Behind the Business Success: Gary Frey’s Radical Approach to Forgiveness

Anthony Codispoti : Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Gary Frey, co-owner at BGW CPA. They are an accounting firm in Charlotte, North Carolina, founded in 2006, focused on helping middle market business owners make money, save money, stay out of trouble and have fun.

Their proprietary process is designed to improve cash flow, reduce expenses, and lower financial risks for their clients. Now, Gary himself has an extensive background in marketing, brand development, and guiding business strategies. He co-founded the Anything But Typical podcast, authored Silence the Imposter, Seven Weapons to Silence Imposter Syndrome, and is credited by Yokohama’s CEO for advancing market share and profitability. And before joining BGW, Gary transformed BusinessJournals.com from three employees into a $100 million enterprise and was named among four magazines best of the web. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, AdVac Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, co-owner of BGW CPA, Gary Frey. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Gary Frey : Anthony, it’s a pleasure. And with your company, man, we should be doing some business because it sounds like you’re helping companies save money too, which is awesome.

Anthony Codispoti : We’ll talk more about that for sure. Yeah. So let’s start by highlighting some of your many career successes. As we talked about there in the intro, you helped turn BizJournals.com from a small team of three into a nine figure success story. What role did you play in all of that?

Gary Frey : Well, it’s funny. You say about successes and actually it’s probably more of my failures where they have been more defining for me. This was another one of those deals where it was one of the most serendipitous, amazing conversations I’ve ever had that led me to become president of bizjournals.com. I was at the time working for Bank of America and heading up business marketing for Bank of America, Bicostal teams, San Francisco and Charlotte.

And my boss said, we’ve got a great promotion for you. We want you to move to San Francisco and lead from there and start infiltrating and impacting the culture. I’m like, well, who am I to be impacting the culture of these guys that just bought vineyards off this deal?

Like I don’t know about that. And I, even though I was out there every other week, when the reality hit, I’m like, I don’t know that I can see my family in San Francisco. It was so far away from any family. We had, you know, most of our family in the Midwest and the South. So we had nobody out there. And then to think about moving my kids, which were in junior high and kind of middle school time, like, I don’t, I’m not seeing this, but I had no really options. And I was speaking at a deal in New York for the American City business journals.

They had this collection of 41 business journals across the country. And I was their largest advertiser. I did not know that at the time. It was a very small part of my budget, but it was a few million bucks a year that I spent with them. And so that’s probably why they wanted me to be the keynote or whatever. But anyway, so I was in New York and this friend of mine who ran the Atlanta business Chronicle, he was their top publisher in all of those publications.

He said, Hey, I really would like to do lunch with you while you’re up here at the Greenbrier or not the Greenbrier, Tavern on the Green. And I had a job interview lined up with Hydric and Struggles at that same time. But Ed’s wife was going through a medical issue that was pretty serious. And he just needed a friend. And so I thought, screw the interview. So I called Hydric and Struggles and said, Hey, something’s come up.

I apologize, but I can’t make this thing. And I thought that might be my lifeline because there were no other options within Bank of America. It was already a senior VP. And so at certain points, there’s, and with my background, it’s like fairly niche.

Anthony Codispoti : So just to highlight this point for a second, I mean, you’re really looking for your next step. And yes, you have this great interview lined up, but you’re like, you know what, my friend, he’s going through something. I’m sorry, I can’t make it. I’ve got a different priority over here. That’s, that says volume. So about your character, sorry, go ahead.

Gary Frey : Well, relationships matter. And yes, it matters to me to be able to provide for my family. But relationships really matter. Transactions are temporary. And so I met with Ed, and this was the craziest time. So I said, Hey, Ed, I know you guys have your San Francisco business Chronicle. I need costs of living data because the bank is trying to give me a 19% increase when it’s like, it should be like a 300% increase, you know, like in 1999, at the end of 1999.

So I said, can you get me cost of living data? And he said, Yeah, that’s no problem. And then he looks at me weird, like he is looking at me and scanning my forehead.

I’m like, and it was very strange. And I said, What are you doing? He goes, This is the craziest thing. It’s like, you have a neon light saying you’re the guy that’s going over your forehead. And I’m like, I’m thinking he’s losing it.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, he’s going through a lot of stress right now. Yeah. And so I’m like, what I’m the guy. And he says, Yeah, you’re the guy to run this.com internet thing that we’ve got going. It’s called amp city.com. It’s only got three people.

Gary Frey : But the chairman’s like, This is the future. We’ve got a national search going on. You’re the guy to run it. And I said, I am not the guy. I’m like, not the guy. He was the head of a J Walter Thompson over account service in Los Angeles. And so we had this common bond in the advertising world in for my early career. And so that’s why we were and he was just a great guy.

He still is. And I’m like, I’m not the guy. And he goes, No, you’re you’re the guy. I said, I am not a tech wizard. I’m not even bleep. I’m certainly not bleeding edge. I’m a little leading edge, but not bleeding edge.

And, and I don’t know anything about publishing. He goes, It doesn’t matter. And he outlined three things that were he goes, Listen, you are known for building bridges amongst warring factions. And he said, We have 41 publishers that are terrified by the existence of this as a separate entity. Because at that time, you know, anything.com that had, you know, just vaporware was worth bazillion times more than anything that had tangible value like toys, or us versus toys, or us.com.

They all had crazy multiples in the in the dot com world. He goes, You are a bridge builder. We need a bridge builder, because all these publishers, with the exception of me, because he is very forward thinking, are threatened to their very core, they think they’re going to go by the way the dinosaur. And so he said, That’s number one. Number two is you’re a brand builder. And he said, We got to rebrand this thing because it’s called am city.com. It doesn’t make sense for as American city. Nobody knows that because everybody knows of these individual business generals, which are hyper local. So that’s the second thing he said.

The third thing is you have a proven track record of growing businesses into legitimate businesses. I’m like, Well, yeah. But man, I don’t see it.

I don’t see it. So he said, I’m calling you in three days. And if you’re 40% interested, I’m introducing you to the chairman who had been the head of Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal.

He was the vice chairman of Dow Jones, old, you know, crusty, very smart business guy, and, you know, journalist from Oklahoma originally, but Ray Shaw. And so that is what took me and they drug me into this thing. But but what was so crazy is on the flight back to Charlotte, I had this stream of consciousness, like all these ideas just exploding out of my mind of like, What about this? And what about that? And what about this? And so when I finally met with Ray, I had a two page, nicely organized stream of consciousness of, Hey, the, you know, without knowing all that much, just what I knew that Ed had told me.

