The Mountain-Top Mindset: Why You Have Time for Corrections in the Ultimate Competitive Sport

I always say business is the ultimate competitive sport, but you don't lose in 2 minutes in business. You have plenty of time for corrections.

Welcome to Big Hitters. I'm Larry Weidel, and this show is for people who are done playing small. Each week we break down what it actually takes to win at a high level— the decisions, the discipline, the adjustments that separate those who almost do it from those who do it. No theory, no fluff, just straight talk from someone who spent 50 years building winners. If you're serious about momentum, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Hello everybody, let's have some fun this afternoon. I know I'm excited 'cause I get to talk to Gregory Kopsky. Hello Gregory.

Hello, it's wonderful to be here, Larry.

Yeah, and thank you so much for brightening up my afternoon 'cause I am looking forward to talking to you about winning. And I get the idea you've had a lot of experience with it from several, you know, multiple different angles. And congratulations on all the success you've had in your life. Give a quick overview for, for, for people. I think you do a better job than, than I will because I've gone through the, your bio and it's just action-packed. So I want to let you, you, put, put a few of the highlights out there to kind of kick us off.

Certainly. So I'm a Pacific Northwest boy. My father came out from Ohio with my mother during the Vietnam War and was stationed at Fort Lewis. Grew up here in the Northwest, got tired of the rain, went down to the University of Texas in Austin, actually lettered in basketball. I'm kind of like Rudy. Not a lick of athletic talent, but was a student manager for the Longhorns and pursued a coaching career for 4 years. Took me to Kansas City, and I was sitting there and I decided there was nothing to do on weekends. I like the mountains and the ocean and just a muddy river running through town, and so I Came back to the Northwest and looking for my next career, I was approached by IBA, which had sold my father's veterinary hospital and real estate, about joining them as a broker. And I joined the firm, emerged as one of the top brokers with the team for about 6 years. And in 2000, the founder came to me. Said he wanted to retire and would like to sell me the business, acquired it in 2000, and 26 years later, I'm still at the helm. And Larry, you're welcome to go into any chapter as deep as you want.

Let's say, first of all, to make sure everybody understand, IBA stands for— is it International Business Associates? Okay. And particularly what you do is work with— it's kind of a business It seems like a specialized business brokerage type thing. It's mergers and acquisitions and help people also, you like really have done a lot of work with helping people move on. People have been successful. You know what, I was excited to talk to you was, you know, you seems like you have a chance to, or you have had the opportunity to deal with people on the happy side of life. You know, when you think of how many people wanna be an entrepreneur, how many people start their businesses, how many people, small percentage fail. I mean, succeed. And then the ones that succeed 5 years, 10 years, 15, 20, 30 years, you know, all of those challenges because you, as you grow, you get bigger challenges. But you know, the, the, the, the thing there, there is, you know, a light at the end of the tunnel where, you know, you do have the option to, to exit and get, get a big check and move on to do other things with your life. And but you need somebody who's going to help you do that stuff. But that's what you call a happy problem. You know, you deal with people that really kind of the ultimate winners. They've navigated things successfully, but they still got to keep on moving. And the business got to keep— because the business, if, if you don't keep the business growing and you don't have excited people running it, no matter how successful the business has been, it can start to do a nosedive. And I heard— I was just hearing today of a guy who built down in Texas Larry Weidel, who built a rock— he had a rock crusher business. He built a rock crusher and that, you know, they use on the highways when they're out there doing that stuff. And so it turned into a big thing and he had a great 25, 30-year run. But when he sold it to the top 4 or 5 people inside his company, when he left, he said inside 2 years they'd had more growth than he'd had his entire career because, you know, you know, they owned it now, you know, so they can put energy into it. And so you want to have people with energy running your company. But sometimes after doing it for 20, 30 years, you run out of gas and you need to move on. And that's, that's where you've spent— you had a lot of success with that, like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that you've helped go through that kind of transition. That's kind of an amazing track record, Gregory.

