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Behind the Business Success: Gary Frey's Radical Approach to Forgiveness · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:12
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
0:17
today's guest is Gary Frye, co-owner at BGWCPA.
0:23
They are an accounting firm in Charlotte, NC founded in 2006
0:28
focused on helping middle market business owners make money, save
0:33
money, stay out of trouble and have fun.
0:36
Their proprietary process is designed to improve cash flow,
0:40
reduce expenses and lower financial risks for their
0:43
clients. Now Gary himself has an
0:46
extensive background in marketing, brand development and
0:49
guiding business strategies. He Co founded the Anything But
0:53
Typical podcast, authored Silence the Imposter 7 Weapons
0:59
to Silence Imposter Syndrome, and is credited by Yokohama's
1:04
CEO for advancing market share and profitability.
1:08
And before joining BGW, Gary transformed Business
1:11
journals.com from three employees into a $100 million
1:16
enterprise and was named among Forbes magazines Best of the
1:20
Web. Now before we get into all that
1:23
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1:26
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AD back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
1:56
today, co-owner of BGWCPA, Gary Frye.
1:59
I appreciate you making the time to Share your story today.
2:02
Anthony, it's a pleasure. And with your company, man, we
2:07
should be doing some business because it sounds like you're
2:09
helping companies save money too, which is awesome.
2:13
We'll talk more about that for sure.
2:15
So let's let's start by highlighting some just some of
2:20
your many career successes. As we talked about there in the
2:24
intro, you helped turn bizjournals.com from a small
2:29
team of three into a nine figure success story.
2:34
What role did you play in all of that?
2:38
Well, it's funny you, you, you say about successes.
2:42
And actually it's probably more of my failures where they have
2:46
been more defining for me. This was another one of those
2:51
deals where it it was one of the most serendipitous, amazing
2:55
conversations I've ever had that led me to become president of
2:59
bizjournals.com. I was at the time working for
3:03
Bank of America and heading up business marketing for Bank of
3:07
America bicoastal teams, San Francisco and Charlotte.
3:11
And my boss said we've got a great promotion for you.
3:16
We want you to move to San Francisco and lead from there
3:20
and start infiltrating and impacting the culture.
3:25
I'm like, well, who am I, you know, to be impacting the
3:28
culture of these guys that just bought vineyards, you know, off
3:32
this deal. Like I, I don't know about that.
3:35
And I, even though I was out there every other week, when the
3:42
reality hit, I'm like, I don't know that I can see my family in
3:46
San Francisco. It was so far away from any
3:49
family. We had, you know, most of our
3:52
family in the Midwest and the South.
3:55
So we had nobody out there. And then to think about moving
3:59
my kids, which were in junior high and kind of middle school
4:02
time, like, I don't, I'm not seeing this, but I had no really
4:07
options. And I was speaking at a deal in
4:09
New York for the American City Business Journals.
4:12
They had this collection of 41 business journals across the
4:15
country and I was their largest advertiser.
4:18
I did not know that at a time. It was a very small part of my
4:22
budget, but there's a few 1,000,000 bucks a year that I
4:24
spent with them. And so that's probably why they
4:27
want me to be the keynote or whatever.
4:30
But anyway, so I was in New York and this friend of mine who ran
4:35
the Atlanta Business Chronicle, he was their top publisher in
4:39
all of those publications. He said, Hey, I really would
4:43
like to do lunch with you while you're up here at the Greenbrier
4:47
or not the Greenbrier Tavern on the Green.
4:51
And I had a job interview lined up with Heidrick and Struggles
4:58
at that same time. But Ed's wife was going through
5:02
a medical issue that was pretty serious and he just needed a
5:07
friend. And so I thought, screw the
5:10
interview, you know. So I called Heidrick and
5:12
Struggles and said, hey, something's come up.
5:13
I, I apologize, but I can't make this thing.
5:16
And I thought that might be my lifeline because there were no
5:19
other options within Bank of America.
5:22
It was already a senior VP. And so at certain points there's
5:25
and with my background it's like fairly nichy, so.
5:32
Just just to highlight this point for a second, I mean,
5:34
you're, you're really looking for your next step and.
5:39
Yes. You, you have this great
5:40
interview lined up, but you're like, you know what, my friend,
5:44
he's going through something. I'm sorry, I can't make it.
5:48
I've got a different priority over here.
5:50
That's that says volumes about your character.
5:53
Sorry, go ahead. Well, relationships matter and
5:57
yes, it matters to me to be be able to provide for my family,
6:02
but relationships really matter. Transactions are temporary.
6:06
And so I met with Ed and this was the craziest time.
6:10
So I said, hey, Ed, I know you guys have your San Francisco
6:14
Business Chronicle. I need cost of living data
6:18
because the bank is trying to give me a 19% increase when it's
6:23
like it should be like a 300% increase, you know, like in 1999
6:28
at the end of 1999. So I said, can you get me cost
6:32
of living data? And he said, yeah, that's no
6:35
problem. And then he looks at me weird,
6:37
like he is looking at me and scanning my forehead.
6:42
I'm like, and it was very strange.
6:43
And I said, what are you doing? He goes it, this is the craziest
6:46
thing. It's like you have a neon light
6:48
saying you're the guy that's going over your your forehead.
6:52
And I'm like, I'm thinking he's losing it.
6:54
Yeah, he's going through a lot of stress right now.
6:57
Yeah. And so I'm like, what?
6:59
I'm the guy. And he says, yeah, you're the
7:03
guy to runthis.com Internet thing that we've got going.
7:08
It's called AM city.com. It's only got 3 people, but the
7:13
chairman's like, this is the future.
7:16
We've got a national search going on.
7:18
You're the guy to run it. And I said I am not the guy.
7:21
And I'm like, not the guy. He was the head of AJ Walter
7:27
Thompson over account service in Los Angeles.
7:30
And so we had this common bond in the advertising world in for
7:35
my early career. And so that's why we were and he
7:38
was just a great guy. He still is.
7:41
And I'm like, I'm not the guy. And he goes, no, you, you're the
7:44
guy. I said I am not a tech wizard.
7:47
I'm not even, I'm certainly not bleeding edge.
7:50
I'm a little leading edge, but not bleeding edge.
7:53
And, and I don't know anything about publishing.
7:56
He goes, it doesn't matter. And he outlined 3 things that
7:59
were he goes, listen, you are known for building bridges
8:04
amongst warring factions. And he said we have 41
8:07
publishers that are terrified by the existence of this as a
8:10
separate entity. Because at that time,
8:12
youknowanything.com that had, you know, just vaporware was
8:17
worth bazillion times more than anything that had tangible value
8:21
like Toys-R-Us versus toysrus.com.
8:24
They all had crazy multiples in the in the.com world.
8:27
He goes, you are a bridge builder, we need a bridge
8:31
builder because all these publishers with the exception of
8:34
me, because he was very forward thinking are threatened to their
8:39
very core. They think they're going to go
8:40
by the way the dinosaur. And so he said that's number
8:44
one. Number two is you're a brand
8:45
builder. And he said we got to rebrand
8:47
this thing because it's called am city.com and it doesn't make
8:50
sense for as American city. Nobody knows that because
8:53
everybody knows of these individual business journals,
8:56
which are hyper local. So that's the second thing he
9:00
said. The third thing is you have a
9:01
proven track record of growing businesses into legitimate
9:06
businesses. I'm like, well, yeah, but man, I
9:11
don't see it. I don't see it.
9:13
So he said, I'm calling you in three days and if you're 40%
9:16
interested, I'm introducing you to the chairman who had been the
9:19
head of Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal.
9:22
He was the vice chairman of Dow Jones old, you know, crusty,
9:27
very smart business guy and you know, journalist from Oklahoma
9:32
originally, but Ray Shaw. And so that is what took me and
9:39
they drugged me into this thing. But but what was so crazy is on
9:45
the flight back to to Charlotte, I had this stream of
9:50
consciousness, like all these ideas just exploding out of my
9:54
mind of like, what about this and what about that and what
9:57
about this? And so when I finally met with
10:00
Ray, I had a two page, nicely organized stream of
10:05
consciousness of hey, the, you know, without knowing all that
10:09
much, just what I knew that Ed had told me.
10:12
So I give it to Ray and we're in his conference room and he was
10:16
always a suit and tie in a very proper man of very few words,
10:22
very intimidating, wonderful soul, but just he was very
10:27
intimidating because he didn't say much.
10:30
And his power, like, you know, he's done a lot and he's reading
10:35
this thing and he's, and I'm thinking I need to leave because
10:41
this is going to be embarrassing.
