Sep 24, 2023

132: Should You Keep or Leave Your Business and Other Soul-Searching Questions, Brian Trzcinski

This episode provides great questions to help you think about what can protect your business and create wealth. Brian Trzcinski, Director of Business Market Development with MassMutual, joins host Laurie Barkman to discuss questions business owners need to answer to enhance value and reduce risk. Like what would your business be worth today if you died 90 days ago? And why should exit planning begin the day your doors open?

Head to SuccessionStories.com for the show notes and transcript to get all the questions you need to consider. Enjoy this Succession Stories episode about soul-searching questions for exit planning with Brian Trzcinski.

Learn more about:

  • The importance of having an exit plan
  • Risk Pillars of Success
  • The first question business owners need to answer
  • How health issues can impact value
  • The value of not waiting too long to plan your exit

Show Links:

MassMutual – Resources for Business Owners

SuccessionStories.com

Schedule a call with Laurie Barkman to discuss transition planning: https://thebusinesstransitionsherpa.com 

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TRANSCRIPT:

Laurie Barkman
Brian Trzcinski, welcome to Succession Stories. This is going to be interesting because of your perspective on Exit Planning and contingency planning, and the broad examples that you’ve seen in your career. I’m so excited to talk with you. Welcome.

Brian Trzcinski
Thanks, Laurie. It’s great to be here.

Laurie Barkman
We met at the Value Builder Summit not too long ago. And you were on stage with a wonderful presentation, which is really the crux of today’s conversation, I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions about that. But first, let’s start with you. How did you get involved with Exit Planning?

Brian Trzcinski
Well, I work for MassMutual, a financial services company, and I’ve been supporting the business owner market there for about 12 years now. And it started off kind of “Okay, how can MassMutual be better in the insurance market?” right? With business owners. But as I started to do the work and learn more about the business market, and what advisors need, and what business owners need to be successful, I learned that there’s two areas that really need to be focused on. And that was business valuation and exit planning, and understanding first, the foundation of what it takes to be an effective business planner, and work with business owners knowing the value of their largest asset, their business, and then helping them create that end gain, if you will. In other words, what do they want the business to do for them when the time comes to exit? And what are the steps they’re going to take all on the way to accomplish that and monetize that largest asset. So pretty much for the last five or six years in my job at MassMutual, we’ve been really focused on that area, I went ahead and got my my certified Exit Planning Advisor designation just like you have and, and we’ve really blown out the resources that we have, in helping business owners understand that business value and plan for their eventual exit, no matter how that exit happens.

Laurie Barkman
There’s a really key thing you just said, which is business owners thinking about their business as an asset. We’re going to talk about that in a moment, I want to go back to the other thing you talked about, which is understanding what your business is worth, the valuation side, and setting some goals around that as well as contingency planning. Some people talk about Exit Planning as one thing, and they don’t always define it. I think this is a good opportunity for our audience to understand, from your perspective, what is the difference between Exit Planning and Contingency Planning.

Brian Trzcinski
Yeah, Laurie, there’s a lot of labels that get thrown around this type of planning, exit planning, business continuity, succession planning, everybody kind of puts these labels on it. And I think a lot of people kind of get trapped in thinking that those are all the same thing. And they’re actually not. And the way I look at it is I consider contingency planning, continuity planning, as a noun. And I consider Exit Planning as a verb, right? Continuity planning, succession planning, that involves putting plans in place for specific areas of the business that you’re protecting, if something unexpected should happen, right, the debt we call those the six DS right? The death the disability, the divorce, the departure of an owner. And that’s a particular plan, a particular document, a particular funding mechanism; whatever the case may be. It’s a thing, right? And it protects the business from those instances should they happen. Exit Planning, on the other hand, is a process. It’s a verb, it’s an action. It’s not one given document. It’s not one particular task that a business owner does. It encompasses everything, including the succession and continuity plan. It includes things like estate planning; it includes things like retirement income planning. All of the things that are going to require the business owner to be able to leave their business on their terms: protect the family, protect the income, protect their heirs, everything that goes into that. And ultimately, the continuity of the business, of course. That’s Exit Planning. And it’s not a one-time event, it’s a process.

