May 6, 2022 • 41 mins
Brittany Brown is a driven entrepreneur with a strong why, and amazing story. In this episode she shares her journey, and gives lots of actionable tips for others looking to grow an agency. Enjoy!
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Episode Transcript
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Dale Majors (00:00):
In today's episode I share with you the
(00:01):
conversation I had with BrittanyBrown of LedgerGurus. And half
of this interview felt like freetherapy for me, or free
consulting because she gave meso many good ideas that I could
apply into my business, andespecially in regards to
building an agency sales versusoperations and some of the
conflicts that can and shouldarise there. And I just really
(00:25):
enjoyed some of her insights. Soshe built ledger gurus from zero
to about 60 employees, and I'mexcited for you to hear the
episode. So without further ado,here it is.
VA Intro (00:35):
Welcome to the venture anyway, build your podcast.
Insights from the trenches bythose who are busy building.
When I finally embraced what Iwas really good at, it kind of
felt like an adventure. Yeah, Ireally would have done a lot
differently.
Dale Majors (00:57):
All right. Welcome, Brittany, we are excited to have
you on the show.
Brittany Brown (01:01):
Thanks, Dale.
Glad to be here.
Dale Majors (01:03):
Or I guess I'm excited to have you on the show
would probably be betterEnglish. So let's get right.
Let's get started. And just haveyou tell us a bit about who you
are your story, your currentbusiness, and then we'll go from
there.
Brittany Brown (01:18):
Sure. So I'm Brittany Brown. I'm the CEO of
LedgerGurus. We are an outsourceaccounting firm. We primarily
focus on E-Commerce businesses,but we do all of the internal
functions for them. Inventory,sales, tax, channel tracking,
bookkeeping, CFO, everything inbetween. We've been in business
about seven years. We're amultimillion dollar accounting
(01:39):
firm, we have about 60employees. And I am personally a
CPA, I graduated from BYUaccounting program, masters and
bachelors in accounting. Andcame through that program as a
single mom, which really theninformed a lot of the choices I
made after that, and was reallythe inspiration to launch the
business but that's where we'reat today.
Dale Majors (02:01):
I love it. Okay, so 60 employees, and how you said
seven years?
Brittany Brown (02:08):
Yeah.
Dale Majors (02:09):
Awesome. Yeah, that's really impressive. What,
uh, so if you could go back to,well, maybe even, you know,
seven years isn't forever ago.
If you could go back to yourselfseven years ago, and give, you
know, a minute of advice, whatwould you say?
Brittany Brown (02:28):
Oh, man. So like, when I first started this
business, I, I really wanted toown a business, like I wanted a
shot in the head, I wasdefinitely not somebody who was
like, seeking the journey ofentrepreneurship. And it was, I
also entered that with very,very little professional
experience when I first began,like, I basically graduated from
(02:49):
college and, and worked very,very part time for about three
years. So by the time I startedthe business, I had the
equivalent of about one year offull time experience. And so I
literally knew nothing. I mean,I didn't even have work
experience to fall back on, Ibarely knew how to be an
accountant, let alone how to bea CEO. And so everything,
(03:13):
everything, everything was sucha challenge, I had only
interviewed for, I'd onlyinterviewed for maybe like, had
like three interviews during myexit from college. And,
therefore, just the process ofhiring people, I didn't even
know what to fall back on. Andso every single aspect of it was
(03:33):
really difficult. And if I couldgo back and go back to that
seven year old ago, self, Iwould just tell her, like,
you're going to be successful,you just have to be willing to
lean into all the learningcurves that are gonna come at
you, like you will come out theother side of this, and you'll
be so glad you did it. Butyou're gonna have to lean in
(03:53):
again and again, and again, andagain, and again. And just know
that there is like an end insight, and that you won't always
feel this way, you will alwaysfeel so overwhelmed, you won't
always have absolutely no ideawhat to do or how to do it. Just
the life of experience will getyou to where you want to be.
Just don't be afraid of leaninginto the learning curve. That's
probably what I would tellmyself.
Dale Majors (04:12):
So are you saying in one way, would I be right in
saying, you know, just enjoy,it's all going to work out? Just
enjoy it maybe a little bit morealong the way?
Brittany Brown (04:24):
Yeah, like just have just have faith in the end
result of it all and, and haveconfidence that it's going to be
okay, like that it's going, it'sgoing to work out great. You're
gonna be so glad you did it.
Therefore, you're not going todie from this experience.
Because it did. It was so hard.
There were so many pieces of itthat were so hard and didn't
have to be as hard as it waslike I was kind of an emotional
(04:45):
basket case through it because Ifelt so overwhelmed. But I would
just say breathe. It's okay.
It's gonna be all good.
Dale Majors (04:52):
Yeah, I love it.
Yeah, so I'm hearing you saylook, I was not professional. I
didn't have I didn't have Uh, Ididn't get into it with a plan.
And I didn't have muchexperience to lean on. Which
makes me wonder like, what werethose? What were those core
personality attributes that thatyou had, that you think helped
you do this?
Brittany Brown (05:16):
Yeah, you know, one of the things that I feel
like my parents instilled in meand my siblings was this
willingness to just dive in andtry things I have, I have very
gifted parents, when it comes totheir, they're just very well
balanced, diversified in skillsets, they tackle things like my
mom will be like, oh, I want tolearn how to, you know, try this
(05:38):
new craft, and she will, my dadwill be like, I want to learn
how to carve and he will. Solike, over and over again, I've
seen my parents just oh, we wantto, we want to shed in the back,
we will build it. We've neverbuilt it before. But we're going
to learn how to build it. And Ithink that they really instilled
upon us a willingness to justjump in and try something
fearlessly. And of all thethings I mean, because I've I've
(06:00):
run the gamut from every aspectof the business, because I
started as our primaryaccountant. And I, you know, had
been our primary salesperson, Ihad to build a marketing
function within ourorganization, when I had no
experience on that either had tolearn how to hire people, I
mean, you name it, I had tolearn how to do it with with no
(06:21):
previous experience at all, andjust being willing to just dive
in. So I heard this really greatquote, once that really inspired
me, and it was something alongthe lines of like, you're going
to have situations over and overagain, that make you afraid,
proceed afraid, like just go,you're scared, we get it, just
(06:41):
do it anyways. And that wasprobably like, you know, my, my
husband is now our CEO, and he'sreally just exceptionally good
at what he does. And he came tothe organization with a lot of
sound foundational knowledge andexperience that I didn't have
the benefit of that he has hadthe benefit of. And, but he will
(07:05):
always say to me, he says, Istill don't think I could have
done what you did, because Ididn't have the starter
mentality. Like I was willing tojust like he, he loves to just
tell the stories of our earlydays in the business, when, for
example, we'd hire newemployees. And I kind of knew we
should be doing like, backgroundchecks. So I would just have
them like sign this piece ofpaper that says I authorized
(07:25):
Brittany brown to do abackground check on me. And that
was like the equivalent of mythat was the equivalent of my
contract, allowing me to thenrun a background check on this
person. And it that it was soquintessential of like,
literally everything I did backthen which was like, pretty sure
I need to be doing this notreally sure how to go about it.
So here's where I'll start, justsign this piece of paper saying
(07:46):
that you authorize me to dobackground check. You know, now
we have a whole contractualprocess, a whole company company
that we contract with it runs abackground checks, a whole
process involved in it, but Ijust started with whatever I had
wherever I knew wherever wewere, and just jumped in, that's
probably the single greatestattribute that helped us get
(08:06):
going was that
Dale Majors (08:07):
I love it. So a very high bias for action and
just doing doing things.
Brittany Brown (08:15):
True. Yes. Okay, maybe even foolishly. So like,
Stephen, my, my, my husband, coOh, well, part of what keeps him
from moving forward? Is he kindof feels like he needs to have
all the questions answered. I'mnot burdened by any of that. I'm
like, who knows? Who cares?
We'll figure it out. It'll work.
Like just jump in, you know?
Dale Majors (08:34):
Yeah. No, I love it. And I think that point that
also highlights the and I guesswe haven't talked about it, but
it seems like you're stillyou're still married, you're
still in business, your businessis thriving. I'm guessing that
your two personalities playreally well together in for the
for this you know, at least forthe business benefiting from the
(08:58):
two of you being involved.
Brittany Brown (09:00):
Very very, very well balanced as a partnership.
And that has was a reallypleasant surprise for us when we
started partnering together andreally helped our personal
relationship as well because Iam very freelance rules are for
the birds like why would we needprocesses and he's very much
(09:21):
like bedtime should beconsistent and routine should be
evident. And we kind of therewas a lot of friction between us
with our personal lives becauseof this. But as we partnered in
business together, we gained apretty significant appreciation
for each other's strengthsthrough the business space,
which then played over into thepersonal lives where we were
(09:43):
able to see a lot more easilyhow our differences actually
created a lot of balance withinour personal life where it was
just inconvenient to us beforethat, after seeing him like
basically saved me from mystupid self inside business. I
became more grateful for himprocess mind and after seeing
the momentum that I created andthe opportunities that I
(10:04):
created, he became moreenthusiastic about my
spontaneity and, and lack of. Ididn't need to know all the
answers before I jumped in.