10:43
I'm like, I'm thinking I got to hit the door.
10:45
How do I get and excuse myself? And then he flips the page and
10:49
he starts smirking and I'm like, oh man, I'm dead.
10:52
This is just stupid. This is really bad.
10:55
And he goes, he goes, I, I like the way you think.
10:58
He offered me a job right then doubled my salary.
11:06
You can't make this stuff up. It was the most incredible
11:11
experience, one of the most incredible business experiences
11:14
I've ever had in my life. And then we, we, we experienced
11:19
some really crazy stuff duringthat.com boom and bust.
11:24
We didn't bust, but we invested 1,000,000 bucks into a company
11:28
that was a competitor that was burning 40 million a year and
11:32
they were out in San Francisco, didn't even have a million top
11:35
line and they sold for 225,000,000 bucks to NBCI.
11:41
It was just the most crazy. Those were the days.
11:45
To be alive, I felt like, and I thought we are, I, I questioned
11:51
whether we were sane because all these other people like the sock
11:54
puppets, you know, of pets.com and all that, they were blowing
11:58
money like it was water and we were running fiscally
12:02
conservative like, and I just like, maybe we're screwed up.
12:09
And, and Ray called it, he said, man, this thing is
12:11
unsustainable. It's going to blow.
12:14
I think he called it like he said it's going to blow in March
12:17
or April of 2000. He called it to the month
12:21
whenthe.com Bobble. Burst yeah, for those for those
12:23
listening who, who maybe aren't familiar with the timeline,
12:26
yeah, what Gary's describing in kind of the late 90s, like
12:29
everything Internet was hot, hot, hot.
12:32
You know, toys.com, the valuation was way higher than
12:35
toysrus.com, which had much better sales.
12:38
And then, yeah, that come early 2000, like the bottom just fell
12:43
out. Like all these overvaluations,
12:45
just everybody sort of came to the the realization at the same
12:48
time and everybody was cooked. A lot of businesses shut down,
12:52
the market topped. Sorry, go ahead.
12:54
Yeah, a few people did well, you know, I mean Timor and Keith
13:00
Belling who were running that company, they did quite well,
13:03
but most of their people did not, you know, because they they
13:08
didn't survive. And so we ended up cutting a
13:11
deal with Microsoft after we had a deal on the table with
13:17
allbusiness.com and that was the company that we put 1,000,000
13:20
bucks with and that great guys. But I mean, it was just crazy
13:26
money. Which makes me wonder, like I
13:28
still like Bitcoin blowing up to 100,000 bucks a coin and then
13:33
down to 77. Like I can't wrap my head around
13:37
it. You know, I have friends that
13:38
have made money in it, but it man, it still feels like
13:41
vaporware, you know, so I I just don't and I believe in the
13:44
technology, but I just don't know.
13:47
So what was the strategy there at biz journals?
13:49
How did you grow it so quickly? Well.
13:53
The demand was there, but what we did is we we partnered with
13:59
these local, with our local business journals, which were
14:02
part of the same, you know, family and umbrella and we
14:06
worked out win win, you know, pricing and to where they could
14:13
make money. So it wasn't like winner take
14:16
all, like no, we're part of the same family, we're drinking from
14:19
the same through. So that's really important.
14:25
And then understanding that really content was king and it
14:29
still is, you know, distribution is really important.
14:33
All we did is we opened up distribution in a big way that
14:36
they didn't have. So now all of a sudden San
14:40
Francisco Business Chronicle, any, anything that's running out
14:44
there that could apply to RTP because of the tech scene or
14:49
down in in San Antonio or you know, Austin, TX, which we had
14:55
in Austin Business Journal. Like all of a sudden this these
14:59
stories are cross pollinating. And so I think that was really
15:02
the thing we just needed to listen to these folks find a win
15:06
win situation, which is why we ended up rebranding to biz
15:10
journals instead of something else, you know, something that
15:15
didn't relate to them. We needed to tip the hat and and
15:19
show, hey, we're part of the same thing.
15:22
Even though the company was structured separately in case, I
15:27
think Ray wanted to like, hey, in case we want to go IPO or
15:30
whatever because everybody else was doing that and we act
15:33
elected not to. And then after we did the deal
15:36
with Microsoft, it wasn't but a few years and Ray said take your
15:42
money back. I want my independence.
15:44
And so, which was really interesting.
15:46
So he turned the company. Back.
15:48
Yeah, bought it. So yeah, yeah.
15:53
And and so when did you wrap up your time there?
15:57
2001, I think it was probably April or May of 2001, I had
16:05
merged two companies when I was at Bank of America and coaching
16:08
these two business owners separately.
16:11
And I'm like, Hey, you need to know him and he needs to know
16:13
you because they were, they had strengths where each other was
16:18
weak. And I thought, man, this is you
16:21
guys would be great together. And they, they were.
16:24
And then they came and said, Hey, why don't you be our third
16:26
partner? And I'm like, no, been through
16:28
partner embezzlement. I ain't doing that again.
16:30
So I said pass. But then after we sold to
16:35
Microsoft 20% of the company, they came back and said, hey,
16:40
we'll give you a third of the company free and clear if you
16:44
come in and be our president because they they had bought a,
16:47
a building together. They hadn't occupied it yet.
16:50
They were, you know, in the process of up fitting it and
16:54
they were in two separate buildings.
16:55
And they they truly, they do knew enough that, hey, there's
16:59
no real such thing as a merger because somebody acquired
17:02
somebody and somebody's got the dominant culture.
17:04
And they really wanted to do what they could do to avoid that
17:08
situation. So they said, hey, we know Gary.
17:11
We trust him. Why don't you be the president?
17:14
And then when we move in, like, hey, it truly is a merger.
17:18
Like, OK. And so I elected to do it.
17:21
I took a pay cut and I and Ray tried talking me out of it.
17:25
He said, man, I'm afraid we're going to go into a recession,
17:27
which he called it. He called that one too.
17:31
He didn't foresee 911. And I was in New York on 9/11
17:34
actually trying to sell our company to a large holding
17:39
company. And the night before and then
17:44
the next day, you know, the world changed.
17:47
So you know that that's where I was.
17:51
So that's I, I went and, and took that and Ray said, well, I
17:54
want you to consult with me for a year at any time.
17:58
And, and he was very generous in doing that.
18:01
And my partner said, yeah, go for it, as long as you can still
18:06
do your job here. And it was, it was, it was a
18:10
really interesting and cool time.
18:14
And I never thought I would leave that place either.
18:17
And then after 911, we were still doing OK.
18:22
And then I had a partner, one of my partners had a son that was
18:26
dying unexpectedly and still was a a mystery to Duke University
18:33
Hospital, normal little kid until about 3:00 and then just
18:38
started regressing and, and he had kind of a meltdown.
18:44
And so we ended up having to split the company and I had to
18:51
go do something, which is what took me to Cleveland, OH.
18:56
You don't. Recommend that move from
18:58
Charlotte to Cleveland. I'm just saying.
19:00
Hey, as an Ohio boy, a Northeast Ohio boy, I'm, well, I'd like to
19:05
say take a little offense to that, but I can appreciate the
19:08
desire for better weather. Wonderful people, wonderful
19:11
people. The weather just stinks and the
19:14
taxes are way too high. Yeah.
19:17
I can't argue with you on either front there.
19:19
But you've, you've, yeah, you've touched on a couple of things
19:21
and I want to kind of connect the dots because, you know, when
19:24
I asked you about the success at biz journals, kind of laughed.
19:27
And you're like, you know, I think my, I found my failures to
19:30
be a lot more defining. And then, you know, you, you
19:33
also mentioned something about partner embezzlement.
19:37
So I think there's probably some, some dots to connect and
19:41
some stories to share here. What's what?
19:43
What's that all about? Well, so I started my career as
19:50
a graphic designer and and I had a job offer after my internship
19:56
my sophomore year in college. And I had to do a portfolio
20:02
review before going back to Kansas State for my what would
20:05
have been my junior year. And 'cause I was on a full ride
20:09
scholarship called the Putnam Scholarship and my advisor said.
20:15
Gary, you got to take this job because I can't get grads placed
20:18
and this guy's really good. And so being mentored and she
20:23
said at the end of the day, at the end of the day, all you have
20:26
is your portfolio. That's it.
20:28
That's all people are buying is your portfolio.
20:32
And she was right. So I, I took that and I was
20:39
brought in to do my first turn around when I was at the ripe
20:42
old age of 28. Didn't know what the heck I was
20:44
doing in that either, but we did.
