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Hey, what is up?
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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.
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As always, I'm your host, brian Lofermento, and I am so excited about today's guest because this is someone who not only is incredibly accomplished in her professional career, not only does she run an incredible business that does meaningful work that unlocks growth for others, but I love the way she articulates it, the way that her messaging is, because she makes it really clear how we can unlock that growth in our own businesses.
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And before I tell you about her, I actually want to read from her website here on the air, because I think that you're immediately going to see why we've been so excited to have today's guest on the show.
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Here's what she's written on her website Inefficient operations can cripple your startup, leading to missed deadlines, wasted resources and unhappy customers.
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You are wearing too many hats and unsure where to focus your limited time and resources.
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Good news you're in the right place and that's because you're in great hands, because today's guest is the amazing Brenna Souza.
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Brenna is the founder of Resonate Growth, which is an operational consulting firm for early-stage startups and small businesses.
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As a Silicon Valley veteran, she spent 10 years supporting innovative entrepreneurs and driving success for some of the Valley's most successful founders.
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She's worked with executives in every department across multiple industries, including tech, government, banking and real estate.
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Her tenure in the startup ecosystem allowed her to dip into the secret sauce, see what makes them tick and spot when they're about to trip over their own shoelaces, which, for all of us who are not only wearing a million hats, but we're involved in so many different projects.
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It's going to be so cool to hear Brenna's backstory and behind the scenes from all these businesses she's helped grow.
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Brenna herself is also a serial entrepreneur and, prior to Silicon Valley, she owned a real estate appraisal firm for 10 years in Northern California.
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In 2020, she relocated to Texas.
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She took a sabbatical to focus on health and development.
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We're going to talk about that for sure, because that's the life of an entrepreneur.
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She's now returned to entrepreneurship by merging her passion for helping others with her operational expertise.
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In her free time, you can find her hiking, gardening or testing products for her organic aromatherapy line.
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Yes, brenna's a hustler, just like all of us.
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I'm excited to learn from her, so I'm not going to say anything else.
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Let's dive straight into my interview with brenna souza.
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All right, bren, I'm so very excited that you're here with us today.
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First things first, welcome to the show.
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Thank you, Brian.
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I'm excited to be here.
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Really, I appreciate the opportunity.
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Heck.
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Yes, I could brag about all of your accomplishments and the cool work that you do all day long, but before we get to the crux of the work that you do with Resonate Growth, take us beyond the bio.
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Who's Brenna?
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How'd you start doing all these cool things?
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Yeah, I mean it's a journey.
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Right, life's a journey.
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Well, like you mentioned, I'm originally from Northern California, lived there all my life till I relocated here to Texas about four years ago, originally went to college and got a degree in tech.
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It was called management information systems at the time.
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I don't know if they still have that degree, but it's kind of bridged the gap between computer science and business, and I'll date myself here.
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When I graduated, the dot-com bubble burst that year.
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So what was kind of a guaranteed job was like now, no job.
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So at that point sort of had to regroup and, to be honest, it wasn't my passion, it was something.
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It was a lesson in what happens when you follow your heart and maybe pursue security over passion.
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So it forced me to sort of regroup and real estate was booming at the time and I always loved real estate.
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So, being that I'm not a salesperson, that's not my genius I decided to pursue appraising and that's an apprenticeship.
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You have to apprentice for 2000 hours and I hounded a couple brothers in the area to train me and after about two years I got my license and actually became the youngest female appraiser in Northern California for a few years and shortly after I opened my own firm and I absolutely loved what I did.
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It was just something different every day.
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But then the real estate market crashed in 2008.
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And I would say within a year the government came in with a lot of regulation and changed the industry completely, and not really for the better.
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So it was again.
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It was time to sort of reinvent myself again, and that took some soul searching.
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It took me a few years to really get a job that was meaningful and surprised me, but turns out a lot of employers don't feel comfortable hiring people who've been self employed for a long time, which which I get really right.