Laurie Barkman
I like to use the word transition, but for that reason, that it’s not a one-time thing. And it’s it is a process, it’s a verb. And I like that explanation. And it’s a movement, right? We’re, as soon as we write down our plan, our plan is going to change, that’s okay. It’s better to have a plan than not have a plan. And I’m sure you know the statistics as I do. Maybe you can share what you see. I like to say, look, 100% of our business owners are going to leave one day, we know that for to be a fact. Why don’t you share how many people have a plan? It’s not a high percentage, is it?

Brian Trzcinski
It’s not and we’ve asked business owners a variety of questions about every step of that process. Right? You know, we’ve asked them: “Okay, how many of you have figured out what your future income needs are?” And it’s something like 50%, you know, “How many of you have identified successors?” It’s like 30%, “How many of you have identified potential buyers?” It’s like 20%. “How many of you have even said timeline for your exit?” It’s like 10%, right? And it just continues to go right on down the line. And we know that only about a third of business owners even have a Buy-Sell agreement in place, you know, agreement between partners on how a business will transfer if there’s one of those 6Ds happen. So many business owners are exposed in that area. Only, I think, according the MassMutual research that we did a few years back, it was something like 35% of business owners have begun the exit planning process, and only 8% have actually completed the process. So, you know, and we get it, right? I mean, business owners are so busy working in their business, not on their business, right, you asked for it, you’re gonna ask me for my most, you know, my favorite quotes, you know, I guess in this space, that’s probably one of my favorite quotes, because it’s so true. And that’s a big reason why a lot of this planning doesn’t get done. But I think it’s important. Here’s the other thing, I think, is important for folks to remember, especially if there’s advisors that are listening to this podcast, when we make things too daunting, too complicated, and too unattained, seemingly unattainable for business owners, they do nothing. And we know that exit planning is a process. And there’s a lot of things that have to go into that process to build a complete exit plan. It’s so important to tackle it in bite-sized chunks, figure out where your highest level of exposure and risk is, and tackle that first. And not think that you need to do everything in one fell swoop, because that’s just impossible. And I think when we can start to put it in that sort of framework for business owners, that helps them to realize that “Yes, I can do this and this is an attainable thing to do for my business.”

Laurie Barkman
Yes, this is the Cookie Monster version of How To Do Exit Planning bite-sized chunks, we’re going to make a morsel that we can swallow. Now, that’s important. The other thing you mentioned is an asset that the business is an asset. What’s the mindset of a business owner when it comes to their business? Do you think that there’s a common mindset around that? Or is that an unusual thought?

Brian Trzcinski
Yeah, I don’t think a lot of business owners look at their business as an asset. And I’m not necessarily thinking they all go to the complete other end of the spectrum and just think of it as a job, right? Because that’s kind of what those are kind of two ends of the spectrum, right? When the business is a job. You know, we joke too, that it’s the most expensive, stressful job you’ll ever own right? But when the business is a job, right, you can’t leave for more than 25 hours, right? Everything gets invested back into it, like you’re not making any investments in yourself or in your future. You know, income is how you view success as a business owner: how much income is that business spitting out, and is it being able to afford your lifestyle? And essentially, when a business is just a job, you’re not building something that’s sellable, or transferable. It doesn’t have that value that you can going to be able to monetize in the future. When a business owner looks at their business as an asset, they completely flip that on their head, right? They’ve built something that is built to sell, as John Warrilow likes to say or built to transfer. They’re building something that’s got future value and has the ability to generate future revenue and profit. That’s really what an acquirer of a business cares about. They don’t care about what you did for the last 10 years of your business, they care can this business continue to generate growth, generate profit into the future. And when a business owner has an eye towards that, and they’re focused on their value versus their income, that’s when you start to view it as an asset. And one of the things we like to say to business owners too, because one of the biggest objections that we deal with when working with business owners is around putting resources toward or paying for the types of services like Exit Planning. And when a business owner looks at their business like an asset, they’re looking at it like any liquid investment that they own. And when business owners look at that, and say, “Okay, well, you know, what I’m gonna I’m paying any asset manager 1% of the value of my liquid investments to manage those, why wouldn’t I do the same thing for my biggest asset, my business, even though it’s illiquid.” So business owners need to sort of shift that mindset and say, you know, this isn’t just a job. This isn’t just my lifestyle, or my income producer. This is a real asset that I’m going to monetize someday. And it’s either going to be the legacy itself for the next generation, or it’s going to create intergenerational wealth for my family into the future. That’s the mindset shift that has to happen. And that’s when the exit planning starts to become real.

