Why I buy these businesses.

I started a company in 2004. By 2016 it was doing multimillions a year. I had customers I'd served for over a decade, a team, real revenue, and a name that meant something in this channel.

I could not have built it on commissions alone. The banks said no, over and over, because they didn't understand what I was building. What got me to eight figures was a very unique private non-equity funding source I found and negotiated myself, because nothing like it was being offered to advisors. Without that capital, the business never gets off the ground.

Then life happened. In 2017 I had to close that company down. I'll be direct about that because everyone who knows me already knows it, and because it's the reason you're reading this page. Closing it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. It was also the biggest catalyst for everything I've done since.

Here's the part that still sits with me. If I'd had access to capital when it mattered, capital like the kind IBA provides now, that company would have survived. But banks and traditional financial institutions don't understand this business. A book of recurring commissions isn't collateral to them, so when an advisor needs money to grow, or wants to get their value out and exit, there's nowhere to go. I know exactly what that costs, because it cost me thirteen years of work.

For the next decade I watched the same thing happen across this channel. Advisors with real books, real customers, twenty years of recurring commissions, who couldn't fund the next stage of growth and couldn't cash out at the end. They wound down and got nothing for it. They retired and the checks just stopped. Nobody told them they had an asset with a market price. Nobody was there to write the check even if they knew.

I spent those years teaching. I wrote Shut The Hell Up & Sell. I built the courses, and more than 200,000 students have taken them. I built four technology sales organizations that generated more than $100 million in partner revenue. I taught sellers how to build pipeline, and I taught agency owners how to build businesses that don't collapse when the founder walks away.

IBA is the other half of that work. Teaching people to build the asset is one thing. Being the person who actually writes the check for it is another. That's what this company does. We provide capital to advisors who want to grow and to advisors who want to exit. We buy businesses in full when you're ready to move on, buy a portion when you want liquidity and intend to keep building, and invest in advisors who are still early, the way someone once invested in me.

If you've been building a book for years, have the conversation. Even if you're years away from selling. Even if you never sell. Know what you've built and what it's worth, because I know exactly what it costs to find out too late.