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But not only that.
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I just didn't know where I would fit, you know, in an organization, and neither did they.
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But after about two years I did find my niche, moved down to San Francisco, which I loved, and became an assistant to a CEO and it made sense to help other people run their business and that sort of started my foray into partnering with executives and I worked for a consulting firm.
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We were very busy, did a lot of government contracts, worked with a lot of commercial real estate vendors in the city and eventually I moved over to corporate, which was First Republic Bank, which they're no longer.
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That bank went under, I think in 2023.
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But I supported the CIO there and that's when I really learned like corporate was just not for me and he moved on to retirement.
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I took that as my opportunity to get into startups and I spent the next 10 years really loving that and worked from some really genius people of all ages, all backgrounds, very technical products, like you mentioned in my bio multiple different executives, all the way to CEOs and founders and really, like I said, I really enjoyed that.
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And then summer 2020, I got laid off after COVID hit and I just took that as my opportunity to relocate and I moved to Texas.
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But prior to that, I took a bit of like an 18 month sabbatical and I camped and I hiked and I just took time off to find myself, eventually decided that I wanted to take all my wisdom and then sort of my love for helping young founders and leading them and put it into one package and that's how I got here to resonate growth.
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Yes, I love that overview, brenna, for so many reasons, and particularly because, obviously, I mean it's in the name of your company.
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So there's no way to get around the fact that you love growth.
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You've lived inside of growth and so many different components.
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But I want to start with, obviously, the crux of where you focus on growth, and that is operations because I'm going to call this out, I'll use myself as a very poor example is that when I started my first business, I was 19, brenna, I had no idea what operations were.
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I had no idea how real businesses operated.
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And so, for me, when I thought about real businesses it was a term I used very frequently in my mind is I was just like, what am I doing differently that real businesses are actually doing?
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Because I want to start doing those things.
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To me, my operations was my to-do list, like it was my email inbox.
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It was things that were dictated just by the forces of what was happening.
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Take us beyond that, that more mature view of operations.
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What is operations?
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What are all the components that it touches and that separates real businesses from those who are just starting out, that don't have those structures in place?
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Right.
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I mean, I think at its basic core, I see operations as just you're kind of the day to day, almost minutiae I hate to call it that but you have to follow a series of processes to stay organized.
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Right, you want to stay organized, you don't want to miss things.
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You got to hire people.
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You need to get an accounting firm, hiring consultants there's all these kind of little things that need to be established, and then in each of those departments, there's so many things that you just don't, you just don't know about and, like you said, you're very young.
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You get started and I think a lot, a lot of these VCs I tend to a large majority of my clients are BC backed startups and that's a younger set, right Early twenties.
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Oftentimes they're coming right out of college.
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They may have worked at like a Google or a Facebook, one of the Fang companies, and they have no idea either.
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Right, and they have a genius idea.
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A lot of millions of dollars is thrown at them and some contacts.
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Nobody teaches them how to hire, how to effectively plan to recruit, how to set up some checklists, some forms, just templates, basic things that will keep you organized.
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So when you're doing the more high level strategic work.
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You're not like, you don't get bogged down in did I do this, did I do that?
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You're just like checking boxes and setting yourself up for success.
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And this is a lot of things I a lot of times I tell my the founders I work with like it's so simple to just spend a little time in the beginning and get organized with your operations.
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How are you going to do X, y and Z?
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I need a chart of accounts.
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Let me get an accountant to set that up.
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How does accounting talk to sales?
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How does sales then talk to you?
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Know, I don't know IT.
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They all need to work together, all these departments.
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And when you don't really take the holistic view into account or you don't know what you don't know, you really can set yourself up for a lot of problems down the road.
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And what I find is a lot of founders who don't come from operational background right, they're like oh, I'll do that later, I can take care of that later, I'll hire somebody to do this later.