20:47
We turned it in nine months, which was like just bonehead
20:50
simple stuff, at least the way I thought.
20:52
And my partner was 20 years older than me and everybody knew
20:57
him in town because he was the head of corporate affairs in
21:01
Cessna Aircraft and Wichita, KS isn't that big of a city.
21:06
And so I thought, man, this is the deal.
21:09
I we ended up putting my name on the door had I think I had 40%
21:15
of the company, something like that.
21:17
And then I caught my partner lying to me and moving money
21:22
into his account that should have been part of mine.
21:26
So how'd you catch him? The group that got me placed
21:31
there for the turn around, I brought them back in to do a
21:34
valuation be and to help us do a we.
21:39
We looked at strategic alliances, we looked at joint
21:41
ventures, we looked at all kinds of stuff.
21:43
Because British Aerospace was my biggest client and I had gotten
21:48
all of North and South America, but I wanted Europe and to do
21:51
Europe because they were based in Prestwick, Scotland.
21:54
I needed AUK presence primarily London if possible.
22:01
And so these guys were tied in with some of the top agencies
22:05
there. And so they came in, did the
22:08
evaluation and they're like, man, you guys, this is amazing
22:11
turn around. But the only thing that's a
22:14
little off on your PNL and and your balance sheet is the fact
22:19
that your consulting fees are pretty high.
22:23
But you probably brought in Stewart, who was the owner of
22:27
that company multiple times and he was 10,000 bucks a day plus
22:30
expenses and you paid him upfront in 1991 to 93 when I was
22:36
there. So about 25 grand in today's
22:39
money per day. And I am like, we haven't
22:45
brought in Stewart at all. And this was in like November or
22:49
December of 93. And so I looked at Bill.
22:55
I'm like, what's that all about? And he starts getting red and
22:59
starts sweating. Like.
23:01
Uh oh, something right. And I knew his ex-wife had sued
23:05
him for child support and alimony.
23:09
And I said, I'll defend you because his his current wife was
23:12
a tenured professor at Wichita State.
23:15
And we had hired her and we'd sent her to training for a
23:19
special kind of focus group testing.
23:22
It's called benefit testing. And I said, hey, I'll, I'll
23:27
testify for you. And he wanted me to have nothing
23:30
to do with that. I'm like, OK, whatever.
23:34
Then I started thinking, wait a minute, something funky.
23:38
What was he trying to keep you away from?
23:40
Yeah, That night I after I took Henry back to the airport, I
23:47
went back into our archives because everything was manual,
23:50
you know. Yeah, we had computer
23:52
workstations and, you know, DOS on, you know, word processors or
23:57
whatever. But it was not hard to find.
24:00
I'm like, oh, his wife was on the payroll and he just failed
24:03
to tell me. And so he was funneling all that
24:07
money to her under consulting fees.
24:11
And so when you found that, was it just like that's it, we're
24:14
done, close this down, split it up.
24:17
I so I went to my neighbor who was, who did our buy sell
24:21
agreement. He was part of the largest law
24:24
firm in all of Kansas. And he was a he was a litigator.
24:28
But did you know big stuff, you know, against big companies?
24:35
And I said, Hey, here's what I found.
24:38
And we were running buddies. So we'd run it in the mornings
24:41
together. And he said, I want, I want the
24:43
whole deck. I want copies of everything.
24:47
And so he went through everything and he said he goes,
24:50
listen, you know, the way that we structured the insurance on
24:56
he, he goes, he is the primary beneficiary, not the company and
25:01
whatever like, And he said, you're actually in danger.
25:05
And he said, what worries me is, you know, you get a cornered
25:08
animal and you never know how they're going to respond.
25:11
So he said if something happens I'm sending this deck to his
25:15
ex-wife. But he said we can't represent
25:18
you. If something happens, yeah.
25:21
What was the implication there? Something happens to your
25:25
safety. Yeah, in case I got killed, you
25:28
know, Wow. You know, this was when the firm
25:32
had just come out, too, which was terrifying.
25:36
But he said, you know, desperate people do desperate things.
25:39
And he said you never know. He goes, you know, so I'm like,
25:44
man, what am I going to do? So I, I'm a very transparent
25:48
person and all of a sudden I'm very reserved.
25:51
And so Bill's like, hey, what's what's up?
25:54
It didn't take long, few couple weeks maybe.
25:58
And I said, Hey, I know exactly what you've been doing.
26:02
And man, he came at me like a ragin rhino, man.
26:05
I mean, and had, you know, it's not of your damn business and
26:10
blah, blah. I'm like, well, it is my
26:11
business because 40% of it's mine.
26:13
You know, I was like it. It's absolutely my business.
26:17
You lied to me. Well, I'm good.
26:19
OK, Well, I'm going to change. OK.
26:21
So I said I forgive you, but man, trust has been very deeply
26:25
damaged. And then I told our internal CPA
26:31
and we had an external CPA that was his sailing buddy.
26:35
I said, listen, if anything, any funky hanky panky starts
26:39
happening with these numbers, I need to know about it.
26:43
And it wasn't long after a month, a couple months, she came
26:47
to me, shut the door crying and said he he took his wife off,
26:54
but he just jump jumped his own salary by that same amount.
26:58
Didn't tell you about it. I said, OK, well I'm done.
27:03
Thank you for letting me know. And so that's when I became very
27:07
earnest about, OK, I, I got to leave.
27:10
I can't stay and so. This has to be painful.
27:15
I mean, this is a guy was your your partner, you trusted him.
27:19
And I don't know how you found it in your heart to to forgive
27:22
him the first time. I don't know if that was more
27:26
out of fear or more like out of like I I think he's actually
27:29
changed. No, I, I, I I didn't know that
27:32
he had changed. But here's what here's the fear
27:36
that struck me more than would this guy try to kill me.
27:40
The fear was I saw how he made incremental adjustments of
27:47
justification because his ex-wife, you know where they
27:51
went through a divorce. She was worth a lot of money and
27:54
he wasn't. And he had his company
27:56
structured as AC Corp. I don't think even S Corps were
27:58
invented yet. And so he was paying her alimony
28:03
and child support based on the gross receipts of the company,
28:06
even if it wasn't profitable. And so when, and there was no
28:11
money when I was brought in, I mean, he didn't have the money
28:13
to go bankrupt. So when we turned it, he's, I
28:19
think he was like, I'm going to show her, you know, and I was
28:22
just, I was just monkey in the middle and I got caught in the
28:26
crossfire. But it was damaging.
28:29
I mean, obviously and but the scary part was I thought we are
28:37
all capable. I am capable of the same
28:40
justification that could have ruined his life.
28:43
If I would have, if I would have outed him, they would have
28:46
destroyed him. Absolutely.
28:48
Because I think he perjured himself too, you know, because
28:51
he was under testimony of what was going on.
28:54
I'm confident he perjured himself with his ex-wife now.
28:59
He's passed away since then and she probably has too.
29:02
I don't know. He was 20 years older than me.
29:07
Was there a thought in your mind to do that?
29:09
I mean, you've got to be furious.
29:12
I mean, there's there has to be a part of you.
29:14
I would guess that like wants to take some sort of action or a
29:17
little bit of like a revenge flair in there.
29:22
Here's what I learned and and I've had it ground into me even
29:25
more because that was just nothing compared to some of the
29:28
other stuff that we've gone through where we had to forgive.
29:31
And that was that was child's play compared to the other
29:33
things that we've been through. But what I found is if we refuse
29:39
to be, if we refuse to forgive, we will also be unforgiven.
29:45
You know, like if you just go to the Lord's Prayer, man, I mean,
29:48
it's pretty clear, but even if you don't believe that it's a
29:53
fact that bitterness will rot you from the inside out.
29:59
It will rot you from the inside out.
30:00
And So what good is it if I it's like drinking poison and hoping
30:05
it kills somebody else? That's what it is.
30:08
That's what bitterness and unforgiveness does.
30:10
It's like drinking poison and hoping that it kills somebody
30:12
else and it won't. It, it only kills you.
30:16
And then it has a ripple effect on your family and everybody
30:18
else around you. So I knew I had to forgive.
30:25
And it doesn't mean that forgiveness is easy.
30:28
It's not because it's an emotional thing.
30:31
Yeah. You want to string the guy up,
30:33
you know, But you, you must choose not to.
30:37
Because I also realized I am absolutely as capable of doing
30:43
the same justifying and justifying the same stupid stuff
30:46
that he did. We're all capable.
