Scaling With People
Tired of spinning your startup wheels but never gaining traction? Buckle up, founders and CEOs, because this podcast is your rocket fuel to profitability! Every week, we ignite explosive conversations with bold-faced founders, brainy experts, and even a few out-of-this-world vendors. Get ready to crack the code on growth, master employee engagement, and blast through your scaling goals. We’re talking real-world strategies, actionable tips, and perspectives that’ll make your business do a cosmic dance. So, strap in and prepare for lift-off!
Scaling With People
Your Business Isn’t Worth What You Think with Gregory Kovsky
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
You can build a great company and still leave millions on the table when it’s time to sell.
In this episode, I sit down with Gregory Kovsky, President and CEO of International Businesas Associates, who has personally closed 300+ transactions. We break down what actually drives valuation, how deals really happen, and the quiet mistakes founders don’t realize they’re making until offers come in lower than expected.
One of the biggest myths in business is that there’s a single “correct” valuation. There isn’t. The same company can sell for very different numbers depending on the buyer, the market, and how well your financial story holds up under scrutiny.
We get into the real drivers that show up in diligence:
Why documented systems and processes increase value
How customer concentration can quietly kill your multiple
What clean financials actually mean—and how messy books destroy trust fast
The hidden cost of running personal expenses through the business or keeping revenue off the books
This conversation also goes beyond the numbers. Selling a business isn’t just a transaction—it’s identity, responsibility, and transition. We talk about what happens after the deal, how to protect employees and customers, and how professionals run a confidential process using NDAs, financial vetting, and controlled outreach—especially in a world where AI makes it easier than ever to expose sensitive information.
If you’re thinking about selling in the next 12–24 months, this episode will change how you prepare—and how much you walk away with.
Follow the show for more conversations on how to scale with people without breaking your business.
And if this episode hits, share it with a founder who’s building toward an exit.
Welcome And What We’re Solving
SPEAKER_02Welcome to Skilling with People, your weekly playbook for turning chaos into compounding growth. Each week we go under the hood with battle test experts in all areas of business, from marketing to sales, operating financing people, plus product and leadership to unpack the plays, numbers, and systems that turn chaos into compounding growth. Learn straight from founders and experts who've done it and continue to do it successfully. There's zero fluff, just moves that you can still immediately. This podcast is brought to you by Guide to HR. Human expertise, AI-powered impact. Welcome everyone to today's Skilling with People Podcast. I'm Guinevere Curry, your host and founder and CEO to Guide to HR. On this episode, we're talking about the part of interpreteneurship. Nobody puts in the highlight rails, what your business is actually worth, why founders get emotionally handcuffed to the company they built, and how to sell without setting off a five alarm fire inside your business. Join us today is Gregory Koskey, president and CEO of International Business Associates, who has personally closed more than 300 deals and helped turn the Pacific Northwest's oldest business beverage firm into a 10-office regional forest. And you think valuation is just math, retirement is just timing, or sell can happen without strategy. This conversation is about to lovingly wreck that illusion. Can't wait to dive in. Gregory, welcome. I can't wait to start talking to you about this, but before we do, uh, would you like to introduce yourself to the audience?
SPEAKER_00Certainly. Guinevere, thank you for the opportunity to be on your podcast.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00I have been a business broker since 1994. I joined IBA after they sold my father's veterinary hospital, and he had been impressed with them during the process. And after graduating from the University of Texas, McComb School of Business, pursuing my first career, I was looking for a new challenge. And so I joined IBA, emerged as one of the top salesmen between 94 and 2000. And then the founder, Bill Osofsky, approached me about being his successor in ownership, took over the helm of the company in 2000, rode through the Great Recession, rode through COVID, and am standing today with, as you said, 10 offices in the Pacific Northwest, about 20 brokers out facilitating transactions for entrepreneurs.
The Biggest Valuation Myth
SPEAKER_02That is so amazing. And something definitely needed too. It's not something we talk a lot about on this podcast, but even just generally as business owners, we, you know, you might start the business thinking, hey, I can sell it eventually, but you might also just be starting a business as a lifestyle business that then five, 10 years later, you're like, oh, maybe I could turn this into a sellable business for retirement. So thinking about that, most founders, including myself, I want to believe that my company is going to be worth more than it probably is. What is the biggest valuation myth you see that you can bust right now for all of us founders?
