contributed PHOTO Brittany Titcomb is the owner of BT Training & Coaching and is based in Marshalltown, where she has resided since 2020.

Owning a business is something Brittany Titcomb knew she wanted to do for a long time as she comes from a family of entrepreneurs. She just had to first go through the journey of figuring out BT Training & Coaching was the business she wanted to start.

“I knew I wanted to help people be the best versions of themselves,” she said.

Titcomb moved to Marshalltown in 2020 and started her business in 2022 while she was working full-time at Pella as an organizational development senior specialist. Knowing she wanted to own her own business, she worked to start BT when she had time on the side, combining her entrepreneur ambition and her desire to help people.

“I provide leadership coaching and training for front-line leaders,” Titcomb said. “It is for people who are new to leadership and have never had training. I have also been requested to expand my workforce training to include things like communication effectiveness and OSHA.”

She covers a 100-mile radius, but will also conduct virtual training sessions. And Titcomb’s family background plays a big role.

“I grew up in small business, in the construction industry,” she said. “When I left the family business, I joined manufacturing and worked my way up from an operator to leadership in human resources. That is where I found my passion for training and development.”

BT training tends to cover a range of leadership essentials.

“How to set expectations, communicate effectively, give feedback, how to have hard conversations and overall be more confident in whatever conversation you have,” Titcomb said. “Leaders are not handed a playbook. Next thing a person knows, they are getting promoted to leadership and expected to have the essentials of a better leader.”

Clients have found the training Titcomb provides is beneficial. She recalled one manufacturing facility success story. After Titcomb’s sessions, she said the owners doubled the business. So, having those hard conversations, while they may be unpleasant for some people, are also valuable.

She provided some common examples of hard conversations she encounters in her line of work – if someone sees the direction a company is going in and does not like it, they may not be able to tell their boss. BT can help that person figure it out; maybe a leader does not know how to give an employee feedback, because he or she wants to be liked; Perhaps an employee is not meeting performance standards and the leader wants to improve that performance, but does not want to be the bad guy.

“Those are the most prominent,” Titcomb said. “Another one is if everyone in the room agrees, but you don’t . . . people don’t want to speak out. They don’t want to be the odd person out. How can they share their opinions?”

After a few years of climbing the ladder at Pella and molding the BT services, Titcomb was able to devote her professional time to her business, and has watched it take off, which surprised her.

“I am not from this area,” she said. “I did not have a lot of connections. I did not know a lot of people to grow a network, and relationships are important to my business. It was hard to grow this business when people did not know me. I did not expect it to take off as rapidly as it did. I am grateful it did, but was not expecting it.”

Some advice Titcomb had for women who want to start a business:

“You do not need to be all the things to all the people all the time,” she said. “Some women, if it’s not perfect, they don’t do it. Just start small and do not let what is not good enough stop you. Take one small scary step per day toward progress to make it happen. Don’t think about the next 10,000 steps, just the next one. That’s less scary.”

Titcomb, 38, lives with her husband Chris and their three cats – Roo, Tigger and Bamboo.

BT TRAINING & COACHING INFO

Phone: 641-352-9080

Email: Brittany@levelupwithbt.com

Website: levelupwithbt.com.