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And 20, 30, 50 people in their head count is now much larger and the problem what would have been an easy you know, something you could have built in a week, now becomes a massive retrofitting excursion and it costs up six figures.
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Maybe you know to fix, so hope that answers your question.
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Yeah, for sure it does.
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Because, brent, I'm sure you also appreciate this, this is something that I love having these types of conversations about how nonlinear business and life and entrepreneurship and growth journeys always are, because hearing you talk about these things, you can effortlessly rattle off.
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You know, we need accounting operations, we need sales operations, we need communication channels between departments.
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You know, know all of these things, but I love the fact that you very correctly and transparently point out that we don't know what we don't know.
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And so, thinking about your average entrepreneur, your average founder, whatever term we want to use today, it kind of is this case of we're in the game, we're on the playing field and we'll figure things out as they arise, versus having a more experienced mind like yourself to come in and say, hey, here's what's going to happen, not just today, but later on in the game, let's address these now.
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How much of that is balancing Okay, this is what we're currently facing, let's figure it out along the way versus this super strategic and intentional approach that you bring to the table.
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Right.
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I mean there is a healthy balance.
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Not obviously when you're, say, a VC backed founder I'll just use that VC backed company as an example.
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You want to go build the product.
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You're aiming towards product market fit, customer acquisition and really your foot needs to be on the gas in that direction.
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And there are some things that can be left, can be fixed later.
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But I think the balance is number one to prioritize people operations and to prioritize financial operations.
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A lot of other things can be let go, but if you don't prioritize financial operations and just getting in, you know basic, making sure you're doing your reporting, making sure you have the right chart of accounts and of course you'd hire a consultant to you know, do this for you.
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But when you're not prioritizing financial stuff, that comes back to really bite you in the butt in terms of taxes, penalties, that kind of stuff.
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And when you have to pay an accountant to fix something that you may have not been doing for the past year or two, that's obviously more expensive.
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On the people operation side, certainly there's AI and technology can really take us pretty far, but you still need people to build your business, to help you build your product, and your first 10, 100 hires are the most important in your business, and especially at the first 10 to 15, because their happiness and really you're going to need them basically to help you recruit more talent.
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So their happiness is paramount.
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Getting them onboarded efficiently is paramount and I think there's a lot of you know here's your laptop, let's code that goes on in the Valley and I've experienced that and there's a time and place for that.
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Maybe your first few employees, but I would say definitely at five people and on.
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It's really time to have building blocks and put time into building blocks for recruiting, to set yourself up to recruit the right talent, to not waste time there and then to onboard them in an organized way, a compliant way and a welcoming way, a way that makes them happy that they chose your startup over the 10 other offers that they received.
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So I think maybe that's kind of the balance there's.
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Just you got to get those things really nailed down.
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Otherwise, I think a good example of not doing this there's a lot of examples I could use, but one would be if you've neglected, you hire a remote workforce and you're just hiring, hiring, hiring and you've neglected to establish nexus in particular states, which is easy to miss it can be.
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And then you bring on, you know head of HR at some point and that head of HR has realized that you haven't been doing that or the employee files are not compliant, you've missed filling out some forms.
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You're probably not going to be audited or sued.
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But that head of HR, instead of getting on the roadmap for which you hired them to do, but that head of HR, instead of getting on the roadmap for which you hired them to do, they're spending weeks or months on this operational minutiae right, bringing everything forward, bringing everything into compliance, and you're spending 200 grand or more right on this person's salary and the first few months are spent doing very basic things.
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So it's just a massive, massive financial resource suck.
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Yeah, brenna, I'll tell you what you talk about this balance of figuring out along the way versus the intentionality that you talk about.
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I want to bring another balance into the conversation because it's something that was apparent to me when I was looking over your messaging and the way that you position yourself in the marketplace, and I don't see this balance called out often enough, and it is strategic versus tactical.