Thank you. Let me give you a little overview on IBA. So we are the oldest business brokerage firm in the Pacific Northwest, have been in business since 1975, have sold over 4,400 companies in our history. I've done over 300 of those transactions myself. We only represent the seller side of the transaction. So you are correct. These are the winners in entrepreneurship. About 70% of our clients are retirement sales. About 20% are people who've built companies and run them as either as far as they want to go, or they've become bored with the project and want to do something else. And about 10% are what we call distress sales, which are divorce, partnership breakups, health issues, etc. And one thing that makes IBA unique is that we are paid 100% on performance. We do not collect a penny from our sell-side clients until the deal is done. So we only want to be paid by happy customers.

Sounds like you've got unlimited number of happy customers. And so, you know, to get this down and master it and then turn it into a system and then build where you can do those kind of high volumes of numbers, you've got to have processes that are— that, that work and that, that, you know, as you're volume goes up inside the company where those processes can be adjusted to be able to take, you know, larger, larger transactions and keeping up with that stuff and staying on top of it so it doesn't get off the rails. You know, you had to bring— there's several things I want to go with that. But let's just for a minute, let's just take a thing and ask you, what do you think you picked up from, let's just say, before you got to Texas, before you got to Texas, what did you pick up that were values that kind of gave you guidelines for success, that kind of set you up for, get you on the road to success and being able to unravel possibilities and options to your best advantage. What do you think when you grew up, what were you interested in? Obviously basketball.

Certainly. No, I would say my mother and father played significant roles in my life. I believe the most important teachers in a person's life early on are their parents. And one of the lessons my mother taught me early on was if you're good at what you do, money takes care of itself. So doesn't matter if you're the best fry cook, the best florist, the best basketball player, the best business broker, pursue excellence and be the best and the money will follow. So I, that has always been a guiding light to me in my approach to everything. Is the pursuit of excellence.

Yeah. At the end of the day, that's a great piece of knowledge to kind of hang your hat on, to know, you know, as we go through all of the trials and tribulations and wondering and doubts that, like, if I do this, you know, if I get good at it, I do a good job, money's going to take care of itself. I've just got to, you know, it's the Bill Belichick thing. Do your job. And it's not only if I do my job, good things are going to happen, you know, things are going to work out for me. And that's— I think I couldn't help but think, since you're in the business brokerage business, the corollary to that, which is well-run businesses grow. And I'm sure you have— like, if you run a business, it's well-run. It doesn't have to be the best, doesn't have to be, you know, set industry standards. But if it's well-run, you're going to be picking up more and more customers and you're going to grow. And that's kind of a foundational belief that can, can save you a lot of worry if you're an entrepreneur.

Yeah, I would say one of the differences between great and average entrepreneurs or business people is having the confidence to surround yourself with high-caliber people and delegate. It's the person who wants yes-men around them who won't challenge them, won't bring new ideas. They're never gonna reach the stars. No different than coaching an athletic team. If Belichick, who you referenced, didn't trust Tom Brady to make decisions under center I don't think they would have won as many Super Bowls as they did.

No question. All you got to do is look at his record after Brady left, you know, because a lot of it has to do with the players you have, the people that are executing your plan, because an entrepreneur is going to get, you know, the idea of an entrepreneur is to work yourself out of a job, you know, have other people doing the things that you were doing and where you can kind of supervise it. And eventually, either add other companies in there, come up with new options, and they go. The same thing has happened at Fame, our production company that, you know, Joe is out here listening to us. His, his boss is Tom. And Tom, that's how Tom has set up the production company, even at Fame. And so, you know, you start doing everything yourself. It's done great, but you're limited. You only got 24 hours in the day. And so as you came in, I want to hit on that, dig into that in a minute. But also, so you go to Texas and you're the, you know, fish out of water. You're down there a long way from home. And how did you get yourself established and what things did you notice about, you know, how your life was going to be, where you wanted to spend your time, who you wanted to spend your time with?

What?

What kind of things stood out to you? You know, maybe any lessons that you were learning right from the time that you got there?

Well, I think my father did a good thing in going to college in that he paid for my tuition. He paid, helped support me with the housing and the food. But he left a lot of the elements of my stability to myself. I had to buy my own car, had to put gas in the car. If I wanted to take a girl on a date, I had to work to have that extra pocket money. And I think by doing that, he, A, taught reliance on myself early. And then B, in that situation, he taught time management because most kids go to college 12, 15 hours a week. You double that with study time. You're maybe engaged in a college environment 30 hours a week, and you have all this available time and making that time productive. Yes, you can go throw back beers with friends and go to the beach or whatever you want. But getting in the mindset, you have 24 hours in a day, using it as productively as possible.