Laurie Barkman
Yeah, absolutely. And there are a lot of pieces and parts of this. And so starting with the biggest risk area is good advice. What might those areas be? Sometimes it’s people, sometimes it’s process, what do you see most commonly?

Brian Trzcinski
Yeah, so we, I don’t think any area of risk is more or less important than any other, right? But business owners, we kind of bucketed into four risk pillars, if you will. Four areas of risk that need to be mitigated for success. The first one is obviously the business itself, right? And that’s going to be all that continuity planning you were talking about, Laurie. Key person protecting against the loss of a key employee, you know. The Buy-Sell agreements that I was talking about earlier. That’s the true continuity. In other words, what happens if we leave this business horizontally versus vertically? Right?

Laurie Barkman
Right.

Brian Trzcinski
That’s protecting a business. But then you also need to worry about the family. Right? How do we protect income? How do we manage debt? How do we be equitable and fair in our Estate Planning? Right? That’s all that’s risk that involves the family. Then we also need to worry about the risk of our team, our employees, right? Building strong management teams, keeping our key employees loyal, attracting new key employees. We like to tell all of our advisors, you know, what, ask your business owners this question: If you were to leave this business and start a new one, who would you take with you? Those are your key employees. And then the final piece of the puzzle is the future. And that’s really all about future income. In other words, don’t not exit the business because you don’t have the financial wherewithal to do. So you want to make sure that you have the financial means to exit the business. And that’s all about building that retirement income strategy. That’s all about leaving the business vertically. And making sure you can do that when you’re ready, and not have to say to attached financially to the business. So we’d like to bucket the risks into those four key areas.

Laurie Barkman
A more crass way to say it, which I’ve said on this show is, you know, leave boots on or boots off. I kind of like your phrasing a little bit better, it’s nicer. And you mentioned the personal side of this a little bit. And as we think about goal setting, and as owners think about what’s important to them, and looking forward for some very much it’s legacy, and they want to build a business that’s gonna sustain the generations. And for others, they do see that they want to be rewarded. You know, for other owners, they want to be rewarded in the future for all of their hard work. And I think MassMutual and Value Builder did a joint study and did a white paper on what we’re going to explain to the audience where pull factors and push factors are, and the impact of business, or excuse me, personal readiness for an exit. And for business owners who are more ready and moving more towards that, you know, they want to have that vertical exit, not the horizontal, and working on it purposefully and having intent and creating pull factors versus these push factors. So why don’t we start there? Why don’t we explain what push and pull are? And then I want to dive into the study. Because I think it’s got a really interesting learning for our audience.

Brian Trzcinski
Sure, I think the first question that business owners need to answer and we have a whole program just on this concept. It’s really all about keeping or leaving. And we know that business owners don’t always keep their businesses for the right reasons. And we also know they don’t always leave their businesses for the right reasons. And there’s a series of questions business owners can ask themselves to help figure out, you know, does it make the most sense for me to stay involved in this business and grow it to its maximum capacity, its highest multiple, whatever you want to say? Or, you know, what? Does it make the right decision to just say, You know what, I’ve taken this business as far as I can, I’m going to sell it or I’m going to let the next generation take it to the next level. And that’s a real thought-provoking exercise that business owners really need to sit down and do. And it involves questions around, you know, do you still have the fire in the belly? Do you have successors in place, or buyers in place that are ready? Are you financially tied to the business? Are you can you write off in the sunset and support yourself? Do you still have a passion for what you’re doing day in and day out? And these are very important questions, I don’t think business owners are always going to step back and ask themselves, because to your point about the pushing and the pulling, like you can’t, you can’t be pushed towards something or pulled away towards something until you’ve done some soul searching about what makes the most sense for you in the business. So we’d like to sort of start with that conversation. And if the decision is to keep it to stay and grow it, that’s a whole different track of planning, than if the decision is to you know what, I’m done. I’ve taken as far as I can, I want to embark on my chosen exit strategy. But far too often, those two get commingled and business owners shouldn’t stay in the business because they have nothing else to do, or they don’t think anybody can run it like they do, or the business is their baby. Right, nor should they leave the business because it’s gotten so out of their control that they want it to be somebody else’s problem, right? We see this all the time in this type of work. And what we learned in that study, Laurie, is that when business owners have that conversation, either with themselves or with their co-owners or with their family, and they really drill down to why they’re making the decision to stay or the decision to leave. That’s when we see value grow. That’s when we see transferable businesses be created. That’s when we see, you know, business owners being able to exit on their terms. But that’s really where it needs to start is figuring out what makes the most sense for you and the business.

