Surprising as it might seem, growth can be a killer for small businesses. Without proper support, it’s easy for a company to outgrow its finances or take on obligations it can never fulfill. During these times, success comes from careful management, a studied shift in resources and a strong accounting foundation. New technology makes all these tasks easier, according to Mike Brown, owner of Death Wish Coffee Co., and Andrew Berg, managing partner at Berg Partners LLC.

To learn from the experience of a business that weathered sudden growth, John Walls (@JohnWalls21) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, talked with Brown and Berg during Intuit Inc.’s QuickBooks Connect conference in San Jose, CA. 

Turning a contest win into a business success

Death Wish Coffee is a company that found itself in a unique position; they had won a small business contest that awarded it an ad slot during the Super Bowl. This sudden exposure supercharged its business. Brown described it as a dream come true. He mentioned that at the time the company had 11 employees, with six more coming on since.

Brown explained they were well-prepared, having had warning a month or two before the big game. This gave them time to map out the best- and worst-case scenarios and to put plans in place.

Berg commented that it was his job to take a lot of these responsibilities off Brown’s plate. He knew Brown’s business was about to go through a major change.    

Working the web, reaching out to partners

Brown described some of the precautions they put into place. They called up their website provider to make sure the traffic would go through and rearranged the site to make it easier for customers to ring up a purchase. Then, Brown reached out to third-party partners for help with production. It worked.

“There were no problems above and beyond what we could handle,” Brown said.

Berg then ran down the details from the accounting side. He mentioned how they installed some great new technologies to manage things and built a new system to handle production and accounts. He related that his company is dedicated to helping small businesses succeed.

“We are onboard with alleviating the fears that small business owners have,” Berg said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of QuickBooks Connect.

*Disclosure: Intuit and other companies sponsor some QuickBooks Connect segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Intuit nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Photo by SiliconANGLE