Venture Anyway Builder Podcast
Venture Anyway Builder Podcast
Building an Outsourced Accounting Agency with Brittany Brown
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!
In today's episode I share with you the conversation I had with Brittany Brown of LedgerGurus. And half of this interview felt like free therapy for me, or free consulting because she gave me so many good ideas that I could apply into my business, and especially in regards to building an agency sales versus operations and some of the conflicts that can and should arise there. And I just really enjoyed some of her insights. So she built ledger gurus from zero to about 60 employees, and I'm excited for you to hear the episode. So without further ado, here it is.
VA Intro:Welcome to the venture anyway, build your podcast. Insights from the trenches by those who are busy building. When I finally embraced what I was really good at, it kind of felt like an adventure. Yeah, I really would have done a lot differently.
Dale Majors:All right. Welcome, Brittany, we are excited to have you on the show.
Brittany Brown:Thanks, Dale. Glad to be here.
Dale Majors:Or I guess I'm excited to have you on the show would probably be better English. So let's get right. Let's get started. And just have you tell us a bit about who you are your story, your current business, and then we'll go from there.
Brittany Brown:Sure. So I'm Brittany Brown. I'm the CEO of LedgerGurus. We are an outsource accounting 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 in between. We've been in business about seven years. We're a multimillion dollar accounting firm, we have about 60 employees. And I am personally a CPA, I graduated from BYU accounting program, masters and bachelors in accounting. And came through that program as a single mom, which really then informed a lot of the choices I made after that, and was really the inspiration to launch the business but that's where we're at today.
Dale Majors:I love it. Okay, so 60 employees, and how you said seven years?
Brittany Brown:Yeah.
Dale Majors: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 yourself seven years ago, and give, you know, a minute of advice, what would you say?
Brittany Brown:Oh, man. So like, when I first started this business, I, I really wanted to own a business, like I wanted a shot in the head, I was definitely not somebody who was like, seeking the journey of entrepreneurship. And it was, I also entered that with very, very little professional experience when I first began, like, I basically graduated from college and, and worked very, very part time for about three years. So by the time I started the business, I had the equivalent of about one year of full time experience. And so I literally knew nothing. I mean, I didn't even have work experience to fall back on, I barely knew how to be an accountant, let alone how to be a CEO. And so everything, everything, everything was such a challenge, I had only interviewed for, I'd only interviewed for maybe like, had like three interviews during my exit from college. And, therefore, just the process of hiring people, I didn't even know what to fall back on. And so every single aspect of it was really difficult. And if I could go back and go back to that seven year old ago, self, I would just tell her, like, you're going to be successful, you just have to be willing to lean into all the learning curves that are gonna come at you, like you will come out the other side of this, and you'll be so glad you did it. But you're gonna have to lean in again and again, and again, and again, and again. And just know that there is like an end in sight, and that you won't always feel this way, you will always feel so overwhelmed, you won't always have absolutely no idea what to do or how to do it. Just the life of experience will get you to where you want to be. Just don't be afraid of leaning into the learning curve. That's probably what I would tell myself.
Dale Majors: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 more along the way?
Brittany Brown:Yeah, like just have just have faith in the end result of it all and, and have confidence that it's going to be okay, like that it's going, it's going to work out great. You're gonna be so glad you did it. Therefore, you're not going to die from this experience. Because it did. It was so hard. There were so many pieces of it that were so hard and didn't have to be as hard as it was like I was kind of an emotional basket case through it because I felt so overwhelmed. But I would just say breathe. It's okay. It's gonna be all good.
Dale Majors:Yeah, I love it. Yeah, so I'm hearing you say look, I was not professional. I didn't have I didn't have Uh, I didn't get into it with a plan. And I didn't have much experience to lean on. Which makes me wonder like, what were those? What were those core personality attributes that that you had, that you think helped you do this?
