Being a Non-Traditional Leader | Brandy Burch

Most interviews with CEOs are pretty stories with the ivy league schools, Y-Combinators, and funding from thin air.

One of the goals of Strategy & Leadership club is to shed light on the stories we don’t often see or hear.

Stories that are unlike the rest and today we’ve got a very interesting story.

I introduce Brandy Burch - the CEO of benefitbay.

Brandy has a story unlike other CEOs - one that inspires all the misfits out there.

From being a single mom with six daughters to leading benefitbay with 20+ employees, here is her story and lessons she’s learned.

Q: Before we get into being a CEO and lessons you’ve learned, take us back to high school and how you even got into business?

I didn't know in high school that I wanted to go into business. I was a teen mom and had a baby at the age of 17 and so I worked as a nanny.

After graduating high school I started working for a CPA and working for her and helping her when the children were napping and doing other things led me to realize that maybe accounting could be a fit for me.

I originally thought I wanted to be a math teacher, but this is how I decided or landed on moving to a business trajectory.

Q: How does it feel transitioning from working in the world of accounting to then becoming a VP of Operations then CEO?

It's been a transition. I'm used to numbers that are black and white and there's no gray space. While in the CEO seat there's a lot of gray spaces. You have to make decisions based on either long term strategy, cash flow, human capital adjustments or needs.

Maybe you don't have the star player that you need in a certain role and you have to play towards strengths and cover up for weaknesses. So it's just been a real transition for me to navigate additional moving parts of the business as well as to really not have that shelter of someone above.

It's the buck stops with me. If benefitbay is not successful, it is because I am not doing a good job as a leader.

Q: What are some lessons you’ve learned around the mindset required to be an effective leader?

I think the most important is to be transparent and that builds trust. So sharing the good, the bad, the ugly. That allows people to really lean in and believe in you.

Especially when it may be a little shaky in a fundraising environment for a new business, the customers may not come on at the volume we had anticipated and so then they know she's going to tell us the truth, we're going to make a plan and we're going to survive whatever bump in the road we face.

Then in the same respect, it builds that trust for when things are going well that you'll put the right pieces in place to continue that success. So we've had that time period where we survived something really scary. I think that built trust in the team. I think it built a lot of compassion and passion for each other on the team because we all kind of dug in together and said we're going to do this thing.

Q: As a leader being able to read people is very important, how do you go about reading someones intentions? What are some red flags?

They immediately try to sell you and so sometimes the intention may be that we're going to get together, see if there are strategic relationships, and immediately the conversation goes to opportunities that help them be successful.

Rather than having a genuine conversation about how either your two careers could complement each other, or your two businesses could complement each other, or how you could support each other in the future.

So I think that tells pretty quick. I had several people early in my career that called on me all the time. I was more close minded to those conversations back then. Not because I was busy raising a family me, and I was post divorce, and I didn't feel my personal story was something that anyone would be open arms to.

So I created all those barriers myself and I was also spread pretty thin. So I said a lot of no's to those opportunities and then later when I met those individuals, I wish I had met them so much sooner.

What I assumed is they were trying to outreach to sell me because I was in a CFO role and in a decision making role. They were really reaching out to see how I could support Kansas City and other leaders in that space, or up and coming leaders and those were some opportunities that I'm glad I finally did say yes to.

But I cut out a good ten year window of benefiting from that. I do get thousands of emails that are cold, that are handled from all of the new AI bots and all of the sales opportunities. So I have to try to navigate that.

It's not easy and sometimes we do miss something that could have been a great opportunity and sometimes we do waste our time. But it's really a numbers game and you're going to find your network if you continue to have an open mind about it.

Q: How did you deal with the biases associated with coming from a non-traditional background?

I think just being open minded on the calls and being transparent, it's very easy for me to speak about the business, to talk about the operational statistics, to talk about my team, to lead with passion.

So as long as you're talking confidently, you're able to build that trust with the investor across from the seat and you're able to share the ups, the downs, the story, the hope, the dream of the future.

I think at some point, once you're on that call, your resume doesn't matter. It matters how you speak during that call and how they feel and if they're able to understand what the opportunity that you're presenting.

Connect with Brandy Burch on Linkedin and visit benefitbay to learn more about what they do.