SPEAKER_00A great question. And the interesting thing about valuation is it's a sophisticated subjective science. So 10 experts can look at the same business and come up with different valuations. And they all could be accurate. So a business that's run by an owner operator at its present level, if that's continued, would have one value. If a business is acquired by a strategic acquirer who wants to increase market share or maybe pick up relationships, may pay a different value. I can take this concept to a much bigger level, and they honestly look at it as a value proposition because they're not looking at what the valuation is today. It's kind of like being an early stage investor in a company that's going IPO. Well, even the IPO value could be a fraction of where the business value is in 10 years. And getting on that train early can be very lucrative. So I just it's uh hiring, engaging someone who knows the market conditions for your company, who are the demographics of the buyer. I've had people come into my office who think their business has no value. I recall a company where the owner was in the flooring business. So they put carpet, ale, laminant into homes. Well, to him, there was nothing here because he had no inventory. Um he would order product directly for installation, but he had a phone number and a multi-decade decade brand that people called, and we sold that company for almost a million dollars. Wow. And the only reason it sold was his CPA said before you shut it down, you should talk to IBA and have them take the look at it. And the successor has done really well with that business model since then.
SPEAKER_02That's amazing. I mean, and what a difference for that particular owner to have a million dollars for their retirement, which they if they shut down, that would have been a million dollars lost. That's crazy.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And you can see, I mean, you come into their showroom and it's carpet samples and tile samples and such, and a number of people working phones, installation crews that go out and install. Yeah. But if you just look at from an asset base, which the owner did, yeah, you know, liquidation value, what is it of that type of company? But he didn't realize the brand, the website, the phone number, the past customers, the Google reviews all have value in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. And as an HR professional, I also hear how many different employees saved a job. Like they were not out of a job, right? You know, you had the showroom people and the installers, and they now they got to keep their job, likely.
SPEAKER_00Well, and as an HR professional, you this will resonate with you is that sometimes people will buy companies because they're having difficulty growing from a staffing perspective. So think like the service trades, plumbing, HVAC, electrical. There's a shortage of skilled, experienced people. So if you could buy a smaller provider in your market who has, let's say, 10 plumbers, that is a great way to facilitate your growth and address your bandwidth concerns, even from your network.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so true. So true. I love that idea. So, what are the top three things that you see actually drive valuation that founders often ignore when they're busy running the business?
SPEAKER_00Well, the first thing I would say is systems and processes.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Get it out of their head, right? Exactly. It's having that up-to-date employee manual, it's having an up-to-date website, it's those sort of things that help scalability and transfer of knowledge, that it can't be all centralized with you. There's an expression working on a business versus in a business.
SPEAKER_02I say that all the time, Gregory.
SPEAKER_00And so if you've staged it where you can go on vacation, where you have good infrastructure on your team, that enhances value. So that's the first thing. The second thing I would say is mitigate customer concentration because for a buyer, their CPA, a bank or investors, if 30% of your revenue comes from one customer, if you lose that customer, where's the business at? So you need to be cognizant of that effect and mitigate, hopefully, keep keeping customers under 10%. Though I'm based in Seattle, if you are manufacturing component parts for aerospace, probably Boeing is a big customer. So there's not a lot of alternative customers in that space. So you can navigate those, and we do, but it's a concern. And then plain and simple, and this gets down to Main Street, have clean and transparent financial records. It may make sense as an entrepreneur for you to barter and trade, to pay employees under the table, to add a hospitality business, take five hundred dollars home a week that somehow doesn't get on the PL. Um, all those items hurt your valuation at time of sale. So I encourage people working ahead of the curve, run your books transparently so that it can be looked at by a buyer, a CPA, CFO, bank, or investor. And it's actually we're having a good conversation today, Guinevere, in that it's a reminder as tax filing day, April 15th, comes up, is that you have an opportunity for 26 to clean up those books. So if you want to sell in 27, even go back in your PL and say, yes, I go to Costco and I throw things for the family out there. But maybe I'm not gonna do that this year because it may not seem like a lot. Say you run$50,000 of expenses through your business, which is a couple thousand a month. Yeah. Well, if we're talking a four or five multiple of EBITDA time of sale, that could be a quarter million dollars you're losing because you can't document it. Wow. So yes, you will on that fifty thousand dollars probably pay fifteen, twenty thousand in taxes at the end of the year. Yeah. But wouldn't you rather 200 to 250,000 than saving 15 to 20?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. So how far back, like you know, does that like need to be? It sounds like maybe a year or two. You want clear books if you're doing something like this?