30:49
Say more about that. What do you mean that we're all
30:52
capable? You think you could have pulled
30:54
the same kind of shenanigans that he did?
30:56
Oh I absolutely think so. I mean because what I what I
31:00
have seen is ends justifies the means.
31:05
Mentality is so dangerous. But we can we can hoodwink
31:09
ourselves and believe a lie. We can believe a lie so fast and
31:15
it usually doesn't happen like kaboom, you know, you go 180,
31:19
it's incremental steps and before you know it, you are 180°
31:25
pointed in the opposite direction of where you wanted to
31:27
go. But they're very slow.
31:29
They're very insidious. And I've seen this happen many,
31:33
many times. And so it's a warning, like if,
31:37
if we think it could never happen to us, watch out.
31:43
You know, I, I, I. How do you guard against it?
31:50
Because this is an interesting sort of thought pattern here to,
31:53
to kind of go through because, you know, I've known some, some
31:56
guys doing pretty well that, you know, ended up getting
31:59
themselves in trouble with the law that, you know, spent some
32:02
time in prison. And, you know, from our circle,
32:05
there were some people really cast in stones like, oh, you
32:08
know, look at those guys like terrible, terrible people.
32:11
And, and I've always wondered, you know, because, because I
32:14
don't, I know them to be terrible people.
32:16
Like I've known them and I've known them well.
32:17
And, you know, good people, smart people.
32:20
And I and, and I've all often wondered exactly what you're
32:23
talking about, Gary. Is it more like that they made
32:27
this decision just a little bit in the wrong direction and it
32:31
led to this? And rather than like starting
32:34
here and being like, I got this, you know, devious plan that I'm
32:37
going to do. And you seem to think that it's
32:39
more of the former. It's sort of like a little bit
32:42
of like these incremental things that then lead you to this dark
32:46
place. Now there are psychopaths and
32:51
sociopaths, and I actually worked for one that was a
32:55
sociopath. I didn't even know what it was
32:57
until everything blew up and then we realized this dude is a
33:00
fraud and everything that he says is a lie.
33:03
Like wow, I don't know. Like you know, I think there are
33:09
some people that come out of the womb, you know, what about
33:14
Charles Manson? Like I mean dude, that was one
33:17
evil dude or Adolf Hitler, like 1 evil dude, I don't know.
33:23
But in other things. And I knew a guy that you know,
33:28
he was a white collar crime guy. He was radioactive in this
33:34
little town of Chagrin Falls where I grew up or where we and
33:37
I didn't grow up. He had grown up there.
33:39
But we when we moved up there, he had just gotten out of seven
33:44
years in a supermax and he was a brilliant day trader, like
33:48
brilliant and, you know, had the long hair and, you know, big
33:53
house and, you know, was the cool guy.
33:55
And so all the big money guys in Cleveland wanted him to trade
34:00
for them. And so he did.
34:03
And I, I got to know him while he was shackled with an ankle
34:06
bracelet working behind the counters in an Einstein bagels.
34:10
And I got to hear his terrifying stories.
34:12
He should have never been in a supermax for what he'd done.
34:15
But there was no room in the day camps.
34:17
So that's where he ended up going.
34:19
And boy, those stories will blow your mind of what goes on in the
34:23
in that prison system. It's it'll, it will blow your
34:28
freaking mind. But he didn't intend on
34:34
falsifying returns. He just like OK, I'm behind, but
34:38
I'll get it back, I'll get it back.
34:40
I'll get these guys money back. And and he was a good guy, but
34:47
they lost patience and they had clout and then they threw the
34:50
book at him and FBI came in and 1st SEC.
34:55
But then FBI and then before you know, he's carted off to jail
34:59
and to prison in Pennsylvania and wife leaves him and his son
35:04
disowns him, you know, like came out with nothing, you know, and
35:09
I heard his stories. So that's but same thing with
35:13
him, like, you know, boom, boom, boom just ends justify the
35:17
means. But I think fear drives people,
35:20
greed drives people. Those two things, fear and greed
35:25
and, and I again, whether somebody believes this or not,
35:29
this is in my experience, there's a scripture says the
35:34
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
35:38
I firmly believe that if you, if you have 0 fear for the God who
35:43
created the heavens and the earth, who've knit our very DNA,
35:48
and I believe that there is, if you have no regard for that,
35:52
then it's kind of like, Hey, I'm in control and whatever I can
35:55
get by, like, you know, get all you can can all you get and sit
35:59
out in the can. Like it doesn't matter who you
36:03
hurt. You're the center of the
36:05
universe. And there are some good people
36:08
that have no regard for God and I appreciate them.
36:12
But at the end of the day, if you just feel like, Hey,
36:15
everything is relative and I can make up my, you know, the rules
36:19
as I go, that's where we get into trouble.
36:21
And that's what I think really happened to my partner.
36:23
I think he, I think he even gave lip service to God.
36:28
And I've gotten really screwed by people that claim to be Jesus
36:32
followers and I am one, but like, I've been really screwed
36:35
by a lot of them. So it doesn't mean it's your
36:39
theology. It's, it means your heart and
36:41
like, what are you doing with it?
36:42
And so we can deceive ourselves. And that that was again, the
36:46
thing that scared me the most. I'm like, man, you know, the
36:52
heart is deceitful above all things.
36:55
And who can know it? And that's not to be a woe is
36:59
me. I'm awful.
37:01
No, no, no. It's just put it in perspective.
37:06
So you had this one partner issue and you mentioned that it
37:10
is child's play compared to some other things that happened to
37:14
you. You strike me as a pretty
37:18
positive guy, pretty upbeat, but you've been, it sounds like,
37:23
hosed by a lot of people that were really close to you.
37:27
I'm I'm curious, like how have you kind of risen above that?
37:30
Like I love the with the line you said bitterness is like
37:33
drinking poison and hoping it kills someone else.
37:36
But it's one thing to kind of like say that in your logical
37:40
brain. It's another thing to sort of
37:41
like make your whole body like believe that and and live that
37:47
way. You get what I'm saying?
37:49
Like, how do you sort of like bridge that chasm?
37:53
Well, I'm, I'm going to take back to a story of my
37:56
grandfather. My grandfather was a, an
38:01
immigrant that came over here is his, his parents came over in
38:06
1874 from Prussia. So it would be Ukraine in today
38:11
where Ukraine is. They were persecuted.
38:15
They were, they were very poor Mennonites and they were
38:18
persecuted because they were not part of the state religion.
38:22
And so they came to Gossel, Kansas, which is a town of about
38:26
300 people in the middle of farm fields and nowhere.
38:30
And my grandfather was very, very poor.
38:35
He never acted poor. They were filled with laughter
38:39
and like, and he was very deep. Like I read about his faith
38:44
through his poetry. But he was a man of very few
38:46
words. And when he did speak words, it
38:48
was German with my grandmother. And so we didn't speak German,
38:54
but he had a glass eye, and the glass eye would even move.
38:58
And so as kids, we were always trying to figure out which was
39:01
the glass eye. And the way the reason he had a
39:03
glass eye was because he and a guy were gathering chickens.
39:08
He was selling chickens to this guy and that they were in the
39:13
chicken coop. And this guy swung a chicken
39:15
hook and it accidentally shattered my grandfather's
39:19
glasses and took out his eye. And I remember my father telling
39:25
me because we were all we asked about these questions, you know,
39:28
as kids, like, you know, which ones is I and how did that
39:30
happen, blah, blah, blah. And my father was somewhat
39:33
bitter about it because people said you need to sue this guy
39:39
because he didn't have the money for his hospital bills.
39:42
And it took him forever to pay his hospital bills.
39:47
And they're like, you need to sue this guy.
39:49
And then he's like, I can't as a Christian man, I cannot sue
39:53
another man. Yeah, but it's just the
39:56
insurance company you need to do that, Ed.
39:59
Like, I can't do it. And so I remember that story
40:04
because he died so poor. And I thought.
40:11
He really needed the money and I've needed the money at at
40:14
times too, but I wasn't that poor.
40:17
You know, like literally for Christmas we got a paper bag
40:21
that had an orange and unsalted roasted peanuts in the shell and
40:28
a couple of candied orange slices and a couple of chocolate
40:33
covered, you know, peanut clusters.
40:37
That was that was all they could afford.
40:40
But that was something precious to them.
40:43
And I thought, man, look at the integrity of this man.
40:49
That's my legacy, you know, that's my grandfather.
40:54
And, you know, so. Yeah.