And so how quickly did you, you know, so you did you hit the campus, uh, as you're going through the orientation and settling the routine with your eyes open for how can I How can I get engaged making some money here as quickly as possible? How quick did that happen?

It happened fairly quickly that, I mean, I had worked since I was 14 and it was part of my life. I liked having the freedom money provides. So I started looking for different part-time jobs near campus, et cetera. Did everything from work at a private softball park as a fry cook to a pet store to being a basketball manager to driving an ice truck during the summer and delivering ice to restaurants and bars when they would run out at about 11 o'clock. And we'd come in and throw 40-pound bags of ice.

I can't help but be reminded of some of the crazy jobs I did when I was at Georgia Tech, similar type things. And now, what did you learn? Uh, how did you get that job? It seems like, you know, to get there, there's not a lot of positions to where you could be the student manager, uh, on the basketball team. That's, you know, there's a limited number of slots for that. So how did you wrangle your way into that? Because I grew up wanting to play, loving basketball, same thing, loving sports, but no way I was fast enough, tall enough to be able to be a college player or beyond. And so, it never dawned on me, hey, you could get on, be around the team. We did play intramural in the dorms and everything at Georgia Tech. They have all the athletes in the dorms with the regular student body population. And so as a result, my roommate was a football player, We played basketball, intramural basketball together and everything, but it never dawned on me, hey, you could be, you know, a student manager on the team and be more engaged. How did that happen?

I came to Texas wanting to be a manager. I had coached youth as a high schooler. I had played growing up, and I was familiar that they needed people to administratively support the coaches. In the team. I mean, it's not all glamour. There are fun parts. Back then, we used to videotape games and practices so the coach could look at them afterward, but we were also doing laundry after practice, you know, those sort of things. So it's just being willing and able to help. And I've always been a hard worker and the guidance I got from the coaching staff, Coach Woutlik, from our athletic director, DeLoss Dodds. You know, I was raised, yes, sir, what can I do? How can I help? You know, you respect your elders and you go to work. You speak with your performance.

Now, was that a winning environment? What kind of record did that team have?

It actually was not a winning environment. My head coach, Bob Woutlik, who had been the top assistant to Bobby Knight at Indiana. He was part of that 1976 undefeated team. He, um, he actually got fired while I was on his staff, and the new coach didn't keep the old managers. They cleaned house. And so I actually moved on and worked for a local youth athletic association running their basketball program my last year or so of college.

Well, what did you learn? What, you know, what did you learn from being around the basketball and, you know, coaching yourself in terms of setting yourself up and setting the team up other than working hard? You know, what did you— what do you think were the values that you had in your core that, you know, kind of you knew inside this is what you got to have if you're going to have a winning team?

Coaching basketball, I think, comes down to two key elements. A, you've got to develop individual skill sets. So like when I coached in Kansas City, I would open up the gym before school and work on jump shots and post moves with my individual players, because during team practices you don't have time for individual skill development. So, you need to take time for yourself as a piece of the puzzle. And then the thing I loved about coaching, and Coach Weltlich was very good at this, is coaching is like playing chess with real people in real time. I mean, I have a lot of respect, whether it's basketball or football, for making changes on the fly and strategy, identifying a weakness and taking advantage of it. And I do not think coaches get enough credit for how intellectually smart they are, because you've got to decide— you're in a 2-minute drill coming down the end of a football game and you've got to move it 70 yards in 2 minutes, and you got to call the right plays, you got to manage the clock, you've got to execute or you lose. And I always say business is the ultimate competitive sport, but you don't lose in 2 minutes in business. You have plenty of time for corrections. In athletics, you make the wrong decision, it's done. I mean, you mentioned Belichick. I'm a Seahawks fan here in Seattle. We— it still bothers me to this day that we didn't hand off the ball to Marshawn Lynch and score a touchdown. Instead, we chose to pass, and the rest is history.