Dale Majors (10:14):
Yeah. One of my one of my biggest regrets, I think,
and I really don't have manyregrets. But I think one of my
main regrets is how much Iundervalued my father, my
father, and I built my firstcompany together, I brought him
in, like, you know, pretty earlyon when I was selling things
(10:34):
online. And I think the biggestregret is undervaluing his
contribution. Because the worldcelebrates people like me and
you, they don't celebratepeople, like your husband or my
dad, that behind the scenesperson, they celebrate the
person who's like, charging infront and, you know, has the
(10:56):
quick answers where a lot oftimes without the person in the
back, we would be, you know, wewould have like burns.
Brittany Brown (11:02):
So dead. Oh, my gosh, I like he my husband got
involved when we were about twoyears in and we had reached
about $215,000 $250,000 a yearin revenue. And I felt like I
had was literally building ahouse of cards because I just I
was basically relying on theheroics of a few key employees,
but there was no structure orprocess around it. I definitely
(11:24):
do agree with you. And part ofwhat seems unfair is they they
they don't get the credit theydeserve when really all the
credit is theirs. Butironically, those kinds of
people often are like perfectlyhappy to not take the credit as
well. So like, I'd be the onespeaking all the conferences,
I'd be the one being like theface of everything. I'd be the
one like getting all theaccolades. And I'd be like, This
(11:46):
is so unfair. Like I wasliterally building a house of
cards before he got involved.
Dale Majors (11:49):
Yeah, yeah, no, that's I, thanks for sharing
that. And I do think that'sinteresting for all those in
partnerships, or for those thatare cursed with our skill set of
being the visionary and goingout there to just really focus
on celebrating, and beinggrateful for those that are
around us. Because
Brittany Brown (12:11):
Oh, so true.
Dale Majors (12:12):
Yeah. I love that.
Brittany Brown (12:13):
I heard once I heard once this great quote that
says, a visionary is a geniuswith 1000 assistants. And like,
every single person that I hire,who's going to be close to me, I
always say like, it will be partof your brain, it will be part
of your job to project manageme, and you will be fully
empowered to call me out at anytime. Like, that's just part of
the job description, becauseit's so critical to our success,
(12:36):
that there are people around whocompensate I mean, I, I'll be
the first to say I have a lot ofstrengths, we would not be where
we are right now without me. ButI would also be the first to say
that it's critical that there beprocesses in place to protect
the organization from me. Andthat is like very key as well.
Dale Majors (12:52):
Yeah. No, I love that. And ever since I've gotten
to know you, I've realized thataction orientation, and I credit
that for a lot of the successthat I've had to is just the,
you know, being willing to justtry things. And yeah, and it's
just super impressive thatyou've been able to do that and
(13:14):
scale to as big as you guyshave. That's awesome.
Brittany Brown (13:18):
Thank you.
Thanks.
Dale Majors (13:19):
So what, what has been harder than you thought? So
you didn't go in with manyexpectations of what it would
look like. But, you know, asyour as you've been, you know,
in the business working the lastfew years? What are the things
in your service based accountingbusiness that are maybe trickier
as somebody that's sitting inyour seat, then then I might
(13:39):
think on the outside?
Brittany Brown (13:42):
You know, one of the things that's been really
hard is to is to level up. Andthat's that's like all the dress
that question twofold. One ofthem is like what's been what's
really hard and accounting fromthe people don't expect, but the
other one would be like, what'sbeen hard for me personally, is
because we've grown so fast. Andbecause I had such little
(14:02):
business experience. And leadtriggers has grown so rapidly
that we have basically had toreinvent ourselves as an
organization every every twoyears, approximately. And having
like personally having to levelup to keep up with that has been
really challenging for me andemotionally taxing but fun to
(14:24):
really exhilarating. But what'sbeen really hard within the
organization is that, you know,service based businesses are
really hard, because every timeyou sell something, you have to
have somebody who can fulfill onthat, which means a continual
process of hiring and trainingand hiring, and training and
hiring and training. And thatthat's really challenging to
(14:46):
stay on top of and we'reconstantly dealing with the
balance between that, like wehave, we have a sales and
marketing team, which actuallymakes us very unique among
accounting firms like I there'shardly any accounting firms that
I know of that actually havethose functions. means within
the organization. But as aresult, what happens is that
service delivery is constantlyfeeling victimized by cells and
(15:08):
cells is constantly annoyed atservice deliveries, like wanting
to shut things down, likeservice delivery gets
overwhelmed, they tell cells,they have to stop cells just
worked so hard to create allthis momentum. Now they want to
take advantage of the momentumthey created in service delivery
is telling us to stop. But thenservice delivery will hire one
or two people and now they'reyelling at us to sell, sell,
sell to get capacity for thosepeople to be able to have work
(15:31):
to do. And it's it's been reallyhard to manage the flow of
capacity, which sellsopportunity. And we try really
hard to be forecasting aboutthis. And we try really hard to,
you know, pre hire and getpeople up to speed in advance.
But then, you know, one keyperson within the individual,
like one key accountant willleave. And then suddenly, we
(15:54):
have an entire full time rolecapacity that we now have to
reassign to other team members.
And now all of the capacity thatwe thought we pre hired is now
no longer there. And now servicedelivery is yelling again, right
as sales is hitting their verypeak of harvesting all the work
that they've done in preparingfor a busy sell season to get
the leads coming in. And nowsources Laurie is telling us we
(16:15):
have to shut it down again. Wow.
So that's Oh, but I hope I toldthat story in a way that
conveyed the pain that weexperienced, because a very real
Sure.
thing.
Dale Majors (16:26):
Can I just take two minutes and just tell you how to
I'm just kidding.
No, I have no clue.
fix that problem?
Brittany Brown (16:32):
Oh, I was like, gosh, please like that's not to
say, oh, man, who knows.
Dale Majors (16:38):
I have no idea.
Well, and that's, I rememberbeing frustrated as a college
student when they because I,when I was in college, we had
our little business with, youknow, eight employees or
something, or 10 or 12,employees, whatever, I took a
while to go through school. So Ithink at one point, we probably
had 15 When I was in still inschool, but I remember talking
about some of these issues, andeverybody would just like, oh,
(16:58):
how do you fix this problem, andeverybody would raise their hand
and, you know, give theseanswers on how you fix the
thing. And I just, I couldn'thandle it, because I'm like, I'm
handled, I have all these sortsof problems in my business. And
it's just not as easy as you'resaying. Because people problems
are complex, complex andcomplicated. And I know, you
(17:20):
know, there are principles andother things, but until you've
like sat in the chair, and Idon't say that to discourage
anyone from getting into it, butjust to also have like, I don't
know, before giving advice onpeople problems to like
realizing this kind of stuffscomplicated, like every sales
and Mark Yeah, every sales andoperations team, you know,
(17:41):
everywhere has these, you know,some sort of tension, right?
Brittany Brown (17:48):
Mm hmm. And that's what like, luckily, I'm
so glad Steven RCO does havebusiness experience like high
level corporate experience,because he's always telling us
like, hey, this tension betweenservice delivery and sells like
it's a, it's a natural thing,like this tension will always
exist. And so it kind of keepsus from like hating on each
other. Because it's like, oh, Iguess this is like a real thing.
(18:11):
But people problems are a realissue. Because you there's so
many factors you can't control.
Like, I really wish I couldcontrol people and be like,
you're, you know, you're workinghere, and you're working here
for the next 10 years. Andthat's the way it's going to be
but like they have choice tocome and go, they have their own
dreams, they have their owngoals, like, we really, really
work hard to try and aligneverything we do with the dreams
(18:31):
and goals of our team members.
Like we really try to supportthe growth that they want to
experience and all of thosethings. And it's just, it's just
so challenging. There's so manymoving pieces, and you deal with
burnout, and maybe somebody isdoing really good. But then they
unexpectedly find themselves,you know, pregnant when they
weren't planning on it. And nowsuddenly, their entire career
(18:52):
traduction has shifted or, youknow, maybe they have a nanny
who quit. And now because all ofour employees work from home,
and so we're really affected by,you know, things like someone
had a nanny that quit on himsuddenly, and now they suddenly
are trying to work around littlekids and their capacity just
went dramatically down. Sothere's always something and
(19:13):
because our entire workforceworks from home, a large
percentage of our employees arefemale. And so we have a huge
number of maternity leaves thathit us every single year. And
it's always our most key people.
And it's like, I think one yearwe had like, for like three
years straight, we have 30% ofour team take maternity leave at
some point. And that's not asmall number, because our team
is quite large. And it was like,this is where this is where
(19:36):
people come to have babies forcrying out loud. And it was it
was it was and now we just kindof try to plan for it and try to
adjust for it. But it's it'sreally hard to plan with people.
Dale Majors (19:48):
So you well and I guess we didn't I didn't call
that out. You're one of thethings as we got, as I got to
know you a bit more and as Iread your bio In the coaching
program, I was so impressed withyour vision and your
deliberateness and like, well,in a lot of the things that you
(20:09):
do, but in just your foundingstory and seeing the need to
start a business for, for femaleaccountants to have work, work
from home work before COVID wasthe thing like because this was
really novel seven years ago,right. Now, it seems like well,
why wouldn't you have that? Youknow, that's what happens.
People do. But seven years ago,this was like, kind of
(20:31):
groundbreaking.
Brittany Brown (20:33):
Mm hmm. Very true.