40:58
So for you it it helped a lot to kind of understand the the
41:04
flesh, the gene pool that you came from and say, I identify
41:09
with that and I want to be emblematic of that.
41:12
And even more so, it was what is what are the stories I'm passing
41:17
to my children? Because I really didn't know my
41:22
grandfather all that well because he was a man of very few
41:24
words. But his poetry, like I still
41:27
have his poetry. Like, wow, that dude was a deep
41:31
guy. But I saw what he did.
41:34
I heard about it from my father. I didn't even talk to my
41:38
grandfather about it. He probably wouldn't want to
41:40
talk about it. But then I thought of the impact
41:46
it had on me a generation away from that.
41:50
What's the impact of my own children?
41:52
Because they had to move across the country when they were three
41:55
or four and seven at the time and completely disruptive, you
42:01
know, And, you know. Yeah, we've been through a lot
42:04
of betrayal when we moved to Charlotte, you know, six months
42:08
into the gig, I get fired. I delivered a $2,000,000 account
42:12
and the guy owes me 30 grand. And I'm like, dude, like what?
42:18
And he said, so sue me. And he knew I forgave hundreds
42:22
of thousands of dollars of my other partner.
42:25
I had a couple grand in my name. That was it. 2 little boys at
42:29
home with their with my wife and I was destitute, you know and,
42:34
and I knew within the first week after moving here because the
42:38
head of account service and the head of our business office came
42:41
to my office and shut the door and said you have no idea what
42:44
you walked into this guy's abusive.
42:46
I'm like what you know I, I helped you win business.
42:50
I thought I had done a very good job of due diligence, flew him
42:54
and his wife out to Kansas and came back and forth out here to
42:58
help them win some business. And then all he really wanted
43:03
was my $2,000,000 account. That's all he wanted.
43:06
And, and I'm like, well, I asked you specifically, is there
43:10
anything I need to know? And you all said no, you are all
43:15
silent. And I said why, what about that?
43:17
And they both said we were told if anybody squirreled the deal,
43:22
we they would be found out and be fired immediately.
43:26
Oh, great guy, son of a Baptist bastard, great guy.
43:30
Well, I mean, man, I had to like, forgiving my partner was
43:35
easy compared to this guy because that was malicious.
43:38
It felt malicious and he lived a half a mile from me.
43:41
It took me a long, like I really had to get very intentional
43:46
about forgiving him. Any time I saw a green
43:49
Bonneville like what he drove, my heart rate would just jump
43:52
into my throat, you know? So how did you do it from a
43:55
practical standpoint? How do you work through those
43:57
feelings? Well, so I, I, I enlisted the
44:04
help of an attorney for that one.
44:06
And the guy's like, this is open and shut, like open and shut.
44:11
And, and then he enlists an attorney because like I hired a
44:16
golden retriever. He had a pit bull, but still.
44:19
And so he's like, I'm going to bury this guy in fees, you know,
44:23
So that's what was happening. And I went to a Promise Keepers
44:29
event in Atlanta. A pledge brother of mine said,
44:33
Gary, I really want you to come to this thing.
44:35
And I said, Steve, he was an architect down in Florida.
44:39
I said, Steve, I don't even have the the money to go for the for
44:42
gas. I and I don't want a rah rah
44:45
thing. I don't need an emotional thing.
44:47
But I really felt like the heavens were kind of brass at
44:49
that time. I was pleading with God, you
44:52
know, I don't know anybody in this town that I am living in.
44:56
I feel so destitute. I feel forsaken.
44:59
I'd put in prayer request cards and nobody would respond.
45:03
You know, like, like I just don't need an emotional thing.
45:07
He said, Gary, you were so impactful in my life.
45:09
Please come to this thing. I've already paid for it.
45:11
I I'll pay your gas. Like I'm like, oh, Steve.
45:15
And he's like, just come. So I did and it's in the Georgia
45:19
Dome. There's like 80,000 guys in this
45:22
thing like, and I was not wanting to be part of the rah
45:25
rah thing at all. And there was a grandson of a
45:29
slave that was one of the keynotes and he was talking
45:34
about forgiveness and he was talking about what are the
45:37
stories that we are passing down to our children.
45:43
Man, that got me, that got me. And so I'm talking.
45:49
So we have to huddle up with different people, like in the
45:52
rows up in the stadium and there's this Baptist pastor that
45:57
I get huddled up with like 4 guys or whatever.
46:00
And what, my buddy Steve was in a different group.
46:02
So they're like, hey, what's God working on you?
46:04
And I said, I got to forgive this guy.
46:07
I don't have the money to pay my attorney, but he owes me 30
46:11
grand. And and this pastor goes, hey,
46:13
God doesn't want you to be a doormat.
46:17
And I know I am like, yeah, I get it.
46:18
But Jesus did say, Hey, if they asked you to walk one mile, walk
46:24
2, or if they ask you for your shirt, give them your coat too.
46:29
I'm like, I don't know how I reconcile that with don't be a
46:33
doormat. I don't know.
46:35
So he was kind of kindly rebuking me.
46:40
Well, that night, the, the, the keynote, the, the guy that
46:43
started promise keepers gave a story on forgiveness again.
46:48
And he said there was a guy at the Silverdome in Detroit that
46:53
he had been at this and a buddy of his had swindled $30,000 from
47:00
him, 30,000 same amount 10 years before.
47:04
And he really struggled with forgiveness, but he knew that he
47:07
needed to forgive him. So he's like, all right, that
47:09
next Monday. So the this was over a weekend.
47:12
That next Monday, this guy that he hadn't seen in 10 years comes
47:15
to his office and said, hey, I was at this thing called Promise
47:19
Keepers at the Silver Dome. They were in the same thing.
47:21
It was just hilarious. And he said, 10 years ago I
47:25
swindled $30,000 from you. What I did was wrong.
47:29
Here's the 30 plus interest. Would you please forgive me?
47:35
And this pastor's yelling at me and we're up in the rafters.
47:39
He's like $30,000. You're right.
47:42
Forgive him. Still very unemotional for me,
47:46
zero emotion. I get home and my kids scream,
47:52
hey, dad, and they come and tackle me as soon as I get home
47:57
and Jennifer says hey, how, how was it?
47:59
I start bawling. I mean, it's still so emotional
48:03
to me today. And that was in 1995, man.
48:08
And so 30 years ago, I'm like, I got to forgive this guy.
48:14
And so I, I wrote him a note. He, he had been a magistrate
48:19
too. So he knew the law and I knew
48:20
that, hey, we got a statute of limitations.
48:23
But I, I wrote him a note and I said what you did was wrong.
48:27
I know that there's a statute of limitations.
48:29
I don't have even have the money to pay my attorney.
48:33
But my response to you was just as wrong.
48:36
Would you please forgive me? Took him a rose and I went to
48:40
his house and blew his mind I think.
48:44
You're blowing mine. And the crazy thing, here's the
48:50
here's the hilarious crazy thing about this.
48:54
So he didn't say much and I said I'm dropping it.
48:58
And it took me 18 months to pay off my attorney.
49:03
Our kids got put on the same freaking kids soccer team.
49:08
So now you got to see this guy all the time.
49:11
All the time. And then Sunday afternoons I'd
49:14
take our kids and other dads and we'd go play at the Harris Y
49:17
with kids and Mark could show up with his kid and like, but you
49:22
know what? I don't want to be his friend.
49:26
I don't want to hang around him. But I've forgiven him.
49:29
Doesn't mean I have to like him, but I've forgiven him and I'm
49:32
free. I have.
49:34
I hold none of that against him. But I kind of want to recap a
49:39
couple of things here 'cause this is a, a pretty phenomenal
49:44
turn of events. So you're, you're at this, this
49:48
promise keepers event, no emotion at the time.
49:52
You're not a rah rah guy. You're there, you're sort of
49:54
taking it in. Nothing's kind of going on in
49:57
inside. No, something triggers though,
49:59
when you get home. And maybe it was being around
50:04
your family, being around your kids.
50:06
What, what kind of legacy? What kind of story am I showing,
50:09
you know, to my kids? And then the emotion comes out
50:14
and I, I've got to forgive this guy, which that in itself is a
50:20
tremendous breakthrough. But then what you did next is
50:25
you wrote him a letter and took him a rose.
50:27
And in that letter, you asked him to forgive you.
50:32
You weren't going to him specifically to say, and, and
50:34
maybe this was part of it, to say, I forgive you.
50:37
You went to him to ask for forgiveness.
50:40
Yeah, yeah. I needed to be free.