Clean Books And EBITDA Multiples
SPEAKER_00Look at three years. Three years, okay. To five years of financials. Now we're coming out of a period where honestly the financials don't matter with the pandemic. 2021 were chaos years. So we don't really look a lot at five years right now. We're back to really having three good years with a reasonable stable economy. Um, and the most important year is what you are doing right now. Yeah. And we will look at both the last tax year, but we'll also look at a trailing 12 months. So we may pull data for April 1, 25, through March 31, 26, because December 31 is an arbitrary cutoff date. And no different than a publicly traded company, you see how the stock market goes up and down based on quarterly earning reports.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Business values at the main street and middle market level go up and down based on quarterly performance as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that makes complete sense. So if a founder wants to start increasing the value of their business or company over the next 24 months, 12 to 24 months, what should they focus first on?
SPEAKER_00Well, first is make sure your books and records are transparent, what we just talked about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The second is a business is more attractive if it's in a growth mode. So I often joke with clients and say, imagine you're running a marathon. Let's kick the last two miles. Because if I am able to show a buyer five to 10% growth going on in 26 versus 25, it looks much better than this owner's checked out, they want to retire, and the business is showing it. So that is something. And then building your team infrastructure, if it's a husband and wife team and one is the CFO, maybe you begin transitioning that position. So at time of sale, you only need to replace the top of the pyramid. You have already trained that CFO type position so that that position doesn't need to simultaneously be replaced. And you know, HR, finding a quality person at an executive level, how long is it taking Guinevere right now to find a CFO or a CMO or those positions?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, usually three to six months, depending on industry and what's happening. I think uh you could actually shorten that if you as the found you as the hiring manager have a really clear, distinct understanding of what is needed. I see a lot of times founders really struggle with that. They go out to market looking for XYZ and then through the recruiting process realize that's not really what they need, and then they completely have to start all over. So they've last one or two months just right there. So it's really identifying and understanding what your needs are and and who's what kind of characteristics and skill sets are going to fill those needs before you even go out and start looking.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and we all know that often, unfortunately, the first person you hire may not be the perfect person.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So again, if you're working ahead of the curve and you get someone in for a month and you just say, This is not a good fit for my corporate culture, you have some runway to find the right person.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because you do really want stability on your team at time of sale. Especially the leadership. That buyers are acquiring.
Why Founders Can’t Let Go
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Yeah, I love that. So, you know, when you're thinking about as an entrepreneur or business owner, you're thinking about uh selling your business. Why do you think so many entrepreneurs struggle with the idea of stepping away from the business that they've built?
SPEAKER_00Wonderful question. I mean, I think for a lot of people, it's their identity. So it's fun to golf with your buddies and talk about the week prior in business. That golfing may not be the same thing if you take away your primary topic of conversation. And then I also think, and I fall in this category, you may as well, business is the ultimate competitive sport, it's an adrenaline rush. And many of my clients don't want to golf. They, you know, they they get up in the morning to think about marketing initiatives. How do I open a new office? What do I do? And that's what makes life fun for them. And it's not as common for people to go into their 70s still working. I mean, look how many years Warren Buffett worked. That's a man who financially probably could have retired 25 years ago and been taking life.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. You have that drive. And I think so many entrepreneurs, you're an entrepreneurial because you have that drive, right? So it's like, then it's like, how do you like dial back? So many of my friends are like, you're you work at Mach 10, you'll never get to like Mach 7. I'm like, hmm, I wouldn't that look like for me. But yeah, it's that it's that con and it's identity too. And I totally agree with you. It's like, it's okay, if I'm not the founder and CEO of my business, if I'm not the podcast host, if I'm not the author of XYZ, who am I? What am I? What do I do with my life? So I think that's really you nailed it right there. Have you seen any of your uh founders, business owners who've sold like what a healthy transition looks like that you could share with the audience? I like, you know, you've seen a couple of founders really be able to make that transition and exit and be healthy, what good looks like.