So I give it to Ray. And we’re in his conference room and he was always a suit and tie, you know, very proper man of very few words, very intimidating, wonderful soul, but just he was very intimidating because he didn’t say much and his power like, you know, he’s done a lot. And he’s reading this thing. And he’s, and I’m thinking, I need to leave because this is going to be embarrassing. I’m like, I’m thinking I got to hit the door.

How do I get an excuse myself? And then he flips the page and he starts smirking. And I’m like, Oh man, I’m dead. This is just stupid. This is really bad. And he goes, he goes, I like the way you think he offered me a job right then doubled my salary.

Speaker 3: You can’t make this stuff up. It was the most incredible experience. What are the most incredible business experiences I’ve ever had in my life.

Gary Frey : And then we, we experienced some really crazy stuff during that.com boom and bust. We didn’t bust, but we invested a million bucks into a company that was a competitor that was burning 40 million a year. They were out in San Francisco, didn’t even have a million top line.

And they sold for 225 million bucks to NBCI. Wow. It was just the most crazy time to be alive. I felt like, and I thought we are at question whether we were sane because all of these other people like the sock puppets, you know, pets.com and all that, they were blowing money like it was water.

And we were running fiscally conservative. Like, and I just like, maybe we’re screwed up and Ray called it. He said, man, this thing is unsustainable. It’s going to blow. I think he called it like he said, it’s going to blow in March or April of 2000. He called it to the month when the dot com bubble burst.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah. For those, those listening who, who maybe aren’t familiar with the timeline, you know, what Gary is describing in kind of the late 90s, like everything internet was hot, hot, hot, you know, toys.com, the valuation was way higher than toys or us.com, which had much better sales. And then yeah, that come early 2000, like the bottom just fell out, like all these over valuations, just everybody sort of came to the realization at the same time that and everybody was cooked. A lot of businesses shut down, the market dropped. Sorry, go ahead.

Gary Frey : Yeah, a few people did well. You know, I mean, Timor and Keith Belling who were running that company, they did quite well, but most of their people did not, you know, because they, they didn’t survive. And so we ended up cutting a deal with Microsoft after we had a deal on the table with all business.com. And that was the company that we put a million bucks with. And the great guys, but I mean, it was just crazy money, which makes me wonder, like I still like Bitcoin blowing up to a hundred thousand bucks a coin and then down to a 77, like I can’t wrap my head around it. You know, I have friends that have made money in it, but it man, it still feels like vaporware, you know, so I just don’t, and I believe in the technology, but I just don’t know.

Anthony Codispoti : So what was the strategy there at BizJournals? How did you grow it so quickly?

Gary Frey : Well, the demand was there. But what we did is we, we partnered with these local, with our local business journals, which were part of the same, you know, family and umbrella. And we worked out win-win, you know, pricing and to where they could make money. So it wasn’t like winter take all like, no, we’re part of the same family.

We’re drinking from the same trough. So that’s really important. And then understanding that really content was king, and it still is, you know, distribution is really important. All we did is we opened up distribution in a big way that they didn’t have. So now all of a sudden San Francisco business Chronicle, any stuff, anything that’s running out there that could apply to RTP because of the tech scene or down in, in San Antonio or, you know, Austin, Texas, which we had an Austin business journal, like all of a sudden these stories are cross pollinating.

And so I think that was really the thing. We just needed to listen to these folks find a win-win situation, which is why we ended up rebranding to BizJournals instead of something else, you know, something that didn’t relate to them. We needed to tip the hat and show, hey, we’re part of the same thing.

Even though the company was structured separately, in case, I think Ray wanted to like, hey, in case we want to go IPO or whatever, because everybody else was doing that. And we elected not to. And then after we did the deal with Microsoft, it wasn’t about a few years. And Ray said, take your money back, I want my independence. And so, which was really interesting. So it took the company back. Yeah. So yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah. And so when did you wrap up your time there?

Gary Frey : 2001. I think it was probably April or May of 2001. I had merged two companies when I was at Bank of America and coaching these two business owners separately. And I’m like, hey, you need to know him and he needs to know you because they had strengths where each other was weak. And I thought, man, this is, you guys would be great together. And they were, and then they came and said, hey, why don’t you be our third partner? And I’m like, no, I’ve been through partner and Baselman, I ain’t doing that again.

So I said pass. But then after we sold to Microsoft, 20% of the company, they came back and said, hey, we’ll give you a third of the company, free and clear, if you come in and be our president, because they had bought a building together, they hadn’t occupied it yet, they were, you know, in the process of upfitting it. And they were in two separate buildings and they truly, they knew enough that, hey, there’s no real such thing as a merger because somebody acquired somebody and somebody’s got the dominant culture. And they really wanted to do what they could do to avoid that situation. So they said, hey, we know Gary, we trust him, why don’t you be the president?

And then when we move in, like, hey, it truly is a merger, like, okay. And so I elected to do it. I took a pay cut.

And I, and Ray tried talking me out of it. He said, man, I’m afraid we’re going to go into a recession, which he called it. He called that one too. He didn’t foresee 9 11. And I was in New York on 9 11 actually trying to sell our company to a large holding company. And the night before, and then the next day, you know, the world changed. So, you know, that that’s where I was. So that’s, I went and took that and Ray said, well, I want you to consult with me for a year at any time. And he was very generous in doing that. And my partner said, yeah, go for it as long as you can still do your job here. And it was a really interesting and cool time.

And I never thought I would leave that place either. And then after 9 11, we were still doing okay. And then I had a partner, one of my partners had a son that was dying unexpectedly and still was a mystery to Duke University Hospital. Normal little kid until about three and then just started regressing.

And he had kind of a meltdown. And so we ended up having to split the company and I had to go do something which is what took me to Cleveland, Ohio. I recommend that move from Charlotte to Cleveland.

Anthony Codispoti : I’m just saying, Hey, as an Ohio boy, a Northeast Ohio boy, I’m, well, I’d like to say take a little offense to that, but I can appreciate the desire for better weather.

Gary Frey : Wonderful people. Wonderful people. The weather just stinks and the taxes are way too high.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, I can’t argue with you on either front there. But you’ve touched on a couple of things. And I want to kind of connect the dots because, you know, when I asked you about the success at biz journals, kind of laughed, and you’re like, you know, I think my I found my failures to be a lot more defining. And then, you know, you, you also mentioned something about partner and bezel meant. So I think there’s probably some some dots to connect and some stories to share here. What’s what’s that all about?

Gary Frey : Well, so I started my career as a graphic designer. And, and I had a job offer after my internship, my sophomore year in college. And I had to do a portfolio review before going back to Kansas State for my what would have been my junior year. And because I was on a full ride scholarship called the Putnam scholarship. And my advisor said, Gary, you got to take this job, because I can’t get grads placed. And this guy’s really good. And so being mentored. And she said at the end of the at the end of the day, all you have is your portfolio. That’s it.