Dale Majors (20:34):
That's a Yeah, that's really awesome. I, I
hadn't heard the well, you know,what you said, your husband,
Steven said about accounting andsales being a thing like, yeah,
when there is issues, like whenthere are issues like that,
sometimes we do try to fix them.
But I like that idea of, therewill always be tension. And
that's just part of thatrelationship, that there's going
(20:56):
to be some tension there. That'syeah, that's really interesting.
Brittany Brown (21:02):
Yeah, and actually, I think part of the
reason why we have grown sosuccessfully, is because we have
separated out the roles of salesand service delivery, like I
heard a really wise, somebodysay something really wise, that
says, if you really want togrow, you cannot have the same
person selling who's also goingto be delivering, because then
they feel persecuted bythemselves. So like, the person
(21:25):
who is delivering is like, oh,man, so overwhelmed, we just
can't take on more work. Andthen they, they just don't
engage in sales relatedactivities. And if you have
those two things tied together,then then you're you will always
be bottlenecking yourself,because that same person who
should be selling is also awareof the need that they're going
to then have to be deliveringit. Oh, my goodness. And so by
(21:47):
so good advice, by separatingthose two things, like our sales
team has certain quotas thatthey are required to meet. And
our service delivery team knowsthat there'll be a certain
amount of sales coming in thedoor, they're going to have to
just deliver on. And byseparating those two things out,
we we are no longer bottleneckedby by that tension, which would
(22:08):
otherwise just bottleneck theentire thing. Someone who's
overwhelmed is not going to beinclined to sell now, that
saying we try not to keep ourteam overwhelmed. But because
our service delivery team knowsthat cells will just be coming
in and because cells is notoverwhelmed by the idea of
fulfilling on it, it keeps aconstant growth going that
otherwise probably would nothave been possible. Yeah.
Dale Majors (22:28):
Okay, I owe you for this conversation. Because a lot
of my struggle, I think youpoint out really well, in my
coaching business, as I've beencreating this, you know, Venture
Anyway Mastermind that I do fromscratch, I'm kind of the guy
that does everything, like Isell it. And I don't want to
take other people's money unlessI totally like knock it out of
(22:49):
the park. And I don't know,there's just all this conflict
between my sales guy, whichactually, that's what I want to
do full time as I want to sellit, only because I enjoy
moderating conversations, and Ienjoy the delivery. But I've met
really good coaches that aregreat at doing that. And I
(23:09):
hadn't thought before aboutthose two roles, kind of needing
a competition needing somecompetition and needing to be
separate, because because I knowall of the operational things
that I could be deliveringbetter in my business. And
because I don't care as muchabout like increasing the sales.
(23:30):
I'm almost like hamstringingthe, the company, by me being
doing both roles.
Brittany Brown (23:37):
Exactly. Right.
So as we've separated those twothings, so I initially lived on
both sides of the business, Iwas managing service delivery,
and I had been our primarysalesperson up until about a
year and a half ago. It wasreally tough. And so I'm the
CPA, and I'm the accountant. Andso it made most sense for me to
be on the service delivery sideof the business, but I couldn't
(23:57):
keep myself from getting pulledinto things. And so one of the
most interesting changes we madefairly early on, was we actually
put all of service deliveryunder operations underneath my
husband, and took me outentirely out of the service
delivery, even though I was theCPA and I was the accountant,
because it allowed me to focuson the growth and the cells
without being burdened in thatway. And it really, really made
(24:20):
a big difference.
Dale Majors (24:24):
Wow. Okay, that's amazing. I'm a if I'm still the
sales guy and the delivery guyin a couple months than you need
to smack me upside the head.
Because smack you upside. I lovethat. And I think that a lot of
the service service basedbusiness businesses that I know
and work with need to hear thatadvice, because you Yeah,
(24:45):
there's too much like oh, youknow, I don't need to sell up.
If I just put my sales hat on. Iwould sell a lot more and
someone needs to full time puttheir operations hat on On in my
business, so I really appreciateyou giving me this free
counseling Brittany.
Brittany Brown (25:05):
Yeah. And then it just becomes somebody else's
problem to deliver. Right. It'slike sales just does their job
to sell it. Someone else'sproblem to deliver it.
Dale Majors (25:13):
Yeah, I love it.
Good luck. suckas. No, it's goodluck. Exactly. Good luck
seconds. Yeah, I do love that.
Well, people are capable, andthey need real problems to
solve. And I think that youalmost kind of shoot yourself in
the foot. When because you canalmost become codependent
Brittany Brown (25:29):
Oh, you know, we're just not going to sell.
Dale Majors (25:31):
And then oh, because I haven't sold I don't
have to totally like go out of Idon't have to stretch beyond
myself to deliver because theproblem is not that big, like,
creating more of a vacuum, Ithink in sales and in operations
to make I think both of those ifyou do it right, I think both
will perform better. With whatyou're saying.
Brittany Brown (25:53):
I totally agree.
Dale Majors (25:54):
Amazing. Thank you.
So how do you feel? How do youfeel you're doing as the CEO of
ledger gurus, if you were tojust give yourself like your own
little analysis scorecard? And Imight say, as you think about
that question, I might say,Well, how did you feel you were
doing five years ago? And maybeas you've like, matured in your
role? How do you feel you'redoing today? Yeah, what do you
(26:16):
think?
Brittany Brown (26:21):
Yeah. So I do feel a lot better about things
today than I did seven yearsago. But in part, I think I've
had a perspective shift. That'sreally, really helped me about
two years ago, we startedreading like the whole traction
EOS series of books, and theyreally talk about like the
difference between a visionaryand an integrator, Gino like,
(26:43):
and I think, yeah, and I thinkbefore we read that I kind of
was always really hard onmyself, because execution wasn't
my strength, and I despisedmeetings. And I really struggled
to show up in some of the waysthat like, Steven was really
good at showing up. And itseemed to be really effortless
for him. And I, it kind of mademe sort of feel like a failure,
(27:04):
because those things weren't astrength for me. And after we
read those books, we realizedlike, I'm actually a really good
visionary. And part of whatmakes me a really good visionary
is that I'm a really crappyintegrator. And so like, it's
okay that I hate meetings, andit's okay that I hate execution.
And it's okay that I hate allthose other things. And the more
(27:26):
that our business allows me toplay to my strengths, instead of
requiring me to, like compensatefor my weaknesses, the better
off we are as an organization.
So that really helped me thatwas one thing that really helped
me. But another thing thatreally helped me was several
years ago, after Stephen, I gotreally going.
(27:46):
I actually had a really badfall, I broke my ankle, I
decided I need to get back inshape. And in order to get back
in shape, I decided to join aroller derby team. And my first
night into that adventure, Ishattered my ankle. And because
at that point, I was I our ourentire sales and marketing
effort, it really affected theorganization, like it was, it
(28:06):
was it really killed a lot ofmore momentum, because for quite
a while I was unable to justengage the way I had previously.
So So yeah, so as part of thatjourney, we ended up hiring a
guy who I think at the time, Iwas, I was really planning on,
like, I really wanted to not beas involved in the business
anymore. I feel like I had putin my time and done my dues. And
(28:29):
like I mentioned, I wanted toown a business like I wanted a
shot in the head. And I wasdefinitely feeling at that time,
like the extreme stress of wherewe were at and extreme growth,
but we didn't yet have thepieces in place to allow for
that growth to not be directlyon my shoulders. And so we hired
this guy with the hope that hewould basically become a partner
(28:51):
within the organization and takeover the role that I had been
playing. And I would be able to,like quietly sneak out the back
and spend my days driving arounddrinking Dr. Pepper considering
my life choices, wondering whereI went wrong, like go back to
the life I knew and loved,right? Send the kids off to
school, veg. I mean, I'm not Idon't mean to say that, like,
I've been a stay at home mom andnot trying to minimize the role
(29:12):
they play. But I am saying like,I wanted my time back in that
way, I wanted my time to lookmore like the life I used to
have where I was just a stay athome mom and really enjoying
that lifestyle. You really havealways really loved that
lifestyle. And it just wasn't mylife anymore. And so we hired
this guy, he got involved. Hehad a lot of corporate
(29:33):
experience seemed to be exactlythe right fit for for the role
with all the resume. But he hada really bad effect on the
organization from a cultureperspective. And it ended up
being really bad for ourorganization. And I ended up
having to fire him and spentquite a bit of time helping the
(29:55):
organization recover from thatexperience and And one of the
things that really came to mefrom that was this realization
that even though I didn't havethe years of corporate
experience, even though I didn'thave the years of professional
experience, even though I was sonew and so junior to everything
that I really had no businessdoing what I was doing, that I
(30:16):
had an innate sense, an innateability that we're just
naturally who I was, that wasbetter than any years of
experience would have givenanybody. And it caused me to
appreciate that I was in therole I was supposed to be in and
that I was where I was supposedto be in life, and that I was
the right person for the job.
And it fundamentally changed mycommitment to the organization
(30:37):
and fundamentally changed beforethat, I felt like I was kind of
on a path of survival, like crapI got, I feel like I got
cornered into this. Because I,like saw the opportunity. And I
was so passionate about and I'mvery much a god person. I feel
like he was really like, Hey,this is what I want you to do.