50:44
And. And the bitterness was killing
50:46
me. It was killing me and it was
50:51
justified. That's the crazy part.
50:54
That's the crazy part about bitterness.
50:56
It's justified. What he did was wrong.
50:59
And I said what you did is wrong, but my response to you
51:04
was just as wrong. It was, you know, where you, you
51:09
want to RIP the guy's throat out.
51:11
I mean, that's not a good thing. That's not a godly perspective.
51:15
And, and that's why I say I think we're all capable.
51:19
Because if you've ever had rage and an emotion of rage or
51:24
revenge, guess what? All you got to do is just take
51:28
it out to its farthest extreme. And we're all capable of
51:31
anything. Just take it to its its furthest
51:35
extreme and we're all capable. You would hope that we have
51:39
governors and restraints that would keep us, you know, in a
51:43
moral equilibrium. But sometimes those things snap,
51:48
man, and you know, so you know, but by the grace of God go I,
51:54
quite frankly. That's a tremendous story, Gary.
51:59
I want to kind of shift gears now and talk about kind of the
52:04
reason and the way that you and I were first connected.
52:09
I had the pleasure of interviewing now a mutual
52:14
friend, Tana Green, for my work. Choice.
52:17
Has a tremendous story and if anybody's listening, watching
52:21
this and they haven't heard Tana's story, you need to go and
52:26
absorb that after you're done here.
52:29
But you know it with several of my guests, Tana included, we end
52:34
up talking about this idea of imposter syndrome.
52:37
And, you know, even people who are very successful doubt
52:41
themselves and say kind of a fraud.
52:44
Like, you know, if people only had any idea of what a mess I am
52:49
inside, how uncertain I am of myself, You know, they, they may
52:53
see the car, they may see the house, they may see the, you
52:56
know, the office building that I walk into.
52:58
But man, I, I question myself every day.
53:01
And this conversation came up with Tana and incredibly
53:06
successful. The and she has an amazing story
53:08
of, you know, hardships that she's overcome.
53:11
And, and I love the fact that she and she's, you know, her
53:14
company's huge, like thousands of employees.
53:16
So everybody would, and she's a great ball of energy.
53:18
Everybody would look at her and, oh, Tana's got it all going on.
53:21
Like everything just flows for her.
53:23
And she admitted she's like, no, like imposter syndrome.
53:27
Every day she's like, I had it coming into this interview, like
53:29
who wants to listen to me kind of a thing?
53:32
And so we started talking about that more.
53:35
She's like, you need to meet the guy who literally wrote the book
53:38
on imposter syndrome. So I want to hear about what was
53:44
the the motivation, the inspiration for writing the book
53:49
and what what are sort of the core lessons inside of it?
53:54
Yeah, In a nutshell, I always thought if I was ever going to
53:57
write a book, it was going to be called Sleeping with a Rhino.
54:00
And is it going to be about the embezzlement and this, the
54:03
terror of that? I always thought because it was
54:06
so crazy and the stuff. But when she told me, because I
54:12
was, I knew her first and she gave me her book called Creating
54:16
a World of Difference, that anybody get it on Amazon.
54:19
It's incredible. Her story's really amazing and
54:23
it took tremendous courage for her to do that, which is why I
54:25
wear a Courage T-shirt anytime I'm talking about imposter
54:29
syndrome. But she said, Gary, I don't know
54:32
what I'm doing and I laughed and I go Tana.
54:37
At the time she had 10,000 employees and I helped her get
54:41
her CFO. Like incredible.
54:45
Is she such a purpose driven leader to just humble, smart,
54:51
wicked smart? And I said, well, why would you
54:56
say that? And she said, because I only
54:57
have a two year secretarial degree.
55:00
And I said, oh, Tana, I think that's imposter syndrome.
55:03
And she said, yeah, you're right.
55:06
And then I realized, wait a minute, this pattern, I see
55:10
patterns. I'm, that's one of the things
55:13
I'm good at doing is I see patterns.
55:15
I'm like, that is a pattern with pretty much every CEO that I've
55:20
brought into our company because we serve privately held
55:25
businesses and their owners or that I've mentored or that I
55:30
have coached or that I've walked alongside that had the humility
55:33
to drop their guard. They all said the same thing.
55:36
And here's the deal. They look at everybody else in
55:40
their peer group and antennas. Her peer group is women's
55:43
presidents organization WPO lot of you have to meet a very high
55:48
bar to even get in this group. But she we we can judge
55:55
ourselves and we look at everybody else's show reels and
55:59
then we compare our behind the scenes reels with everybody
56:02
else's show reels. Well, it's an unfair fight and
56:05
we think, Oh, well, they got it together and they're at the same
56:08
time, they're looking at us thinking we got it together
56:10
because we see just this facade. We don't know all the crap
56:15
that's going on and they don't know all of our behind the
56:18
scenes reels. We're the only ones that do.
56:21
And so that's when I was like, you know, I got to write this.
56:25
And it's not because I'm a clinical psychiatrist.
56:28
I'm not, I'm a college dropout, you know, so like I have been
56:32
through this, though, I, I started feeling these feelings
56:39
and thoughts of inferiority from the time I was probably 10.
56:42
And ironically, in 1972, I was 10.
56:46
And in 1972, two female psychologists noticed this
56:50
phenomenon among high achieving female clients of theirs, where
56:55
they were plagued by these thoughts of I'm not good enough.
56:58
I'm in over my head. They must be perfect.
57:01
I got lucky. That's the only reason I'm in
57:03
the position that I'm at. If people knew this or that
57:06
about me, they'd reject me. I'm a fraud, all of those things
57:11
because this comparison trap and that just like throws fuel on
57:16
the fire. And so, but I was feeling it at
57:19
age 10. So that's why they would call me
57:23
Mr. Perfect and they would tease me as a, you know, like at
57:26
junior high. I was just trying so hard to be
57:29
perfect. I don't know why it wasn't my
57:32
parents driving me. They weren't they were always
57:34
trying to back me off, you know, like, but I don't know why I
57:38
didn't feel like I could accept myself and I don't know why that
57:41
was the case, you know, I you know, but IA lot of it was
57:46
comparison, you know. Well, you know, my parents were
57:49
a little bit older than all my other friends, you know, we
57:52
didn't have as much money as they did.
57:54
You know, we didn't have the same kind of car I had to wear,
57:57
you know, cheap knock off stuff and they could have Converse or,
58:02
you know, whatever. They could have Adidas and I
58:04
couldn't, you know, like stupid things like that.
58:06
But then we carry it into an adulthood.
58:09
And so that's why I started writing it, Put it down after
58:12
about 3 months. I just put it down because I'm
58:15
like, I, I started writing my journey and I'm like, I don't
58:18
want this book to be about me. Yeah, I've had some crazy
58:21
experiences, some crazy ones, and we haven't even talked about
58:24
the craziest ones, but like some crazy experiences and yet
58:28
wonderful. Like I've had a wonderful life,
58:30
but it's been crazy. And there are things that I wish
58:33
I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemies of what I've
58:36
experienced. But it's been a great life.
58:40
But I didn't want it to be about me.
58:42
So. But it was in these Crucible
58:43
moments throughout my life that I realized, wait a minute,
58:47
that's where I I learned this, what I call a weapon.
58:53
Like one of them's like, you're not alone.
58:56
How simple is that? But we get it into these
58:59
isolation chambers in our mind and like we allow, like we don't
59:02
want to talk about this or that because we think we're the only
59:05
stupid ones that it went through it and it's not true.
59:09
It's just not true. We bought a lie.
59:11
And, you know, and for me, one of the weapons, Tana, and the
59:16
reason I wear the shirt is because I call shine a light on
59:19
it. Expose the thing that you have
59:21
really tried hard to keep hidden from everybody else.
59:25
Drag it out of the shadows. And I'm not saying just go out
59:28
and broadcast all your dirty laundry, but I'm saying if
59:31
you've been carrying around a millstone around your neck that
59:34
you're embarrassed by that you don't want anybody to know
59:37
about, put a light on it and like, call it out.
59:41
The sooner the better. You know, for me, all of my jobs
59:45
were master's preferred, bachelor's required.
59:47
And here I am at College Dropout.
59:50
I got circumvented by HR. Like people were always
59:53
circumventing HR to get me into the roles and positions that
59:57
I've had. But that was an albatross.
1:00:00
Like I couldn't talk about it. At Bank of America, I had MBAs
1:00:04
from Northwestern working for me.
