Courtney is an owner at The Bookkeeper, a fast-growing business bookkeeping and CFO consulting firm. She got her start in accounting as a 15-year-old intern, and loved the industry right from the beginning. Before The Bookkeeper, she worked in corporate, CPA offices, and governmental accounting.
She is a life-long native of the Raleigh-Durham Triangle area, and outside of the office, enjoys hiking and backpacking.
- CEO Hack: Constant communication with my team
- CEO Nugget: Be authentic, true to yourself
- CEO Defined: Being the person responsible for the company
Website: http://www.thebookkeepernc.com/
Twitter: www.twitter.com/thebookkeepernc
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thebookkeepernc
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/thebookkeepernc
Full Interview
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Transcription
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Intro 0:02
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.
Gresham Harkless 0:26
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Courtney Barbee of The Bookkeeper. Courtney, it's awesome to have you on the show.
Courtney Barbee 0:26
Thank you. It's good to be here.
Gresham Harkless 0:28
Great to have you on and what I want to do is read a little bit more about Courtney so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Courtney is the owner of The Bookkeeper a fast-growing business, bookkeeping, and CFO consulting firm. She got her started in accounting as a 15-year-old intern and love the industry right from the beginning. Before the bookkeeper, she worked in corporate CPA offices and governmental accounting. She is a lifelong native of the Raleigh Durham triangle area and outside of the office enjoys hiking and backpacking. Courtney, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?
[restrict paid=”true”] – Beginning
Courtney Barbee 1:06
I'm ready.
Gresham Harkless 1:07
Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was a here a little bit more about your CEO story, what led you to start your business?
Courtney Barbee 1:13
You know, I'd always loved accounting and the problem that you run into working in corporate or governmental offices, you kind of end up doing the same thing over and over and I'm here in Raleigh-Durham triangle, a huge startup tech world and saw all these companies that needed some help. So it's like, okay, now this is going to be the kitchen table side job that my father and I were going to be together. It just exploded, we had to quit our day jobs, we had to hire staff, we have to get an office, and it took off so quickly. So that's kind of how I became an accidental CEO.
Gresham Harkless 1:44
There you go. It's funny, you say that sometimes, as you said, you just think it's gonna be like a side business or a side hustle, and then next thing, you know, everybody's craving exactly what it is that you're providing because you're providing such a great need. Things just kind of take off from there.
Courtney Barbee 1:56
Yeah, we were not prepared.
Gresham Harkless 1:59
Yes, it's funny. I always, talk with people. Sometimes everyone wants to be able to prepare everything, have all the ducks in a row before they take action but sometimes you just have to take that first step and then things start to sometimes get in line there.
Courtney Barbee 2:10
Right. Well, especially in my industry, we're all about preparation. So when you're just kind of holding on to the rocketship without any real control, it's a little scary.
Gresham Harkless 2:17
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I know I touch on a little bit when I read your bio, could you tell us a little bit more on how you're serving clients and what exactly you guys do?
Courtney Barbee 2:25
Yeah, we try to kind of just fill whatever needs the client has. We work with a little bit shy of 200 companies right now and some of them are one-person startups who just need somebody kind of set them on the right course, and give them a little bit of setup and training for their financial systems. Then we've got a multimillion 250 employing midsize business where we're the whole outsourced accounting department. We're paying all the bills, we're running payroll, we're the CFO doing our projections, expansion planning, and things like that. So of course, 100 different things in between.
Gresham Harkless 2:25
Yeah, absolutely. A little something for everybody, which is awesome. So it doesn't matter what I guess stage or even size a company is but they're able to work with you.
Courtney Barbee 3:04
Yeah and I have a real heart for the startups, right? Because that's who this community is. I mean, it's a small business startup, inventor, and tech community around here. So I love working with those, people who haven't gotten funding yet or are on a really limited budget, and just helping them as much as we can, while they're getting themselves up and running. Just giving some guidance.
Gresham Harkless 3:23
Yeah, that makes perfect sense and it's funny because I've always heard you know, whenever you start a business, you want to make sure that you have an accountant, CPA, you want to have that in place along with an attorney, and things like that, is that one of the things you would definitely recommend to especially if you're starting out, or even if you're more established to make sure you have that taken care of?