Brittany Brown:Yeah, you know, one of the things that I feel like my parents instilled in me and my siblings was this willingness to just dive in and try things I have, I have very gifted parents, when it comes to their, they're just very well balanced, diversified in skill sets, they tackle things like my mom will be like, oh, I want to learn how to, you know, try this new craft, and she will, my dad will be like, I want to learn how to carve and he will. So like, over and over again, I've seen my parents just oh, we want to, we want to shed in the back, we will build it. We've never built it before. But we're going to learn how to build it. And I think that they really instilled upon us a willingness to just jump in and try something fearlessly. And of all the things I mean, because I've I've run the gamut from every aspect of the business, because I started as our primary accountant. And I, you know, had been our primary salesperson, I had to build a marketing function within our organization, when I had no experience on that either had to learn how to hire people, I mean, you name it, I had to learn how to do it with with no previous experience at all, and just being willing to just dive in. So I heard this really great quote, once that really inspired me, and it was something along the lines of like, you're going to have situations over and over again, that make you afraid, proceed afraid, like just go, you're scared, we get it, just do it anyways. And that was probably like, you know, my, my husband is now our CEO, and he's really just exceptionally good at what he does. And he came to the organization with a lot of sound foundational knowledge and experience that I didn't have the benefit of that he has had the benefit of. And, but he will always say to me, he says, I still don't think I could have done what you did, because I didn't have the starter mentality. Like I was willing to just like he, he loves to just tell the stories of our early days in the business, when, for example, we'd hire new employees. And I kind of knew we should be doing like, background checks. So I would just have them like sign this piece of paper that says I authorized Brittany brown to do a background check on me. And that was like the equivalent of my that was the equivalent of my contract, allowing me to then run a background check on this person. And it that it was so quintessential of like, literally everything I did back then which was like, pretty sure I need to be doing this not really sure how to go about it. So here's where I'll start, just sign this piece of paper saying that you authorize me to do background check. You know, now we have a whole contractual process, a whole company company that we contract with it runs a background checks, a whole process involved in it, but I just started with whatever I had wherever I knew wherever we were, and just jumped in, that's probably the single greatest attribute that helped us get going was that
Dale Majors:I love it. So a very high bias for action and just doing doing things.
Brittany Brown:True. Yes. Okay, maybe even foolishly. So like, Stephen, my, my, my husband, co Oh, well, part of what keeps him from moving forward? Is he kind of feels like he needs to have all the questions answered. I'm not 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:Yeah. No, I love it. And I think that point that also highlights the and I guess we haven't talked about it, but it seems like you're still you're still married, you're still in business, your business is thriving. I'm guessing that your two personalities play really well together in for the for this you know, at least for the business benefiting from the two of you being involved.
Brittany Brown:Very very, very well balanced as a partnership. And that has was a really pleasant surprise for us when we started partnering together and really helped our personal relationship as well because I am very freelance rules are for the birds like why would we need processes and he's very much like bedtime should be consistent and routine should be evident. And we kind of there was a lot of friction between us with our personal lives because of this. But as we partnered in business together, we gained a pretty significant appreciation for each other's strengths through the business space, which then played over into the personal lives where we were able to see a lot more easily how our differences actually created a lot of balance within our personal life where it was just inconvenient to us before that, after seeing him like basically saved me from my stupid self inside business. I became more grateful for him process mind and after seeing the momentum that I created and the opportunities that I created, he became more enthusiastic about my spontaneity and, and lack of. I didn't need to know all the answers before I jumped in.
Dale Majors:Yeah. One of my one of my biggest regrets, I think, and I really don't have many regrets. But I think one of my main regrets is how much I undervalued my father, my father, and I built my first company together, I brought him in, like, you know, pretty early on when I was selling things online. And I think the biggest regret is undervaluing his contribution. Because the world celebrates people like me and you, they don't celebrate people, like your husband or my dad, that behind the scenes person, they celebrate the person who's like, charging in front and, you know, has the quick answers where a lot of times without the person in the back, we would be, you know, we would have like burns.
Brittany Brown:So dead. Oh, my gosh, I like he my husband got involved when we were about two years in and we had reached about $215,000 $250,000 a year in revenue. And I felt like I had was literally building a house of cards because I just I was basically relying on the heroics of a few key employees, but there was no structure or process around it. I definitely do agree with you. And part of what seems unfair is they they they don't get the credit they deserve when really all the credit is theirs. But ironically, those kinds of people often are like perfectly happy to not take the credit as well. So like, I'd be the one speaking all the conferences, I'd be the one being like the face of everything. I'd be the one like getting all the accolades. And I'd be like, This is so unfair. Like I was literally building a house of cards before he got involved.
Dale Majors:Yeah, yeah, no, that's I, thanks for sharing that. And I do think that's interesting for all those in partnerships, or for those that are cursed with our skill set of being the visionary and going out there to just really focus on celebrating, and being grateful for those that are around us. Because
Brittany Brown:Oh, so true.