1:00:06
And here, you know, they or Yale, like, like they'd be
1:00:10
talking about stuff. And then all of a sudden I got
1:00:11
to get get real quiet. I don't want to be found out.
1:00:16
She put a light on it like in that book, you know, having a
1:00:19
baby at age 15 out of wedlock and in the South, you don't want
1:00:23
to talk about that. And then gets beat up by the
1:00:26
husband after she has the baby, gets married.
1:00:28
She tries to do the right thing. He puts her in the hospital.
1:00:31
She's beaten up so badly and she wants to go back to high school,
1:00:35
Didn't want a GED. So she humbles herself and goes
1:00:39
graduates 2 years later with a class that wasn't even hers.
1:00:44
And then she can't afford college because single parent
1:00:48
and she goes to a two year secretarial school.
1:00:50
Like she kept all that hidden for a long time until she put
1:00:54
that thing in the book. I'm like, that took courage,
1:00:57
tremendous courage. And I said, hey Tana, what was
1:00:59
that like? She said, oh, it was terrifying,
1:01:01
but it set me free and it set a whole bunch of other people
1:01:05
free. Oh.
1:01:07
So giving voice to the the thing that shames you.
1:01:11
Yeah, like, neutralize it, like, you know, a virus, bring it out
1:01:16
into sunshine, let the UV take care of it.
1:01:21
But no, no, we, we got to keep that hidden.
1:01:23
Well, it just keeps growing in the dark, dank, you know,
1:01:27
basement. And before you know it, it's,
1:01:30
you know, taking over your house.
1:01:34
That's powerful. Before we wrap up, I got to make
1:01:39
sure that we talk about BGW. How is it that a guy with your
1:01:44
background becomes a co-owner at ACPA firm?
1:01:49
That is the. There's got to be another wild
1:01:51
story here, right? I have to laugh at this one.
1:01:55
Well, so I was coaching CEOs full time for a couple years,
1:02:01
but man, it's lonely. Like, I love it and I'm good at
1:02:04
it, but it's stinking lonely. Like, I want to be part of a
1:02:07
team. I swam my fastest splits in high
1:02:10
school and college when I was on the 4 by 100 relay or the medley
1:02:15
relay because I wanted to win as a team.
1:02:18
And that's just how I'm built. But it's lonely coaching.
1:02:22
And so I was asked to speak at a an event that was being hosted
1:02:27
by BGW in their large conference room.
1:02:30
Like it. And I've been working with other
1:02:32
CPA firms because they were good, you know, kind of
1:02:35
connectors for me with the right audiences.
1:02:39
But they were speaking on culture.
1:02:41
They wanted me to be on a culture panel.
1:02:43
I'm like, what CPA firm talks about culture?
1:02:45
Like I didn't, they were always talking about regulations and
1:02:49
whatever, but this one was talking about culture.
1:02:52
And then I see they, they were an EOS shop.
1:02:55
So entrepreneurs operating system.
1:02:57
And I see their purpose on the wall.
1:02:59
It said to make a difference in the lives of our employees are
1:03:03
clients in our community. And I'm like, wow, I wrote my
1:03:06
purpose in O3 to make a positive difference in the lives of
1:03:10
others. Like, hey, that my purpose is
1:03:12
very similar to yours. And so I ended up getting to
1:03:14
know Adam Bozeman, who founded the thing.
1:03:17
He's like 11 years younger than me.
1:03:20
And as we became friends and I started realizing, wait a
1:03:24
minute, I've got a lot of friends that are clients over
1:03:26
here, but I'd never heard of you guys.
1:03:28
And I said, hey, and I found out they had an outside coach that
1:03:34
was taking them through EOS. And I was trained in that and
1:03:38
trained in the precursor of that called Scaling Up by Vern
1:03:42
Harnish. And these other CPA firms that
1:03:46
were even bigger were courting me and, and wanting me to either
1:03:51
do pure business development or bring coaching into a practice
1:03:55
where they didn't even have their own coach.
1:03:57
And like, well, that's kind of hypocritical, you know, like
1:04:00
you, you want me to bring another revenue stream that you
1:04:03
don't even believe in, You know, like, I don't think that's going
1:04:05
to work too well. But these guys had an outside
1:04:08
coach and I said, what would happen if I bring my coaching
1:04:11
practice in to you guys? But I want to be part of a team.
1:04:13
Like I and I'm like, I'm good at selling stuff I believe in
1:04:18
because I'm not trying to sell. I'm just trying to connect good
1:04:20
people to good people and good solutions.
1:04:23
And so they said, well, you know, we failed in every other
1:04:28
attempt that we've made when we had an outside salesperson come
1:04:31
in. We haven't cracked the code, but
1:04:33
let's see. So Adam convinced the partners
1:04:37
at the time to give me a six month window.
1:04:41
See. And you know, you either hit the
1:04:42
tape and you hit the goal or you don't.
1:04:44
And I'm like, all right, Commission only, all right, I'm
1:04:48
signing up because I believed in these guys.
1:04:50
I look for differentiation. That was the blessing of my
1:04:53
branding, like these guys are different.
1:04:56
Were they different because of the focus on culture?
1:04:58
Did you see something else? There no culture is big, but
1:05:02
like the bigger thing was there was a high disproportionate
1:05:08
amount of people in this company.
1:05:11
And now we're 90, but I think about 13 of us have started run
1:05:15
or turn around companies using our money.
1:05:17
So it wasn't like your, your traditional firm where you, you
1:05:21
start in the bowels of the ship and you work your way up to the
1:05:23
poop deck. Now all of a sudden you're a
1:05:25
partner and now you know, you're an owner.
1:05:28
But well, now we all had to, you know, go without salaries at
1:05:34
times to make payroll. Like we, we had enough of, of
1:05:37
those, but we have a real passion for business owners and
1:05:41
we're aggressive in the tax code compared to everybody else.
1:05:44
We've never lost the IRS, but so we're like stay within the
1:05:50
lines, don't don't cross the lines of ethical or legal.
1:05:55
But there's so much that most Cpas, because either they're
1:05:58
lazy or they're super cautious, they miss.
1:06:01
And so we find multiples of our fees all the time, all the time.
1:06:06
And and we're very picky about who we bring in as a client.
1:06:10
And if they don't fit our criteria, I'll connect them to
1:06:13
somebody else with no strings. I don't get a dime, but I want
1:06:17
to take care of people because I've had bad Cpas along the line
1:06:21
too. I've had good ones, very few,
1:06:24
but I've had bad ones. And I've seen what we do like
1:06:26
literally we find multiples of our fees.
1:06:29
Wow. Multiples and we've found one
1:06:32
group 8 and a half million bucks, you know that their other
1:06:35
CPA missed another 1-3 and a half million found my son's
1:06:39
company a million, you know, like crazy.
1:06:43
So it's fun. I mean that, you know, and I
1:06:46
don't want to be a CPAI don't have to be I I can be who I am.
1:06:49
This is how I go to work every day.
1:06:50
Like I'm in T-shirts, you know? And so your your primary
1:06:54
function is is what these days primarily.
1:06:57
Business development, helping the company grow.
1:07:00
Yeah. So I bought in as a as a owner a
1:07:03
few years ago. I said I'm going to be the first
1:07:05
non CPA partner in this thing and I, I was and also the first
1:07:11
non college graduate partner and the 1st 100% Commission partner.
1:07:18
But I'm free to be who I am. So, you know, I start a podcast
1:07:22
with Ben McDonald, who's, you know, my youngest son's age and
1:07:25
35 or whatever. And we started that five, almost
1:07:30
5 1/2 years ago. And that's a gas.
1:07:34
What other CPA firm lets you do that?
1:07:36
You know, unless you're talking about wonky CPA stuff like no,
1:07:40
we, we bring on CP, you know, we bring on owners and
1:07:44
entrepreneurs that have humility that will tell their story
1:07:48
versus just like, hey, look at how great I'm at.
1:07:51
Nobody wants to hear that. So what have been sort of the
1:07:55
biggest growth levers for you to pull with BGW?
1:08:01
What? What strategies have worked the
1:08:02
best? Oh, there's a lot, man.
1:08:05
I mean, right, people in the right seats.
1:08:07
So I'm a big Jim, Jim Collins, good to great guy.
1:08:12
One of the weapons in my book is called Thrive Wither.
1:08:15
And it's about aligning people in their thrive zones, not their
1:08:20
strengths and weaknesses. Because a lot of times strengths
1:08:22
are actually in their wither column.
