought if I could go back to work at a place like [Acumen], that would be fantastic."

Amy James suggested that her husband recruit McCratic to the company. John James still recalls their first meeting.

"She said to me, 'I don't know what I want to do, but I want to find something and be the best in the world at it,'" James says. "I thought, 'All right, that's pretty cool.'"

McCratic's job was to promote Acumen's Country Outfitter brand, which consisted of boots and other Western wear, through Facebook and other social media channels. James has said the brand's Facebook page attracted 7 million fans in four months, while sales grew from $1 million in 2011 to $15 million in one month the next year.

"Obviously she did an incredible job," James says. "She was instrumental in helping that growth."

McCratic left Acumen in 2013 for a brief stint with the GrowthWise Group, a business consulting firm in Bentonville, before starting Acorn in May 2014.

"I knew I had this one particular thing I could potentially be the best in the world at -- influencer marketing," she says.

In the internet age, the term means engaging influencers -- basically popular bloggers and other users of social media -- to spread the word about new products and services in exchange for some kind of compensation.

McCratic admits going out on her own was scary. "I didn't even know how to write a contract," she says.

But she was able to draw on everything she'd done in the past, from human resources and sales to blogging and SEO-centered marketing. The key component -- attracting clients -- proved "easier than I thought it would be," she says.

Acorn has run campaigns for companies including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Tyson Foods Inc., Dasani, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly-Clark Corp., S.C. Johnson & Son, Covergirl and many more. Now in its second office, just off Bentonville's picturesque square, Acorn employs about 20 people here. The company has worked with about 1,000 "influencers" this year, McCratic says, paying the company's bloggers and social media contacts about $500,000 along the way.

McCratic says Acorn's revenue grew tenfold in 2015 and should expand by 2.5 percent to 4 percent this year. That has made her a kind of poster child for startups in Northwest Arkansas. She's a volunteer mentor for the region's chapter of Startup Junkie Consulting, a "social venture," which tries to help entrepreneurs around the world.

"She's definitely paying it forward," says Ann Bordelon, a former Wal-Mart executive who heads up another startup in the area. "She's happy to give her time to organizations. She brings a lot of awareness to what goes on in Northwest Arkansas in terms of entrepreneurial activity."

The company's website is full of testimonials from influencers praising Acorn's "personal touch," which might take the form of a gift or handwritten thank-you note. One Acorn goal is "meaningful relationships" for everybody involved, McCratic says.

"That means it's meaningful for the influencer and the brand and the consumer. It has to matter and add value to your readers' lives," she adds.

McCratic has also attracted venture capital from New­Road Capital Partners in Bentonville to help the company grow in what she calls a "serious, long-term way."

Acorn primarily employs and caters to women, and McCratic is determined to run it in a way that reflects that.

"We're all about work-life balance," she says. "Personally, I kind of struggled with that."

McCratic became pregnant with her second daughter shortly after launching Acorn. Two weeks after Piper was born, the infant was diagnosed with a blood infection that required her to be taken to Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock. "For a solid two months, I was out of this brand-new company," McCratic says.

Piper recovered and is now 18 months old.

New opportunities

Helping the company grow means McCratic often travels in search of new opportunities. The second half of this month alone took her to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. "To be all over the country all the time, she's absent from very little," says husband Steve, director of facilities and logistics for Now Diagnostics, which makes medical diagnostic tests in Fayetteville. "Of course, we share a lot of the duties."

He says his wife especially enjoys taking Charlie to the Acorn office. "She wants her to see successful women." Indeed, Stephanie McCratic gives much of the credit for Acorn's growth to her "amazing" staff.

McCratic quit her blog about eight months ago, shortly after detailing Piper's hospital stay, but keeps a journal and writes when she can find the time.

It's a lot for one woman to handle. McCratic doesn't argue with her husband's assessment that she's overextended. "He's right, but he also knows that I love life and want to pack in as much as possible."

High Profile on 08/28/2016

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