Former Tipperary Sales CEO Martha Brown wrote “It’s On You: Empowerment for Leaders Seeking the Highest Level of Personal Satisfaction and Corporate Success.”
AUGUSTA, Ga. — In more than three decades with Top 100 retailer Tipperary Sales, including 11 as CEO, Martha Brown learned and adapted and used that experience to help drive change and growth for the La-Z-Boy licensee.
As the first woman to lead the multigenerational, family-owned retail furniture company, Brown helped grow the organization to a team of 170 employees with revenue exceeding $75 million by the time she retired at the end of 2023.
Today, Brown is using her experience to guide the next generation of leaders as an executive coach and as an author. Her new book, “It’s On You: Empowerment for Leaders Seeking the Highest Level of Personal Satisfaction and Corporate Success” published on Feb. 4 and outlines her journey, leadership strategies, ways leaders can achieve personal and professional satisfaction and more.
She told Furniture Today that being willing to take things on and stepping into new roles helped sharpen her skillset and developed her as a leader.
“Over the decades, whatever was needed, I filled roles and positions and learned something from it,” Brown said. “The things I learned and the professional I became: All those things contributed and helped me once I was offered the position and accepted it.”
Brown said putting those lessons and examples in a book felt like a worthwhile effort, and feedback she received during the process reinforced that mindset.
“Initially, the folks who read the book before it was available for purchase were positive about it. They said what I wanted to hear, like ‘I kept a notebook while I was reading because certain things jumped out at me,’ or ‘It gave me encouragement,’” she told Furniture Today. “I said if anybody reading my book gets one thing from it that produces good fruit for them or their team or company, that’s my absolute prayer for this endeavor.”
Brown’s key achievements include the launch of the company’s first formal community relations program, the transformation of her company’s learning and development function into “Tipperary University” and establishment The Tipperary Way, which outlines the critical fundamentals that strategically align hundreds of employees across all store locations throughout the Southeast.
She also championed the use of Predictive Index, a highly accurate behavioral analysis tool, which significantly reduced turnover and created more satisfaction and cohesion among teams.
She said predictive analytics helped place people in the best positions possible, which created a sharper, more cohesive team.
“We wanted to be the product knowledge experts in our markets. We committed to continuous improvement for all our people,” Brown said. “I would open a Predictive Index for everybody in the company. To open it up and here’s your Predictive Index survey and here’s mine helped find people for the right positions which made them happy and opened up improvements and efficiency for the company.”
Brown said while positioning people correctly is important, so, too, is having and communicating a clear sense of direction and purpose in everything.
“I feel the CEO has to champion these initiatives in the company. We can delegate tasks, but we can’t delegate responsibility. If we want the company to have a certain culture, we have to champion the culture,” she said. “We have to constantly overcommunicate the vision and mission. Never walking past a mistake and making the most important thing the most important thing and teaching that.”
Brown said the most important attributes for any leader to possess are resilience, compassion, empathy, mental toughness and a sense of joy.
“I think it’s critical for CEOs and leaders to lead with encouragement and positivity. I’m a firm believer in the glass is half full. There are times that fundamentally the glass may be half empty, but we have to be able to see the better view and the better perspective to lead our teams through difficult times. They look to us to do that,” she said. “We have to pour into ourselves personally and allow others to pour into us and keep our eyes open for the good stuff around us; for the opportunities instead of just seeing obstacles. Once we can do that, we can encourage our team because they’re always watching us.
“Keeping that mindset of encouragement and positivity is a huge benefit in the long and short run.”
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