And I was like, Please, no. AndI felt up until that point in
time, I felt very, likevictimized by the success I was
(30:59):
having. I know that sounds liketerrible, but really, like, I
was a stay at home mom, myhusband did just fine. I had
been a single mom for all theseyears, I was so happy to finally
be back in that role. We'd hadanother couple of kids together
after Stephen and I after I gotremarried. And I was so happy to
be there in that space that whensuddenly I felt like prompted to
start a business and to act onthat I felt terrorized,
(31:23):
victimized, tormented for years.
And it wasn't until we had thatexperience that I was like, I'm
right where I'm supposed to beI'm right, I'm doing exactly
what I'm supposed to be doing.
There's no better person forthis job than me. And my lack of
experience is not holding usback, that I became confidently
engaged from that point forward.
(31:48):
So that helped a lot too.
Dale Majors (31:49):
I love that. Okay, so what I'm, I'm going to write
a song, because I learned fourchords on the guitar. That's how
you don't have to be everything.
Wow. So I'll just get on that.
But that's what I'm hearing. Andthat, yeah, that that I think a
lot of times, yeah, you havethis pressure, of needing to fix
(32:12):
everything, neut needing to doeverything. And I've even even
in doing my coaching business,probably even as even last year,
and I've probably only beengetting over this the last few
months even is, there's so manythings that need to be done. And
if you're the only person any ofthose things that don't go as
(32:33):
well, you know, not you know,people don't show up for as many
calls as you want them to orwhatever else, you know, you're
like, oh, you know, what am Idoing wrong? Like, but you
can't, you just can't do that.
And that's why I start I thinkstarting up is a much harder
phase than when you have youknow, several people to help
(32:55):
compensate. Because at thebeginning, you kind of have to
do everything. But I think it isinteresting and just important,
I really am glad that you sharedthat is we don't have to be
everything forever. And maybepart of that startup phase is,
is, is surrounding yourself withother great people as quickly as
you can. So you don't have towear three backpacks going up
(33:19):
the mountain because at firstyou kind of do you kind of have
to wear like all the back youhave to. And that's just the
heart of it. But if you do that,and you know, I'm okay wearing
three backpacks for like, forlike a third of the trip, or
like, you know, a mile, but I'mnot okay, doing it like across
the country. And I think as asan entrepreneur, maybe maybe
(33:42):
it's good for people to alsorealize that, if you're in the
middle of that, you know,carrying the whole load thing
that it doesn't have to lastforever, and to find people to
help, you know, carry more ofthat burden.
Brittany Brown (33:56):
And that's exactly how the experience has
gotten better is it went frombeing really hard to being kind
of hard to being really fun wasas those pieces were in place
where I was no longer carryingthe burden and the hardest parts
of the job were shared byothers. That's what made it so
much easier and so much moreenjoyable.
Dale Majors (34:15):
Yeah, I love that.
That's funny. I really haveenjoyed how you've laid that
out. Because it's, again, Ithink good therapy. For me, as I
look at my coaching business,I'm currently carrying a couple
backpacks. And but it's fun, andI kind of enjoy, you know, a lot
of that. But it's notsustainable. To just write to
always do it all. But a lot ofpeople get stuck in that mode of
(34:38):
I just always have to carrythree backpacks and I don't
trust other people and I'm theguy that has to do everything.
So that's why we're going tocome up with this hit single you
don't have to be everything.
Brittany Brown (34:50):
Yeah, that'll be great with the course should be
something like delegatedelegate. Yes, it's going to be
just so great.
Dale Majors (35:00):
I love it. Yeah.
Well throw a little frozen inthere. Okay. Awesome. Yeah,
Delegate trust your friends.
Because the because the miserynever ends. Wait no, no, not
that.
Brittany Brown (35:15):
That's good.
That's good. You know, you askedme kind of at the beginning of
the call before we started this,you said, How would you define
that you've made it. And that'sactually the way that I would
define that is by saying, when Ireach a point where literally
any person within theorganization could quit at any
moment of time, and the burdenof it would not fall on me.
(35:37):
That's how I'll know that I'vemade it.
Dale Majors (35:42):
I love it. Yep.
Cool. That's awesome. Well,Brittany, we have reached the
magical 35 minute mark, whichall of these interviews have
ended up at. And I'm trying tothink of, so I love that you
went right into the arrived,we've talked about your
superpower, your you know, youraction orientation. Is there
(36:03):
anything that you want to add tothat? Like, is there anything
else besides the visionary, youknow, action orientation, where
you think that you justnaturally do really well, that
you want to touch on?
Brittany Brown (36:14):
Yeah, I actually feel like my other superpower is
I'm really good at finding theright people for the right job.
Like, if I have something that Ineed to have done, I'm really
good at identifying the rightperson to do it. And so whether
it's at work, whether it's athome, um, case, in point the
other day, I was like, I neededto find somebody to tutor my two
(36:36):
little kids in Spanish, becausethey're both in Spanish
immersion, but they're resistantto actually using their
language. And within 24 hours, Ihad the perfect tutor lined up
ready to roll. So like, Idefinitely have a superpower
with being able to find theright person for the right job.
And that's really helped me alot.
Dale Majors (36:52):
Awesome. Awesome.
And so how, what what do youlike, what's one issue? You
know, so you have 50 employees,you've, you've really come a
long way. And you know, you havethis great perspective, what
kind of what kind of a problem,you know, when you come into
work, when you came into workthis week? What was one of the
problems on your mind that youwere working to fix?
Brittany Brown (37:18):
So 60 employees, and one of the problems that
we're trying to fix right now isthe shortage, like the labor
shortage that's affecting theentire country is also
definitely affecting theaccounting space. Yeah. And so
we have to figure out theproblem we're trying to solve
right now is we're trying tofigure out how to apply the
principles that we've learnedand building a marketing
(37:40):
function into our HR functionnow as well. So and what I mean
by that is that if you thinkabout the way that people
approach marketing, if they'vebeen really thoughtful about it,
is they they have sort of thefunnel approach where the top of
the funnel is wide, and they'rebringing in all of these leads,
and then they're funneling themdown through until they, they
identify the ones that theyreally want to work with. And
(38:01):
then they're there. You know,turning them into marketing,
qualified leads, and thenturning them into sales,
qualified leads and trying toclose the deals well, with HR
for years, because it wasrelatively easy to find
somebody, if we needed to hiresomebody, we would just post a
listing and off we will go, we'dbe off and running. But that is
really not an option anymore.
With with how, with howrestricted the the hiring pool
(38:24):
is so small. So we basicallyneed to take the same approach
where we're now engaging withpotential employee fees long
before they're actually lookingfor a job and throwing the net
very wide, and narrowing themdown and bringing in people so
like, the HR approach that we'retaking, right, that we had
previously been taking, which isbasically, you know, post the
(38:45):
listing and wait for applicantsto come in, would be the
equivalent of us saying, Hey,we're ready for new customer.
Let's just tell everyone onFacebook, that we're ready for a
new customer and just wait forthe customers to just walk in
the door. Like that's theapproach that we've taken with
HR, because we could, but nowwe're the only...
Dale Majors (39:04):
Because you were the only stay at home, you know,
you weren't you right, one ofvery few options to stay at
Brittany Brown (39:08):
Exactly, we had no trouble at all fine, we'd
home.
have over 1000 applicants a yearwho reached out to us, well,
that's no longer the case. So wenow need to take a marketing
approach to our HR function. Andthat's a pretty unique approach
to take like, especially withinthe accounting firm space, very
unique approach to take. So wedon't really have a lot of good
models on what that would looklike or how to create that. But
(39:31):
we definitely need to do that.
And so that's one of the primaryproblems we're facing right now
is that.
Dale Majors (39:37):
What a fun problem that you get to work on?
Brittany Brown (39:40):
Yeah, it is fun problem.
Dale Majors (39:41):
That's amazing.
Yeah, I'm trying with all of myproblems. And with everybody
that I work with, I'm trying tocelebrate problems more because
it's like, we always haveproblems if it's not this other
thing.
Brittany Brown (39:51):
And every problem you have is an
opportunity to become likereally, really good because,
like I feel like we take a veryunique approach to marketing.
When you compare us to otheraccounting firms, we're about to
start taking a very uniqueapproach to HR when you compare
it to other accounting firms.
And every time we face one ofthese problems, it gives us the
opportunity to really setourselves apart and to become
marketing like industry leadersand whatever our approaches,
(40:15):
which will then give us astrategic advantage.
Dale Majors (40:19):
I love it. How can people get a hold of you?
Brittany Brown (40:23):
So you can go to our website, ledgergurus.com If
you reach out through ourcontact form there, someone at
lead triggers will reach out toyou directly if you want to talk
to me directly. You can justemail me bbrown@ledgergurus.com
be like Britney brown like thecolor ledger gurus like the way
it sounds.
Dale Majors (40:40):
Love it. And yep.
Okay, Bernie, this is great.
Thanks so much for sharing withus today.
Brittany Brown (40:44):
Yeah, thanks Dale, this has been really fun.
Thank you.
Dale Majors (40:48):
Awesome. Hey, thanks again for listening. If
there's anything I can do to behelpful to you, then you can
email me atDale@ventureanyway.com. Also, if
you know someone I shouldinterview or if you have any
suggestions on how I shouldchange the podcast, then I would
love to hear them. If you wantto learn more about my coaching
group. You can learn more atventureanyway.com And if you'd
(41:12):
like to hear babies screaming inthe background, then this is the
podcast for you.
