That One Time I Taught Accounting

When I was researching RevOps in preparation for the Revenue Operations Certification Course, I met with a ton of operations professionals to better understand their work and challenges. In these conversations, I heard over and over again that operations is extremely important to a business's success but also extremely difficult to get executives to seriously invest in. I knew this was a problem Mary Barba and I were going to need to help people solve, but I had no idea how to do that.

Then I learned about Alicia Butler Pierre. I read her book and immediately saw she was someone who had not only faced and overcome this challenge herself, but who had also helped many other people overcome it, too. If anyone knows how to teach operations people to sell their value to upper manager, it's her, and I was thrilled when she agreed to record an interview with me.

Alicia came well prepared and laid out four key tips for ops professionals who want to communicate the value of their work:

1. Learn the "language of business" (that's accounting)
2. Understand the Cost of Poor Quality (a Lean Six Sigma tool)
3. Use the A3 Template (pioneered by Toyota)
4. Get some public speaking skills

She did a fantastic job explaining the core components of these concepts and directing people to free, online resources where they could learn more. For a couple months, my plan was to just take her interview, divide it into four videos, and publish that as the lesson. I really didn't think I had anything to add.

But maybe the most important thing I learned about ops people in my research is that there's one thing they never have enough of: Time. If any ops person found a way to clear enough space in their day to take a RevOps course from HubSpot Academy, I owed it to them to make it the be-all, end-all course of the topic. There was no way any ops person was going to finish our course and say to themselves, "I've got a few more hours to burn. I guess I'll head over to EdX and learn accounting now." Ops people just don't have that kind of freedom.

And so I had a moment of clarity where I got a deeper, truer, more passionate sense of my purpose as a HubSpot Academy professor than I've ever had before: My job is to take the time to learn things you don't have the time to teach yourself. That's the whole reason I'm here, folks.

So I took the EdX courses on accounting. I took a few of them. I've never taken an accounting class in my life, so I got to experience first hand how overwhelming, intimidating, and boring accounting can be. But I also got to see how people who are truly passionate about accounting explain it. I got to see what topics get emphasized in every accounting course. And I went and created a Kyle Jepson-style intro to accounting, which isn't something I knew I could do.

From there, it was a no-brainer to do the same thing for The Cost of Poor Quality and the A3 Template. And then public speaking is something I've already dedicated most of my adult life to, so I was happy to share the things that have been most helpful to me.

The lesson that resulted from all this work is quite a bit longer than the other lessons in the course -- honestly, it could probably be a course unto itself -- but it's an ode to all the overworked, under-appreciated ops professionals out there who have struggled to know how to communicate their worth. It's a love letter to anyone in any role who knows their value but doesn't know how to make their leaders see it. In short, it's my gift to you -- all of you -- and I hope it helps.

And please know that I didn't stop after creating the lesson. In the workbook that accompanies the RevOps course, I created a huge section on persuasion and change management to help you get your big ideas implemented, no matter what kind of opposition you face. The lesson and workbook together are my magnum opus. I've never been prouder of something I've created.

Thanks to Alicia for providing the tools and framework I needed to build a tremendous lesson. Thanks to Mary and Jana daSilva and Tina Singe for pushing me to make this content as great as possible. People watching the lesson will see my face and hear my voice, but I would have looked like a blame fool without you four helping me know what to say. I've never worked with a finer team.

So what are you waiting for? Go take the Revenue Operations Certification Course now and let me know what you think!