Laurie Barkman
And doesn’t it make sense also to try to do this thinking when it’s not too late?

Brian Trzcinski
Yes. Yeah.

Laurie Barkman
Too many times I’ve heard people say I wish I started sooner. Yeah, you probably get asked this question all the time. When should I, right? When should I blank? When should I start Exit Planning? Or how should I think about this? When should I? Is it five years out? 10 years out? How do you answer that question?

Brian Trzcinski
Well, I mean, the answer that we always give a little bit tongue in cheek, because we know it’s not 100% realistic to say this, but Exit Planning should begin the day the doors open. Right? We should always be thinking about our exit, because we don’t know when that’s going to happen. I mean, you could open up your doors, and at the risk of, you know, sorry, I’m an insurer, I work for insurance companies. So sometimes we get morbid, but right, you could, you could open up the doors, and two years from now, a cancer diagnosis or a disability, you know, 56% of business owners tell us that if they become disabled, they’re gonna have to stay on the payroll throughout that entire disability, they don’t have that safety net in place, right? And we know that so many agreements aren’t funded with insurance products. So that means cash flow from the business is going to have to fund buyouts and things like that. So we know that these exposures exist. So while we may be saying, you know, tongue in cheek, it should start the day the doors open, it really should. Now, again, to my point earlier, that doesn’t mean that you should check every single box of your exit plan, you know, week one of opening your business, but you have to start thinking about these things. And as I mentioned earlier too, Laurie 10% of business owners have a timeline for exit. So how do they even know when five years out is they don’t know what five years out, five years out becomes two years out really quick, when the business owner just kind of throws up their arms and says, I’m done. I’ve had enough. So the earlier you start thinking about this, and planning about it is absolutely the better and it’s gonna give you more options, down the line as well.

Laurie Barkman
Yeah, and if you’re a sole owner of the business, and you have a health issue, and now you’re bringing your company to market, the sharks are swirling, especially if they know that you’re having a health problem. That’s and that’s not an easy thing to do either is tried to work on your exit, when you’re getting treatments. There’s, there’s a firm in North Carolina, I was talking to two partners of a design firm, we were just going to sit down and start talking about Exit Planning. One partner for sure was ready the other partner, I wasn’t sure what her hesitation was. And then unfortunately, I found out that she was going to be undergoing some treatments. And everything just paused. And I thought, Oh, my goodness, you know, I totally understand why they wanted to pause that was the right thing to do to focus on her health. But here we are, right? I mean, this is a real example of two partners that absolutely have to figure this out. And I and I don’t, and I hope the best right? I want I want her health to come back. And I want her to be active in the business. But if not, what’s that going to lead to one partner buying out the other? You know, are they both going to sell? And we see very often, especially, you know, for me and my practice, I’m sure you see it to where the companies are so dependent on their owner, then that’s one of the main reasons why the value is gonna go to go down. If there’s a health issue, it’s very dependent on its owner. And when we were talking about the push factors and The pull factors, part of the study, I think that you did with Value Builder, as you saw the data, right, that if we have more of these reasons why would be feeling pushed, because of health, because of divorce, because of disaster, or these Ds that you mentioned, that’s going to have a negative impact on our value, as opposed to these more positive pull factors. We’re leaping to our next thing. We’re excited about our next thing, we’re working on that. And then there’s this middle zone, which the data didn’t show any specific impact on value. But for me with my clients, I feel like that’s the worry zone. If you’re complacent if you’re coasting if you’re feeling really comfortable and cozy in that middle. That’s a watch out potentially, because you can just take your foot off the gas, and now what’s going to happen to your business value over a period of time, it’s going to deteriorate, because maybe now we’re marching towards our retirement date. And once again, the sharks are swirling, right? So in context of that study, you know, what have you seen, for owners who haven’t had like I’m describing where they’ve just waited too long to work on this.