In today's episode I share with you the
(00:01):
conversation I had with BrittanyBrown of LedgerGurus. And half
of this interview felt like freetherapy for me, or free
consulting because she gave meso many good ideas that I could
apply into my business, andespecially in regards to
building an agency sales versusoperations and some of the
conflicts that can and shouldarise there. And I just really
(00:25):
enjoyed some of her insights. Soshe built ledger gurus from zero
to about 60 employees, and I'mexcited for you to hear the
episode. So without further ado,here it is.
VA Intro (00:35):
Welcome to the venture anyway, build your podcast.
Insights from the trenches bythose who are busy building.
When I finally embraced what Iwas really good at, it kind of
felt like an adventure. Yeah, Ireally would have done a lot
differently.
Dale Majors (00:57):
All right. Welcome, Brittany, we are excited to have
you on the show.
Brittany Brown (01:01):
Thanks, Dale.
Glad to be here.
Dale Majors (01:03):
Or I guess I'm excited to have you on the show
would probably be betterEnglish. So let's get right.
Let's get started. And just haveyou tell us a bit about who you
are your story, your currentbusiness, and then we'll go from
there.
Brittany Brown (01:18):
Sure. So I'm Brittany Brown. I'm the CEO of
LedgerGurus. We are an outsourceaccounting firm. We primarily
focus on E-Commerce businesses,but we do all of the internal
functions for them. Inventory,sales, tax, channel tracking,
bookkeeping, CFO, everything inbetween. We've been in business
about seven years. We're amultimillion dollar accounting
(01:39):
firm, we have about 60employees. And I am personally a
CPA, I graduated from BYUaccounting program, masters and
bachelors in accounting. Andcame through that program as a
single mom, which really theninformed a lot of the choices I
made after that, and was reallythe inspiration to launch the
business but that's where we'reat today.
Dale Majors (02:01):
I love it. Okay, so 60 employees, and how you said
seven years?
Brittany Brown (02:08):
Yeah.
Dale Majors (02:09):
Awesome. Yeah, that's really impressive. What,
uh, so if you could go back to,well, maybe even, you know,
seven years isn't forever ago.
If you could go back to yourselfseven years ago, and give, you
know, a minute of advice, whatwould you say?
Brittany Brown (02:28):
Oh, man. So like, when I first started this
business, I, I really wanted toown a business, like I wanted a
shot in the head, I wasdefinitely not somebody who was
like, seeking the journey ofentrepreneurship. And it was, I
also entered that with very,very little professional
experience when I first began,like, I basically graduated from
(02:49):
college and, and worked very,very part time for about three
years. So by the time I startedthe business, I had the
equivalent of about one year offull time experience. And so I
literally knew nothing. I mean,I didn't even have work
experience to fall back on, Ibarely knew how to be an
accountant, let alone how to bea CEO. And so everything,
(03:13):
everything, everything was sucha challenge, I had only
interviewed for, I'd onlyinterviewed for maybe like, had
like three interviews during myexit from college. And,
therefore, just the process ofhiring people, I didn't even
know what to fall back on. Andso every single aspect of it was
(03:33):
really difficult. And if I couldgo back and go back to that
seven year old ago, self, Iwould just tell her, like,
you're going to be successful,you just have to be willing to
lean into all the learningcurves that are gonna come at
you, like you will come out theother side of this, and you'll
be so glad you did it. Butyou're gonna have to lean in
(03:53):
again and again, and again, andagain, and again. And just know
that there is like an end insight, and that you won't always
feel this way, you will alwaysfeel so overwhelmed, you won't
always have absolutely no ideawhat to do or how to do it. Just
the life of experience will getyou to where you want to be.
Just don't be afraid of leaninginto the learning curve. That's
probably what I would tellmyself.
Dale Majors (04:12):
So are you saying in one way, would I be right in
saying, you know, just enjoy,it's all going to work out? Just
enjoy it maybe a little bit morealong the way?
Brittany Brown (04:24):
Yeah, like just have just have faith in the end
result of it all and, and haveconfidence that it's going to be
okay, like that it's going, it'sgoing to work out great. You're
gonna be so glad you did it.
Therefore, you're not going todie from this experience.
Because it did. It was so hard.
There were so many pieces of itthat were so hard and didn't
have to be as hard as it waslike I was kind of an emotional
(04:45):
basket case through it because Ifelt so overwhelmed. But I would
just say breathe. It's okay.
It's gonna be all good.
Dale Majors (04:52):
Yeah, I love it.
Yeah, so I'm hearing you saylook, I was not professional. I
didn't have I didn't have Uh, Ididn't get into it with a plan.
And I didn't have muchexperience to lean on. Which
makes me wonder like, what werethose? What were those core
personality attributes that thatyou had, that you think helped
you do this?
Brittany Brown (05:16):
Yeah, you know, one of the things that I feel
like my parents instilled in meand my siblings was this
willingness to just dive in andtry things I have, I have very
gifted parents, when it comes totheir, they're just very well
balanced, diversified in skillsets, they tackle things like my
mom will be like, oh, I want tolearn how to, you know, try this
(05:38):
new craft, and she will, my dadwill be like, I want to learn
how to carve and he will. Solike, over and over again, I've
seen my parents just oh, we wantto, we want to shed in the back,
we will build it. We've neverbuilt it before. But we're going
to learn how to build it. And Ithink that they really instilled
upon us a willingness to justjump in and try something
fearlessly. And of all thethings I mean, because I've I've
(06:00):
run the gamut from every aspectof the business, because I
started as our primaryaccountant. And I, you know, had
been our primary salesperson, Ihad to build a marketing
function within ourorganization, when I had no
experience on that either had tolearn how to hire people, I
mean, you name it, I had tolearn how to do it with with no
(06:21):
previous experience at all, andjust being willing to just dive
in. So I heard this really greatquote, once that really inspired
me, and it was something alongthe lines of like, you're going
to have situations over and overagain, that make you afraid,
proceed afraid, like just go,you're scared, we get it, just
(06:41):
do it anyways. And that wasprobably like, you know, my, my
husband is now our CEO, and he'sreally just exceptionally good
at what he does. And he came tothe organization with a lot of
sound foundational knowledge andexperience that I didn't have
the benefit of that he has hadthe benefit of. And, but he will
(07:05):
always say to me, he says, Istill don't think I could have
done what you did, because Ididn't have the starter
mentality. Like I was willing tojust like he, he loves to just
tell the stories of our earlydays in the business, when, for
example, we'd hire newemployees. And I kind of knew we
should be doing like, backgroundchecks. So I would just have
them like sign this piece ofpaper that says I authorized
(07:25):
Brittany brown to do abackground check on me. And that
was like the equivalent of mythat was the equivalent of my
contract, allowing me to thenrun a background check on this
person. And it that it was soquintessential of like,
literally everything I did backthen which was like, pretty sure
I need to be doing this notreally sure how to go about it.
So here's where I'll start, justsign this piece of paper saying
(07:46):
that you authorize me to dobackground check. You know, now
we have a whole contractualprocess, a whole company company
that we contract with it runs abackground checks, a whole
process involved in it, but Ijust started with whatever I had
wherever I knew wherever wewere, and just jumped in, that's
probably the single greatestattribute that helped us get
(08:06):
going was that
Dale Majors (08:07):
I love it. So a very high bias for action and
just doing doing things.
Brittany Brown (08:15):
True. Yes. Okay, maybe even foolishly. So like,
Stephen, my, my, my husband, coOh, well, part of what keeps him
from moving forward? Is he kindof feels like he needs to have
all the questions answered. I'mnot burdened by any of that. I'm
like, who knows? Who cares?
We'll figure it out. It'll work.
Like just jump in, you know?
Dale Majors (08:34):
Yeah. No, I love it. And I think that point that
also highlights the and I guesswe haven't talked about it, but
it seems like you're stillyou're still married, you're
still in business, your businessis thriving. I'm guessing that
your two personalities playreally well together in for the
for this you know, at least forthe business benefiting from the
(08:58):
two of you being involved.
Brittany Brown (09:00):
Very very, very well balanced as a partnership.
And that has was a reallypleasant surprise for us when we
started partnering together andreally helped our personal
relationship as well because Iam very freelance rules are for
the birds like why would we needprocesses and he's very much
(09:21):
like bedtime should beconsistent and routine should be
evident. And we kind of therewas a lot of friction between us
with our personal lives becauseof this. But as we partnered in
business together, we gained apretty significant appreciation
for each other's strengthsthrough the business space,
which then played over into thepersonal lives where we were
(09:43):
able to see a lot more easilyhow our differences actually
created a lot of balance withinour personal life where it was
just inconvenient to us beforethat, after seeing him like
basically saved me from mystupid self inside business. I
became more grateful for himprocess mind and after seeing
the momentum that I created andthe opportunities that I
(10:04):
created, he became moreenthusiastic about my
spontaneity and, and lack of. Ididn't need to know all the
answers before I jumped in.