Courtney Barbee 3:38
Oh, yeah, definitely the attorney and then the accountant. I mean as an example, I had a client who accidentally made $2 million last year, things like that just took off really quickly. So they kind of called this emergency huddle in November and it was me, their tax preparer, their financial advisor, their attorney, and we just figured out how are we going to protect these guys? Because, again, they weren't expecting that to happen and then they didn't have a ton of systems in place.
Gresham Harkless 4:03
Yeah. Yeah, it's funny you say that I say a lot of times the most important thing, sometimes it's not necessarily having the things in place, obviously, you want to whenever possible, but making sure you know who to call when something like that happens so you can tap into that expertise that you guys have.
Courtney Barbee 4:18
Yeah, yeah and we do a lot of pro bono work for people who are just kind of getting going for nonprofits. We always like, we always hope people will ask us for help, even if they're not quite ready to hire. Yeah.
Gresham Harkless 4:29
That's awesome. Now, I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce, and this could be for you or your organization, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart to make you guys unique?
Courtney Barbee 4:38
You know, in general, our industry is full of people who are very reserved and very rigid thinkers. That's not us at all. We're people-people, we're a little bit creative. We try to work with systems that make sense for the client. So whereas they might come to somebody and they're like, you're gonna use this platform, and here's how we're going to do it. We'd like to see how we fit into that client's business and how we support them without trying to order them around or taking things over.
Gresham Harkless 4:38
Yeah, that's absolutely huge. Correct me if I'm wrong for what I hear from that as well, too, is you're actually sitting down and figuring and doing that due diligence sounds like in the very beginning to understand what that client, how they worked, what their ecosystem is, and then you're figuring out how best you can support them.
Courtney Barbee 5:18
Yeah, I mean, even just figuring out what's the best accounting software for somebody. It's not going to be the same for each client. So we try to really stay on top of the new and upcoming ones too, so that we can recommend something new if that's a good fit.
Gresham Harkless 5:29
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app or book or habit that you have, but it's something that you feel makes you more effective and efficient.
Courtney Barbee 5:41
Honestly, since we've had rapid growth, I would just say, having constant communication with your team and, always checking in, to see how you can support them. I'm very much an open-door ball, in terms of one having questions, or something bothering them. I mean, I couldn't do any of this on my own so just having that relationship with my people, and them knowing I got their back has been everything.
Gresham Harkless 6:03
Yeah, I can imagine that. And especially, when you have a team, you have employees, you have, people that are kind of on the same page, you're not necessarily always going to be over them doing exactly, checking and making sure they're doing everything exactly right but to make sure they have that open door policy, and also you guys are having and striving for the same mission is definitely something that's really big. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or if you can happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?
Courtney Barbee 6:32
So you know, I'm only 33 and the company just turned six. So I was pretty young when I started and I felt like I needed to have, the long hair and a bun and we're all black and be very serious. It was so disingenuous, and people picked up on that. So when I stopped taking myself seriously and stop let go of what that CEO of a bookkeeping firm should look like. We had all this success because people respond to honesty. I mean, clearly, I'm not necessarily what most people would expect looking for an accountant.
Gresham Harkless 7:01
No, but it is like kind of like that. I don't know, it's kind of a buzzword now but it's so true. Like that authenticity, you being who you are and to me, and I don't know, if you found this, a lot of times when you are consistent with that you attract those same people or the right people a lot of times just because they can it's kind of like a vibe thing but a lot of times you can pick up on that with people.
Courtney Barbee 7:21
Yeah, and again, especially here in the startup world, the young inventors, don't want that middle-aged guy and a three-piece suit. He's not someone they're going to trust, they want to talk to the young woman with their head shaved, trying to help them out.
Gresham Harkless 7:34
Exactly, exactly. That makes perfect sense. Do you find like, there's certain things are kind of, I don't want to call them landmines, that might be too excessive, but things that people like startups could you potentially do to make sure they have all their ducks in a row or a little bit better prepared?