Absolutely. Yeah, we won't get into that play. But somehow Belichick knew, knew they were going to go to that pass and he had coached up that defensive play. That was the last thing he said to him. You know, as soon as the ball's high, jump in front of the receiver.

Yeah, but the reality of that situation is Pete Carroll had a decision to make at that time and place and he made the wrong decision. Because defense is reactive. If Pete Carroll had made the right decision, it wouldn't have mattered.

Wouldn't have mattered. Now Marshall was gone. He was going in. And so as, as you got, uh, you know, the thing, the thing that, uh, from, uh, when you're doing things like you did with the players, number one, you're sending, you know, come in early, you're sending a message Regardless how good you are right now, you can get better. In other words, you can develop those skills. We can make you a better person. And that gives them hope. And then the other thing is you got to work for it. You know, we got to come in and grind it out. But, you know, putting the edge on the knife so it'll be sharp, that those things allow players to really have hope that they can move up. And I really think that's the difference between the better coaches that they, you know, the lesser coaches seem to say, I got to make something out of these knuckleheads. And, you know, they don't think about, I can, you know, it's my job to help them get better. It's like they are where they are. You know, they, you know, they don't— they're not thinking about they can make them run faster or perform higher., you know, or catch the ball a higher percentage of the time, you know, there are— make more shots. They're thinking about, what have I got here? And let's just make the best out of it, you know. And so the great coaches are looking for all these different ways they can make improvements. And that does relate to business. And so let's talk about when you got in a situation where you started to— let's talk about as you got involved into the business brokerage business, it started to get inside companies. Did things pop out to you, uh, that, you know, trends, principles, attitudes that you saw in sports that contributed to winning and losing situations? By the way, if you're still listening right now, you're different. You don't just consume content, you're actively constantly looking for an edge. And that's who I built the Big Hitter community for— not people chasing motivation, people chasing momentum. Not theory, proximity. Proximity to operators who are actually in the arena making real decisions and winning at a high level. Inside Big Hitter, you get conversations we don't have in the podcast, direct access to people who build what you're trying to build in a room that holds you to a higher standard every single week. This isn't a hype group. It's not networking for the sake of networking. It's where serious people go to sharpen their thinking and compress their timeline. If you're done just listening and you're ready to be in the room where it actually happens, head to joinbighitters.com or click the link in the show notes. The right room changes everything. I'll see you inside.

Yes. I mean, the foundation for success The key to success in life is often knowledge. And the difficulty about dealmaking and mergers and acquisitions is you need knowledge from many diverse areas. You gotta understand accounting, you gotta understand tax, you gotta understand finance, you gotta understand law, you gotta understand real estate, you gotta understand business, you gotta understand psychology. When you start out in business brokerage, you're drinking from a fire hose and building a reference manual on how do I problem solve through the different elements that are necessary to get a deal across the finish line. And the client often is selling the business. They're the ones who are conveying the business operations, the history, the competitive landscape. Our job as an M&A broker is to get parties to yes and get them to shake hands. And there's such a spectrum from price to non-competition agreement to tax allocation that you need to address in a properly done deal.

Let's talk about, you know, I believe there's no secrets in life, but there are straight lines. And let's talk about how a person starting out a business, let's assume they're going to get all their information and they're going to do the right things. And how can we put into their thinking, you know, just like your parents put in your head, like if, you know, if you work hard and do well, the money's going to take care of itself. What kind of ideas can we put inside the heads of these entrepreneurs entrepreneurs are out there that are working, going around the clock, and they're dealing with all these areas that you, you talked about. And, uh, they're getting— they're learning about those things on the run, and they're making the decisions. And sometimes they make the Pete Carroll decision and win this and lose the Super Bowl. Sometimes they're, they're, uh, making the, uh, Bill Belichick and, you know, winning. But the thing is that, uh, you know, I— as you were talking, I remember Warren Buffett said the difference between business and baseball is in baseball you get 3 strikes, in business you You get unlimited number of strikes. You know, there's no 3 strikes and you're out. So the thing is that in business now, what kind of— what kind of thoughts can we put in business owners' heads? Let's just assume there's people listening on this call. They're going to be talking to you in the next 3, 5, 7 years. And, you know, what kind of thoughts can you put in people's minds that get them on track for a successful exit and successful launch? How can they make things better for themselves 3, 5, 7 years from now if they want to get out and move on to something else or be able to, you know, they don't have to, but it's, you know, it's kind of like financial independence. It's like, you know, working is a lot of fun when you don't have to, you know, and that's where you cross the threshold of financial independence or not. You're not working because you have to. Anymore for survival. You're working because you want to. And so the same thing in your business. You want to get your business to where I could sell out. But, you know, right now I just want to keep running it for a while. But how do you get— how can they streamline their thinking or improve their thinking or the way they spend their time, the way they build their staff to put— to make it a smoother transition should they decide to exit down the road?