Dale Majors (10:14):
Yeah. One of my one of my biggest regrets, I think,
and I really don't have manyregrets. But I think one of my
main regrets is how much Iundervalued my father, my
father, and I built my firstcompany together, I brought him
in, like, you know, pretty earlyon when I was selling things
(10:34):
online. And I think the biggestregret is undervaluing his
contribution. Because the worldcelebrates people like me and
you, they don't celebratepeople, like your husband or my
dad, that behind the scenesperson, they celebrate the
person who's like, charging infront and, you know, has the
(10:56):
quick answers where a lot oftimes without the person in the
back, we would be, you know, wewould have like burns.
Brittany Brown (11:02):
So dead. Oh, my gosh, I like he my husband got
involved when we were about twoyears in and we had reached
about $215,000 $250,000 a yearin revenue. And I felt like I
had was literally building ahouse of cards because I just I
was basically relying on theheroics of a few key employees,
but there was no structure orprocess around it. I definitely
(11:24):
do agree with you. And part ofwhat seems unfair is they they
they don't get the credit theydeserve when really all the
credit is theirs. Butironically, those kinds of
people often are like perfectlyhappy to not take the credit as
well. So like, I'd be the onespeaking all the conferences,
I'd be the one being like theface of everything. I'd be the
one like getting all theaccolades. And I'd be like, This
(11:46):
is so unfair. Like I wasliterally building a house of
cards before he got involved.
Dale Majors (11:49):
Yeah, yeah, no, that's I, thanks for sharing
that. And I do think that'sinteresting for all those in
partnerships, or for those thatare cursed with our skill set of
being the visionary and goingout there to just really focus
on celebrating, and beinggrateful for those that are
around us. Because
Brittany Brown (12:11):
Oh, so true.
Dale Majors (12:12):
Yeah. I love that.
Brittany Brown (12:13):
I heard once I heard once this great quote that
says, a visionary is a geniuswith 1000 assistants. And like,
every single person that I hire,who's going to be close to me, I
always say like, it will be partof your brain, it will be part
of your job to project manageme, and you will be fully
empowered to call me out at anytime. Like, that's just part of
the job description, becauseit's so critical to our success,
(12:36):
that there are people around whocompensate I mean, I, I'll be
the first to say I have a lot ofstrengths, we would not be where
we are right now without me. ButI would also be the first to say
that it's critical that there beprocesses in place to protect
the organization from me. Andthat is like very key as well.
Dale Majors (12:52):
Yeah. No, I love that. And ever since I've gotten
to know you, I've realized thataction orientation, and I credit
that for a lot of the successthat I've had to is just the,
you know, being willing to justtry things. And yeah, and it's
just super impressive thatyou've been able to do that and
(13:14):
scale to as big as you guyshave. That's awesome.
Brittany Brown (13:18):
Thank you.
Thanks.
Dale Majors (13:19):
So what, what has been harder than you thought? So
you didn't go in with manyexpectations of what it would
look like. But, you know, asyour as you've been, you know,
in the business working the lastfew years? What are the things
in your service based accountingbusiness that are maybe trickier
as somebody that's sitting inyour seat, then then I might
(13:39):
think on the outside?
Brittany Brown (13:42):
You know, one of the things that's been really
hard is to is to level up. Andthat's that's like all the dress
that question twofold. One ofthem is like what's been what's
really hard and accounting fromthe people don't expect, but the
other one would be like, what'sbeen hard for me personally, is
because we've grown so fast. Andbecause I had such little
(14:02):
business experience. And leadtriggers has grown so rapidly
that we have basically had toreinvent ourselves as an
organization every every twoyears, approximately. And having
like personally having to levelup to keep up with that has been
really challenging for me andemotionally taxing but fun to
(14:24):
really exhilarating. But what'sbeen really hard within the
organization is that, you know,service based businesses are
really hard, because every timeyou sell something, you have to
have somebody who can fulfill onthat, which means a continual
process of hiring and trainingand hiring, and training and
hiring and training. And thatthat's really challenging to
(14:46):
stay on top of and we'reconstantly dealing with the
balance between that, like wehave, we have a sales and
marketing team, which actuallymakes us very unique among
accounting firms like I there'shardly any accounting firms that
I know of that actually havethose functions. means within
the organization. But as aresult, what happens is that
service delivery is constantlyfeeling victimized by cells and
(15:08):
cells is constantly annoyed atservice deliveries, like wanting
to shut things down, likeservice delivery gets
overwhelmed, they tell cells,they have to stop cells just
worked so hard to create allthis momentum. Now they want to
take advantage of the momentumthey created in service delivery
is telling us to stop. But thenservice delivery will hire one
or two people and now they'reyelling at us to sell, sell,
sell to get capacity for thosepeople to be able to have work
(15:31):
to do. And it's it's been reallyhard to manage the flow of
capacity, which sellsopportunity. And we try really
hard to be forecasting aboutthis. And we try really hard to,
you know, pre hire and getpeople up to speed in advance.
But then, you know, one keyperson within the individual,
like one key accountant willleave. And then suddenly, we
(15:54):
have an entire full time rolecapacity that we now have to
reassign to other team members.
And now all of the capacity thatwe thought we pre hired is now
no longer there. And now servicedelivery is yelling again, right
as sales is hitting their verypeak of harvesting all the work
that they've done in preparingfor a busy sell season to get
the leads coming in. And nowsources Laurie is telling us we
(16:15):
have to shut it down again. Wow.
So that's Oh, but I hope I toldthat story in a way that
conveyed the pain that weexperienced, because a very real
Sure.
thing.
Dale Majors (16:26):
Can I just take two minutes and just tell you how to
I'm just kidding.
No, I have no clue.
fix that problem?
Brittany Brown (16:32):
Oh, I was like, gosh, please like that's not to
say, oh, man, who knows.
Dale Majors (16:38):
I have no idea.
Well, and that's, I rememberbeing frustrated as a college
student when they because I,when I was in college, we had
our little business with, youknow, eight employees or
something, or 10 or 12,employees, whatever, I took a
while to go through school. So Ithink at one point, we probably
had 15 When I was in still inschool, but I remember talking
about some of these issues, andeverybody would just like, oh,
(16:58):
how do you fix this problem, andeverybody would raise their hand
and, you know, give theseanswers on how you fix the
thing. And I just, I couldn'thandle it, because I'm like, I'm
handled, I have all these sortsof problems in my business. And
it's just not as easy as you'resaying. Because people problems
are complex, complex andcomplicated. And I know, you
(17:20):
know, there are principles andother things, but until you've
like sat in the chair, and Idon't say that to discourage
anyone from getting into it, butjust to also have like, I don't
know, before giving advice onpeople problems to like
realizing this kind of stuffscomplicated, like every sales
and Mark Yeah, every sales andoperations team, you know,
(17:41):
everywhere has these, you know,some sort of tension, right?
Brittany Brown (17:48):
Mm hmm. And that's what like, luckily, I'm
so glad Steven RCO does havebusiness experience like high
level corporate experience,because he's always telling us
like, hey, this tension betweenservice delivery and sells like
it's a, it's a natural thing,like this tension will always
exist. And so it kind of keepsus from like hating on each
other. Because it's like, oh, Iguess this is like a real thing.
(18:11):
But people problems are a realissue. Because you there's so
many factors you can't control.
Like, I really wish I couldcontrol people and be like,
you're, you know, you're workinghere, and you're working here
for the next 10 years. Andthat's the way it's going to be
but like they have choice tocome and go, they have their own
dreams, they have their owngoals, like, we really, really
work hard to try and aligneverything we do with the dreams
(18:31):
and goals of our team members.
Like we really try to supportthe growth that they want to
experience and all of thosethings. And it's just, it's just
so challenging. There's so manymoving pieces, and you deal with
burnout, and maybe somebody isdoing really good. But then they
unexpectedly find themselves,you know, pregnant when they
weren't planning on it. And nowsuddenly, their entire career
(18:52):
traduction has shifted or, youknow, maybe they have a nanny
who quit. And now because all ofour employees work from home,
and so we're really affected by,you know, things like someone
had a nanny that quit on himsuddenly, and now they suddenly
are trying to work around littlekids and their capacity just
went dramatically down. Sothere's always something and
(19:13):
because our entire workforceworks from home, a large
percentage of our employees arefemale. And so we have a huge
number of maternity leaves thathit us every single year. And
it's always our most key people.
And it's like, I think one yearwe had like, for like three
years straight, we have 30% ofour team take maternity leave at
some point. And that's not asmall number, because our team
is quite large. And it was like,this is where this is where
(19:36):
people come to have babies forcrying out loud. And it was it
was it was and now we just kindof try to plan for it and try to
adjust for it. But it's it'sreally hard to plan with people.
Dale Majors (19:48):
So you well and I guess we didn't I didn't call
that out. You're one of thethings as we got, as I got to
know you a bit more and as Iread your bio In the coaching
program, I was so impressed withyour vision and your
deliberateness and like, well,in a lot of the things that you
(20:09):
do, but in just your foundingstory and seeing the need to
start a business for, for femaleaccountants to have work, work
from home work before COVID wasthe thing like because this was
really novel seven years ago,right. Now, it seems like well,
why wouldn't you have that? Youknow, that's what happens.
People do. But seven years ago,this was like, kind of
(20:31):
groundbreaking.
Brittany Brown (20:33):
Mm hmm. Very true.
Dale Majors (20:34):
That's a Yeah, that's really awesome. I, I
hadn't heard the well, you know,what you said, your husband,
Steven said about accounting andsales being a thing like, yeah,
when there is issues, like whenthere are issues like that,
sometimes we do try to fix them.