That’s all people are buying is your portfolio. And she was right. So I took that. And I was brought in to do my first turnaround when I was the ripe old age of 28.

Didn’t know what the heck I was doing in that either. But we did we turned it in nine months, which was like just bonehead simple stuff, at least the way I thought. And my partner was 20 years older than me. And everybody knew him in town because he was the head of corporate affairs in at Sussner aircraft, and which talk Kansas isn’t that big of a city. And so I thought, man, this is the deal. I we ended up putting my name on the door had, I think I had 40% of the company, something like that. And then I caught my partner lying to me and moving money into his account.

That should have been part of mine. How’d you catch him? The group that got me placed there for the turnaround, I brought them back in to do evaluation be and to help us do a we looked at strategic alliances, we looked at joint ventures, we looked at all kinds of stuff because British Aerospace was my biggest client. And I had gotten all of North and South America, but I wanted Europe. And to do Europe, because they were based in Westwick, Scotland, I needed a UK presence, primarily London, if possible. And so these guys were tied in with some of the top agencies there.

And so they came in, did the evaluation, and they’re like, man, you guys, this is an amazing turnaround. But the only thing that’s a little off on your P &L and in your balance sheet is the fact that your consulting fees are pretty high. But you probably brought in Stuart, who is the owner of that company multiple times, and he was 10,000 bucks a day plus expenses and you paid him up for in 1991 to 93 when I was there. So about 25 grand in today’s money per day.

And I am like, we haven’t brought in Stuart at all. And this was in like, November or December of 93. And so I looked at Bill, I’m like, what’s that all about? And he starts getting red and starts sweating.

Like, uh oh, something, right. And I knew his ex-wife had sued him for child support and alimony. And I said, I’ll defend you because his current wife was a tenured professor at Wichita State.

And we had hired her and we had sent her to training for a special kind of focus group testing, it’s called benefit testing. And I said, hey, I’ll, I’ll testify for you. He wanted me to have nothing to do with that. I’m like, okay, whatever. Then I started thinking, wait a minute, something funky.

Anthony Codispoti : What was he trying to keep you away from?

Gary Frey : Yeah, that night I, after I took Henry back to the airport, I went back into our archives because everything was manual, you know, yeah, we had computer workstations and, you know, DOS on, you know, word processors or whatever.

But it was not hard to find. I’m like, oh, his wife was on the payroll and he just failed to tell me. And so he was funneling all that money to her under consulting fees.

Anthony Codispoti : And so when you found that, was it just like, that’s it, we’re done, closes down, split it up?

Gary Frey : So I went to my neighbor who was, who did our buy-sell agreement, and he was part of the largest law firm in all of Kansas. And he was a, he was a litigator, but did, you know, big stuff, you know, against big companies. And I said, Hey, here’s what I found. And we were running buddies.

So we had run it in the mornings together. And he said, I want, I want the whole deck. I want copies of everything. And so he went through everything. And he said, he goes, listen, you know, the way that we structured the insurance on, he goes, he is the primary beneficiary, not the company and whatever like, and he said, you’re actually in danger. And he said, what worries me is, you know, you get a cornered animal, you never know how they’re going to respond. So he said, if something happens, I’m sending this deck to his ex-wife. But he said, we can’t represent you.

Anthony Codispoti : If something happens, yeah, what was the implication there? Something happens to your safety?

Gary Frey : Yeah, in case I got killed, you know, wow. You know, this was when the firm had just come out to, which was terrifying. But he said, you know, desperate people do desperate things. And he said, you never know. He goes, you know, so I’m like, man, what am I going to do? So I, I’m a very transparent person. And all of a sudden, I’m very reserved.

And so Bill’s like, Hey, what’s what’s up? It didn’t take long, a few couple of weeks, maybe. And I said, Hey, I know exactly what you’ve been doing.

And man, he came at me like a rage in Rhino, man. I mean, and had, you know, it’s not your damn business and blah, blah, blah. I’m like, well, it is my business because 40% of it’s mine.

It’s like, it’s absolutely my business. You lied to me. Well, I’m good. Okay, well, I’m going to change.

Okay. So I said, I forgive you, but man, trust has been very deeply damaged. And then I told our internal CPA, and we had an external CPA that was his sale and buddy. I said, Listen, if anything, any funky hanky, panky starts happening with these numbers, I need to know about it. And it wasn’t long after a month, a couple months, she came to me shut the door crying and said, he, he took his wife off, but he just jumped jumped his own salary by that same amount didn’t tell you about it. I said, Okay, well, I’m done. Thank you for letting me know. And so that’s when I became very earnest about, Okay, I got to leave. I can’t stay.

Anthony Codispoti : And so that’s gonna be painful. I mean, the guy was your partner, you trusted him. And I don’t know how you found it in your heart to forgive him the first time. I don’t know if that was more out of fear or more like out of like, I think he’s actually changed.

Gary Frey : No, I didn’t know that he had changed. But here’s what, here’s the fear that struck me more than would this guy try to kill me. The fear was, I saw how he made incremental adjustments of justification. Because his ex-wife, you know, when they went through a divorce, she was worth a lot of money and he wasn’t and he had his company structured as a C Corp.

I don’t think even S Corps were invented yet. And so he was paying her alimony and child support based on the grocery seats of the company, even if it wasn’t profitable. And so when, and there was no money when I was brought in, I mean, he didn’t have the money to go bankrupt.

So when we turned it, he’s, I think he was like, I’m going to show her, you know, and I was just, I was just monkey in the middle and I got caught in the crossfire. But it was damaging. I mean, obviously. And but the scary part was, I’ve thought, we are all capable. I am capable of the same justification that could have ruined his life.

If I would have, if I would have outed him, they would have destroyed him. Absolutely. Because I think he perjured himself too, you know, because he was under testimony of what was going on. I’m confident he perjured himself with his ex-wife. Now he’s passed away since then and she probably has too. I don’t know. He was 20 years older than me.

Anthony Codispoti : Was there a thought in your mind to do that? I mean, you’ve got to be furious. I mean, there has to be a part of you, I would guess, that like wants to take some sort of action or a little bit of like a revenge flare in there.

Gary Frey : Here’s what I learned and I’ve had it ground into me even more because that was just nothing compared to some of the other stuff that we’ve gone through where we had to forgive. And that was child’s play compared to other things that we’ve been through. But what I found is, if we refuse to be, if we refuse to forgive, we will also be unforgiven.

You know, like if you just go to the Lord’s Prayer, man, I mean, it’s pretty clear. But even if you don’t believe that, it’s a fact that bitterness will rot you from the inside out. It will rot you from the inside out. And so what good is it if I, it’s like drinking poison and hoping it kills somebody else.