Brian Trzcinski
I actually have a story that actually does the flip side of that about the value of not waiting too long. So you share your story. The story that came to my mind as you were sharing yours is we worked with a manufacturing company, family-owned business and father started the business and the succession plan was to hand it down to his son and his daughter and they were doing all the right planning. You know, hired the right professionals put the right agreements in place the right funding mechanisms, hired a business coach, organizational psychologist to help do all these things. So they were doing all the right things, doing it early. But in the midst of that planning, the patriarch, the owner, the founder of the family was diagnosed with ALS, so their succession planning quickly went from that vertical exit, to unfortunately, him passing away. But because they had done all that planning ahead of time, it was all in place. It just sped up the timeline, and the business was able to transition to the next generation. And everything was fine. So that’s a great example of what happens when you start planning early, because that ended up being a success story. Unfortunately, they lost their father to an insidious disease. But because they had done the planning upfront, they were able to pivot and do that. But when you start to talk about that, it’s interesting, I, you know, when I got the research, that sort of that watch spot was really all about retirement. So it wasn’t necessarily about a push-pull, it was just kind of like, you know, what I ran my course, as a business owner, I’m just going to kind of step away. And that’s where we saw that there wasn’t a lot of impact on the value positive or negatively. And I think a lot of that has to do with not so much about waiting too long to plan, but probably waiting too long to exit, you know, probably stayed in the business longer than they should have. They didn’t necessarily have a poor exit or a mistimed exit, or, I mean, the business probably was able to continue, but they weren’t necessarily doing things that put the business in the right light to necessarily take that next jump for whoever was going to take over. And we hear this statistic all the time, Laurie, about what is it 30% of businesses don’t make it past the second generation, right? We hear that statistic all the time. And I think we’re always so quick to blame that next generation as the culprit for why that is. I think in a lot of instances, the culprit is actually the first generation because they didn’t position the next generation for success. And case in point with what you just said, Right? Giving your children a plateaued business, or giving your children one that’s been stagnant for, you know, 5-10 years, that’s not positioning that next generation for success. So whether they stayed around too long, and it didn’t transfer on a growth trajectory, or they just kind of, they just kind of maybe lost that fire in the belly. As I said earlier, I think that’s why we start to see that, that sort of that group, not impact value. But it’s again, it’s all about creating a business that can generate future revenue and profit, not transitioning a business that’s plateaued or just become stagnant.

Laurie Barkman
Absolutely, if you’re gonna have a baton handoff, in that relay race, it’s got to be a really clean handoff. So many times the next generation is excited, and they’re looking to take it to the next level. And sometimes they’re handed a business they need to turn around. And that’s hard. Yeah, that’s really hard. I liked earlier what, Brian, when you were talking about questions that business owners might ponder, and things to help them get their head around, you know what this all means? And I guess for me, one question would be, what would it mean for you to leave on your own terms? What are some other questions that you might share with the audience, as we kind of start to wind down here and make this actionable for people that they might do on their own when they’re walking and listen to this podcast? You know, one of the things they’re gonna start thinking about?

Brian Trzcinski
Yeah, yeah, thought-provoking, provocative questions, I think are some of the best things that least we as advisors can do with business owners. A couple that I like to ask business owners around the business risk is what would your business be worth today if you died 90 days ago? Right? Pennies on the dollar, most likely, because you hit the nail on the head when you said owner dependency is a huge risk. It’s probably the biggest risk that is out there. I saw a study not too long ago that 95% of businesses are owner-dependent. I mean, that’s a frightening statistic. The one of the best things you can do as a business owner around continuity planning, besides the agreements in the insurance products, is just make yourself redundant in the business. Have people that can do what you do. I mean, that is one of the first and probably easiest things that you can do as an owner. Some other questions I like to ask business owners as well as “Are you a family-first business or a business-first family?” Because a lot of the decisions that you’re going to ask or that you’re going to make in terms of that are going to revolve around that. So interesting. Another data point Laurie that we found out we asked business owners in our last study what is the number one or the main goal that you have for your exit? And it was things like you know, be able to maintain my lifestyle, keep the business in the family, make sure my employees are taken care of. Do you know what the worst-rated goal was? Maintain family money.