But I like that idea of, therewill always be tension. And
that's just part of thatrelationship, that there's going
(20:56):
to be some tension there. That'syeah, that's really interesting.
Brittany Brown (21:02):
Yeah, and actually, I think part of the
reason why we have grown sosuccessfully, is because we have
separated out the roles of salesand service delivery, like I
heard a really wise, somebodysay something really wise, that
says, if you really want togrow, you cannot have the same
person selling who's also goingto be delivering, because then
they feel persecuted bythemselves. So like, the person
(21:25):
who is delivering is like, oh,man, so overwhelmed, we just
can't take on more work. Andthen they, they just don't
engage in sales relatedactivities. And if you have
those two things tied together,then then you're you will always
be bottlenecking yourself,because that same person who
should be selling is also awareof the need that they're going
to then have to be deliveringit. Oh, my goodness. And so by
(21:47):
so good advice, by separatingthose two things, like our sales
team has certain quotas thatthey are required to meet. And
our service delivery team knowsthat there'll be a certain
amount of sales coming in thedoor, they're going to have to
just deliver on. And byseparating those two things out,
we we are no longer bottleneckedby by that tension, which would
(22:08):
otherwise just bottleneck theentire thing. Someone who's
overwhelmed is not going to beinclined to sell now, that
saying we try not to keep ourteam overwhelmed. But because
our service delivery team knowsthat cells will just be coming
in and because cells is notoverwhelmed by the idea of
fulfilling on it, it keeps aconstant growth going that
otherwise probably would nothave been possible. Yeah.
Dale Majors (22:28):
Okay, I owe you for this conversation. Because a lot
of my struggle, I think youpoint out really well, in my
coaching business, as I've beencreating this, you know, Venture
Anyway Mastermind that I do fromscratch, I'm kind of the guy
that does everything, like Isell it. And I don't want to
take other people's money unlessI totally like knock it out of
(22:49):
the park. And I don't know,there's just all this conflict
between my sales guy, whichactually, that's what I want to
do full time as I want to sellit, only because I enjoy
moderating conversations, and Ienjoy the delivery. But I've met
really good coaches that aregreat at doing that. And I
(23:09):
hadn't thought before aboutthose two roles, kind of needing
a competition needing somecompetition and needing to be
separate, because because I knowall of the operational things
that I could be deliveringbetter in my business. And
because I don't care as muchabout like increasing the sales.
(23:30):
I'm almost like hamstringingthe, the company, by me being
doing both roles.
Brittany Brown (23:37):
Exactly. Right.
So as we've separated those twothings, so I initially lived on
both sides of the business, Iwas managing service delivery,
and I had been our primarysalesperson up until about a
year and a half ago. It wasreally tough. And so I'm the
CPA, and I'm the accountant. Andso it made most sense for me to
be on the service delivery sideof the business, but I couldn't
(23:57):
keep myself from getting pulledinto things. And so one of the
most interesting changes we madefairly early on, was we actually
put all of service deliveryunder operations underneath my
husband, and took me outentirely out of the service
delivery, even though I was theCPA and I was the accountant,
because it allowed me to focuson the growth and the cells
without being burdened in thatway. And it really, really made
(24:20):
a big difference.
Dale Majors (24:24):
Wow. Okay, that's amazing. I'm a if I'm still the
sales guy and the delivery guyin a couple months than you need
to smack me upside the head.
Because smack you upside. I lovethat. And I think that a lot of
the service service basedbusiness businesses that I know
and work with need to hear thatadvice, because you Yeah,
(24:45):
there's too much like oh, youknow, I don't need to sell up.
If I just put my sales hat on. Iwould sell a lot more and
someone needs to full time puttheir operations hat on On in my
business, so I really appreciateyou giving me this free
counseling Brittany.
Brittany Brown (25:05):
Yeah. And then it just becomes somebody else's
problem to deliver. Right. It'slike sales just does their job
to sell it. Someone else'sproblem to deliver it.
Dale Majors (25:13):
Yeah, I love it.
Good luck. suckas. No, it's goodluck. Exactly. Good luck
seconds. Yeah, I do love that.
Well, people are capable, andthey need real problems to
solve. And I think that youalmost kind of shoot yourself in
the foot. When because you canalmost become codependent
Brittany Brown (25:29):
Oh, you know, we're just not going to sell.
Dale Majors (25:31):
And then oh, because I haven't sold I don't
have to totally like go out of Idon't have to stretch beyond
myself to deliver because theproblem is not that big, like,
creating more of a vacuum, Ithink in sales and in operations
to make I think both of those ifyou do it right, I think both
will perform better. With whatyou're saying.
Brittany Brown (25:53):
I totally agree.
Dale Majors (25:54):
Amazing. Thank you.
So how do you feel? How do youfeel you're doing as the CEO of
ledger gurus, if you were tojust give yourself like your own
little analysis scorecard? And Imight say, as you think about
that question, I might say,Well, how did you feel you were
doing five years ago? And maybeas you've like, matured in your
role? How do you feel you'redoing today? Yeah, what do you
(26:16):
think?
Brittany Brown (26:21):
Yeah. So I do feel a lot better about things
today than I did seven yearsago. But in part, I think I've
had a perspective shift. That'sreally, really helped me about
two years ago, we startedreading like the whole traction
EOS series of books, and theyreally talk about like the
difference between a visionaryand an integrator, Gino like,
(26:43):
and I think, yeah, and I thinkbefore we read that I kind of
was always really hard onmyself, because execution wasn't
my strength, and I despisedmeetings. And I really struggled
to show up in some of the waysthat like, Steven was really
good at showing up. And itseemed to be really effortless
for him. And I, it kind of mademe sort of feel like a failure,
(27:04):
because those things weren't astrength for me. And after we
read those books, we realizedlike, I'm actually a really good
visionary. And part of whatmakes me a really good visionary
is that I'm a really crappyintegrator. And so like, it's
okay that I hate meetings, andit's okay that I hate execution.
And it's okay that I hate allthose other things. And the more
(27:26):
that our business allows me toplay to my strengths, instead of
requiring me to, like compensatefor my weaknesses, the better
off we are as an organization.
So that really helped me thatwas one thing that really helped
me. But another thing thatreally helped me was several
years ago, after Stephen, I gotreally going.
(27:46):
I actually had a really badfall, I broke my ankle, I
decided I need to get back inshape. And in order to get back
in shape, I decided to join aroller derby team. And my first
night into that adventure, Ishattered my ankle. And because
at that point, I was I our ourentire sales and marketing
effort, it really affected theorganization, like it was, it
(28:06):
was it really killed a lot ofmore momentum, because for quite
a while I was unable to justengage the way I had previously.
So So yeah, so as part of thatjourney, we ended up hiring a
guy who I think at the time, Iwas, I was really planning on,
like, I really wanted to not beas involved in the business
anymore. I feel like I had putin my time and done my dues. And
(28:29):
like I mentioned, I wanted toown a business like I wanted a
shot in the head. And I wasdefinitely feeling at that time,
like the extreme stress of wherewe were at and extreme growth,
but we didn't yet have thepieces in place to allow for
that growth to not be directlyon my shoulders. And so we hired
this guy with the hope that hewould basically become a partner
(28:51):
within the organization and takeover the role that I had been
playing. And I would be able to,like quietly sneak out the back
and spend my days driving arounddrinking Dr. Pepper considering
my life choices, wondering whereI went wrong, like go back to
the life I knew and loved,right? Send the kids off to
school, veg. I mean, I'm not Idon't mean to say that, like,
I've been a stay at home mom andnot trying to minimize the role
(29:12):
they play. But I am saying like,I wanted my time back in that
way, I wanted my time to lookmore like the life I used to
have where I was just a stay athome mom and really enjoying
that lifestyle. You really havealways really loved that
lifestyle. And it just wasn't mylife anymore. And so we hired
this guy, he got involved. Hehad a lot of corporate
(29:33):
experience seemed to be exactlythe right fit for for the role
with all the resume. But he hada really bad effect on the
organization from a cultureperspective. And it ended up
being really bad for ourorganization. And I ended up
having to fire him and spentquite a bit of time helping the
(29:55):
organization recover from thatexperience and And one of the
things that really came to mefrom that was this realization
that even though I didn't havethe years of corporate
experience, even though I didn'thave the years of professional
experience, even though I was sonew and so junior to everything
that I really had no businessdoing what I was doing, that I
(30:16):
had an innate sense, an innateability that we're just
naturally who I was, that wasbetter than any years of
experience would have givenanybody. And it caused me to
appreciate that I was in therole I was supposed to be in and
that I was where I was supposedto be in life, and that I was
the right person for the job.
And it fundamentally changed mycommitment to the organization
(30:37):
and fundamentally changed beforethat, I felt like I was kind of
on a path of survival, like crapI got, I feel like I got
cornered into this. Because I,like saw the opportunity. And I
was so passionate about and I'mvery much a god person. I feel
like he was really like, Hey,this is what I want you to do.