That’s what it is. That’s what bitterness and unforgiveness does. It’s like drinking poison and hoping that it kills somebody else and it won’t.

It only kills you. And then it has a ripple effect on your family and everybody else around you. So I knew I had to forgive and it doesn’t mean that forgiveness is easy.

It’s not because it’s an emotional thing. Yeah, you want to string the guy up, you know, but you must choose not to because I also realized I am absolutely as capable of doing the same justifying and justifying the same stupid stuff that he did. We’re all capable.

Anthony Codispoti : Say more about that. What do you mean that we’re all capable? You think you could have pulled the same kind of shenanigans that he did?

Gary Frey : Oh, I absolutely think so. I mean, because what I what I have seen is ends justifies the means mentality is so dangerous, but we can we can hoodwink ourselves and believe a lie.

We can believe a lie so fast. And it usually doesn’t happen like kaboom, you know, you go 180. It’s incremental steps.

And before you know it, you are 180 degrees pointed in the opposite direction of where you wanted to go. But they’re very slow. They’re very insidious. And I’ve seen this happen many, many times. And so it’s a warning. Like if we think it could never happen to us, watch out. How do you guard against it?

Anthony Codispoti : This is an interesting sort of thought pattern here to kind of go through because, you know, I’ve known some some guys knew him pretty well that, you know, ended up getting themselves in trouble with the law that, you know, spent some time in prison. And, you know, from our circle, there were some people really cast in stones like, Oh, you know, look at those guys like terrible, terrible people. And I’ve always wondered, you know, because because I don’t know them to be terrible people. Like I’ve known them and I’ve known them well, and, you know, good people, smart people.

And I and I’ve all often wondered exactly what you’re talking about, Gary. Is it more like that they made this decision, just a little bit in the wrong direction. And it led to this. And rather than like starting here and being like, Oh, I got this, you know, devious plan that I’m going to do. And you seem to think that it’s more of the former. It’s sort of like a little bit of like these incremental things that then leads you to this dark place.

Gary Frey : Now, there are psychopaths and sociopaths. And I actually worked for one. That was a sociopath. I didn’t even know what it was until everything blew up. And then we realized this dude is a fraud and everything that he says is a lie. Like, wow. I don’t know. You know, I think there are some people that come out of the womb. You know, what about Charles Manson? Like, I mean, dude, that was one evil dude or Adolf Hitler, like one evil dude.

I don’t know. But in other things, and I knew a guy that, you know, he was white collar crime guy. He was radioactive in this little town of Sugar and Falls where I grew up or where we didn’t grow up. He had grown up growing up there.

But we when we moved up there, he had just gotten out of seven years in a super max. And he was a brilliant day trader, like brilliant. And, you know, had the long hair and, you know, big house and, you know, was the cool guy. And so all the big money guys in Cleveland wanted him to trade for them. And so he did. And I got to know him while he was shackled with an ankle bracelet, working behind the counters in the Einstein bagels.

And I got to hear his terrifying stories. He should have never been in a super max for what he’d done. But there was no room in the day camps. So that’s where he ended up going. And boy, those stories will blow your mind of what goes on in the prison system.

It will blow your freaking mind. But he didn’t intend on falsifying returns. He just like, okay, I’m behind, but I’ll get it back. I’ll get it back.

I’ll get these guys money back. And he was a good guy. But they lost patience and they had clout and man, they threw the book at him and FBI came in and first SEC, but then FBI.

And then before you know, he’s carted off to jail and to prison in Pennsylvania and wife leaves him and his son disowns him, you know, like came out with nothing, you know, and I heard his stories. So that’s, but same with thing with him, like, you know, boom, boom, boom, just ends justify the means. But I think fear drives people greed drives people those two things fear and greed. And again, whether somebody believes this or not, this is in my experience. There’s a scripture says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I firmly believe that if you if you have zero fear for the God who created the heavens and the earth, who’ve knit our very DNA, and I believe that there is, if you have no regard for that, then it’s kind of like, Hey, I’m in control and whatever I can get by, like, you know, get all you can, can all you get and sit on the can, like, it doesn’t matter who you hurt, you’re the center of the universe. And there are some good people that have no regard for God. And I appreciate them. But at the end of the day, if you just feel like, Hey, everything is relative.

And I can make up my, you know, the rules as I go, that’s where we get into trouble. And that’s what I think really happened to my partner. I think he I think he even gave lip service to God. And I’ve gotten really screwed by people that claim to be Jesus followers.

And I am one, but like, I’ve been really screwed by a lot of them. So it doesn’t mean it’s your theology, it’s me, it means your heart and like, what are you doing with it? And so we can deceive ourselves. And that that was again, the thing that scared me the most. I’m like, man, you know, the heart is deceitful above all things and who can know it. And that’s not to be a woe is me. I’m awful. No, no, no. It’s just put it in perspective.

Anthony Codispoti : So you had this one partner issue, and you mentioned that it is child’s play compared to some other things that happened to you. You strike me as a pretty positive guy, pretty upbeat. But you’ve been, it sounds like hosed by a lot of people that were really close to you.

I’m curious, like, how have you kind of risen above that? Like, I love this with the line, you said bitterness is like drinking poison and hoping it kills someone else. But it’s one thing to kind of like say that in your logical brain. It’s another thing to sort of like make your whole body, like, believe that and in live that way. Yeah, you get what I’m saying? Like, how do you sort of like bridge that chasm?

Gary Frey : Well, I’m going to take back to a story of my grandfather. My grandfather was an immigrant that came over here. His parents came over in 1874 from Prussia. So it would be Ukraine into where Ukraine is. They were persecuted. They were very poor Mennonites, and they were persecuted because they were not part of the state religion.

And so they came to Gosal, Kansas, which is a town of about 300 people in the middle of farm fields and nowhere. And my grandfather was very, very poor. He never acted poor. They were filled with laughter and like, and he was very deep. Like I read, about his faith through his poetry, but he was a man of very few words. And when he did speak words, it was German with my grandmother. And so we didn’t speak German, but he had a glass eye. And the glass eye would even move.

And so as kids, we were always trying to figure out which was the glass eye. And the way, the reason he had a glass eye was because he and a guy were gathering chickens. He was selling chickens to this guy. And they were in the chicken coop and this guy swung a chicken hook and it accidentally shattered my grandfather’s glasses and took out his eye.

And I remember my father telling me, cause we asked about these questions, you know, as kids like, you know, which one’s his eye and how did that happen, blah, blah, blah. And my father was somewhat bitter about it because people said, you need to sue this guy because he didn’t have the money for his hospital bills. And it took him forever to pay his hospital bills. And they were like, you need to sue this guy. And then he’s like, I can’t, as a Christian man, I cannot sue another man. Yeah, but it’s just the insurance company.