Great. Well, I'll start because you mentioned them with a Warren Buffett quote that I very much like, which is, it is better to buy a good company at a fair price than a fair company at a good price. And so the systems you want to put in place, the first one is you want to work on your business, not in your business. You want to be strategically planning for the future, leading executively your team. You don't want to be the chief bottle washer in the, the cog that runs the machine is number one. The next thing is having good financials in place that a buyer, a CPA or CFO, a banker can look at. Because that is your pedigree in terms of your performance. And if they're muddy waters, you won't achieve as good a value. The next thing I would say is have good SOPs, have an employee manual, have sales manuals, have things that can be used to train the next generation. And then last I would say is you only get one chance to make a first impression. So don't have an antiquated website. Don't come out to the business and have weeds growing in the parking lot. You know, those sort of things make it—

paint peeling in the hallways. Yeah, paint peeling in the hallways.

Exactly. Because if you are buying something, you want it perfect. There's a reason when you go buy a car, it's detailed out at the lot, because even if it's a lemon, it's going to look really good sitting there in the sun.

Yeah. Now, how— talk to me about some of the disasters that you've run into. You know, And, you know, as you're going through all these companies, you got to have some that are just— I mean, it was just not good. And you probably have some you got into, you say, why did I let myself get involved in this? So tell us about some of your toughest situations and maybe where maybe you didn't make the right call or maybe you got talked into doing something or agreeing to something that you wish you hadn't had. And, you know, got caught up in a drowning. Sometimes a drowning man in the ocean is not good to get too close to them. And some of these people are, I'm sure there's some drowning businesses out there that have called you in to rescue them and try and get a big price for a dying organization, dying company. But what comes to mind when I say that to you?

Two ends of the spectrum. So sometimes they're just bad business decisions. That are difficult to reverse, like signing too expensive a lease, and you're working and running your company like in a retail setting just for the landlord. You're in a shopping mall that's 20% empty of tenants, and you're still paying the market that existed when it was full. So those things can be difficult. And then sometimes I've seen crooks, and I don't use that word lightly, where like I had a client who owned multiple companies. And he— I always say there's a thin line between the genius mind and the criminal mind. And what he did in preparation for sale of one of his companies is he diverted some of the expenses into the other company that wasn't being sold. They were both S-corps. So at the end of the day, his 1040 tax return was honest because the expenses combined to pay the right amount of taxes. But when people were looking at the company with the cooked books, it was looking much more profitable than it really was. And it was, it was a horrible situation. I am thankful the buyer and their CPA caught it by going through the finances and seeing, for example, paying utilities 8 out of 12 months. You know, how— why would that exist? But unless you drilled into utilities, you would just look at a gross number on a tax return and say, hey, that looks reasonable.

So the one thing you brought up is that if you're running a company, uh, be careful, and you want to keep yourself flexible so you could sell it down the road. Don't overcommit, overspend and over-obligate yourself unnecessarily. Would you say that's— in other words, run a lean operation?

Yeah, 100%. It could be facilities, having too much building. It could be buying equipment that's running at 35% of capacity. I mean, you've got to strategically plan for growth. Obviously, you need the bandwidth to grow. But if, you know, your appetite is bigger than you can digest, you end up having leftovers and not everyone is grabbing the leftovers out of the fridge.

Yeah. So you want to make sure you're not over— you're not, you're not getting that new Gulfstream right before you're getting ready to put your company on the market. You're not signing a big expensive lease at, you know, the, you know, Freedom Tower in New York City or something like, you know, you're getting 30 floors there for, you know, a 20-year lease or something like that.