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It's something that I so appreciate about your service offerings is you very readily say, yeah, we can work on the tactical stuff workflows, checklists, tools, systems that's tactical stuff as well as the strategic, the bigger thinking because you've been there, you've been behind the scenes, you've seen fast growing companies Talk to us about that.
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Because I'll be honest with you, I only learned the difference between strategy and tactics over a chess board.
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I once asked a master chess player.
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I was like what is the difference?
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I mean, I feel like I don't have strategy or tactics.
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I just learned how to play chess and the guy said to me he goes well, strategy is knowing what to do when there's nothing to do, and tactics are knowing what to do when there's something to do.
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If there's a piece that you can take for free on a chessboard.
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That's a tactic.
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You don't need a longer-term strategy to know to take that piece.
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Talk to us about that in the right tactics, with the right overarching strategy.
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Yeah, that's a good question, I think.
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Strategically, I think it really helps number one, if you're a founder, to have a network of founders, because these are the kinds of things you can discuss right, when did you make a decision that ended up being a mistake?
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How do we strategize together?
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I think for me and I hope this is going in the direction you're looking for but when I worked for executives and we would strategize, it was more about long-term planning, like, okay, we need to do these, this is what we know we need to do now.
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Let's get these tactical things in place.
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And then what we want to do is we're going to bring in this department head and then that person is going to build out this you know their department.
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Then we're going to go international this department head and then that person's going to build out this you know their department.
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Then we're going to go international, etc.
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Etc.
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Etc.
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But setting up checkpoints along the way before you move on to that next phase.
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And when I work and supported very experienced executives who had done it before versus a younger set of executives who were new, they're like very keen about knowing, okay, we need to hit these, like particular time blocks, okay, we're going to do these things and then we'll see where we land.
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And then we'll do some more tactical stuff and then we'll see where we land and knowing like sort of the different things that can come in to derail you along the way.
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And I think a lot of what I bring in terms of strategy to my clients and when I was supporting executives same with them was when they want to make a decision in a moment and it's like okay, if you here's what my experience has shown me If you make that decision, here's one of two outcomes.
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This is probably what's going to happen based on what I've seen, or here's the positive of that decision, here's the negative, here's other alternative decisions that we could make and here's the outcome that I've seen of those types of decisions.
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So, in terms of strategizing, it's really trying to think of the long game and the stepping stones that will get you there.
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A lot of times when we think big picture and I kind of suffer from this in my sort of aromatherapy business, I've just sometimes want to be five years down the road and I neglect a lot of just the building blocks in between because I'm excited about the creative process, I'm not focusing on the operations.
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So it's a little bit like that, I think, with the founders that I've worked with.
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Right, they know their inherent genius and they're just wanting to get to the end game and they don't always have somebody to bounce these ideas off of, certainly not somebody who's seen a lot.
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Hope that helps.
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Yeah, it's really well said, Brennan.
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I appreciate that example because I know it's going to resonate with 100% of our listeners.
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We all feel that way.
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That's so deeply embedded in the way that our entrepreneurial minds think is we're so hungry, we have so many ideas and we want that growth now.
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But you talk about different decision points along the way and actually I want to expand that a little bit and talk about inflection points along the way, because, if I brag for you for a quick second here, you've worked with the CEOs and founders of companies that have a $43 billion with a B dollar valuation, for example, another company that was acquired for $3.2 billion, again with a B.
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So, brenna, you've seen these massive stages and scales of growth.
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But it also means you've seen behind the scenes that there are inflection points along the way.
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Neither of those companies got into the billions overnight.
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They once were worth a dollar or $10.
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And so there's a lot of growth that happens between there.
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That's a giant gap.
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There are many inflection points along the way.
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Talk to us about some of those inflection points.
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Is it things that they decided that just happened to work out?
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Is it great product market fit that they were able to establish?
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Was it incredible operations behind the scenes that just unlocked all those layers, so nothing was standing in the way so they could grow?