You need to do that ad, like I can’t do it. And so I remember that story because he died so poor. And I thought, he really needed the money. And I’ve needed the money at times too, but I wasn’t that poor, you know, like literally for Christmas, we got a paper bag that had an orange and unsalted roasted peanuts in the shell and a couple of candied orange slices and a couple of chocolate covered, you know, peanut clusters.

That was all they could afford, but that was something precious to them. And I thought, man, look at the integrity of this man. That’s my legacy, you know, that’s my grandfather. And, you know, so yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : So for you, it helped a lot to kind of understand the flesh, the gene pool that you came from and say, I identify with that and I want to be emblematic of that.

Gary Frey : And even more so, it was, what are the stories I’m passing to my children? Because I really didn’t know my grandfather all that well, because he was a man of very few words, but his poetry, like I still have his poetry, like, wow, that dude was a deep guy, but I saw what he did. I heard about it from my father. I didn’t even talk to my grandfather about it.

He probably wouldn’t want to talk about it. But then I thought of the impact it had on me, a generation away from that. What’s the impact of my own children? Because they had to move across the country when they were three or four and seven at the time. And completely disruptive, you know. And, you know, yeah, we’ve been through a lot of betrayal. When we moved to Charlotte, you know, six months into the gig, I get fired. I delivered a $2 million account and the guy owes me $30 grand and I’m like, dude, like, what? And he said, so sue me. And he knew I forgave hundreds of thousands of dollars of my other partner. I had a couple grand of my name, that was it.

Two little boys at home with my wife. And I was destitute, you know. And I knew within the first week after moving here, because the head of account service and the head of our business office came to my office and shut the door and said, you have no idea what you walked into.

This guy’s abusive and I’m like, what? You know, I helped you win business. I thought I had done a very good job of due diligence, flew him and his wife out to Kansas and came back and forth out here to help them win some business. And then all he really wanted was my $2 million account.

That’s all he wanted. And I’m like, well, I asked you specifically, is there anything I need to know? And you all said, no.

You are all silent. And I said, what about that? And they both said, we were told if anybody squirreled the deal, they would be found out and be fired immediately. Oh, great guy, son of a Baptist pastor. Great guy. Well, I mean, man, I had to, like forgiving my partner was easy compared to this guy, because that was malicious. It felt malicious and he lived a half a mile from me. It took me a long, like I really had to get very intentional about forgiving him. Anytime I saw a Green Bonneville, like what he drove, my heart rate would just jump into my throat.

Anthony Codispoti : So how did you do it from a practical standpoint? How do you work through those feelings?

Gary Frey : Well, so I enlisted the help of an attorney for that one. And the guy’s like, this is open and shut. Like open and shut. And then he enlists an attorney because like I hired a golden retriever, he had a pit bull. But still, and so he’s like, I’m gonna bury this guy in fees.

So that’s why it was happening. And I went to a Promise Keepers event in Atlanta. A Pledge Brother of Mine said, Gary, I really want you to come to this thing. And I said, Steve, he was an architect down in Florida. I said, Steve, I don’t even have the money to go for gas. And I don’t want a rah-rah thing.

I don’t need an emotional thing, but I really felt like the heavens were kind of brass at that time I was pleading with God. I don’t know anybody in this town that I am living in. I feel so destitute. I feel forsaken. I’d put in prayer request cards and nobody would respond.

Like I just don’t need an emotional thing. And he said, Gary, you were so impactful in my life, please come to this thing. I’ve already paid for it. I’ll pay your gas.

Like, I’m like, oh, Steve, and he’s like, just come. So I did. And it’s in the Georgia Dome.

There’s like 80,000 guys in this thing. And I was not wanting to be part of the rah-rah thing at all. And there was a grandson of a slave that was one of the keynotes. And he was talking about forgiveness. And he was talking about what are the stories that we are passing down to our children.

Speaker 3: Man, that got me. That got me.

Gary Frey : And so I’m talking, so we have to huddle up with different people like in the rows up in the stadium. And there’s this Baptist pastor that I get huddled up with like four guys or whatever. And what my buddy Steve was in a different group.

So they’re like, hey, what’s God working on you? And I said, I got to forgive this guy. I don’t have the money to pay my attorney. But he owes me 30 grand. And this pastor goes, hey, God doesn’t want you to be a doormat.

And I know, I am like, yeah, I get it. But Jesus did say, hey, if they asked you to walk one mile, walk two. Or if they asked you for your shirt, give them your coat too. And like, I don’t know how I reconcile that with don’t be a doormat.

I don’t know. So he was kind of kindly rebuking me. Well, that night, the keynote, the guy that started Promise Keepers gave a story on forgiveness again. And he said, there was a guy at the Silver Dome in Detroit that he had been at this. And a buddy of his had swindled $30,000 from him, $30,000, same amount, 10 years before. And he really struggled with forgiveness, but he knew that he needed to forgive him. So he’s like, all right, that next Monday, so this was over a weekend, that next Monday, this guy that he hadn’t seen in 10 years comes to his office and said, hey, I was at this thing called Promise Keepers at the Silver Dome.

They were in the same thing, it was just hilarious. And he said, 10 years ago, I swindled $30,000 from you. What I did was wrong.

Here’s the 30 plus interest. Would you please forgive me? And this pastor is yelling at me, and we’re up in the rafters.

He’s like, $30,000, you’re right, forgive him. Still very unemotional for me, zero emotion. I get home and my kids scream, hey dad, and they come and tackle me as soon as I get home. And Jennifer says, hey, how was it? I start bawling. I mean, it’s still so emotional to me today.

Speaker 3: And that was in 1995, man. And so 30 years ago,

Gary Frey : I’m like, I gotta forgive this guy. And so I wrote him a note. He had been a magistrate too, so he knew the law. And I knew that, hey, we got a statute of limitations. But I wrote him a note and I said, what you did was wrong. I know there’s a statute of limitations.

I don’t even have the money to pay my attorney. But my response to you was just as wrong. Would you please forgive me? Took him a rose and I went to his house.

Speaker 3: And blue is mine, I think. You’re blowing mine.

Gary Frey : And the crazy thing, here’s the hilarious crazy thing about this. So he didn’t say much and I said, I’m dropping it. And it took me 18 months to pay off my attorney. Our kids got put on the same freaking kid’s soccer team.

Anthony Codispoti : So now you gotta see this guy all the time.

Speaker 3: All the time.

Gary Frey : And then Sunday afternoons, I’d take our kids and other dads and we’d go play at the Harris Y with kids. And Mark would show up with his kid. And I’m like, but you know what? I don’t wanna be his friend. I don’t wanna hang around him, but I’ve forgiven him. Doesn’t mean I have to like him, but I’ve forgiven him and I’m free. I hold none of that against him.