Dale Majors:Yeah. I love that.
Brittany Brown:I heard once I heard once this great quote that says, a visionary is a genius with 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 part of your brain, it will be part of your job to project manage me, and you will be fully empowered to call me out at any time. Like, that's just part of the job description, because it's so critical to our success, that there are people around who compensate I mean, I, I'll be the first to say I have a lot of strengths, we would not be where we are right now without me. But I would also be the first to say that it's critical that there be processes in place to protect the organization from me. And that is like very key as well.
Dale Majors:Yeah. No, I love that. And ever since I've gotten to know you, I've realized that action orientation, and I credit that for a lot of the success that I've had to is just the, you know, being willing to just try things. And yeah, and it's just super impressive that you've been able to do that and scale to as big as you guys have. That's awesome.
Brittany Brown:Thank you. Thanks.
Dale Majors:So what, what has been harder than you thought? So you didn't go in with many expectations of what it would look like. But, you know, as your as you've been, you know, in the business working the last few years? What are the things in your service based accounting business that are maybe trickier as somebody that's sitting in your seat, then then I might think on the outside?
Brittany Brown:You know, one of the things that's been really hard is to is to level up. And that's that's like all the dress that question twofold. One of them is like what's been what's really hard and accounting from the people don't expect, but the other one would be like, what's been hard for me personally, is because we've grown so fast. And because I had such little business experience. And lead triggers has grown so rapidly that we have basically had to reinvent ourselves as an organization every every two years, approximately. And having like personally having to level up to keep up with that has been really challenging for me and emotionally taxing but fun to really exhilarating. But what's been really hard within the organization is that, you know, service based businesses are really hard, because every time you sell something, you have to have somebody who can fulfill on that, which means a continual process of hiring and training and hiring, and training and hiring and training. And that that's really challenging to stay on top of and we're constantly dealing with the balance between that, like we have, we have a sales and marketing team, which actually makes us very unique among accounting firms like I there's hardly any accounting firms that I know of that actually have those functions. means within the organization. But as a result, what happens is that service delivery is constantly feeling victimized by cells and cells is constantly annoyed at service deliveries, like wanting to shut things down, like service delivery gets overwhelmed, they tell cells, they have to stop cells just worked so hard to create all this momentum. Now they want to take advantage of the momentum they created in service delivery is telling us to stop. But then service delivery will hire one or two people and now they're yelling at us to sell, sell, sell to get capacity for those people to be able to have work to do. And it's it's been really hard to manage the flow of capacity, which sells opportunity. And we try really hard to be forecasting about this. And we try really hard to, you know, pre hire and get people up to speed in advance. But then, you know, one key person within the individual, like one key accountant will leave. And then suddenly, we have an entire full time role capacity that we now have to reassign to other team members. And now all of the capacity that we thought we pre hired is now no longer there. And now service delivery is yelling again, right as sales is hitting their very peak of harvesting all the work that they've done in preparing for a busy sell season to get the leads coming in. And now sources Laurie is telling us we have to shut it down again. Wow. So that's Oh, but I hope I told that story in a way that conveyed the pain that we experienced, because a very real Sure. thing.
Dale Majors: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:Oh, I was like, gosh, please like that's not to say, oh, man, who knows.
Dale Majors:I have no idea. Well, and that's, I remember being frustrated as a college student when they because I, when I was in college, we had our little business with, you know, eight employees or something, or 10 or 12, employees, whatever, I took a while to go through school. So I think at one point, we probably had 15 When I was in still in school, but I remember talking about some of these issues, and everybody would just like, oh, how do you fix this problem, and everybody would raise their hand and, you know, give these answers on how you fix the thing. And I just, I couldn't handle it, because I'm like, I'm handled, I have all these sorts of problems in my business. And it's just not as easy as you're saying. Because people problems are complex, complex and complicated. And I know, you know, there are principles and other things, but until you've like sat in the chair, and I don't say that to discourage anyone from getting into it, but just to also have like, I don't know, before giving advice on people problems to like realizing this kind of stuffs complicated, like every sales and Mark Yeah, every sales and operations team, you know, everywhere has these, you know, some sort of tension, right?