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Give us some of those behind the scenes insights.
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Sure, I think that there's a lot that goes into that right, this tremendous success, and say, with the one that's the $43 billion, one Databricks, a lot of their success.
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So I think I was employee 119, maybe there, so pretty early on we were series B and a lot of their success.
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First of all, the CEO is a genius and multiple founders.
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They had five, I think, co-founders, five or six great investors and the investor, their main investor, ben Horowitz a lot of people may know him.
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He's an operator.
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Horowitz A lot of people may know him, he's an operator.
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He's built companies and not a lot of VCs have been operators.
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They haven't gone in and built companies themselves.
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They're genius at what they do and spotting talent and opportunity.
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But that was one of the things that helped right Genius people and the right investors and you can be intentional about your investors.
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You don't have to accept everyone that comes your way.
00:22:50.285 --> 00:22:55.565
So there's that Also great product, great product, market fit.
00:22:55.565 --> 00:22:56.548
I mean that company.
00:22:56.548 --> 00:23:00.821
Everyone wants what they have, which is why their valuation is so high.
00:23:00.821 --> 00:23:04.166
Very talented employees.
00:23:04.166 --> 00:23:06.049
They were great at hiring.
00:23:06.049 --> 00:23:16.853
They hired the right people and put a lot of intention into that and they focused on they didn't really focus on operations.
00:23:16.853 --> 00:23:18.663
I'll say I did a lot of that.
00:23:18.663 --> 00:23:24.022
But by the time I had gotten there there was like a head of HR and there were a few department heads already.
00:23:24.022 --> 00:23:38.365
I more played a larger role in bridging the gap between all the departments and then growing with the CEO through all of these sort of different stages, and that was a 3x hyper growth company.
00:23:38.365 --> 00:23:50.654
I mean we were hiring I don't know, we would have like 20 or 30 new hires every single Monday, but they still managed to hire great people even at that scale, at that amount.
00:23:50.654 --> 00:23:58.817
So I would say for them, those were some of the main things that really made them successful.
00:23:58.817 --> 00:24:10.239
That and really identifying the right partnerships, right Google, microsoft they really went after the right partnerships and won them.
00:24:10.239 --> 00:24:13.355
But by and large also because they had great product market fit.
00:24:14.445 --> 00:24:24.215
I would say for the other company that was acquired by Twilio, they actually started with one intention in their product and this happens with a lot of founders.
00:24:24.215 --> 00:24:30.352
They find that it's that maybe tweaking it actually becomes the better fit.
00:24:30.352 --> 00:24:34.368
Like their initial intention isn't what everyone wanted.
00:24:34.368 --> 00:24:43.497
They, you know, made some changes and it took them down a different path and it was very different sort of level success for that company I found.
00:24:43.497 --> 00:24:47.615
Also they hired great people and the founders were very smart.
00:24:47.615 --> 00:24:52.717
But they also had great investors, I will say that.
00:24:52.717 --> 00:24:55.789
But they were very people-focused, very talent-focused much.
00:24:55.789 --> 00:24:59.414
They were very people focused, very talent focused.
00:24:59.414 --> 00:25:12.113
So they grew a really kind of great camaraderie within the organization and then also did great at hiring.
00:25:12.113 --> 00:25:29.057
So I would say the companies that I've worked for that that struggled or had a lot of internal drama that really kept them from getting off the ground, the main differences were the people and hiring the right people versus hiring the wrong people.
00:25:30.025 --> 00:25:31.269
Yeah, it makes sense, brenna.
00:25:31.269 --> 00:25:44.002
So many times throughout our conversation today, even in a short amount of time, you've said that word people so many times, and so that's why I want to switch gears and get into the people element of business, because we are also as executives of our own businesses.
00:25:44.002 --> 00:25:47.798
We are also the people that are driving so much of this stuff up front.
