GrowthLab develops formulas to get businesses on right track

BRAINSTORMING: GrowthLab’s CEO and Managing Partner Dan Gertrudes, second from right, and President, Managing Partner and Chief Operating Officer Steven Byler, third from right, have a discussion with, from left, analysts Ben Marszalek and Talia Solomon, and Korey Cournoyer, GrowthLab’s manager of strategic growth. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
BRAINSTORMING: GrowthLab’s CEO and Managing Partner Dan Gertrudes, second from right, and President, Managing Partner and Chief Operating Officer Steven Byler, third from right, have a discussion with, from left, analysts Ben Marszalek and Talia Solomon, and Korey Cournoyer, GrowthLab’s manager of strategic growth. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

2019 PBN Business Excellence Awards
EXCELLENCE IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP: GrowthLab Financial Services Inc.


Effective talk may not be cheap, but it requires follow-ups in action, a fact not lost on GrowthLab Financial Services Inc. CEO and Managing Partner Dan Gertrudes, and President, Managing Partner and Chief Operating Officer Steven Byler.

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Since its founding five years ago, the company has assessed the financial situation of startups, developed the best growth plan for them, then pitched in on the execution.

Gertrudes left his sales job at Textron Inc. in 2012 to focus on startups and become an entrepreneur. Byler was a brand and marketing manager for Boston-based legal consulting firm Elysium Digital LLC. When they met about five years ago, Gertrudes and Byler realized they had a shared interest in building brands and businesses.

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“So, we decided to, call it, join forces,” Gertrudes said.

While they had expertise in businesses, Gertrudes and Byler realized the need for solid financial assessments to inform clients’ strategies. GrowthLab subsequently acquired a 12-member Fall River accounting firm in 2015.

Now, not only did it blaze the surest path to the future, it was also able to get a good handle on every-day accounting for its clients to iron out challenges in the present.

GrowthLab’s approach is more partnership than in-and-out contracting, Gertrudes said.

“We don’t just parachute in,” he said. Rather, the company applies its deep field of accounting, branding, marketing and strategy experts to carry out the advice offered and plans put in place.

“We have the team behind us to execute on that strategy,” Gertrudes said.

“All of that is probably at a minimum four or five people on your team,” Byler said.

When they’re called in to begin a business’s turnaround, “[Businesses have] got to the point where they know that they need some help,” Byler said.

‘[GrowthLab staffers] create intimate relationships with the customers.’
STEVEN BYLER, GrowthLab president, managing partner and chief operating officer

A core approach Gertrudes and Byler follow to help their clients grow is aligning sales teams with the company’s values and making it worth their time. Too few people, Byler said, think about how their behavior affects their business.

“It comes back to, really, company goals and finance strategy,” Gertrudes said.

Part of GrowthLab’s success is the variety of work it provides people who might otherwise find themselves either in a corporate environment as one of several people in a single department, or in public accounting with a lot of regular but repetitive work.

Neither option provides an engaging relationship with the people benefiting from their work, Byler said. But GrowthLab does.

“[Our staffers] get to go really deep. They create intimate relationships with the customers,” Byler said.

Gertrudes noted the firm hired seven new staffers between May and August. Employees, said John Isola, “growth hacker” at GrowthLab, are encouraged to volunteer in the community.

About a month ago, a group of GrowthLab employees participated in the fourth annual Boston Regatta for Entrepreneurship, which the company sponsored. Proceeds from the event went to Year Up, a one-year, intensive training program providing underserved young adults ages 18-24 with hands-on skills development, coursework eligible for college credit, corporate internships and support.

Such events both create community bonding and introduce the team to startups and small businesses that can benefit from GrowthLab’s services, Isola said.

“We also like to promote these nonprofits’ events, gathering a ‘GrowthLab team’ and attending,” Isola said.

Year Up, National Alliance on Mental Illness Rhode Island, Bike Newport, Coggeshall Farm Museum and DesignxRI are among the nonprofits GrowthLab has assisted. Additionally, Gertrudes and Byler are each involved in the startup community outside of GrowthLab’s client base.

Gertrudes is a mentor at the B-Lab program through Brown University. He and Byler have office hours at CIC Providence. Each have also been involved in MassChallenge Rhode Island, which connects entrepreneurs to resources and support in Rhode Island and regional opportunities in Boston.

Gertrudes said GrowthLab’s aid quickly brings business owners around to the realization of the time investment they could use more effectively, “that they have spent on the business and not in business.”

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