Brittany Brown:Mm hmm. And that's what like, luckily, I'm so glad Steven RCO does have business experience like high level corporate experience, because he's always telling us like, hey, this tension between service delivery and sells like it's a, it's a natural thing, like this tension will always exist. And so it kind of keeps us from like hating on each other. Because it's like, oh, I guess this is like a real thing. But people problems are a real issue. Because you there's so many factors you can't control. Like, I really wish I could control people and be like, you're, you know, you're working here, and you're working here for the next 10 years. And that's the way it's going to be but like they have choice to come and go, they have their own dreams, they have their own goals, like, we really, really work hard to try and align everything we do with the dreams and goals of our team members. Like we really try to support the growth that they want to experience and all of those things. And it's just, it's just so challenging. There's so many moving pieces, and you deal with burnout, and maybe somebody is doing really good. But then they unexpectedly find themselves, you know, pregnant when they weren't planning on it. And now suddenly, their entire career traduction has shifted or, you know, maybe they have a nanny who quit. And now because all of our employees work from home, and so we're really affected by, you know, things like someone had a nanny that quit on him suddenly, and now they suddenly are trying to work around little kids and their capacity just went dramatically down. So there's always something and because our entire workforce works from home, a large percentage of our employees are female. And so we have a huge number of maternity leaves that hit us every single year. And it's always our most key people. And it's like, I think one year we had like, for like three years straight, we have 30% of our team take maternity leave at some point. And that's not a small number, because our team is quite large. And it was like, this is where this is where people come to have babies for crying out loud. And it was it was it was and now we just kind of try to plan for it and try to adjust for it. But it's it's really hard to plan with people.
Dale Majors:So you well and I guess we didn't I didn't call that out. You're one of the things as we got, as I got to know you a bit more and as I read your bio In the coaching program, I was so impressed with your vision and your deliberateness and like, well, in a lot of the things that you do, but in just your founding story and seeing the need to start a business for, for female accountants to have work, work from home work before COVID was the thing like because this was really novel seven years ago, right. Now, it seems like well, why wouldn't you have that? You know, that's what happens. People do. But seven years ago, this was like, kind of groundbreaking.
Brittany Brown:Mm hmm. Very true.
Dale Majors: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 and sales being a thing like, yeah, when there is issues, like when there are issues like that, sometimes we do try to fix them. But I like that idea of, there will always be tension. And that's just part of that relationship, that there's going to be some tension there. That's yeah, that's really interesting.
Brittany Brown:Yeah, and actually, I think part of the reason why we have grown so successfully, is because we have separated out the roles of sales and service delivery, like I heard a really wise, somebody say something really wise, that says, if you really want to grow, you cannot have the same person selling who's also going to be delivering, because then they feel persecuted by themselves. So like, the person who is delivering is like, oh, man, so overwhelmed, we just can't take on more work. And then they, they just don't engage in sales related activities. 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 aware of the need that they're going to then have to be delivering it. Oh, my goodness. And so by so good advice, by separating those two things, like our sales team has certain quotas that they are required to meet. And our service delivery team knows that there'll be a certain amount of sales coming in the door, they're going to have to just deliver on. And by separating those two things out, we we are no longer bottlenecked by by that tension, which would otherwise just bottleneck the entire thing. Someone who's overwhelmed is not going to be inclined to sell now, that saying we try not to keep our team overwhelmed. But because our service delivery team knows that cells will just be coming in and because cells is not overwhelmed by the idea of fulfilling on it, it keeps a constant growth going that otherwise probably would not have been possible. Yeah.
Dale Majors:Okay, I owe you for this conversation. Because a lot of my struggle, I think you point out really well, in my coaching business, as I've been creating this, you know, Venture Anyway Mastermind that I do from scratch, I'm kind of the guy that does everything, like I sell it. And I don't want to take other people's money unless I totally like knock it out of the park. And I don't know, there's just all this conflict between my sales guy, which actually, that's what I want to do full time as I want to sell it, only because I enjoy moderating conversations, and I enjoy the delivery. But I've met really good coaches that are great at doing that. And I hadn't thought before about those two roles, kind of needing a competition needing some competition and needing to be separate, because because I know all of the operational things that I could be delivering better in my business. And because I don't care as much about like increasing the sales. I'm almost like hamstringing the, the company, by me being doing both roles.