Anthony Codispoti : But I kinda wanna recap a couple of things here. Cause this is a pretty phenomenal turn of events. So you’re at this Promise Keepers event. No emotion at the time. You’re not a raw, raw guy. You’re there, you’re sort of taking it in. Nothing’s kind of going on inside. Something triggers though when you get home.

And maybe it was being around your family, being around your kids, what kind of legacy, what kind of story am I showing to my kids? And then the emotion comes out. And I’ve gotta forgive this guy.

Which that in itself is a tremendous breakthrough. But then what you did next is you wrote him a letter and took him a rose and in that letter, you asked him to forgive you. You weren’t going to him specifically to say, and maybe this was part of it to say, I forgive you. You went to him to ask for forgiveness. Yeah, yeah.

Gary Frey : I needed to be free and the bitterness was killing me. It was killing me. And it was justified. That’s the crazy part. That’s the crazy part about bitterness. It’s justified. What he did was wrong. And I said, what you did is wrong.

But my response to you was just as wrong. It was, you know, where you wanna rip the guy’s throat out. I mean, that’s not a good thing. That’s not a godly perspective. And that’s why I say, I think we’re all capable.

Because if you’ve ever had rage and an emotion of rage or revenge, guess what? All you gotta do is just take it out to its farthest extreme and work, all capable of anything. Just take it to its farthest extreme and we’re all capable.

You would hope that we have governors and restraints that would keep us in a moral equilibrium. But sometimes those things snap, man. And so, you know, but by the grace of God go I, quite frankly.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s a tremendous story. Gary, I wanna kind of shift gears now and talk about kind of the reason and the way that you and I were first connected. Oh yeah. I had the pleasure of interviewing now a mutual friend, Tana Green for my work choice. It has a tremendous story. And if anybody’s listening, watching this and they haven’t heard Tana’s story, you need to go and absorb that after you’re done here. But, you know, with several of my guests, Tana included, we ended up talking about this idea of imposter syndrome. And, you know, even people who are very successful doubt themselves and say, kind of a fraud. Like, you know, if people only had any idea of what a mess I am inside, how uncertain I am of myself.

You know, they may see the car, they may see the house, they may see the, you know, the office building that I walk into, but man, I question myself every day. And this conversation came up with Tana and incredibly successful. And she has an amazing story of, you know, hardships that she’s overcome. And I love the fact that she, and she’s, you know, her company’s huge, like thousands of employees. So everybody would, and she’s a great ball of energy. Everybody would look at her and, oh, Tana’s got it all going on, like everything just flows for her. And she admitted, she’s like, no, like imposter syndrome every day. She’s like, I had it coming into this interview. Like who wants to listen to me kind of a thing?

And so we started talking about that more. She’s like, you need to meet the guy who literally wrote the book on imposter syndrome. So I want to hear about what was the motivation, the inspiration for writing the book. And what are sort of the core lessons inside of it?

Gary Frey : Yeah, on a nutshell, I always thought if I was ever going to write a book, it was going to be called Sleeping with a Rhino. And it was going to be about the embezzlement and the terror of that.

I always thought, because it was so crazy and the stuff. But when she told me, because I was, I knew her first and she gave me her book called Creating a World of Difference that anybody get it on Amazon. It’s incredible. Her story is really amazing. And it took tremendous courage for her to do that, which is why I wear a courage t-shirt anytime I’m talking about imposter syndrome. But she said, Gary, I don’t know what I’m doing. And I laughed.

Speaker 3: I go, Tana, at the time she had 10,000 employees.

Gary Frey : And I helped her get her CFO. Like incredible. She’s such a purpose driven leader to just humble, smart, wicked smart. And I said, well, why would you say that? And she said, because I only have a two year secretarial degree. And I said, oh, Tana, I think that’s imposter syndrome.

And she said, yeah, you’re right. And then I realized, wait a minute, this pattern, I see patterns. That’s one of the things I’m good at doing is I see patterns. I’m like, that is a pattern with pretty much every CEO that I’ve brought into our company, because we serve privately held businesses and their owners, or that I’ve mentored, or that I have coached, or that I’ve walked alongside that had the humility to drop their guard. They all said the same thing.

And here’s the deal. They look at everybody else in their peer group. In Tana’s, her peer group is women’s presidents, organization, WPO.

Lot of, you have to meet a very high bar to even get in this group. But we can judge ourselves and we look at everybody else’s show reels. And then we compare our behind the scenes reels with everybody else’s show reels.

Well, it’s an unfair fight. And we think, oh, well, they got it together. And they’re at the same time, they’re looking at us, thinking we got it together because we see just this facade. We don’t know all the crap that’s going on. And they don’t know all of our behind the scenes reels.

We’re the only ones that do. And so that’s when I was like, you know, I got to write this. And it’s not because I’m a clinical psychiatrist. I’m not, I’m a college dropout. So like, I’ve been through this though. Like I started feeling these feelings and thoughts of inferiority from the time I was probably 10. And ironically, in 1972, I was 10. And in 1972, two female psychologists noticed this phenomenon among high achieving female clients of theirs, where they were plagued by these thoughts of, I’m not good enough, I’m in over my head, they must be perfect.

I got lucky. That’s the only reason I’m in the position that I’m at. If people knew this or that about me, they’d reject me.

I’m a fraud, all of those things, because this comparison trap, and that just like throws fuel on the fire. And so, but I was feeling at age 10. So that’s why they would call me Mr.

Perfect. And they would tease me as a, you know, like a junior high. I was just trying so hard to be perfect. I don’t know why it wasn’t my parents driving me. They weren’t, they were always trying to back me off, you know, like, but I don’t know why.

I didn’t feel like I could accept myself. And I don’t know why that was the case. You know, but a lot of it was comparison. You know, well, you know, my parents were a little bit older than all of my other friends. You know, we didn’t have as much money as they did. You know, we didn’t have the same kind of car. I had to wear, you know, cheap knockoff stuff, and they could have converse or, you know, whatever.

They could have Adidas and I couldn’t, you know, like, stupid things like that. But then we carried into it adulthood. And so that’s why I started writing it, put it down after about three months. I just put it down because I’m like, I started writing my journey.

I’m like, I don’t want this book to be about me. Yeah, I’ve had some crazy experiences, some crazy ones. And we haven’t even talked about the craziest ones, but like some crazy experiences and yet wonderful. Like I’ve had a wonderful life, but it’s been crazy. And there are things that I wish, I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemies of what I’ve had experience. But it’s been a great life, but I didn’t want it to be about me. So, but it was in these crucible moments throughout my life that I realized, wait a minute, that’s where I learned this, I call a weapon.