Laurie Barkman
Really?

Brian Trzcinski
Right? So that tells me that there’s an awful lot of business-first families out there. And I don’t necessarily think that that statistic is a bad thing. What it tells me is that a lot of business owners are making decisions that are in the best interest of the business, and not worrying about how that impacts the family, because they know the business is the legacy, the business is what’s going to transition the businesses, what’s the wealth creator, and you know, what if you don’t like it too bad? Right? And I think that’s a…

Laurie Barkman
That’s a really interesting point, which is why we have psychologists on the show, too, because sometimes those things don’t know. But those are great questions, Brian. And of course, like every episode will have a transcript. So those questions will be in our notes if people want to go to successionstories.com, and make sure to get to get those in writing. You’re just you’re rattling off, not rattling, that’s not the right word. You’re sharing so many golden nuggets here that I really do hope people come back to this episode again and again, and think about these questions, because they’re not easy to answer. They’re not meant to be answered in five minutes.

Brian Trzcinski
Yeah, and the last one, the last question I’ll throw out there, Laurie, to kind of put a bow on all this too is when it comes to Exit Planning and why you haven’t done it or why you haven’t exited if you feel like you should. You got to ask yourself: is it because the business is your baby? Or the business is your lifestyle? And if the business is your baby, that just means that you’re so attached to it, and you need to figure out how to unattach yourself from it. If the business is your lifestyle, that just means you haven’t built assets outside the business or maximize the value of the business to be able to maintain your lifestyle when you leave. But those should not be two reasons to do Exit Planning. So asking yourself those questions and thinking long and hard about it can really help you put it put yourself on a path to leaving the business on your terms.

Laurie Barkman
You shared a quote earlier, it’s probably worth saying again, and probably making it your favorite quote. What is yeah, what is something that you’d like to emphasize, just put a little underline underneath it?

Brian Trzcinski
yeah, the quote that I said earlier, and I think it does tie into all this as you know, business owners spend so much time working in their business and not on their business. And I and we understand that, you know, we, we have these conversations, we talk about all the things business owners should be doing and what they’re not doing and, and it shouldn’t be in we’re not doing that just because we’re trying to make business owners feel like they’re missing the boat on anything, we get it we understand. It’s hard work running a business, it’s a lot of sacrifice, running a business. But if we can just take a little bit of time here and there work with the right advisors, the right people to help, and spend a little bit more time working on it instead of just in it, you can really start to de-risk a lot of these areas and build that exit plan so that you’re able to continue the business and continue your lifestyle into the future.

Laurie Barkman
Wonderful. Brian, if people want to learn more about you, or about MassMutual, and the products and the people you serve, how can they get in touch?

Brian Trzcinski
Yeah, absolutely the best place to go to is our business markets and our business owner landing page on massmutual.com. It’s massmutual.com/business owners. We have blogs, we have video, my podcast can be launched there. A lot of research as well. So if you’re just looking to learn more about how MassMutual can support business owners, that’s a great place to start.

Laurie Barkman
Absolutely. And definitely check out Brian’s podcast. Brian, what’s the name of your podcast?

Brian Trzcinski
The Real Business Podcast: Where Business Gets Personal.

Laurie Barkman
And I was lucky enough to be on your show. So they’ll find that episode there as well. Brian, one any last thoughts? Anything additional you’d like to share that I didn’t ask?

Brian Trzcinski
I don’t think so. Laurie, I think we covered a lot of ground. I think we covered a lot of good topics. And again, just remember, create a prioritized action plan, baby steps, bite-sized chunks. Don’t expect to do everything all at once. But start early because it does take time to accomplish all this. But there’s plenty of resources and advisors out there that’ll help. You don’t have to go it alone.

Laurie Barkman
Absolutely. Brian, you are a wealth of knowledge. Thank you so much for coming on Succession Stories. It was really fun to be with you today.

Brian Trzcinski
Laurie, it was truly my pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity.

Laurie Barkman
Thank you so much! Listeners, thanks for all your support. Catch Succession Stories on your favorite podcast player or on YouTube. And be sure to subscribe and rate the show. If you want to maximize the value of your business and plan for future transition. Connect with me at meetlauriebarkman.com. Join me next time for more insights from transition to transaction. Until then, here’s to your success.

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