Brittany Brown:Exactly. Right. So as we've separated those two things, so I initially lived on both sides of the business, I was managing service delivery, and I had been our primary salesperson up until about a year and a half ago. It was really tough. And so I'm the CPA, and I'm the accountant. And so it made most sense for me to be on the service delivery side of the business, but I couldn't keep myself from getting pulled into things. And so one of the most interesting changes we made fairly early on, was we actually put all of service delivery under operations underneath my husband, and took me out entirely out of the service delivery, even though I was the CPA and I was the accountant, because it allowed me to focus on the growth and the cells without being burdened in that way. And it really, really made a big difference.
Dale Majors:Wow. Okay, that's amazing. I'm a if I'm still the sales guy and the delivery guy in a couple months than you need to smack me upside the head. Because smack you upside. I love that. And I think that a lot of the service service based business businesses that I know and work with need to hear that advice, because you Yeah, there's too much like oh, you know, I don't need to sell up. If I just put my sales hat on. I would sell a lot more and someone needs to full time put their operations hat on On in my business, so I really appreciate you giving me this free counseling Brittany.
Brittany Brown:Yeah. And then it just becomes somebody else's problem to deliver. Right. It's like sales just does their job to sell it. Someone else's problem to deliver it.
Dale Majors:Yeah, I love it. Good luck. suckas. No, it's good luck. Exactly. Good luck seconds. Yeah, I do love that. Well, people are capable, and they need real problems to solve. And I think that you almost kind of shoot yourself in the foot. When because you can almost become codependent
Brittany Brown:Oh, you know, we're just not going to sell.
Dale Majors:And then oh, because I haven't sold I don't have to totally like go out of I don't have to stretch beyond myself to deliver because the problem is not that big, like, creating more of a vacuum, I think in sales and in operations to make I think both of those if you do it right, I think both will perform better. With what you're saying.
Brittany Brown:I totally agree.
Dale Majors:Amazing. Thank you. So how do you feel? How do you feel you're doing as the CEO of ledger gurus, if you were to just give yourself like your own little analysis scorecard? And I might say, as you think about that question, I might say, Well, how did you feel you were doing five years ago? And maybe as you've like, matured in your role? How do you feel you're doing today? Yeah, what do you think?
Brittany Brown:Yeah. So I do feel a lot better about things today than I did seven years ago. But in part, I think I've had a perspective shift. That's really, really helped me about two years ago, we started reading like the whole traction EOS series of books, and they really talk about like the difference between a visionary and an integrator, Gino like, and I think, yeah, and I think before we read that I kind of was always really hard on myself, because execution wasn't my strength, and I despised meetings. And I really struggled to show up in some of the ways that like, Steven was really good at showing up. And it seemed to be really effortless for him. And I, it kind of made me sort of feel like a failure, because those things weren't a strength for me. And after we read those books, we realized like, I'm actually a really good visionary. And part of what makes me a really good visionary is that I'm a really crappy integrator. And so like, it's okay that I hate meetings, and it's okay that I hate execution. And it's okay that I hate all those other things. And the more that our business allows me to play to my strengths, instead of requiring me to, like compensate for my weaknesses, the better off we are as an organization. So that really helped me that was one thing that really helped me. But another thing that really helped me was several years ago, after Stephen, I got really going. I actually had a really bad fall, I broke my ankle, I decided I need to get back in shape. And in order to get back in shape, I decided to join a roller derby team. And my first night into that adventure, I shattered my ankle. And because at that point, I was I our our entire sales and marketing effort, it really affected the organization, like it was, it was it really killed a lot of more momentum, because for quite a while I was unable to just engage the way I had previously. So So yeah, so as part of that journey, we ended up hiring a guy who I think at the time, I was, I was really planning on, like, I really wanted to not be as involved in the business anymore. I feel like I had put in my time and done my dues. And like I mentioned, I wanted to own a business like I wanted a shot in the head. And I was definitely feeling at that time, like the extreme stress of where we were at and extreme growth, but we didn't yet have the pieces in place to allow for that growth to not be directly on my shoulders. And so we hired this guy with the hope that he would basically become a partner within the organization and take over the role that I had been playing. And I would be able to, like quietly sneak out the back and spend my days driving around drinking Dr. Pepper considering my life choices, wondering where I 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 I don't mean to say that, like, I've been a stay at home mom and not trying to minimize the role they play. But I am saying like, I wanted my time back in that way, I wanted my time to look more like the life I used to have where I was just a stay at home mom and really enjoying that lifestyle. You really have always really loved that lifestyle. And it just wasn't my life anymore. And so we hired this guy, he got involved. He had a lot of corporate experience seemed to be exactly the right fit for for the role with all the