Healthy Exits And New Purpose
SPEAKER_00Certainly. And I maybe I'll divide that in three demographic groups. So um the first one is frequently my sellers will stay on and continue to work for the company on a part-time basis or doing what they like. For example, Graham Hollingsworth, one of my past clients, loved the sales element and his customers, but he wanted to not manage people, worry about finances. He stayed on for six years with the new owner, doing exactly what he enjoyed. And when we negotiated his employment contract, it had seven weeks of vacation, nice, including the month of December. And he he said, I'm happy when I'm in town to help. I still enjoy this, but I need the freedom. So that's one. The second is many times founders need quiet space to come up with their next idea. So I have one client who has sold four businesses through IBA who builds them to a certain level. It's in the tech space. At that point, he doesn't like the HR element. Many people don't like the HR element, let's be honest. He likes someone in a small dedicated group of people pedal to the metal, working together. So he will sell and go do something, go travel, enjoy life. But then it's amazing, and I've been doing this 32 years. He'll call me and say, I built another company, I want to sell it again. So it's so that's that piece. And then the final is the freedom to do what you want, maybe working for nonprofits, um, those sort of things. I have seen many people transition and take their knowledge and experience and promote in that space and give back to society, which is wonderful. I mean, I'm I have a special needs brother, and I'm an advocate for that community and have been on boards of organizations that help them find employment opportunities. I'm not ready to retire, but I could see continuing advocacy in that space, or I'm a voracious reader. I joke with my wife. I could see being a librarian in a beach town and being happy if no one came in and just gave law. In the stacks, or if a student comes in and says, 'I'm doing a report on the Amazon,' sitting down with them and like pulling books and going on the internet and saying, 'Let's do this, let's learn about the ecosystem of the Amazon.' So you know, you gotta find your why. And I believe we all need to have a reason to get up in the morning and do something. I don't think it's good for our mental health, having no purpose in our lives.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. And so many times, like I love the nonprofit concept because we all have so much experience and knowledge doing whatever our business is, but also owning and managing and uh running the business, working on the business, that translates so well into nonprofit space. And they need that kind of skill set and knowledge infused into their business. So I love that. That's a great concept.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we um to close on that, I mean, I have multiple members of my team who volunteer at SCOR, which is a division of the small business administration, where it's a wonderful program where there's free experts that entrepreneurs can reach out to, sit down with, and they try to pair them with people in your industry or relevant experience. Um, we've sponsored that organization for years because there are resources out there to entrepreneurs. Yeah. And often people don't even know that.
Selling Confidentially Without Panic
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So let's switch gears a little bit. Um, you know, selling, we talked about a little bit about selling and stealth mode, don't cause a five alarm panic in your business, right? One of the biggest fears founders have is employees finding out that they're selling. How do you actually make a business uh like market the business confidentially and try to sell it confidentially in a way where you're successful? And obviously you've got to communicate at some point in time, but you're not setting to panic and fear where people start walking out the door and lose valuation.