00:25:47.798 --> 00:25:52.076
So I want to talk about executive support because I called it out in the intro of you.
00:25:52.076 --> 00:26:01.131
I love the fact that you so intentionally took a sabbatical, took that time to reflect and to grow and obviously launch something amazing into the world after that.
00:26:01.131 --> 00:26:10.671
But talk to us about the executive support function, because personal time management, finding the right assistant or business partner these are important tasks that we don't have that foresight.
00:26:10.671 --> 00:26:12.679
A lot of us have never done that before.
00:26:12.679 --> 00:26:16.127
So offer that executive support to all of our listeners here on the air.
00:26:16.127 --> 00:26:17.509
What are those things that you look at?
00:26:17.509 --> 00:26:20.252
What are the important considerations within that function?
00:26:21.615 --> 00:26:21.915
Right.
00:26:21.915 --> 00:26:43.426
I think it's a really underrated role, to be honest, especially in the startup world or if you're even a small business, to expand the thinking around an assistant to more of an operational partner to more of an operational partner.
00:26:43.426 --> 00:26:45.632
Certainly, I mean, this runs the gamut, and this is sort of what you mentioned.
00:26:45.632 --> 00:26:48.766
In finding the right type of assistant, it really depends on what you need.
00:26:48.766 --> 00:26:54.405
So I will help founders or small business owners really pin down what they do and do not need.
00:26:54.405 --> 00:26:59.517
Certainly you get people that will help you with your calendar and with time management.
00:26:59.517 --> 00:27:03.045
Certainly you get people that will help you with your calendar and with time management.
00:27:03.045 --> 00:27:24.186
But one thing to really like open your eyes to and open your mind to, rather, is if you find the right person who can help take so much operational stuff off your shoulders that can go far beyond just calendaring, booking your travel and submitting your expenses.
00:27:24.186 --> 00:27:55.794
Somebody who can sort of be the go between between you and the staff, who can kind of be the mom or the pop, whatever, whatever you want to call it but as a founder you don't have time to kind of deal with all these small things and the executive, the person that's your support system, your business partner, the person who's going to move your agenda along and help you win, is like really such a key role.
00:27:55.794 --> 00:28:11.667
Is like really such a key role, especially if you give them the opportunity to expand beyond that the typical role of just kind of helping with scheduling.
00:28:11.667 --> 00:28:29.457
I've worked with a ton of great assistants and then all the really good ones are operationally brilliant and they know they have their ear to the grindstone right Like the staff tells you everything that's wrong, everything that's not working, where the gaps are, where the communication is not flowing, things that they would never tell the executive.
00:28:29.457 --> 00:28:55.664
So you can take that opportunity to just fix those things or take solutions to the executive and I think if you can find the right business partner who can play this role for you and really just help you keep on task number one but help you see what you cannot see, help you see around corners, they will make you infinitely more successful.
00:28:56.006 --> 00:29:19.768
So I really think that executive support is a tremendously important role and I think, just on the human side, a big part of my job honestly was just like sometimes emotional support or sounding board when you're and if you're CEO and you maybe don't have any co founders, maybe you're the only founder.
00:29:19.768 --> 00:29:31.414
You've got to be very careful about your persona and what you share with other executives, and you might just be insecure about a particular decision, or you don't know which way to go.
00:29:31.414 --> 00:29:38.704
Or you're trying to hire an executive and I don't know if this is the right person or not, and or I just did a keynote speech.
00:29:38.704 --> 00:29:39.970
I don't think it went well.
00:29:39.970 --> 00:29:40.986
They just don't.
00:29:40.986 --> 00:29:41.867
They don't have anybody.
00:29:41.867 --> 00:29:42.690
It's a lonely job.
00:29:42.690 --> 00:29:44.394
We all know that it's a lonely job.
00:29:44.394 --> 00:29:56.532
So having someone that can really just be your partner, I think, is a great key to success and really help you go far beyond where you think you can.