resume. But he had a really bad effect on the organization from a culture perspective. And it ended up being really bad for our organization. And I ended up having to fire him and spent quite a bit of time helping the organization recover from that experience and And one of the things that really came to me from that was this realization that even though I didn't have the years of corporate experience, even though I didn't have the years of professional experience, even though I was so new and so junior to everything that I really had no business doing what I was doing, that I had an innate sense, an innate ability that we're just naturally who I was, that was better than any years of experience would have given anybody. And it caused me to appreciate that I was in the role I was supposed to be in and that I was where I was supposed to be in life, and that I was the right person for the job. And it fundamentally changed my commitment to the organization and fundamentally changed before that, I felt like I was kind of on a path of survival, like crap I got, I feel like I got cornered into this. Because I, like saw the opportunity. And I was so passionate about and I'm very 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. And I felt up until that point in time, I felt very, like victimized by the success I was having. I know that sounds like terrible, but really, like, I was a stay at home mom, my husband did just fine. I had been a single mom for all these years, I was so happy to finally be back in that role. We'd had another couple of kids together after Stephen and I after I got remarried. And I was so happy to be there in that space that when suddenly I felt like prompted to start a business and to act on that I felt terrorized, victimized, tormented for years. And it wasn't until we had that experience that I was like, I'm right where I'm supposed to be I'm right, I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. There's no better person for this job than me. And my lack of experience is not holding us back, that I became confidently engaged from that point forward. So that helped a lot too.
Dale Majors:I love that. Okay, so what I'm, I'm going to write a song, because I learned four chords 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. And that, yeah, that that I think a lot of times, yeah, you have this pressure, of needing to fix everything, neut needing to do everything. And I've even even in doing my coaching business, probably even as even last year, and I've probably only been getting over this the last few months even is, there's so many things that need to be done. And if you're the only person any of those things that don't go as well, you know, not you know, people don't show up for as many calls as you want them to or whatever else, you know, you're like, oh, you know, what am I doing wrong? Like, but you can't, you just can't do that. And that's why I start I think starting up is a much harder phase than when you have you know, several people to help compensate. Because at the beginning, you kind of have to do everything. But I think it is interesting and just important, I really am glad that you shared that is we don't have to be everything forever. And maybe part of that startup phase is, is, is surrounding yourself with other great people as quickly as you can. So you don't have to wear three backpacks going up the mountain because at first you kind of do you kind of have to wear like all the back you have 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, for like a third of the trip, or like, you know, a mile, but I'm not okay, doing it like across the country. And I think as as an entrepreneur, maybe maybe it's good for people to also realize that, if you're in the middle of that, you know, carrying the whole load thing that it doesn't have to last forever, and to find people to help, you know, carry more of that burden.
Brittany Brown:And that's exactly how the experience has gotten better is it went from being really hard to being kind of hard to being really fun was as those pieces were in place where I was no longer carrying the burden and the hardest parts of the job were shared by others. That's what made it so much easier and so much more enjoyable.
Dale Majors:Yeah, I love that. That's funny. I really have enjoyed how you've laid that out. Because it's, again, I think good therapy. For me, as I look at my coaching business, I'm currently carrying a couple backpacks. And but it's fun, and I kind of enjoy, you know, a lot of that. But it's not sustainable. To just write to always do it all. But a lot of people get stuck in that mode of I just always have to carry three backpacks and I don't trust other people and I'm the guy that has to do everything. So that's why we're going to come up with this hit single you don't have to be everything.
Brittany Brown:Yeah, that'll be great with the course should be something like delegate delegate. Yes, it's going to be just so great.
Dale Majors:I love it. Yeah. Well throw a little frozen in there. Okay. Awesome. Yeah, Delegate trust your friends. Because the because the misery never ends. Wait no, no, not that.
Brittany Brown:That's good. That's good. You know, you asked me 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's actually the way that I would define that is by saying, when I reach a point where literally any person within the organization could quit at any moment of time, and the burden of it would not fall on me. That's how I'll know that I've made it.
Dale Majors:I love it. Yep. Cool. That's awesome. Well, Brittany, we have reached the magical 35 minute mark, which all of these interviews have ended up at. And I'm trying to think of, so I love that you went right into the arrived, we've talked about your superpower, your you know, your action orientation. Is there anything that you want to add to that? Like, is there anything else besides the visionary, you know, action orientation, where you think that you just naturally do really well, that you want to touch on?