Like one of them is like, you’re not alone. How simple is that? But we get it into these isolation chambers in our mind and like we allow, like we don’t want to talk about this or that because we think we’re the only stupid ones that went through it and it’s not true. It’s just not true.

We bought a lie. And for me, one of the weapons, Tana, and the reason I wear the shirt is because I call shine a light on it. Expose the thing that you have really tried hard to keep hidden from everybody else. Drag it out of the shadows. And I’m not saying just go out and broadcast all your dirty laundry, but I’m saying if you’ve been carrying around a millstone around your neck that you’re embarrassed by, that you don’t want anybody to know about, put a light on it and like call it out.

The sooner the better. For me, all of my jobs were masters preferred, bachelors required, and here I am at college dropout. I got circumvented by HR. Like people were always circumventing HR to get me into the roles and positions that I’ve had.

But that was an albatross. Like I couldn’t talk about it at Bank of America. I had MBAs from Northwestern working for me.

And here, you know, they are Yale. Like they’d be talking about stuff. And then all of a sudden I gotta get real quiet.

And I want to be found out. She put a light on it. Like in that book, you know, having a baby at age 15 out of wedlock and in the South, you don’t want to talk about that. And then gets beat up by the husband after she has the baby, gets married, she tries to do the right thing. He puts her in a hospital.

She’s beaten up so badly. And she wants to go back to high school, didn’t want a GED. So she humbles herself and goes, graduates two years later with a class that wasn’t even hers.

Then she can’t afford college because single parent and she goes to a two year secretarial school. Like she kept all that hidden for a long time until she put that thing in the book. I’m like, that took courage, tremendous courage. And I said, Hey, Tana, what was that like? She said, Oh, it’s terrifying, but it set me free. And it’s a whole bunch of other people free.

Anthony Codispoti : So giving voice to the thing that shames you. Yeah.

Gary Frey : Like neutralize it. Like, you know, a virus, bring it out into sunshine. Let the UV take care of it. But no, no, we gotta keep that hidden. Well, it just keeps growing in the dark dank, you know, basement. And before you know it, it’s, you know, taking over your house. That’s powerful.

Anthony Codispoti : Before we wrap up, I gotta make sure that we talk about BGW. How is it that a guy with your background becomes a co-owner at a CPA firm? That is- There’s gotta be another wild story here, right?

Gary Frey : I have to laugh at this one. Well, so I was coaching CEOs full time for a couple of years, but man, it’s lonely. Like I love it and I’m good at it, but it’s stinking lonely. Like I want to be part of a team. I swam my fastest splits in high school and college when I was on the four by 100 relay or the medley relay because I wanted to win as a team. And that’s just how I’m built.

But it’s lonely coaching. And so I was asked to speak at an event that was being hosted by BGW in their large conference room. And I’d been working with other CPA firms because they were good, you know, kind of connectors for me with the right audiences. But they were speaking on culture. They wanted me to be on a culture panel. I’m like, what CPA firm talks about culture?

Like I didn’t, they were always talking about regulations and whatever, but this one was talking about culture. And then I see, they were an EOS shop, so Entrepreneurs’ Operating System, and I see their purpose on the wall. It said to make a difference in the lives of our employees, our clients, and our community. And I’m like, wow, I wrote my purpose in 03 to make a positive difference in the lives of others. Like, hey, that, my purpose is very similar to yours. And so I ended up getting to know Adam Boattsman who founded the thing.

He’s like 11 years younger than me. And as we became friends, and I started realizing, wait a minute, I’ve got a lot of friends that are clients over here, but I’d never heard of you guys. And I said, hey, and I found out that they had an outside coach that was taking them through EOS. And I was trained in that and trained in the precursor of that called Scaling Up by Vern Harnish. And these other CPA firms that were even bigger were courting me and wanting me to either do pure business development or bring coaching into a practice where they didn’t even have their own coach. And I’m like, well, that’s kind of hypocritical. Like you want me to bring another revenue stream that you don’t even believe in.

You know, like, I don’t think that’s gonna work too well. But these guys had an outside coach. And I said, what would happen if I bring my coaching practice in to you guys? But I want to be part of a team. Like I, and I’m like, I’m good at selling stuff I believe in because I’m not trying to sell.

I’m just trying to connect good people to good people and good solutions. And so they said, well, you know, we’ve failed in every other attempt that we’ve made when we had an outside salesperson come in. We haven’t cracked the code, but let’s see. So Adam convinced the partners at the time to give me a six month window. See, and you know, you either hit the tape and you hit the goal or you don’t. And I’m like, all right, commission only. All right, I’m signing up. Cause I believed in these guys. I looked for differentiation. That was with the blessing of my branding. Like these guys are different.

Anthony Codispoti : Were they different because of the focus on culture? Did you see something else there?

Gary Frey : No, culture is big, but like the bigger thing was there was a high disproportionate amount of people in this company and now we’re 90, but I think about 13 of us have started, run or turn around companies using our money. So it wasn’t like your traditional firm where you start in the bowels of the ship and you work your way up to the poop deck.

Now all of a sudden you’re a partner and now, you know, you’re an owner. But well, now we all had to, you know, go without salaries at times to make payroll. Like we had enough of those, but we have a real passion for business owners and we’re aggressive in the tax code compared to everybody else.

We’ve never lost the IRS, but so we’re like, stay within the lines, don’t cross the lines of ethical or legal, but there’s so much that most CPAs because either they’re lazy or they’re super cautious, they miss. And so we find multiples of our fees all the time, all the time. And we’re very picky about who we bring in as a client.

And if they don’t fit our criteria, I’ll connect them to somebody else with no strings. I don’t get a dime, but I want to take care of people because I’ve had bad CPAs along the line too. I’ve had good ones, very few, but I’ve had bad ones. And I’ve seen what we do. Like literally we find multiples of our fees, multiples and we’ve found one group, eight and a half million bucks, that their other CPA missed another one, three and a half million, found my son’s company a million, like crazy. So it’s fun. I mean, and I don’t want to be CPA, I don’t have to be, I can be who I am. This is how I go to work every day. Like I’m in T-shirts.

Anthony Codispoti : And so your primary function is what these days?

Gary Frey : Primarily business development? Helping the company grow. Yeah, so I bought in as a owner a few years ago. I said, I’m going to be the first non-CPA partner in this thing. And I was, and also the first non-college graduate partner, the first 100% commissioned partner.

Speaker 3: But I’m free to be who I am. So, I start a part podcast with Ben McDonald, who’s my youngest son’s age and 35 or whatever. And we started that five, almost five and a half years ago. And that’s a gas. What other CPA firm lets you do that? Unless you’re talking about wonky CPA stuff. Like, no, we bring on owners and entrepreneurs that have humility that will tell their story versus just like, hey, look at how great I’m at. Nobody wants to hear that.