Courtney Barbee 7:48
You know, it's heartbreaking to have to say it but cash controls, make sure that whoever's tracking the money is not the person spending the money. We see it all the time and we see it a lot in family businesses, which is what's really sad, but if you can just remove the temptation early on and have those systems in place, that's a big landmine people step on.
Gresham Harkless 8:08
Yeah, that makes sense. It's kind of like the checks and balances, making sure that you're holding, the team accountable. You're holding, family business, whatever it is that, as you said, the person that's writing the checks, not spending the money and taking into money, so on and so forth, things like that. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different “CEOs” on this show. So I want to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?
Courtney Barbee 8:32
Being the person who, for better or for worse, is responsible for the company. Hopefully, you get to take some credit, you also take a lot of blame.
Gresham Harkless 8:39
Absolutely, absolutely. I know you mentioned too, that a lot of times people have a certain picture of especially like you said, in the accounting world of what being a “CEO” of an accountant is. So it's great to see that one of the things we're trying to echo is that there are all different types of “CEOs” and people that can run businesses, and anybody can definitely do that. I'm sure you experienced that a lot.
Courtney Barbee 8:58
Absolutely. I mean, so many of our clients are jeans and T-shirt types, and we love it.
Gresham Harkless 9:03
Exactly, exactly. So Courtney, I truly appreciate your time, what I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional as far as advice or just any information you can tell for entrepreneurs and business owners, and then also how best they can get a hold of you.
Courtney Barbee 9:18
My kind of personal motto is that I take the business seriously, and I never take myself seriously. There's gonna be a lot of failures. I think you just gotta roll with it and never take it personally. If people do want to get in touch with us, we've got free counsel, we do. We've got a contact form on our website. It's www.thebookkeepernc.com and also people are free to call the office at 9195783886. Happy to talk to people.
Gresham Harkless 9:45
Awesome, awesome, awesome. We'll have that information and links in the show notes as well too. Just to clarify, can anybody do you have to be based in North Carolina to reach out to you to work with you?
Courtney Barbee 9:55
No, that's the magic of the internet. We got clients all over the country and a few Internationals.
Gresham Harkless 10:01
There you go. Awesome. So anybody can definitely reach out. So we'll have all those links in the show notes. Courtney, thank you so much for taking some time out. Thank you so much for all the awesome things you're doing to help out these startups and all the massive growth that you guys have had and happy birthday as well too. Happy six years.
Courtney Barbee 10:17
Thank you.
Gresham Harkless 10:17
I hope you guys have a great rest of the day.
Courtney Barbee 10:19
Alright, thanks, you too.
Outro 10:21
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
Intro 0:02
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.
Gresham Harkless 0:26
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Courtney Barbee of The Bookkeeper. Courtney, it's awesome to have you on the show.
Courtney Barbee 0:26
Thank you. It's good to be here.
Gresham Harkless 0:28
Great to have you on and what I want to do is read a little bit more about Courtney so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Courtney is an owner of The bookkeeper a fast growing business, bookkeeping and CFO consulting firm. She got her started in accounting as a 15 year old intern and love the industry right from the beginning. Before the bookkeeper, she worked in corporate CPA offices and governmental accounting. She is a lifelong native of the Raleigh Durham triangle area and outside of the office enjoys hiking and backpacking. Courtney, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?
Courtney Barbee 1:06
I'm ready.
Gresham Harkless 1:07
Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was a here a little bit more about your CEO story, what led you to start your business?
Courtney Barbee 1:13
You know, I'd always loved accounting and the problem that you run into working in corporate or governmental offices, you kind of end up doing the same thing over and over and I'm here in Raleigh Durham triangle, huge startup tech world and saw all these companies that needed some help. So it's like, okay, now this is going to be the kitchen table side job that my father and I were going to be together. It just exploded, we had to quit our day jobs, we had to hire staff, we have to get an office, it took off so quickly. So that's kind of how I became an accidental CEO.
Gresham Harkless 1:44
There you go. It's funny, you say that sometimes, like you said, you just think it's gonna be like a side business or a side hustle and then next thing, you know, everybody's craving exactly what it is that you're providing, because you're providing such a great need. Things just kind of take off from there.
Courtney Barbee 1:56
Yeah, we were not prepared.