1:08:24
They're they're burned out and they haven't even realized it
1:08:27
yet. Or they they're, they're good
1:08:29
at, but they just don't love it. We work really hard at getting
1:08:33
people aligned in the right roles that are in their thrive
1:08:37
zones. I mean, I every night this every
1:08:39
day this week I've had 14 hour days and I'm not even in busy
1:08:43
season. We call it peak season.
1:08:45
I'm not cranking out tax returns, but I've got a lot on
1:08:49
my plate. But I love what I do.
1:08:51
And my wife is very like I'm, I'm working sitting on the couch
1:08:54
next to her while she's watching Escape to the country and you
1:08:58
know, and how much the properties are and which is
1:09:02
fine, but I can write and I can do what I need to do.
1:09:04
I meet by day and do some work at night.
1:09:09
But I love what I do. So I think that's one that's a
1:09:12
big one. And then being very picky about
1:09:15
knowing what your sweet spot is and not trying to be all things
1:09:19
to all people and being willing to say no very quickly.
1:09:23
So I created a red flags green lights checklist that we are
1:09:27
religious about in prospecting. Like when people are coming to
1:09:32
us, like we're going through red flags, red flags.
1:09:36
Are there red flags? If they're red flags, then I
1:09:38
know who I'm going to send them to unless they're village idiots
1:09:42
and and that's not usually the case.
1:09:44
It's just usually that not the right fit, but that's why we
1:09:48
have high retention, you know, because we, we aren't going to
1:09:52
just take a buck and prostitute our, our, our friends and our
1:09:56
colleagues. Hey, you know, the, the, the
1:09:58
almighty dollars it none of that isn't it like we want to help
1:10:01
people grow. It's not about transactions,
1:10:03
about relationships. So I think those are some of the
1:10:07
big things. And we speak English, you know,
1:10:10
we, we speak the language of business when most CPA firms
1:10:15
speak the language of CPA and IRS rules and regulations.
1:10:21
And then then they actually don't take advantage of them.
1:10:25
You know, that's the other crazy thing.
1:10:26
They're so conservative typically and cautious, but it's
1:10:32
because they're high S, high C in the disk profile typically
1:10:35
that that's what fills CPA firms.
1:10:39
We just have a a few of us that are very visionary and more high
1:10:42
I high D, which would be my profile and and Adam has some of
1:10:47
that, but we're both very visionary, but in our
1:10:51
complementary lanes, you know, which is really fun.
1:10:54
So yeah, I would have never imagined if somebody said, Gary,
1:10:57
you're going to go work for ACPA firm, I would have just laughed.
1:11:00
I'm like, yeah, my dead body. Am I going to do that?
1:11:04
But I love. It like I was going to say, it
1:11:05
sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun over there now,
1:11:07
but. We have a ton of fun and I think
1:11:10
business should be fun. Gary, I just want to wrap up
1:11:13
with one more question, but before I ask it, I want to take
1:11:15
care of two things. First, I'm going to invite all
1:11:17
the listeners to hit the follow button on their favorite podcast
1:11:21
app. Continue to get more great
1:11:22
content like we've had today with Gary Fry.
1:11:25
It's been a blast. I also want to let people know
1:11:28
the best way to get in touch with you, follow your story, get
1:11:32
in touch with the company. What?
1:11:34
Are those best options there? So LinkedIn, I'm posting on
1:11:40
there typically 6 * a week, but it's Gary Fry Frey and the only
1:11:46
one with funky glasses. So there are a number of Gary
1:11:49
Fry's on there. But the Anything but typical
1:11:51
podcast is ours as well. And then trustbgw.com is our,
1:11:59
our website. What you, what you see is what
1:12:02
you get. It's, it's very different.
1:12:04
And we're going through another website revamp.
1:12:07
Hopefully it'll be coming up here soon, but it's it's still
1:12:12
very UN CPA like it's anything but typical is what it is
1:12:18
really. But it's not, not pretentious.
1:12:21
And we're not trying to be goofy for goofy's sake.
1:12:23
We're we're very serious about helping people save money and
1:12:28
make money and stay out of trouble.
1:12:30
Like if, if they get thrown in jail or they're getting drugged
1:12:33
before the IRS because of some stupid risky tax strategy that
1:12:39
is ill founded, like that's, we didn't do our job and we want
1:12:43
them to have fun. Like you, you worry about
1:12:45
growing your business. We'll, we'll worry about keeping
1:12:48
you out of the ditches and, and you know, maximizing your, your,
1:12:52
your take home and being proactive about it.
1:12:55
Most CPA firms are not that at all.
1:12:57
Yeah. So last question for you, Gary.
1:13:00
As you look to the future, next two or three years, call it for
1:13:03
BGW, what is it that you're most excited about?
1:13:08
I think we'll probably triple in size within three years.
1:13:12
Triple. I think we could.
1:13:15
I think we could. You feel like you've got the
1:13:19
infrastructure and the bones in place to support that, kind of.
1:13:22
Growth and we're building more of that, which is what I really
1:13:26
excited about. We're, we're building some stuff
1:13:28
in the foundation that nobody sees that I think is really
1:13:33
exciting that will give us more heft.
1:13:37
But we ain't grown by acquisition.
1:13:40
We, we tried that early on and getting cultures to align and
1:13:44
getting guys that say, Oh yeah, I want it.
1:13:48
And really what they want is they want a paycheck and they
1:13:50
want a payday on the front end. But then they aren't going to
1:13:53
adopt and they aren't going to change their ways.
1:13:55
They aren't going to adopt our systems, our processes, our
1:13:58
protocols. It's just too much of a pain in
1:14:02
the butt. So we've been working really
1:14:05
hard at, at growing our own and growing organically and
1:14:09
sustainably. So maybe 3 three times in three
1:14:13
years is is a bit much, but I, I would be shocked if we're not
1:14:17
double wow, I'd be shocked. You mentioned that there are
1:14:20
some things kind of going on like that people don't see.
1:14:23
Are you able to give voice to any of those things or that's
1:14:26
kind of under wraps? You know, there's there we like
1:14:31
innovating and so we're dabbling with some AI type stuff and and
1:14:39
things that where we can automate and allow our people to
1:14:45
use their best and brightest versus bunch of data entry and
1:14:49
stuff like that. So there are those kind of
1:14:51
things going on and you know, we've got some partnerships that
1:14:56
we've been formalizing that I think bring tremendous value.
1:15:03
Like when ERC came in like PPP, we, we did, we helped, we, we
1:15:09
brought millions and millions and millions of dollars of stuff
1:15:12
to companies and helping them. But it burned out our people
1:15:16
like because we were working round the clock, it seemed like.
1:15:21
And so when the ERC money and employee retention tax credit
1:15:25
came through, Adams like Gary, you got to find a conservative.
1:15:30
Like we want to go super conservative in that 'cause
1:15:32
there were a bunch of flim flam men that were popping up all
1:15:35
over the place. Dangerous, quite frankly.
1:15:38
So we partnered with a group called ERC today and they're
1:15:41
like the second largest in the country.
1:15:43
And we knew it was going to be a short window, but we helped so
1:15:47
many clients save a ton of money.
1:15:50
We we became a big funnel for these guys and, and we got
1:15:55
residual income as well. We normally don't partner to get
1:16:00
any sort of income, but it was all transparent.
1:16:03
We negotiated great feet. I think whether you like Trump
1:16:07
or not, like he's a negotiator, I think he would have been, you
1:16:10
guys negotiated really well for our clients and like, it was a
1:16:15
triple win, like everybody won. And so I think those are the
1:16:19
kind of things that I'm always looking for.
1:16:22
I'm looking, I'm always looking for what can we do to bring to
1:16:27
our clients something that means something and is valuable to
1:16:30
them that other people can't or aren't bringing to them right
1:16:34
now? And are there ways that the
1:16:38
partner organization wins? And are there ways that we can
1:16:41
win last? Like we want to be the last ones
1:16:43
to win, but I you know it, it's like an abundance mindset, it
1:16:52
will serve you well. A scarcity mindset where you're
1:16:54
in competition with everybody will not serve you well and
1:16:57
won't serve your clients well. Gary, I want to be the first one
1:17:01
to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us
1:17:04
today. It's been a lot of fun.
1:17:05
Thank you. Thank you, Anthony.
1:17:08
What a pleasure. I mean, we, I didn't expect some
1:17:12
of these and I certainly didn't expect Promise Keepers to come
1:17:16
up, but it is what it is. I'm honored that you were
1:17:20
comfortable enough to do that. Well, folks, it's been wrap on
1:17:24
another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:17:26
Thanks for learning with us today.