“They had hundreds of locations. I was putting all the account numbers in and there were extras. I asked the Controller what all the extra account numbers were for. She told me not to worry about it,” Candy tells Stuart on the podcast. “All of her bills—her fiancé's bills, her boyfriend's bills, and her mother's bills—all went through the company.”

Another job took advantage of her math talents by having her kite checks. This means she wrote bad checks from one bank account, then used the bank’s clearing times to write a check from another account to make it ‘good’.

Her math prowess allowed her to memorize all the bank’s clearing times and never have a moment when an account didn’t clear. All the while, the funds never really existed. She was commended for her stellar work when, in fact, she was doing illegal work without the faintest clue. One of the banks eventually let her know that she was being used.

At the same company, she was asked to doctor the reported profits to get a business loan. When she refused, another employee did it instead.

Where some people might have thrown up their hands in disillusionment, Candy saw a chance to learn from the best in the game. “As a kid, I got a lot of good breaks in life, with really great people around me, whether they taught me shady stuff and I learned not to do it, or trusting me to get them out of those situations.”

She was then able to take those lemons, grown in the shade, and make lemonade with the goal of total integrity in her own work. After helping build a wholesale footwear startup into an eight-figure company and enjoying a brief stint in the Peace Corps, she moved into consulting and found a more permanent home.

Taking out the garbage

Candy’s pursuit of justice in accounting eventually led her to become a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE). As a consultant, companies pay her to come in and figure out why money is missing. Doing that work, Candy established ground rules.

“You can't say no to me about anything. I can talk to anybody, I can see anything, and I can fire whoever I want,” she explains.

Even before officially becoming a CFE, Candy was bringing justice to accounting. With one particular company, they agreed to her terms, except there were two specific people they didn’t want fired. To her, that was an immediate red flag. She sensed that those two people were the ones responsible for the missing funds.

She was right.

Through careful financial detective work, she determined that the President and Vice President of the company were siphoning funds into a bank account with a similar name to the company. The VP ended up with a 10-year prison sentence.

Still, companies shouldn’t feel bad for misplacing their trust. And Candy feels rewarded when she can help them figure out who to trust.

“Sometimes they don't realize who the really good people are, they are placing so much value on bad people,” she says. “It just feels good to clean the house, get the garbage out, and really highlight and showcase the good people.”

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Putting family first

Now that Candy’s a mom, she’s shifted her priorities. While she loves the fraud work and making dramatic turnarounds for companies, she admits: “It sucks the life out of me because you can’t just go in a little bit–it’s all or nothing.”

Her consulting today centers around helping small businesses push to the next level of growth. In her accounting firm, she is proud to have all women, and mostly mom, employees. But she can safely say she’s a better boss than she once was.

“I really was a horrible boss until I had a child. I called and apologized to a number of people that had children that I managed in the past,” she says.

She feels she was too critical of parents who had to take time off to deal with sick kids. She thought having kids would be easier than it was. The experience humbled her, and she shifted her priorities.

More freedom

With her priorities reset for herself and her staff, Candy looks forward to more freedom in the future. That means declining big projects in the summer so staff can focus on their families. It also means letting go of less valuable clients.

Candy credits technology for giving her more flexibility.

“We have the freedom to say yes or no to projects... I don't think anybody on the team works 40 hours. They're very efficient. We work a lot with technology. We utilize what's out there.”

Though her own childhood had its ups and downs, she’s happy to give her own daughter, and the children of her employees, the stability they need to thrive.

• Candy Bellau, founder of the all-female firm Kramerica Business Solutions, works to give small business owners helpful and timely financial support. She also works as a consultant to boost small businesses.

• Detecting fraud through accounting has been a major part of Candy’s career. She once caught a fraudster who ended up with a 10-year prison sentence.

• Since having her daughter, Candy has adopted a more family-first approach to managing people. Her focus for her all-female, mostly-mom team is to put their children, not the work, as the main priority.