And I was like, Please, no. AndI felt up until that point in
time, I felt very, likevictimized by the success I was
(30:59):
having. I know that sounds liketerrible, but really, like, I
was a stay at home mom, myhusband did just fine. I had
been a single mom for all theseyears, I was so happy to finally
be back in that role. We'd hadanother couple of kids together
after Stephen and I after I gotremarried. And I was so happy to
be there in that space that whensuddenly I felt like prompted to
start a business and to act onthat I felt terrorized,
(31:23):
victimized, tormented for years.
And it wasn't until we had thatexperience that I was like, I'm
right where I'm supposed to beI'm right, I'm doing exactly
what I'm supposed to be doing.
There's no better person forthis job than me. And my lack of
experience is not holding usback, that I became confidently
engaged from that point forward.
(31:48):
So that helped a lot too.
Dale Majors (31:49):
I love that. Okay, so what I'm, I'm going to write
a song, because I learned fourchords on the guitar. That's how
you don't have to be everything.
Wow. So I'll just get on that.
But that's what I'm hearing. Andthat, yeah, that that I think a
lot of times, yeah, you havethis pressure, of needing to fix
(32:12):
everything, neut needing to doeverything. And I've even even
in doing my coaching business,probably even as even last year,
and I've probably only beengetting over this the last few
months even is, there's so manythings that need to be done. And
if you're the only person any ofthose things that don't go as
(32:33):
well, you know, not you know,people don't show up for as many
calls as you want them to orwhatever else, you know, you're
like, oh, you know, what am Idoing wrong? Like, but you
can't, you just can't do that.
And that's why I start I thinkstarting up is a much harder
phase than when you have youknow, several people to help
(32:55):
compensate. Because at thebeginning, you kind of have to
do everything. But I think it isinteresting and just important,
I really am glad that you sharedthat is we don't have to be
everything forever. And maybepart of that startup phase is,
is, is surrounding yourself withother great people as quickly as
you can. So you don't have towear three backpacks going up
(33:19):
the mountain because at firstyou kind of do you kind of have
to wear like all the back youhave to. And that's just the
heart of it. But if you do that,and you know, I'm okay wearing
three backpacks for like, forlike a third of the trip, or
like, you know, a mile, but I'mnot okay, doing it like across
the country. And I think as asan entrepreneur, maybe maybe
(33:42):
it's good for people to alsorealize that, if you're in the
middle of that, you know,carrying the whole load thing
that it doesn't have to lastforever, and to find people to
help, you know, carry more ofthat burden.
Brittany Brown (33:56):
And that's exactly how the experience has
gotten better is it went frombeing really hard to being kind
of hard to being really fun wasas those pieces were in place
where I was no longer carryingthe burden and the hardest parts
of the job were shared byothers. That's what made it so
much easier and so much moreenjoyable.
Dale Majors (34:15):
Yeah, I love that.
That's funny. I really haveenjoyed how you've laid that
out. Because it's, again, Ithink good therapy. For me, as I
look at my coaching business,I'm currently carrying a couple
backpacks. And but it's fun, andI kind of enjoy, you know, a lot
of that. But it's notsustainable. To just write to
always do it all. But a lot ofpeople get stuck in that mode of
(34:38):
I just always have to carrythree backpacks and I don't
trust other people and I'm theguy that has to do everything.
So that's why we're going tocome up with this hit single you
don't have to be everything.
Brittany Brown (34:50):
Yeah, that'll be great with the course should be
something like delegatedelegate. Yes, it's going to be
just so great.
Dale Majors (35:00):
I love it. Yeah.
Well throw a little frozen inthere. Okay. Awesome. Yeah,
Delegate trust your friends.
Because the because the miserynever ends. Wait no, no, not
that.
Brittany Brown (35:15):
That's good.
That's good. You know, you askedme kind of at the beginning of
the call before we started this,you said, How would you define
that you've made it. And that'sactually the way that I would
define that is by saying, when Ireach a point where literally
any person within theorganization could quit at any
moment of time, and the burdenof it would not fall on me.
(35:37):
That's how I'll know that I'vemade it.
Dale Majors (35:42):
I love it. Yep.
Cool. That's awesome. Well,Brittany, we have reached the
magical 35 minute mark, whichall of these interviews have
ended up at. And I'm trying tothink of, so I love that you
went right into the arrived,we've talked about your
superpower, your you know, youraction orientation. Is there
(36:03):
anything that you want to add tothat? Like, is there anything
else besides the visionary, youknow, action orientation, where
you think that you justnaturally do really well, that
you want to touch on?
Brittany Brown (36:14):
Yeah, I actually feel like my other superpower is
I'm really good at finding theright people for the right job.
Like, if I have something that Ineed to have done, I'm really
good at identifying the rightperson to do it. And so whether
it's at work, whether it's athome, um, case, in point the
other day, I was like, I neededto find somebody to tutor my two
(36:36):
little kids in Spanish, becausethey're both in Spanish
immersion, but they're resistantto actually using their
language. And within 24 hours, Ihad the perfect tutor lined up
ready to roll. So like, Idefinitely have a superpower
with being able to find theright person for the right job.
And that's really helped me alot.
Dale Majors (36:52):
Awesome. Awesome.
And so how, what what do youlike, what's one issue? You
know, so you have 50 employees,you've, you've really come a
long way. And you know, you havethis great perspective, what
kind of what kind of a problem,you know, when you come into
work, when you came into workthis week? What was one of the
problems on your mind that youwere working to fix?
Brittany Brown (37:18):
So 60 employees, and one of the problems that
we're trying to fix right now isthe shortage, like the labor
shortage that's affecting theentire country is also
definitely affecting theaccounting space. Yeah. And so
we have to figure out theproblem we're trying to solve
right now is we're trying tofigure out how to apply the
principles that we've learnedand building a marketing
(37:40):
function into our HR functionnow as well. So and what I mean
by that is that if you thinkabout the way that people
approach marketing, if they'vebeen really thoughtful about it,
is they they have sort of thefunnel approach where the top of
the funnel is wide, and they'rebringing in all of these leads,
and then they're funneling themdown through until they, they
identify the ones that theyreally want to work with. And
(38:01):
then they're there. You know,turning them into marketing,
qualified leads, and thenturning them into sales,
qualified leads and trying toclose the deals well, with HR
for years, because it wasrelatively easy to find
somebody, if we needed to hiresomebody, we would just post a
listing and off we will go, we'dbe off and running. But that is
really not an option anymore.
With with how, with howrestricted the the hiring pool
(38:24):
is so small. So we basicallyneed to take the same approach
where we're now engaging withpotential employee fees long
before they're actually lookingfor a job and throwing the net
very wide, and narrowing themdown and bringing in people so
like, the HR approach that we'retaking, right, that we had
previously been taking, which isbasically, you know, post the
(38:45):
listing and wait for applicantsto come in, would be the
equivalent of us saying, Hey,we're ready for new customer.
Let's just tell everyone onFacebook, that we're ready for a
new customer and just wait forthe customers to just walk in
the door. Like that's theapproach that we've taken with
HR, because we could, but nowwe're the only...
Dale Majors (39:04):
Because you were the only stay at home, you know,
you weren't you right, one ofvery few options to stay at
Brittany Brown (39:08):
Exactly, we had no trouble at all fine, we'd
home.
have over 1000 applicants a yearwho reached out to us, well,
that's no longer the case. So wenow need to take a marketing
approach to our HR function. Andthat's a pretty unique approach
to take like, especially withinthe accounting firm space, very
unique approach to take. So wedon't really have a lot of good
models on what that would looklike or how to create that. But
(39:31):
we definitely need to do that.
And so that's one of the primaryproblems we're facing right now
is that.
Dale Majors (39:37):
What a fun problem that you get to work on?
Brittany Brown (39:40):
Yeah, it is fun problem.
Dale Majors (39:41):
That's amazing.
Yeah, I'm trying with all of myproblems. And with everybody
that I work with, I'm trying tocelebrate problems more because
it's like, we always haveproblems if it's not this other
thing.
Brittany Brown (39:51):
And every problem you have is an
opportunity to become likereally, really good because,
like I feel like we take a veryunique approach to marketing.
When you compare us to otheraccounting firms, we're about to
start taking a very uniqueapproach to HR when you compare
it to other accounting firms.
And every time we face one ofthese problems, it gives us the
opportunity to really setourselves apart and to become
marketing like industry leadersand whatever our approaches,
(40:15):
which will then give us astrategic advantage.
Dale Majors (40:19):
I love it. How can people get a hold of you?
Brittany Brown (40:23):
So you can go to our website, ledgergurus.com If
you reach out through ourcontact form there, someone at
lead triggers will reach out toyou directly if you want to talk
to me directly. You can justemail me bbrown@ledgergurus.com
be like Britney brown like thecolor ledger gurus like the way
it sounds.
Dale Majors (40:40):
Love it. And yep.
Okay, Bernie, this is great.
Thanks so much for sharing withus today.
Brittany Brown (40:44):
Yeah, thanks Dale, this has been really fun.
Thank you.
Dale Majors (40:48):
Awesome. Hey, thanks again for listening. If
there's anything I can do to behelpful to you, then you can
email me atDale@ventureanyway.com. Also, if
you know someone I shouldinterview or if you have any
suggestions on how I shouldchange the podcast, then I would
love to hear them. If you wantto learn more about my coaching
group. You can learn more atventureanyway.com And if you'd
(41:12):
like to hear babies screaming inthe background, then this is the
podcast for you.
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