Yeah. You're not buying a, you know, a Mercedes SUV when a Dodge truck would get the job done.

Right. And so that's one thing. Keep, you know, keep control, be, you know, be frugal, let's just say, in running it. And then the other thing is make sure your numbers are right. Make sure your systems are right. Make sure you know the important numbers very clearly and make sure people on your team know the numbers that, you know, have to be there. In fact, I'm interested in what you would say about this, Gregory. It dawned on me that, you know, I was talking this week to a friend of mine. It's like the difference, the big difference, one big difference between an employee and an entrepreneur or a CEO is the CEO knows the numbers and looks at the business and looks at the activity and knows exactly the activities that have to be done that direct into, you know, the turn into sales and revenue for the company. Whereas the entrepreneur, I mean, the employee is just thinking about doing their job. And so, you know, they might be in that pipeline, But unless the entrepreneur lets them know, here's why your job is important and how it contributes to us being profitable, they're just, you know, they're just going to be oblivious to it. But I think that's when you see companies that have everyone united around their mission. They know them, they know the numbers, they know what they do and how it relates to the company being successful. And that is seems like a unified company is more energized and be more profitable if you and I want to go in there and buy it.

Most certainly. I mean, and it's knowing your boneyard. I would say I deal with a lot of manufacturing companies and right now I'm selling a countertop manufacturer that does marble, quartz, Granite, those sort of items. Well, they have a remnant selection, and having someone come in who's doing their powder room in their house and being smart enough to guide someone to that, because if that remnant never gets used, it's a missed opportunity. Where if they can sell that remnant and have a happy customer, it's a win-win.

I'm interested in your take on this. The thing is, like, you know, we, we used to say in our business in financial services, like, everybody's in sales, you know, everybody's in sales because at some point we've got— we don't make a sale, none of this, none of this matters. And so you've got to be like, if you're in customer service, if you're whatever aspect of it, it's not just the salespeople in sales because you got to have sales. That's where the— we call it marketing, you can call it promotion, whatever. But you've got to have outreach. You got to have new customers coming in. And, you know, energetic outreach is going on all the time. How hard do you look at the sales side of things and the, you know, the emphasis on that and the, you know, the, the, the how big the market is, you know, when you're you're looking at selling a business?

Great question. And sales cures all ills. I mean, there's a famous Henry Ford story where he was walking a plant with his accountants, and one of his accountants came up to him and said, if we shut down this plant, we'll make more money. And Henry Ford's comment was, well, under your theory, why don't I just shut down all my plants? You know, you've got to have sales. I mean, my own company where I have 20 M&A intermediaries doing transactions, I can tell you all of my people are paid on performance, no retainers. I don't want a salesperson at my company who doesn't have the confidence they will deliver. And I'm a strong believer the best salespeople in the world don't need a retainer and they will overachieve if they're good at what they do.

Yeah. In other words, they don't need like salary plus bonus or something like that. Some kind of guarantee. No, they They know they're going to make more money without the guarantee. Just, you know, just give me the, just give me the commission and I'll go. I'm not worried about minimum. You know, the people are worried about the minimums for the retainers are the people who are not going to work.

Well, those are the ones who want to be an employee and have an hourly wage or a salary. But they're also the ones that the Friday before Memorial Day weekend they're disappearing at noon. The people who are compensated on commission, they're the one who is still there at 6 on that Memorial Day weekend because they're trying to close one more deal before the end of the month because it pushes them into a new tier in terms of compensation.

When you go to these different— I mean, this is a huge number of businesses that you sell. How deep do you get into these? Companies and are you learning? You know, one thing I like about podcasting is like I thank you for taking the time to talk to me this afternoon because, you know, it's a fun thing for me to, you know, talk about winning with a person like yourself because I'm always learning and I'm always getting reminded of important things or I'm getting, you know, my perspective fine-tuned on all of these aspects. It's not like you're learning new stuff, but I mean, you're learning, you see it in a brighter light or you see it in a different light and it keeps it fresh in my mind as you go out. So that's why I like the podcasting. That's why I get a lot out of it. It's the— as you go out to these businesses, are you— do you get in or is it unavoidable that you're going to get close enough to these people to see what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong, and you wind up taking those lessons back to your business?

