We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Melissa Leon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Melissa, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?
Two Sense started kind of by accident. My grandmother’s Home Owners Association asked me to review their P&L once a year as a check and balance to their volunteer Treasurer. I worked in accounting and was fully qualified to help, so I said yes immediately. A few years later, a friend asked me if I would do his bookkeeping for him. He was buried in a start-up website business and didn’t know what he didn’t know about accounting. I gladly agreed but decided I should set up an LLC now that I had two paying customers. That year happened to be 2020, and by the time the company registered in the state, we were in total COVID lockdown. Soon every small business owner I knew was asking for help to get their books in shape so they could apply for the government assistance programs. Former colleagues, friends of friends, everyone was coming out of the woodwork needing help. At the same time, a long-time friend and colleague of mine was a victim of the COVID job reductions and suddenly out-of-work. I called her and said, “I started this company, and so many people need help. I’m not sure if it will go anywhere, but I’m having a good time. Are you interested in doing it with me?” Of course, she said yes, and two and half years later, here we are. A real business helping dozens of outstanding small businesses do what they do best. When we started, we scaled by alternating clients. She took one; I took one. Then we started getting multiple clients simultaneously and had to modify. The first thing we did was hire an admin who could help us create the things we needed. Our list included an onboarding process, standard/recurring emails, email signature files, basic flyers for inquiries, website details, social media accounts, and Google Drive folders. She helped us set up a “Google My Business” account, set up Calendly and Time Trackers, and gather client birthdays to send out treats. She helped us run the admin part of the business so we could do what we loved – accounting. It cut into our profit, allowing us to scale faster than if we had not had her. Following that model, we continued adding more services and hiring more help. We hired a course creator to build our online course (www.TwoSenseConsulting.com/CFOCourse) and a podcast editor to help us run The Efficiency Bitch Podcast. The more help we paid for, the more the profit came in as we were able to spend our time and energy on the areas that excited and energized us versus the things that zapped us.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Between the two of us, we have been in accounting for thirty-five years. I think the thing that makes us so unique is that we are not typical accountants. We were raised in the luxury hospitality world – we learned customer service from the best in the business. We like people, like what we do, and have a great time doing it. We are mothers to young children and practice what we preach by doing what we love and outsourcing the rest. We both love to give back to our communities and volunteer on advisory boards, at our kid’s schools, and anywhere else our hearts desire. We both have a passion for helping the young women of the next generation drive toward a career knowing they can do so without sacrificing motherhood (if they so choose). We are advocates for optimizing time and money to live a life of freedom and harmony.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
The best source of new clients for any business is word of mouth. Always! Tell a friend and leave a review if you love a product or service – if you don’t love the product or service, tell the owner quietly. Small business owners are up against deep pressure when it comes to being perfect. If McDonald’s messes up an order, the customer rolls their eyes but often will return. If a small business makes a mistake, people usually roll their eyes, demand a refund, embarrass the chef and leave a terrible review. I always encourage people to buy local but also remember that they are just that, locals. Praise in public and reprimand in private is my motto for managing people and as a consumer of small business services.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
I think it’s all about treating people well. From the first meeting with a potential client, we try to set the stage for how they will be treated. We arrive on time, professionally dressed, smiling, and happy to see them. We send birthday cards to all clients with Dairy Queen gift cards and thank you cards to all podcast guests. We believe treating people with kindness and paying attention to the details is essential. We are far from perfect; if and when we make mistakes, we own them and correct them immediately. Being in a service-based business is about people and learning from each opportunity. We never also treat the people who work for us, from employees and contractors to vendors, with great respect. If you treat the people who help you like “the help,” your reputation for the way you treat people will far outway the five-star reviews from clients.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.TwoSenseConsulting.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/two.sense.consulting/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TwoSenseConsulting/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/two-sense-consulting
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNXKPHWR7nHdO3pyrlLoGXw
- Other: The Efficiency Bitch Podcast www.TwoSenseConsulting.com/CFOcourse
Image Credits
Priscilla Marchal Photography