Brittany Brown:Yeah, I actually feel like my other superpower is I'm really good at finding the right people for the right job. Like, if I have something that I need to have done, I'm really good at identifying the right person to do it. And so whether it's at work, whether it's at home, um, case, in point the other day, I was like, I needed to find somebody to tutor my two little kids in Spanish, because they're both in Spanish immersion, but they're resistant to actually using their language. And within 24 hours, I had the perfect tutor lined up ready to roll. So like, I definitely have a superpower with being able to find the right person for the right job. And that's really helped me a lot.
Dale Majors:Awesome. Awesome. And so how, what what do you like, what's one issue? You know, so you have 50 employees, you've, you've really come a long way. And you know, you have this great perspective, what kind of what kind of a problem, you know, when you come into work, when you came into work this week? What was one of the problems on your mind that you were working to fix?
Brittany Brown:So 60 employees, and one of the problems that we're trying to fix right now is the shortage, like the labor shortage that's affecting the entire country is also definitely affecting the accounting space. Yeah. And so we have to figure out the problem we're trying to solve right now is we're trying to figure out how to apply the principles that we've learned and building a marketing function into our HR function now as well. So and what I mean by that is that if you think about the way that people approach marketing, if they've been really thoughtful about it, is they they have sort of the funnel approach where the top of the funnel is wide, and they're bringing in all of these leads, and then they're funneling them down through until they, they identify the ones that they really want to work with. And then they're there. You know, turning them into marketing, qualified leads, and then turning them into sales, qualified leads and trying to close the deals well, with HR for years, because it was relatively easy to find somebody, if we needed to hire somebody, we would just post a listing and off we will go, we'd be off and running. But that is really not an option anymore. With with how, with how restricted the the hiring pool is so small. So we basically need to take the same approach where we're now engaging with potential employee fees long before they're actually looking for a job and throwing the net very wide, and narrowing them down and bringing in people so like, the HR approach that we're taking, right, that we had previously been taking, which is basically, you know, post the listing and wait for applicants to come in, would be the equivalent of us saying, Hey, we're ready for new customer. Let's just tell everyone on Facebook, that we're ready for a new customer and just wait for the customers to just walk in the door. Like that's the approach that we've taken with HR, because we could, but now we're the only...
Dale Majors:Because you were the only stay at home, you know, you weren't you right, one of very few options to stay at
Brittany Brown:Exactly, we had no trouble at all fine, we'd home. have over 1000 applicants a year who reached out to us, well, that's no longer the case. So we now need to take a marketing approach to our HR function. And that's a pretty unique approach to take like, especially within the accounting firm space, very unique approach to take. So we don't really have a lot of good models on what that would look like or how to create that. But we definitely need to do that. And so that's one of the primary problems we're facing right now is that.
Dale Majors:What a fun problem that you get to work on?
Brittany Brown:Yeah, it is fun problem.
Dale Majors:That's amazing. Yeah, I'm trying with all of my problems. And with everybody that I work with, I'm trying to celebrate problems more because it's like, we always have problems if it's not this other thing.
Brittany Brown:And every problem you have is an opportunity to become like really, really good because, like I feel like we take a very unique approach to marketing. When you compare us to other accounting firms, we're about to start taking a very unique approach to HR when you compare it to other accounting firms. And every time we face one of these problems, it gives us the opportunity to really set ourselves apart and to become marketing like industry leaders and whatever our approaches, which will then give us a strategic advantage.
Dale Majors:I love it. How can people get a hold of you?
Brittany Brown:So you can go to our website, ledgergurus.com If you reach out through our contact form there, someone at lead triggers will reach out to you directly if you want to talk to me directly. You can just email me bbrown@ledgergurus.com be like Britney brown like the color ledger gurus like the way it sounds.
Dale Majors:Love it. And yep. Okay, Bernie, this is great. Thanks so much for sharing with us today.
Brittany Brown:Yeah, thanks Dale, this has been really fun. Thank you.
Dale Majors:Awesome. Hey, thanks again for listening. If there's anything I can do to be helpful to you, then you can email me at Dale@ventureanyway.com. Also, if you know someone I should interview or if you have any suggestions on how I should change the podcast, then I would love to hear them. If you want to learn more about my coaching group. You can learn more at ventureanyway.com And if you'd like to hear babies screaming in the background, then this is the podcast for you.
