This entrepreneur is helping create a brain trust for Atlanta women founders

Sherry Deutschmann was sitting in her boss’ office when he made a comment that would change the trajectory of her life.

Deutschmann, who was vice president of sales, had gone to him to say the company could fix its customer service problem if it treated its employees better and made them feel appreciated. But her boss blew her off.

“He reached across the desk and patted my hand and said, ‘You don’t know anything about business. Why don’t you just go sell something?’” Deutschmann told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“I cried. I was angry. But I left that day and I never walked back in that door.”

Instead, she bought as many books about writing a business plan as she could and decided to start a rival company out of her basement. She was a single mother and had worked as a maid and gas station cleaner before getting into sales. She only had a high school education.

But in 2002, she founded health care billing company LetterLogic and grew the business to $40 million in annual recurring revenue before selling it to private equity for an undisclosed amount in 2016.

Deutschmann built it based off the premise that her boss had discarded: If you take care of your employees, offer them a living wage instead of just minimum and make them feel appreciated, then a company can be successful. Her advocacy on increasing the minimum wage brought her to the attention of the Obama administration, and in 2016 she was named a Champion of Change.

She could have sailed off into the sunset after selling LetterLogic, but instead she is working 60 hours a week again building BrainTrust, a peer membership organization for women founders primarily focused on helping them reach $1 million or more in revenue.

Members of BrainTrust, a community of female business owners, take a break during a four-hour monthly “Vault” session in Nashville, Tenn., in early 2024. The small-group meetings bring founders together to share financial insights and work through business challenges. (Courtesy of Darcy Ferris Nashville Family Films + Photos/BrainTrust)

Deutschmann founded BrainTrust in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2019 and recently expanded to Atlanta. She plans to hire a market leader in the city and will also have a business development team and a trainer to help women founders in the city. Deutschmann expects there will be 150 BrainTrust members in Atlanta by the end of the year.

She’s taking the bumps, bruises and hard-won lessons she’s gained from decades of business to help other female entrepreneurs.

“(Former U.S. Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright said there’s a special place in hell for women that don’t help other women. I have the ability and the social and political capital to help more women do what I did,” Deutschmann said.

There are a little more than 14 million wholly female-owned businesses in the U.S. but just about 2% of those have at least $1 million in sales or receipts, according to an AJC analysis of 2023 census data.

BrainTrust is centered around a curated group of seven female entrepreneurs who meet every month for four hours. The women — who sign nondisclosure and confidentiality agreements to encourage total candor — present their problems and opportunities to the other members, who then help them through those decisions.

Women interested in joining BrainTrust first have to attend an informational session, then there is an application and interview process.

Membership cost varies depending on the size of the member’s company. It’s $249 per month for those who make less than $1 million in revenue.

Once women reach more than $1 million in revenue, they are grouped with others who have gotten to that revenue milestone and are focused more on scaling. For those members with over $1 million in revenue, the cost is $349 per month, according to Deutschmann.

Though peer membership groups are not new, few have catered to female entrepreneurs who are making less than $1 million in revenue, she said.

“A lot of the organizations are focused on the unicorns and the really investable, scalable businesses, and we have those, but we care just as deeply for the woman who is running a hair salon and the generational poverty that she can break out of … if she can get her business from $200,000 a year to $700,000 a year to $1 million,” she said.

BrainTrust members gather in February 2024 for the organization’s annual Pacesetter Awards — which recognizes women founders for revenue growth, profit gains and job creation — in Nashville, Tenn. (Courtesy of Justin Wright Photography/BrainTrust)

Alongside the peer groups, BrainTrust membership includes workshops, a roster of subject matter experts and an online portal where members across the country can communicate and ask for everything from short-term loans to warm introductions.

“If the women in your group don’t have what you need on a particular topic, you post it (in the portal) and suddenly you’ve got an ad hoc vault of women who are like, ‘Yes, I have experience in this. Let me tell you what I did,’” Deutschmann said.