SPEAKER_00You just hit it on one of the biggest reasons why you want to hire a professional to sell your business. Because we walk a fence. On one side, just like selling anything, you want to create a competitive market space where there's as many buyers looking at the product as possible, create competition, drives up price. On the other side, in selling a business, you want no one to know it's for sale. You don't want your employees, your customers, your vendors learning it's for sale because it could honestly damage the business.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So a firm like IBA, we will screen buyers. So we will have them sign non-disclosure agreements saying they won't make public a business for sale. We will very importantly financially qualify them because you may have the most relevant experience to running this, but if you don't have the chips to play at that poker table, then there's no reason to start the game. Yeah, agree. And then the last thing to look at is relevant experience, which is actually something that the Small Business Association looks at with SBA loans, where you can get up to five million dollars to buy a business with an SBA-backed loan. Um, but they want to make sure if you're a tech worker and you're wanting to buy an Italian restaurant and you've never worked in an Italian restaurant, you probably will not get the backing of the SBA and support for your loan. And conversely, you may make YouTube videos preparing food, um, your Italian recipes that have been handed down for generations, be a great Italian cook. That doesn't mean you should buy a video production company and manage that operation. So, you know, relevant experience definitely matters. And we, in assessing potential buyers, and we frequently have multiple offer situations where our sellers have choices, and one of the metrics they're choosing on is who's gonna be able to take the helm of this ship and guide it into the future. Because, as we touched on, the seller cares about their employees, they know their life stories, they may have kids in college, preparing for retirement, whatever it may be. They don't want to put their lives in chaos. Yeah, they care about their customers, they don't want them to be dissatisfied with the products and service offered by the business in the future, and they care about their vendors. Let's say you're a roofing company and you've been buying plywood for years and years from a local lumber yard where you have a friend who your kids played little league together, etc. Well, they need the sales of plywood to your roofing company as their business model, and you're both well known in the community, you don't want to damage that community's ecosystem because it is interdependent. And so those type of things all matter to sellers. People focus on the exit price, but there are many elements that come into deciding who a seller should or wants to sell to.
Preventing Leaks In The Market
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that makes so much sense. So, what mistakes do you see that cause leaks um before those leaks knowledge get out into employees and vendors and customers?
SPEAKER_00Well, not having a professional process and it includes in marketing. So IBA's first office was in Portland, Oregon. So if we're advertising a business that may be in Portland, we're not gonna say the neighborhood um that it's located in. We may even say the business is located in Multnomah County to give us coverage so that people can't identify what it is based on the ad. And we actually have to be much more careful in advertising today than we've ever had to be because people put our profiles, our information that we share in AI. And if you're pulling direct verbiage off of a website or something, yeah, um, they may be able to trace who's for sale, and competitors are curious who's for sale. Yeah. So again, you need to be strategic and thoughtful at all stages in the sale process, and it helps to have you know a knowledge, experience, and skill from a guide leading the process.
Resources Links And Closing
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so true. I I have so many more questions, but as I look at the time, I'm gonna wrap up. Any last final tips or tricks or thoughts you'd like to share with the audience today?
SPEAKER_00Um, Guinevere, I would share our website, which is ibaink.com. So ice cream boy apple, ice cream nancycharlie.com, and direct you specifically to two elements. The first being our blog. My mom was a school teacher. I believe in our industry there's poor information out there. So we have had approximately 200 authors in the history of our blog. Wow. Publish twice a week, attorneys, CPAs, um, bankers, business brokers. So there's a lot of information there that could help whether you're interested in selling and buying. And then our video page, we all have our own corporate videos with information, but we also publish podcasts like this from YouTube where people can go back and listen to these interviews. And whether it's driving in a car, listening on Apple or Spotify, or watching at home on YouTube, knowledge is power.
SPEAKER_02Oh, 100%. Absolutely. We'll definitely get those links into the bio below. And uh, Gregory, it was great talking with you. A lot of things, food for thought there, especially as I'm an owner myself. But I really appreciate your insights into how to start thinking about exiting and what that looks like in so many different ways. So thanks again, Gregory, for joining us. And for our listeners, we look forward to seeing you on the next podcast. Have a great one, everybody. That's a wrap for today's episode of Scaling with People. If you got value from this conversation, do me a favor, share it with someone building something big. And hey, I'd love to hear your take. Drop a comment, share with me and assist, or start a conversation. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss the bold unfiltered strategies we drop every week. I'm Windaver Cruy, founder and CEO of Guide2HR, where we help high-growth companies build smart with people for strategies and AI-powered systems that don't just keep up, they lead. If you're building fast and want your HR to move faster, head to guide2hr.com and let's talk. And remember, scale isn't just about speed, it's about people. Until next time, have a great one.