Gresham Harkless 1:59
Yes, it's funny. I always, talk with people. Sometimes everyone wants to be able to prepare everything, have all the ducks in a row before they take action but sometimes you just have to take that first step and then things start to sometimes get in line there.
Courtney Barbee 2:10
Right. Well, especially in my industry, we're all about preparation. So when you're just kind of holding on to the rocketship without any real control, it's a little scary.
Gresham Harkless 2:17
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I know I touch on a little bit when I read your bio, could you tell us a little bit more on how you're serving clients and what exactly you guys do?
Courtney Barbee 2:25
Yeah, we try to kind of just fill whatever need the client has. We work with a little bit shy of 200 companies right now and some of them are one person startups who just need somebody kind of set them on the right course, give them a little bit of setup and training for their financial systems. Then we've got multimillion 250 employing midsize businesses where we're the whole outsourced accounting department. We're paying all the bills, we're running payroll, we're the CFO doing our projections, expansion planning, things like that. So of course, 100 different things in between.
Gresham Harkless 2:25
Yeah, absolutely. A little something for everybody, which is awesome. So it doesn't matter what I guess stage or even size a company is but they're able to work with you.
Courtney Barbee 3:04
Yeah and I have a real heart for the startups, right? Because that's who this community is. I mean, it's a small business startup, inventor, tech community around here. So I love working with those, people who haven't gotten funding yet or on a really limited budget, and just helping them as much as we can, while they're getting themselves up and running. Just giving some guidance.
Gresham Harkless 3:23
Yeah, that makes perfect sense and it's funny, because I've always heard you know, whenever you start a business, you want to make sure that you have accountant, CPA, you want to have that in place along with an attorney and things like that, is that one of the things you would definitely recommend to especially if you're starting out, or even if you're more established to make sure you have that taken care of?
Courtney Barbee 3:38
Oh, yeah, definitely the attorney and then the the accountant. I mean as an example, I had a client who accidentally made $2 million last year, things like that just took off really quickly. So they kind of called this emergency huddle in November and it was me, their tax preparer, their financial advisor, their attorney, and we just figured out how are we going to protect these guys? Because, again, they weren't expecting that to happen and then they didn't have a ton of systems in place.
Gresham Harkless 4:03
Yeah. Yeah, it's funny you say that I say a lot of times the most important thing, sometimes it's not necessarily having the things in place, obviously, you want to whenever possible, but making sure you know who to call when something like that happens so you can tap into that expertise that you guys have.
Courtney Barbee 4:18
Yeah, yeah and we do a lot of pro bono work for people who are just kind of getting going for nonprofits. We always like, we always hope people will ask us for help, even if they're not quite ready to hire. Yeah.
Gresham Harkless 4:29
That's awesome. Now, I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce, and this could be for you or your organization, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart to make you guys unique?
Courtney Barbee 4:38
You know,in general, our industry is full of people who are very reserved and very rigid thinkers. That's not us at all. We're people-people, we're a little bit creative. We try to work with systems that make sense for the client. So whereas they might come to somebody and they're like, you're gonna use this platform, and here's how we're going to do it. We'd like to see how we fit into that client's business and how we support them without trying to order them around or taking things over.
Gresham Harkless 4:38
Yeah, that's absolutely huge. Correct me if I'm wrong for what I hear from that as well, too, is you're actually sitting down and figure and doing that due diligence sounds like in the very beginning to understand what that client, how they worked, what their ecosystem is, and then you're figuring out how best you can support them.
Courtney Barbee 5:18
Yeah, I mean, even just figuring out what's the best accounting software for somebody. It's not going to be the same for each client. So we try to really stay on top of the new and upcoming ones too, so that we can recommend something new if that's a good fit.
Gresham Harkless 5:29
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app or book or habit that you have, but it's something that you feel like makes you more effective and efficient.
Courtney Barbee 5:41
Honestly, since we've had the rapid growth, I would just say, having constant communication with your team and, always checking in, seeing how you can support them. I'm very much an open door balls, in terms of one has questions, or something's bothering them. I mean, I couldn't do any of this on my own so just having that relationship with my people, and them knowing I got their back has been everything.
