Opening Options for Others

PROVO, Utah – Feb 26, 2018 – At twenty-six years old, Brittany Drury Brown had an associate’s degree, a small amount of retail experience, and a more-than-full-time task of raising three kids under the age of five. Then, life hit hard: Brown discovered that her husband was living a secret life and he abruptly moved out of state, leaving her with their children and little else.

“When I became a single mom, there was no legitimate stay-at-home career option,” Brown says. “I was extremely limited in the choices I had with my skill set, and it was really discouraging.”

Brown, whose last name was Lembke at the time, began studying marketing at UVU and things improved drastically; UVU offered night classes, affordable childcare, and flexibility. But after a professor suggested she look into accounting, Brown couldn’t shake the feeling that she should come to BYU.

Despite being told she’d never survive the junior core and facing monthly childcare bills of $800, Brown enrolled at BYU and, with the help of two BYU Marriott single-parent scholarships, completed her BS and MAcc in 2010.

“Affiliating with people of that caliber and getting a world-class education redefined who I was,” she says. “I had been completely abandoned; I was floundering. And then I was in this program full of brilliant people. Granted, I was struggling: I put my kids to bed at 6:30 every night and worked until 3 a.m. But it allowed me to regain my confidence and my strength.”

Following graduation, things calmed down a bit. After working for KPMG and Squire, Brown remarried, had two more kids, and was loving life at home while also working as an outsource CFO. In her words, life was fun again. Yet another big change was still in store.

At an Intuit conference, the discussion turned to the future of accounting and cloud computing. That’s when lightning struck. Brown realized that through remote employees, others could have the same experience she was having—being both a CFO and a stay-at-home mom.

“I knew that I could bless lives on the client side and the employee side and give what had not been there for me: a legitimate stay-at-home opportunity,” she says. “I became obsessive. I couldn’t sleep; I couldn’t talk about anything else. It wouldn’t leave me alone.”

She and her husband, Stephen, created LedgerGurus, a company that offers big-business accounting to small businesses at a small-business price. All of their employees—twenty-two and counting—are stay-at-home parents with great education and work experience, and many are also SOA alums. Their stories are just as riveting and full of triumphs as Brown’s.

McKayla Humbert, a 2016 MAcc grad and LedgerGurus employee, went into labor with her first child while she was training with Brown. Only two months into motherhood, Humbert suffered a neck injury that left her bedridden.

“The whole situation of becoming a new mom, and then having my injury, was really awkward for me,” Humbert says. “But Brittany made me feel valued. It was an environment where she was understanding, and she’s been that way ever since.”

That kind of smart thinking has kept LedgerGurus growing. To keep up with the expansion, Stephen left a lucrative position to become the full-time COO of LedgerGurus, while Brown continues as the CEO.

“We felt like LedgerGurus was something that was meant to be,” Brown says. “We can’t walk away from it without truly investigating and doing everything in our power to make it fly.”