Inevitably. I mean, I've learned so much from clients over the years. Many have become close friends. If you don't have two ears and one mouth and listen twice as much as you talk, you're not being very smart. There's no reason to recreate the wheel. And 100% believe you can take ideas from different venues. It's one reason I love podcasts and learning from people, whether it's Elon Musk or other creators. I was listening to an interview with the, um, founder of ServiceTitan, which is used in the trades for managing operations. You can pick something up from anyone if you just listen and learn.

Give me an example of something like maybe it was earlier in your career, whatever, that you brought, that you saw and you brought back in and it made a difference in running your company.

I'll give you a great example. During the Great Recession, the banks turned off the spigots. We couldn't get deals financed. So I actually created another company, um, with some partners called fairtaxassessment.com, which was designed to appeal tax assessments on real estate when they're not adjusting in alignment with the market. When a market goes down, governments slow to act, and I was building an online tool to deal with that. Um, the markets corrected and I eventually— that model never got to the monetization level that I had hoped for a dot-com company. But many of the attributes for online engagement were brought back into IBA, which I also owned at that time. On how can we do pay-per-click better, how can we do SEO better that I learned from that operation. So you often learn more in failure than in success.

Yeah, fantastic. Well, thanks so much, Gregory, for taking the time to talk. We, we, you know, it's, you know, we're just scratching the surface. Of the stories and the experiences that you have. But at least hopefully we've given people an appetite for thinking about, thinking forward to success in their company and the opportunities that are available out there for you, whether you want to take advantage of them right away or not. And when those things come, Now, are you limited to the Northeast or do you work around the country?

Our primary service area is Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Idaho. But we will on select projects represent in other states. I've sold businesses in the Triangle in North Carolina, in Massachusetts, in California. One of my brokers just completed a sale in New York. So we will, in specific industries, take on projects in other parts of the country.

Yeah, well, certainly people need to keep you in mind as a contact because, you know, it is kind of a niche thing. You know, you need a specialist, you need somebody with mileage. And what I love is someone with successful, successful track record. Of, you know, high volume. There's just no way you can duplicate that any other way rather than someone who's just opened, opened their business up and starting to do it today. So down the road, it's nice. It'll be nice for people who are listening to this when they get in there and, you know, they compound, they start to have incredible success to know that they can give you a call and get some good insider go. Do you have a website?

I do. It's ibainc.com. So Ice Cream Boy Apple, Ice Cream Nancy Charlie dot com, ibainc.com.

Fantastic. Well, thanks so much, Gregory. It's been a whole lot of fun. You brightened my afternoon. How about I'm going to give you the chance to give a final word for the people who stayed with us through this thing about any, any aspect of the winning or selling their business or anything that comes to your mind that could be helpful to them, that as a takeaway you'd want for them to take away from this?

Well, I would just say whether you're in business, athletics, or anywhere else, if you don't seek the top of the mountain, you will never get there. If you're, you know, look at a mountain and say it's too high, it's too hard, then all you'll have in life is regrets. So I, I would say go for it, put it all on the table. And at the end of the run, you'll look back and say, even if I didn't make it, I did go for it. Fantastic.

Great insight. And of course, those of y'all that are listeners know this is sponsored by our Big Hitter community. And you can find, find us at joinbighitter.com. LarryWeidel.com anytime. Get on our newsletter list. Come see us. And folks, we need more winners. We need you to do it big. We need, we need more people out there going, providing jobs, hope, inspiration. And that's where you come in. And so this is all about giving you information that can help you compress timeframes and move up faster. And so thanks so much, Gregory. This has been fantastic. Look forward to next time. Thank you. That's it for this episode. If this resonated with you, do me a favor, share it with someone who's ready to level up. Winners find winners, and the right conversation at the right time can change everything. Want to go deeper? Join us inside the Big Hitter community at joinbighitters.com. That's where the real work happens. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss the next one. Remember that you're either growing or dying, and there's no standing still. Keep winning, and I'll see you next week.