Gresham Harkless 6:03
Yeah, I can imagine that. And especially, when you have a team, you have employees, you have, people that are kind of on the same page, you're not necessarily always going to be over them doing exactly, checking and making sure they're doing everything exactly right but to make sure they have that open door policy, and also you guys are having and striving for the same mission is definitely something that's really big. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or if you can happen to a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?
Courtney Barbee 6:32
So you know, I'm only 33 and the company just turned six. So I was pretty young when I started and I felt like I needed to have, the long hair and a bun and we're all black and be very serious. It was so disingenuous, and people picked up on that. So when I stopped taking myself seriously and stop let go what that CEO of a bookkeeping firm should look like. We had all this success because people respond to honesty. I mean, clearly, I'm not necessarily what most people would expect looking for an accountant.
Gresham Harkless 7:01
No, but it is like kind of like that. I don't know, it's kind of a buzzword now but it's so true. Like that authenticity, you being who you are and to me, and I don't know, if you found this, a lot of times when you are consistent with that you attract those same people or the right people a lot of times just because they can it's kind of like a vibe thing but a lot of times you can pick up on that with people.
Courtney Barbee 7:21
Yeah, and again, especially here in the startup world, the young inventors, they don't want that middle aged guy and a three piece suit. He's not someone they're going to trust, they want to talk to the young woman with their head shaved, trying to help themout.
Gresham Harkless 7:34
Exactly, exactly. That makes perfect sense. Do you find like, there's certain things are kind of, I don't want to call them landmines, that might be too excessive, but things that people like startups could you potentially do to make sure they have all their ducks in a row or a little bit better prepared?
Courtney Barbee 7:48
You know, it's heartbreaking to have to say it but cash controls, making sure that whoever's tracking the money is not the person spending the money. We see it all the time and we see it a lot in family businesses, which is what's really sad, but if you can just remove the temptation early on and have those systems in place, that's a big landmine people step on.
Gresham Harkless 8:08
Yeah, that makes sense. It's kind of like the checks and balances, making sure that you're holding, the team accountable. You're holding, family business, whatever it is that, like you said, the person that's writing the checks, not spending the money and taking into money, so on and so forth, things like that. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different "CEOs" on this show. So I want to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?
Courtney Barbee 8:32
Being the person who, for better or for worse, is responsible for the company. Hopefully, you get to take some credit, you also take a lot of blames.
Gresham Harkless 8:39
Absolutely, absolutely. I know you mentioned too, that a lot of times people have a certain picture of especially like you said, in the accounting world of what being a "CEO" of an accountant is. So it's great to see that one of the things we're trying to echo is that there's all different types of "CEOs" and people that can run businesses, and anybody can definitely do that. I'm sure you experienced that a lot.
Courtney Barbee 8:58
Absolutely. I mean, so many of our clients are jeans and T shirt types, and we love it.
Gresham Harkless 9:03
Exactly, exactly. So Courtney, I truly appreciate your time, what I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional as far as advice or just any information you can tell for entrepreneurs and business owners, and then also how best they can get a hold of you.
Courtney Barbee 9:18
My kind of personal motto is that I take the business seriously, and I never take myself seriously. There's gonna be a lot of failures. I think you just gotta roll with it and never take it personally. If people do want to get in touch with us, we've got a free counsel, we do. We've got a contact form on our website. It's www.thebookkeepernc.com and also people are free to call the office at 9195783886. Happy to talk to people.
Gresham Harkless 9:45
Awesome, awesome, awesome. We'll have that information and links in the show notes as well too. Just to clarify, can anybody do you have to be based in North Carolina to reach out to you to work with you?
Courtney Barbee 9:55
No, that's the magic of the internet. We got clients all over the country and a few Internationals.
Gresham Harkless 10:01
There you go. Awesome. So anybody can definitely reach out. So we'll have all those links in the show notes. Courtney, thank you so much for taking some time out. Thank you for so much for all the awesome things you're doing to help out these startups and all the massive growth that you guys have had and happy birthday as well too. Happy six years.
Courtney Barbee 10:17
Thank you.
Gresham Harkless 10:17
I hope you guys have a great rest of the day.
Courtney Barbee 10:19
Alright, thanks, you too.
Outro 10:21
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
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