Anthony Codispoti : So what have been sort of the biggest growth levers for you to pull with BGW? What strategies have worked the best?

Gary Frey : Oh, there’s a lot, man. I mean, right people in the right seats. So I’m a big Jim Collins, good to great guy. One of the weapons in my book is called Thrive Wither. And it’s about aligning people in their Thrive Zones, not their strengths and weaknesses, because a lot of times strengths are actually in their wither column. They’re burned out and they haven’t even realized it yet. Or they’re good at it, but they just don’t love it.

We work really hard at getting people aligned in the right roles that are in their Thrive Zones. I mean, every night, every day this week, I’ve had 14 hour days. And I’m not even in busy season. We call it peak season. I’m not cranking out tax returns, but I’ve got a lot on my plate, but I love what I do. And my wife is very, like I’m working, sitting on the couch next to her, or she’s watching Escape to the Country.

And how much the properties are. And it was just fine, but I can write and I can do what I need to do. I meet by day and do some work at night. But I love what I do. So I think that’s one, that’s a big one.

And then being very picky about knowing what your sweet spot is, and not trying to be all things to all people, and being willing to say no very quickly. So I created a red flags green lights checklist that we are religious about, and prospecting, like when people are coming to us, like we’re going through red flags, red flags, are there red flags? If they’re red flags, then I know who I’m gonna send them to, unless they’re village idiots, and that’s not usually the case. It’s just usually that not the right fit. But that’s why we have high retention, because we aren’t going to just take a buck and prostitute our friends and our colleagues. Hey, the almighty dollars, no, that isn’t it.

Like we wanna help people grow. It’s not about transactions, about relationships. So I think those are some of the big things, and we speak English. We speak the language of business when most CPA firms speak the language of CPA, and IRS rules and regulations. And then they actually don’t take advantage of them.

That’s the other crazy thing. They’re so conservative, typically, and cautious, but it’s because they’re high S, high C in the disc profile, typically. That’s what fills CPA firms.

We just have a few of us that are very visionary and more high I, high D, which would be my profile, and Adam has some of that, but we’re both very visionary, but in our complimentary lanes, which is really fun. So yeah, I would have never imagined. If somebody said, Gary, you’re gonna go work for a CPA firm. I would have just laughed. I’m like, yeah, my dead body, am I gonna do that?

Anthony Codispoti : But I love it. I was gonna say, it sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun over there now.

Gary Frey : Oh, we have a ton of fun. And I think business should be fun.

Anthony Codispoti : Gary, I just wanna wrap up with one more question, but before I ask it, I wanna take care of two things. First, I’m gonna invite all the listeners to hit the follow button on their favorite podcast app. Continue to get more great content like we’ve had today with Gary Fry.

This has been a blast. I also wanna let people know the best way to get in touch with you, follow your story, get in touch with the company. What are those best options there?

Gary Frey : So LinkedIn, I’m posting on there typically six times a week, but it’s Gary Fry, F-R-E-Y. And the only one with funky glasses. So there are a number of Gary Fry’s on there, but the anything but typical podcast is ours as well. And then trustbgw.com is our website. What you see is what you get. It’s very different. And we’re going through another website revamp.

Hopefully it’ll be coming up here soon. But it’s still very un-CPA-like. It’s anything but typical is what it is really.

But it’s not pretentious. And we’re not trying to be goofy for goofy sake. We’re very serious about helping people save money and make money and stay out of trouble. Like if they get thrown in jail or they get drugged before the IRS because of some stupid risky tax strategy that is ill-founded like that, we didn’t do our job. And we want them to have fun. Like you worry about growing your business, we’ll worry about keeping you out of the ditches and maximizing your take home and being proactive about it. Most CPA firms are not that at all.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah. So last question for you, Gary. As you look to the future, next two or three years, call it for BGW. What is it that you’re most excited about?

Gary Frey : I think we’ll probably triple in size within three years. Triple? I think we could. I think we could.

Anthony Codispoti : You feel like you’ve got the infrastructure and the bones in place to support that kind of growth?

Gary Frey : And the building more of that, which is what I’m really excited about. We’re building some stuff in the foundation that nobody sees that I think is really exciting that will give us more heft. But we ain’t grown by acquisition. We tried that early on and getting cultures to align and getting guys that say, oh yeah, I want it. And really what they want is they want to paycheck and they want to payday on the front end, but then they aren’t going to adopt and they aren’t going to change their ways. They aren’t going to adopt our systems, our processes, our protocols.

It’s just too much of a pain in the butt. So we’ve been working really hard at growing our own and growing organically and sustainably. So maybe three times in three years is a bit much, but I would be shocked if we’re not double. I’d be shocked.

Anthony Codispoti : You mentioned that there are some things kind of going on that people don’t see. Are you able to give voice to any of those things or that’s kind of under wraps?

Gary Frey : You know, we like innovating. And so we’re dabbling with some AI type stuff and things where we can automate and allow our people to use their best and brightest versus a bunch of data entry and stuff like that.

So there are those kind of things going on. And we’ve got some partnerships that we’ve been formalizing that I think bring tremendous value. Like when ERC came in, like PPP, we did, we helped it. We brought millions and millions and millions of dollars of stuff to companies and helping them, but it burned out our people because we were working around the clock it seemed like.

And so when the ERC money, employee retention, tax credit came through, Adams like Gary, you got to find a conservative, like we want to go super conservative in that because there were a bunch of flim flam men that were popping up all over the place, dangerous quite frankly. So we partnered with a group called ERC today and they’re like the second largest in the country. And we knew it was going to be a short window, but we helped so many clients save a ton of money. We became a big funnel for these guys and we got residual income as well. We normally don’t partner to get any sort of income, but it was all transparent and we negotiated great feet. I think whether you like Trump or not, like he’s a negotiator, I think he would have been, you guys negotiated really well for our clients.

And like it was a triple win, like everybody won. And so I think those are the kind of things that I’m always looking for. I’m looking, I’m always looking for what can we do to bring to our clients something that means something and is valuable to them that other people can’t or aren’t bringing to them right now. And are there ways that the partner organization wins and are there ways that we can win last? Like we want to be the last ones to win, but it’s like an abundance mindset, it will serve you well. A scarcity mindset where you’re in competition with everybody will not serve you well and won’t serve your clients well.

Anthony Codispoti : Gary, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you.

Gary Frey : Thank you, Anthony. What a pleasure. I mean, I didn’t expect some of these and I certainly didn’t expect promise keepers to come up, but it is what it is.

Anthony Codispoti : I’m honored that you were comfortable enough to do that. Well, folks, it’s been a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today. Bye.