Straight out of college, I found myself walking into a Wall Street brokerage office in Newport Beach. I only had one suit and an old lime green duster to drive. But I had a clear vision of what I wanted to do. I’d already passed my Series 7 and had spent years studying personal finance.
I wasn’t just looking for a job; I was looking for a role that didn’t quite exist yet in the way I envisioned it. When I sat down with the branch manager, I laid out about ten specific things I felt ‘called to do’.
While I explained my ideal job, he kept looking at a piece of paper on his L-shaped desk, and I thought he wasn’t paying attention. Turns out, he was holding the job description for a brand-new position the company was creating in New York.
I had just described it point-for-point. He was stunned. “This clearly is meant for you,” he told me. “Can you be in New York in 3 weeks?” That was 1983, and I became the financial planner for the Newport Beach office, one of the first in the company. It was the start of a career defined by seeing the connections nobody else would.
Whole Picture
My “macro view of business” really started to take shape early on. I realized that professionals, especially lawyers and accountants, tend to be very siloed. They specialize in their niche, which is great for deep expertise, but it means a business owner often has to navigate a fragmented landscape.
Accountants are over here, attorneys are over there. But within each profession, they have their own specialties. Within the law, you have estate planning, tax, litigation, bankruptcy, criminal, health, etc. and within accounting you have audit, tax, forensic, management, government, non-profit, etc.. They all work in their own ‘silos within the silo’, as I like to say.
As a business grows, it encounters new problems, new opportunities, and new risks that none of these specialists see in their entirety. My goal has always been to be the one who sees that whole picture, the macro application of how I see the business world, understanding who’s doing what, when they’re needed, and how they fit into the larger trajectory of a business owner’s life.
Early Lessons
I grew up around entrepreneurs, namely my grandfather and uncles. I had an inside view of that world. My first real entrepreneurial venture was in college. I was a track athlete living in the dorms, and I noticed there were no vending machines.
So, I started buying leftover baked goods from a local bakery for five cents a piece and sold them to hungry athletes for fifty cents. My margins were huge, and for about six months, I was living la dolce vita.
Eventually, the campus authorities found out and decided to open their own vending operations, effectively shutting me down. But it was clear then that the entrepreneurial bug was alive inside me.
Law School
After my stint on Wall Street and starting my own financial planning firm, I hit a wall. I was working with business owners, and I realized I didn’t have a deep enough understanding of things like business law, tax or estate planning.
Lawyers at the time had zero respect for financial planners. I didn’t blame them. So, I did the logical thing. I went to law school myself and cut out the middleman.
Becoming a lawyer immediately gave me credibility across the board and a deeper insight into the legal issues business owners face.
Exit Planning
My legal practice lasted 30 years, but about 14 years ago, I found my true calling in exit planning. One day I met a lawyer from Denver, John Brown, who was talking about exit planning at a conference with 600 other attorneys. After his presentation, no one approached him but me.
I had found a kindred spirit. He was the first person in my whole career where I thought, this guy understands exactly what I'm trying to do. He mentored me for the next five years.
I eventually moved back to North Carolina, slowly shut down my law practice, and started our consulting company, Build, Prove, Sell. I did not want to do this work inside my law practice because I wanted independence and to avoid the conflict rules of the legal industry.
With exit planning, I can be in the room with all the professionals (lawyers, accountants, M&A firms) and ensure everyone is working together for the client’s best interests, without the silos.
Owner's Problem
At Build, Prove, Sell, we focus on “pre-M&A” work. We want a company to be run in such a way that it’s always ready for a sale or transition, whether to an outside buyer or the next generation.
We get the company ready. We get the family ready. That means getting ahead of the tax planning, the estate issues, and the family dynamics.
One blue-collar company we worked with was valued at $2.69 million the day we started. The owner was doing all the bidding himself, working sixty-plus hours a week, completely worn out. Everything behind him — the crews, the systems, the capacity — could have handled far more work than he was feeding it. The bottleneck was him.
I told him directly: "You are the problem."
It took us six months to convince him to bring in a process engineer and redesign the bid system. His wife was doing the accounting, and she became our greatest advocate. She could see we were looking out for their family's future.
Once he agreed, we moved him from sixty hours a week to fifteen or twenty. Four years later, we sold it for $14 million.
We also prettied up the plant, changed the accounting system to be M&A ready, and brought in new accountants and lawyers. We essentially redesigned everything except the production end of that business.
Strategic Buyers
One of my pet peeves is selling to private equity. I want my M&A firm to do the best it can for me, not sell my company to the same group of PE firms it sells everything to.
While PE firms have their place, I prefer to work with firms that lean into selling to strategic buyers. Strategic buyers often pay a much higher multiple because they can leverage what’s special about your business, like that redesigned front-end bidding system, across their existing operations.
The company that bought our blue-collar client, for instance, paid double the industry average multiple because they wanted that front-end design to apply across their 29 other companies. It’s about finding the best fit and maximizing value
Family Legacy
Beyond the business, I’m deeply committed to the family. My daughter, Ellen, has been working alongside me for 12 years. She’s a macro planner, like me, with a CFP, and she’s a great public speaker. We work as a team for our clients, bringing both our perspectives to the table.
This experience has definitely informed my approach to family legacy for our clients. We try to resolve issues together before we bring in counsel so that we don’t get a situation where every family member gets a lawyer right away and they go to their corners and come out fighting.
I've had my share of hard years. A split with a former partner cost me a great deal of money and five years ago, my wife got seriously ill.
For months she was largely bedridden, and I was caring for her while running two businesses. It was terrifying, and it was isolating. I leaned hard on my faith in Jesus during that stretch. I'm a Christian, and it's the most important thing in my life.
Because of my isolation I had been praying for fellowship. One Friday night I showed my wife a lawyer's website and told her I wanted to meet the man, because he had the guts to put his Christianity right there on it. Nine o'clock the next morning, that very lawyer was standing at my front door. I had never met him. There's no solicitation in my neighborhood and so it was weird he was there in front of me.
He took two steps back when I called him by name because that startled him.. He thought he had come to make sure I voted in the upcoming election, but I asked him why God had brought him to my door and how I had told my wife I needed to meet him the evening before. He said, “I am here to invite you to our Bible Study.”
That was a clear answer to my prayers and I am still deeply involved 3 years later.
My Business Legacy
Ultimately, what I want to be remembered for is helping my clients thrive—in their businesses, their lives, and their relationships. I want them to reach a place where they can transition or sell their business, leaving a strong financial and family legacy.
Part of that means helping them learn to live with money instead of letting it define them. It's a wide arc — the business, the tax, the estate, the family, the years after the sale. It is seeing the world with macro eyes. I'm not doing every piece of it myself. I am making sure every piece gets done. I want them to live their legacy, not just leave one.
I genuinely love what I do, and I have no intention of retiring as long as I can keep delivering value. If you’re a business owner looking to build a saleable company, maximize its value, and ensure your family’s future is secure, let's talk. You can find more about our approach at buildprovesell.com and longfamilyoffice.com.
Listen Now
You can listen to the full episode of my interview with Anthony Codispoti on The Inspired News Podcast here:
