Built to Sell Radio: Recent Episodes
John Warrillow
Built to Sell Radio is a weekly podcast for business owners interested in selling a business. Each week, we ask an entrepreneur who has recently sold a business why they decided to sell their business, what they did right and what mistakes they made through the process of exiting their business. Built to Sell Radio is the ultimate insider's guide to approaching the most important financial transaction of your life.
In 2016, Janessa White and her business partner started Simply Eloped, a marketplace that planned elopements and small weddings for couples in 35 cities across the United States. They also decided, before they had a single customer, which company they wanted to sell it to. The Knot Worldwide, the largest wedding platform in the world.
Over the next seven years, White told The Knot exactly that, met with their corporate development team every quarter for four years, and shared her revenue and margins with them along the way. When she finally emailed to say she was ready, the letter of intent arrived within a week.
There are four types of financial buyers who might make an offer on your business, and more often than any other type, the one approaching you is an independent sponsor. It is an unhelpful label for a group that raises the money for a deal only after the seller has signed an LOI, which is also when the seller's leverage is at its lowest.
Travis Jamison runs Capital Pad, where investors fund independent sponsor deals. He sees dozens of them for every one he approves. Independent sponsors are now behind roughly 28% of lower middle market acquisitions, which is more than traditional private equity does.
One day, you're going to sell your business, and when you do, you'll experience a step function increase in your net worth. Navigating that moment is something Adam Katz has spent his career helping owners do. He spent twenty years at Merrill Lynch as a Private Wealth Advisor to ultra high net worth families before he and his team left in 2018 to build KORE Private Wealth, an independent firm that grew to five billion dollars in assets. Just four years later, they sold. His new book, Making the Zeros Count: A Field Guide for Decamillionaires, Centimillionaires, and Billionaires, distills what he's learned into a playbook for owners who come into sudden wealth.
Katz says the greatest benefit of wealth isn't what it buys. It's the freedom of never needing anyone again. Not your clients, not a boss, not a buyer. He argues that kind of independence is impossible to understand until you're on the other side of the deal, which is why, even after decades of coaching founders through liquidity events, he admits he is still adjusting to it himself.
If you own a company, chances are you're its best salesperson. Put you in a room with a prospect and you rarely lose. But listen to your employees try to tell the same story and something gets lost. You've tried hiring salespeople. You've tried training them. The selling keeps landing back on your shoulders, and when it comes time to sell, an acquirer will see it too. Expect an earn-out or an equity rollover, golden handcuffs designed to keep the rainmaker locked in.
Here's what most owners miss: you have a built-in advantage no salesperson can replicate. Your founder story defines the enemy, the problem, and why you built something better, and you tell it instinctively because you lived it. A new rep who tries to recite your story will sound like a fraud. The fix isn't better sales training. It's giving your team professional positioning, and nobody on the planet knows more about positioning than April Dunford. She spent 25 years as an executive at seven B2B technology startups, companies that were acquired for a combined total of more than two billion dollars, and her books, Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch, are the standard playbooks for explaining why customers should pick you over the competition.
Jeff Church co-founded Suja Juice in 2012 with $300,000 and a green juice that had a four-day shelf life. Within three years, the company hit $70 million in revenue, and Coca-Cola and Goldman Sachs invested $150 million at a $300 million valuation. Then, two weeks after Coke flew its entire North American management team to Suja's plant, they passed on the option to buy the rest of the business, leaving Jeff with $40 million in maturing debt and a company losing $9 million a year.
More owners than ever say they are simply tired. A look at 10,255 PREScore™ assessments over six years found that 17.5% pointed to burnout, not retirement, as the number one reason they want out.
So the question went to two people who spend their days on the buy side, valuing companies and deciding what to pay. Lee McCabe is a private equity veteran who advises PE firms on the businesses they acquire. Jason Swenk built marketing agencies and spent time acquiring them. In this episode, you discover how to tell whether burnout is a signal to sell or a problem worth fixing first, and how a buyer prices the difference either way.
What do you need to know before selling your business to an ETA buyer?
Most owners have received the email. It usually starts with something flattering: "I love what you've built…" Then comes the ask: a quick call to learn more about your business.
Increasingly, those emails are coming from ETA buyers — entrepreneurs using entrepreneurship through acquisition as their path into business ownership. Instead of starting a company from scratch, they look to buy an existing business and run it themselves.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow talks with Will Smith, host of Acquiring Minds, one of the leading podcasts covering entrepreneurship through acquisition. Will has interviewed hundreds of ETA buyers and brings rare insight into how they think, how they finance deals, and where deals fall apart.
What You'll Learn in This Episode Whether you're actively considering selling your business or just exploring your options, this conversation covers what every owner should understand before entertaining an offer from an ETA buyer:
- How to tell the difference between a funded searcher and a self-funded buyer — and why it matters for your deal structure
- Why some ETA buyers use heavy debt to acquire a business — and what that means for you as a seller
- How to spot the hidden risk in a seller note — a key piece of most ETA transactions
- How to evaluate whether a young buyer has the leadership experience to run your company after you exit
- How to protect your employees from a buyer who may not fit your culture
- Better questions to ask before signing a letter of intent (LOI) with an ETA buyer
- How to judge whether a buyer can actually close — not just sign
Are ETA Buyers Right for Your Business? ETA buyers can be a great fit for owners of profitable niche businesses that may not attract private equity or a strategic acquirer. They're often motivated, passionate, and willing to pay fair value for the right business.
But they come with real risks. A buyer may need your financing — in the form of a seller note — to get the deal done. They may still need to raise money after you sign an LOI. And they may look great on paper but struggle to lead the team you've built over years.
That's why this conversation is worth your time. Before you take the next call from someone who says they "love what you've built," listen to this episode.
About Will Smith Will Smith is the host of Acquiring Minds, a podcast dedicated to entrepreneurship through acquisition. He has interviewed hundreds of search fund entrepreneurs and self-funded searchers, making him one of the most knowledgeable voices on the ETA buyer landscape.
About Built to Sell Radio Built to Sell Radio is hosted by John Warrillow, author of Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You. Each week, John interviews business owners who have navigated the process of selling their company — sharing what worked, what didn't, and what every owner should know before they sell.
Keywords: ETA buyer, entrepreneurship through acquisition, selling your business, search fund, seller note, business acquisition, how to sell a business, Built to Sell Radio, Will Smith Acquiring Minds, exit strategy, business exit planning
Knowing what kind of seller you are turns out to be one of the most important things you can figure out before you ever take a meeting with a potential acquirer. There are three: the transactional seller who wants the money and the door, the transitional seller who wants to land the plane, and the transformational seller who sells to go bigger.
Cameron Passmore built one of the largest independent wealth management firms in Canada, roughly 3,000 families and about $8 billion under management, and owned half of it. Most founders in that seat cash out and leave. Cameron sold to OneDigital at 60, and has no intention of going anywhere. He rolled 40% of the deal into equity, and now uses OneDigital's capital, deal expertise, and acquisition currency to buy other firms. He has acquired five and roughly doubled the business in under two years.
"When I sell the company, then I'll be happy." Psychotherapist Jo Swann says that one phrase is the most reliable predictor of a miserable exit. She would know. She made her money in the 90s, retired to an oceanfront apartment in Borneo, and fell straight into an existential crisis.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, part of our popular After the Deal series, Swann explains why the trap survives the wire transfer
Every founder fixates on the multiple. Tim Hellebrand will tell you the (second) most important number on a letter of intent is the one almost nobody understands until it is too late: working capital.
When Tim and his four brothers took their $105 million family appliance business to market, six letters of intent came back, and the spread between the lowest and the highest was 60 percent. Most of that gap had nothing to do with the multiple. Don's Appliances ran on a mountain of inventory, refrigerators and ranges and washers sitting across two distribution centers, and every buyer had a different view of how much of that had to stay locked in the company on closing day. Whatever stayed in was money the brothers did not get to take home. Tim assumed they would simply get their inventory money back. That is not how it works.
A lot of owners are losing sleep over AI right now. They watch search traffic erode, they see competitors automating, and they wonder if the business they spent twenty years building is quietly becoming obsolete.
Jaryd Krause sees it differently. He's a buyer. And when he looks at a 20-year-old company run by an owner who is "scared of AI and selling because of it," he sees an acquisition opportunity, not a write-off.
Krause has been acquiring online businesses since 2014.
When Sean Kernan wanted out of the financial advisor support business he co-founded in Dallas, he didn't shop it to outside acquirers, and he didn't wait for his five partners to make him an offer. He engineered the buyout himself. Three and a half months from the first conversation to the wire hitting his account, $500,000 in cash, no earn-out, no holdback.
In this episode, you discover how to:
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Open the conversation with your partners without triggering a defensive reaction or a stall
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Anchor your price to a prior valuation event so the number is hard to argue with
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Use a deliberately low ask as leverage to get speed, certainty, and 100% cash upfront
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Identify which one of your partners is most likely to write the check, and approach them first
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Source the cash from a platform partner, franchisor, or custodian who holds the underlying assets
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Negotiate a "ceasefire" non-compete that protects the buyers without trapping you
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Read inbound acquirer silence as market signal before you push the group toward a full sale
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Spot the partner who is too eager to buy, and what that eagerness usually means
There's an old idea in M&A called the Rembrandt in the attic. A company owns something valuable — a brand, a patent, a customer list, a data set — and nobody inside the business sees it for what it is. The right acquirer walks in, looks at the same asset through a different lens, and recognizes a masterpiece.
Dori Yona spent six years and raised $14 million building what he thought was a price protection company for consumers. Earny tracked everything its users bought online and automatically clawed back refunds whenever the price dropped within the retailer's protection window.
The model never quite worked. After two rounds of layoffs, a shutdown plan presented to the board, and a move out of the Santa Monica office, Dori pivoted to selling the one thing the company had in abundance: SKU-level purchase data on 3.5 million users.
That pivot found the acquirer.
To a consumer packaged goods (CPG) giant trying to understand what shoppers were actually putting in their carts during COVID, the data was the prize. The consumer app was almost incidental.
Aaron Leibtag was one of the most popular guests in Built to Sell Radio history. He sold his 15-employee bootstrapped healthcare AI company, Pentavere, for $15 million.
Pentavere built AI to unlock patient data trapped inside PDFs and clinical notes years before large language models existed.
The headline number was $15 million. What it did not reveal was the structure underneath. Part of the consideration was paid in the volatile stock of the acquirer. Aaron and his partners also rolled 49% of their equity into the new entity. Now Aaron returns, and you might be surprised to learn how it all played out.
When it comes time to sell, most business owners want 100% cash at closing. Almost no one gets it. Most deals come with structure, and structure usually comes down to three levers: what currency the buyer pays you in (cash versus stock), how they keep you tied to the future after giving up control (earn-out versus equity roll), and what rights either side has to unwind the relationship later.
Boris Berenberg bootstrapped Atlas Authority, an Atlassian partner that resold Jira and Confluence to mid-market companies and built apps on top of the platform, to high seven figures in revenue with 18% net margins, then sold to private equity in May 2022.
A year later he wrote a blog post titled "I regret selling my startup" that went viral inside the exited founder community.
Ret Taylor spent his entire adult life chasing a number. First it was $30 million. Then $10 million. Then $6 million. Then he sat in a tent at 18,000 feet on Denali with two Arctic storms closing in and realized the number was never the point.
He came down the mountain, sold Ned, his natural remedies company, and now guides people through life transitions on multi-day vision quests in the mountains of Colorado.
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At some point every founder needs to ask a simple question: is it better to own a big slice of a small pie, or a smaller slice of a bigger pie?
In this week's episode, we hear from someone who chose a smaller slice of a bigger pie. Simon Lorenz co-founded Klara, a patient communication platform for medical practices, and raised roughly $32 million across six rounds of outside capital before selling to ModMed at 15 times forward revenue.
The path there was not a clean one. Every funding round was painful. Most of them came down to a single term sheet, take it or leave it, because an early valuation had set an equity story Simon spent years chasing. He hired salespeople he later had to fire. He took on an apparatus he could not easily shut off. And when ModMed's CEO first reached out, Simon almost ignored the email because the company had finally started humming and he was preparing another round.
What turned a distraction into a deal was Simon's willingness to act genuinely uninterested, which pulled ModMed up to a price that made his eyeballs pop out. What let him walk away twelve months after closing was a single clause his lawyer negotiated into the contract.
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Most founders think they're not great negotiators. John Richardson thinks they're wrong. Richardson has spent decades teaching negotiation at MIT's Sloan School of Management and before that at Harvard Law, where he was an associate at the Harvard Negotiation Project and co-authored foundational texts with Roger Fisher and Howard Raiffa. His new book is called Never Settle. In this episode, you discover how to
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Murray Kent had no background in electrical conduit fittings when he paid $40,000 for a four-person business that, as he put it, looked like a bit of a crack den. What he did have was Value Builder's 8 drivers -- pinned to the wall next to his desk as a literal road map for every decision he made.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, you discover how to negotiate a clean exit with no earn-out complications and no equity rollover.
You'll learn:
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Jay Richards spent five months deep in an acquisition process. He had a letter of intent. He had mentally checked out. He was planning what came next.
Then issues surfaced in diligence and the deal collapsed.
This week on Built to Sell Radio, Jay walks John Warrillow through the full story of selling Imagen Insights, a qualitative research platform with clients like Visa, Google, and Amazon, and how you discover how to navigate two very different acquisition conversations and come out the other side with a deal you are genuinely happy with.
You'll learn why:
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an LOI means far less than you think, and how problems in your books can kill a deal
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founders who shop their company can signal desperation, and what Jay did instead
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the eventual buyer valued the business on EBITDA instead of revenue, and why that worked in Jay's favor
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Jay accepted an earn-out worth more than half the deal, and why he was comfortable with it
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handing out equity without vesting created a problem at the worst possible moment
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a long-standing accountant relationship does not guarantee clean books, and how this nearly killed the deal
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the moment the DocuSign came through did not bring relief, but a flood of new ideas
David Sinkinson and his brother Chris built AppArmor over eleven years without taking a single dollar from outside investors. They bootstrapped it by running side businesses, plowing the profits back in, and staying lean through long sales cycles and compliance-heavy buyers. By the time they were ready to sell, they had over 250 universities on the platform and roughly $6 million in annual recurring revenue — profitable, with no cap table to split with anyone.
Then an acquirer asked them a simple question, and they answered it. That answer nearly cost them $20 million.
Recorded live at the Value Builder Summit, this is David Sinkinson's second appearance on Built to Sell Radio. This time he goes beyond the mechanics of the deal — into the surprising struggles he faced after the sale, and a take on employee equity that is going to challenge what most founders believe.
When Sharon Gillenwater built Boardroom Insiders, she was doing something nobody else wanted to do: manually researching the personal work styles, business initiatives, and habits of Fortune 500 executives so that enterprise sales teams could finally get a meeting with the C-suite. It was hard, painstaking work — and that was exactly the point.
After more than a decade of bootstrapping, consulting on the side to fund payroll, and raising just $275,000 from three people she knew personally, Sharon sold Boardroom Insiders to London-based public company EuroMoney for $25 million — all cash at close, no earn-out. In this episode, you discover how to build and sell a business where customers love you so much they follow you from company to company.
You'll learn:
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Why a cold call from a PE firm offering $48 million was actually the worst thing that could have happened to Sharon — and what she did instead
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The one overheard side conversation that changed her negotiation posture entirely and helped her push from a $17–20M offer to $25M
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Why Sharon insisted on all cash at close — and why her angel investor told her a lower number in cash beats a higher number with strings attached
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What convertible notes look like after a decade — and why her investors converted their notes just six months before the sale
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Why Sharon cried on her birthday, the day she was quietly walked out of the company she had spent 13 years building
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How she watched the acquirer run Boardroom Insiders into the ground, tried to buy it back — and then decided to rebuild from scratch anyway
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The land-and-expand growth strategy that took Boardroom Insiders from zero to $5 million ARR without ever cracking the demand generation problem
Most founders approach a sale with one goal: get the highest price possible. But Mark Ferrer argues that focusing only on price can lead to the wrong deal, the wrong partner, and a painful transition after closing.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow talks with Ferrer about what he has learned after moving from founder to buyer, and why every owner needs to know whether they are a transactional, transitional, or transformative seller before they go to market. In this episode, you discover how to identify your seller type before a buyer does it for you.
You'll learn:
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Why a transactional founder who insists they just want the money often turns out to be something else entirely — and why getting that wrong poisons the deal
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What a buyer learns about you when they ask whether you would sell to your biggest competitor for the same price
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Why the multiple is just the starting point, and how cash at closing, seller financing, and rolled equity can swing the real outcome by more than most founders expect
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How Mark lost 8 to 14 percent of his own deal proceeds not because of bad faith, but because he did not ask the right questions about his rolled equity
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Why pushing for agreement after a sale closes is the fastest way to destroy a partnership — and what to focus on instead
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What working capital and normalized earnings actually mean, and why founders who gloss over both almost always regret it
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How to clarify the role you want after closing before it becomes the source of tension no one saw coming
Most business owners assume their buyer will be a private equity group or a strategic acquirer. But if you run a smaller business in a niche category, the person most likely to buy you is an individual — someone who likes what you've built, can see a path to improve it, and is willing to put their own name on the line to finance the deal.
This week on Built to Sell Radio, Joe Soelberg joins the Inside the Mind of an Acquirer series to pull back the curtain on what that kind of buyer actually looks like — and what it means for you as a seller. Listen and you discover how to:
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spot the tells of a real buyer versus "capital partners" theater
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pressure-test proof of funds without turning it adversarial
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use a seller note as a credibility filter, not just a concession
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understand why individual buyers consistently misread the cash down, seller note, bank structure and how to use that to your advantage
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ask questions that surface risk early, before lawyers get involved
Andrew McConnell built a SaaS company that helped vacation rental managers price homes like airlines using dynamic pricing based on demand. He eventually successfully exited, but not before learning the hard way that building a company and selling one require two entirely different skill sets.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Andrew walks through the pivot that saved his business, why his VC backers stayed on board, and the exact moment he realized that a "short buyer list" is a dangerous trap for founders.
Listen in to discover how to:
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Spot the "hidden ceiling" in a business that looks like it's doubling—right up until it isn't.
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Move a cap table from a failed bet into a new one without lighting your professional relationships on fire.
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Understand liquidation preference in plain English (and why it can erase a founder's take-home pay at exit).
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See why a banker's real value isn't just managing the process—it's forcing pressure and widening the field of potential acquirers
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Avoid the "I can sell this myself" mindset that often results in a year of free research for buyers and zero leverage for you.
This episode is part of our Inside the Mind of an Acquirer series, and it unpacks the ETA (Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition) wave now flooding the market.
For business owners, ETA is a double-edged sword. On the upside, more buyers courting you means more choice, more urgency, and more liquidity. On the downside, many ETA buyers are first-timers who lean on heavy leverage and seller financing. If they misread your business or hit a snag they can't handle, the part of the deal you financed can quickly become the part you never collect.
We often think of a "successful exit" as handing over the keys to a perfectly oiled machine—a business that is growing, profitable, and operationally sound.
But what happens when the machine starts to sputter?
What if the margins are too thin, the operations are exhausting, and you are simply burned out?
It is easy to assume that a broken business model means a worthless company. But as this week's guest on Built to Sell Radio proves, sometimes the individual parts are worth more than the whole.
Meet Jason Patel.
Jason built Transitions Education, a college counseling marketplace. On the surface, it looked great: upper six-figure revenue and a noble mission. But under the hood, customer acquisition costs were eating his margins, and he was carrying $250,000 in personal debt to keep it afloat.
He was ready to walk away. He assumed he had zero leverage.
Then, a "Micro Private Equity" firm reached out. They didn't want his headaches. They didn't want his operations. They didn't even want his business model.
They wanted his "parts."
Specifically, they wanted his SEO ranking, his blog traffic, and his 5-star reputation. They realized they could strip away the expensive service delivery and plug his high-performing marketing assets into their own portfolio.
In this episode, Jason breaks down how he structured an asset sale that allowed him to:
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Sell the high-value "parts" (marketing assets) without the operational baggage.
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Avoid a grueling earn-out (because the buyer didn't need him to run the company).
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Pay off his debt and fund his next venture.
If you feel like your business model is grinding you down, this episode will open your eyes to the hidden value sitting on your balance sheet right now.
acasa helps people run a shared home without the usual friction. It started as a simple way for housemates to track and split rent, bills, and groceries, then added payments and utility setup so households could manage recurring bills in one place.
When Nick Katz tried to sell acasa on his own, the downside wasn't just a slow process. It created a setup where buyers had the leverage: they could keep asking for information, keep "exploring," and never commit to an LOI.
Nick Telson-Sillett and his co-founder built what you could call "OpenTable for bars and nightclubs" in the UK.
Instead of chasing the US (the move most founders are told to make), they went big fish, small pond: dominate their home market first. That focus helped them build DesignMyNight into a business that sold for more than $40M.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Nick shares what happened, so you discover how to:
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Turn one clear customer frustration into a business idea you can explain fast
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Choose focus over hype when everyone tells you to chase the biggest market
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Set a "financial freedom" number and use it to make cleaner decisions
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Run a sale process without tipping off competitors too early
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Negotiate an earn-out tied to revenue so the targets stay in your control
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Plan for the morning after the deal, when your identity gets reset
The fastest way to make a service company unsellable is building it around a personal brand.
When clients hire you—because of your reputation, your name, and your specific expertise—you haven't built a business; you've built a high-paying job.
And as Gavin Bell realized, you can't sell a reputation.
Gavin was known as the "Facebook Ads Guy" in the UK. He was making good money, but he knew that to build a sellable asset, he had to fire himself as the face of the company.
He rebranded his firm from "Gavin Bell" to "Yatter," productized his service, and systematically removed himself from sales and delivery.
The result? He sold Yatter to a larger agency, Velstar, in a deal that closed just one minute before a major tax deadline.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Gavin breaks down exactly how he made the switch.
Some of the richest founders don't run trendy companies. They run dirty ones. The kind of work you'd never brag about at a dinner party, but that quietly throws off real money because it's hard, risky, and most people won't do it.
This Built to Sell Radio episode follows Shenar Wood, who built an underground power business by taking on personal risk, earning trust job by job, and eventually selling when he hit a ceiling that had nothing to do with demand, you discover how to:
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Recognize the hidden ceiling that has nothing to do with demand and everything to do with your balance sheet
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Stop confusing "more revenue" with "more value" when margin and risk aren't improving
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Build a reputation flywheel where customers feed you better work because they trust how you operate
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Separate assets from value so you don't overestimate what a buyer will pay for "stuff"
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Fix the financial story before a buyer forces an expensive cleanup under pressure
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Negotiate earn-out terms so the buyer can't hit your results by moving costs onto your books
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Decide when it's smarter to sell now than grind for years just to add a rounding error to valuation
Most business owners hit a fork in the road.
Stay "on the tools" and keep making great money. Or start feathering back your personal involvement so the business can grow beyond you.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Dr. Michael Filosi walks through how he made that shift in a dental practice, without jeopardizing cash flow. He didn't rip the band-aid off. He reduced his patient days one day at a time while the practice added clinicians and transitioned patients carefully. Over a few years, his billings went from roughly 43% of revenue to single digits, and he only went to zero once the business was already producing most of his take-home income.
In this episode, you discover how to
- Spot the "capped upside" moment when your time becomes the constraint
- Feather back from four days on the tools to three, then two, then zero
- Time each reduction using numbers, not hope
- Transition customers off the owner without breaking trust
- Remove key-person risk by ensuring no one producer dominates revenue
- Keep cash flow steady while you trade personal production for enterprise value
The result: Filosi sold his practice and collected 100% of his cash at closing, which is almost unheard of in dentistry.
Built to Sell Radio just dropped a year-end special that pulls the strongest moments from 2025 into one episode.
Across four formats (Exit Story, Inside the Mind of an Acquirer, Mastering the Deal, and After the Deal), you discover how to
- Choose exit value over lifestyle income before comfort caps valuation
- Spot the "founder-dependent" trap that scares off serious buyers
- See how buyers price risk, not just revenue and EBITDA
- Use imperfections as leverage instead of liabilities
- Build leverage before a first offer quietly sets your ceiling
- Create real alternatives so negotiations stop feeling one-sided
- Prepare for the identity shift that hits after the wire clears
If you're feeling a little queasy about the pace of change, you're not alone. AI is accelerating competition in almost every market, and it's making some business models feel irrelevant almost overnight.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow talks with Ryan O'Leary, who saw a similar wave coming in payments when Shopify started bundling merchant processing into its plans. O'Leary chose to sell before the shift crushed margins, structuring a deal that put most of his cash in hand up front. In this episode, you discover how to
• Decide whether to raise capital, hire a CEO, roll equity, or sell • Spot the early signals that a platform is about to "bundle" you into irrelevance • Run a tight sale process with a short target list and still generate multiple LOIs fast • Negotiate for deal structure that protects you, not just a higher multiple • Limit earnout risk by keeping the earnout short and the rules hard to game • Separate emotion from the numbers so you can negotiate clean • Keep your team aligned through the transition by sharing upside, including the earnout
Most experts who start a practice or studio end up trapped by their own success. The schedule is packed, the waitlist is long, but every dollar still depends on them showing up.
In this week's episode of Built to Sell Radio, John talks to a physical therapist who turned a fully booked, owner-dependent practice into a boutique fitness business with recurring revenue, a second-in-command, and a clean exit on her terms. After a first deal collapsed on closing day thanks to a last-minute bank clause, she went back to market with three non-negotiables and still got a seven-figure outcome.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow sits down with Ujwal Arkalgud, who built the same company twice. Chapter one was a classic problem: a profitable, founder-heavy services firm with impressive EBITDA but a ceiling on valuation. Chapter two began when he turned that service into a productized offering, transformed how customers bought his work, and ultimately sold for more than 15x EBITDA — roughly three times the offer he received as a simple service provider.
For many owners, private equity feels like a black box: a buyer shows up with a multiple, some debt, and a term sheet, and it is hard to tell whether you are getting a fair shake or being set up for a painful re-trade later.
In this Inside the Mind of an Acquirer episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow sits down with Speyside Equity managing director Eric Wiklendt.
Andrew Roberts spent two decades turning a bootstrapped family company from Brisbane into one of the most widely used text editors on the web, then faced the hardest call of his career: keep a comfortable, profitable business or push for a bigger exit with venture capital and private equity in the mix.
A strategic acquirer is a company buying to advance its own roadmap, distribution, or capabilities—unlike financial buyers (private equity, family offices) who buy primarily for cash flow. To a strategic, value may sit in what you've built, not what you've earned.
Chris Hutchins' story makes the point. He co-founded Milk, acquired by Google, and later founded Grove, acquired by Wealthfront. Both saw assets they could plug in—product, team, IP—even when revenue and EBITDA weren't impressive.
If you want a strategic acquirer to pay for what you've built rather than how much money you make, this episode of Built to Sell Radio is for you. You'll discover how to:
• Define and prioritize the assets a strategic may value now (team, product, customer list, roadmap, even your lease) • Reframe your pitch so a distribution-rich buyer may see an immediate lift from your assets • Run a fast, momentum-led process that invites quick noes and surfaces real interest • Split assets across buyers when it improves the overall outcome • Protect employees and customers while you move quickly toward a decision
If a strategic exit is on your radar, this playbook helps you create options when EBITDA won't carry the deal.
Spencer Dennis was an elite golfer whose playing career ended with spine surgery in his teens. He became a tour-level coach, running high-performance programs for juniors, college players, and pros. Managing parents, trainers, and recruiters through texts and email was chaos, so he built CoachNow to guide athletes between sessions.
CoachNow caught on quickly with busy coaches. Then a run of decisions—turning off revenue under "grow fast" advice, stacking convertibles and preferences, and accepting stock-for-stock deals—left Spencer with little to show for a product customers loved. This is a cautionary tale for any owner negotiating with "sophisticated" investors.
If you're considering your endgame, you're probably looking at private equity. Most PE firms use a familiar formula: buy a majority stake and ask the owner to "roll equity"—re-invest part of the proceeds—into the newco they're building. The downside: you become a minority shareholder in a business you no longer control.
There's another path: growth equity, which lets you take chips off the table via a secondary while maintaining control. That's the business John Ruffolo is in as Founder & Managing Partner at Maverix Private Equity (he also founded OMERS Ventures).
If you've ever noticed those ads inside a mobile game, you have Zain Jaffer to thank. He co-founded Vungle and helped popularize rewarded video ads—the ones that revive your character or hand you in-app currency after you watch.
In this Built to Sell Radio episode, Zain explains how he rode the smartphone wave to a $780M all-cash exit to Blackstone—and why he personally took home more than $100M. Then he gets candid about what came next.
Most cities have a problem: what to do with cars that get towed and never picked up. They pile up in impound lots—taking up space and tying up cash. Stan Markuze helped solve that problem by co-founding Joyride Auto, an online auction platform where repair shops, scrap dealers, and car enthusiasts can buy those abandoned vehicles directly from the lot.
In this episode, Stan shares how he and his co-founders built a cash-flow-positive business that turned a clunky, paper-based process into a digital marketplace—and sold it to a private-equity firm for seven times revenue in just two years.
After a 23-year journey building Non-Linear Creations into a marketing giant with more than 120 employees, Randy Woods sold it in 2017 to Valtech. Valtech is a distinguished digital agency offering marketing, digital technology, and business transformation consulting services.
Post-sale, Woods now serves as the SVP of Strategic Growth Opportunity at Valtech, a role dedicated to identifying potential acquisitions for the business. In the latest installment of Built to Sell Radio’s Inside the Mind of an Acquirer series, we sit down with Woods to discuss how to:
- Make your company irresistible to an acquirer.
- Leverage a “put option” to cover your downside.
- Understand the factors that influence how acquirers value businesses.
- Target potential acquirers who would see your company as a strategic addition.
- Avoid deal breakers during negotiations with potential acquirers.
Today’s episode of Built to Sell Radio is part of our Inside the Mind of an Acquirer series. John Warrillow interviews Lee McCabe, a former Meta and Alibaba executive turned private equity investor—now an advisor helping PE firms modernize how they create value.
McCabe argues the old model of buying cheap, piling on debt, and hoping for multiple expansion is over. Interest rates are up, LPs are demanding more, and the firms that win will need to act more like operators than bankers. If you’re planning to sell, and private equity is your natural buyer, you’ll want to hear this.
Dave Sifry has founded nine companies, including Technorati and Linuxcare, raising more than $170 million along the way. In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, he reveals how he went from being worth more than $100 million on paper to watching that value disappear — and what he’d do differently if he had the chance again.
Despite those scars, Sifry has built an extraordinary career. He has founded nine companies and today is founder and CEO of Warmstart, a platform that helps entrepreneurs turn old contacts into new business.
In 2006, Tad Fallows and two friends spotted a problem inside Harvard’s cancer labs: researchers were spending more time managing freezers, fruit flies, and mice than actually doing research. They built iLab, a SaaS tool for universities and hospitals, bootstrapped it to high–7-figure ARR, and eventually sold to Agilent Technologies for roughly six times revenue.
But the journey wasn’t smooth. Cash was often razor-thin with 75 employees on payroll, and an early inbound offer at 3× ARR forced Tad and his partners to decide: take the deal, or gamble on building more value.
Ronan Berder built Wiredcraft to 140 people, then sold to Publicis for a reported 67 million euros. This Exit Story traces the moment he walked away from Techstars and a product dream to double down on services—and why that decision paid off.
Most owners want 100% cash at closing. Most acquirers want the opposite—they try to hold back as much as possible and tie it to future results. That tug-of-war defines the negotiation.
In this week’s episode of Built to Sell Radio, you discover how to turn common transition structures from potential pitfalls into opportunities for upside.
What happens when it’s time to sell? Every acquirer looks at your business differently. In this special episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow breaks down the four most common buyer profiles and explains how each thinks about acquiring a company. Along the way, you’ll hear clips from past guests from our Inside the Mind of an Acquirer series.
Dan Berger built Social Tables into a SaaS success story with $20M in recurring revenue and more than 6,000 customers. He sold the business for $100 million.
But after raising $27M in venture funding and navigating liquidation preferences, his personal payout was just under $20M.
In this week’s episode of Built to Sell Radio, Dan reveals the surprising math behind his deal and shares the emotional highs and lows of walking away from his company.
Adam Rossi built a 250-employee software company serving law enforcement and intelligence agencies. They routinely beat Lockheed Martin in head-to-head bids.
Then a banker came back with five acquisition offers — each at the “absurd” number Adam and his wife had thrown out as a hypothetical. The winning bid came from SRA International, a publicly traded defense contractor, for a price that created generational wealth for his family. Adam took all cash and walked away with no earn-out.
But as Adam discovered, the hard part wasn’t negotiating the deal — it was figuring out what to do after it closed.
Unlike most tech founders, Josh Payne never dreamed of a billion-dollar valuation.
His goal was simpler—and harder. He wanted his equity stake to be worth $50 million.
To get there, he skipped the usual playbook. No blitzscaling. No VC treadmill. He raised a small seed round, built a profitable company, and avoided dilution. By the time he sold StackCommerce, Payne still owned 75%—and hit his number.
Most founders measure success by the price they get for their company.
David Hauser did that—he built Grasshopper to $30M Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and sold it for $175M – almost 6 times revenue. He and his partner owned the majority of the shares so the deal was life-changing for Hauser. But what makes this interview different is what Hauser did next: he crossed the table to become an investor and now acquires businesses through Durable Capital.
It’s a study in contrasts. As a founder, Hauser chased growth. As an investor, he’s ruthlessly disciplined. He mocks the PE herd chasing home services roll-ups and avoids auction-driven deals. Drawing on his experience founding Grasshopper and Mark Cuban-backed Chargify, he outmaneuvers ETA buyers and first-time acquirers with quiet, direct, close-ready offers. This is a rare window into how someone who’s built and sold a business thinks about buying one—and what makes a deal attractive from the other side.
After selling When Rich Galgano was 25, he left a sales job in wire distribution to start Windy City Wire. Within nine months, he was doing over $1 million in sales—while fighting a lawsuit from his former employer. Fast forward 30 years, and Galgano had built the dominant low-voltage cable distributor in the U.S., sold it for just under half a billion dollars, and stayed on as CEO.
When Ryan Atkinson sold CORE Resources to 24 Seven, it wasn’t his first exit. After selling Redwood Global in 2014, Ryan played a different role in his next venture—injecting $2 million of his own capital while his partner ran the business day-to-day.
The model worked. They grew CORE Resources into a go-to firm for specialized technology talent solutions and ultimately sold the company to 24 Seven—one of the largest privately held marketing, creative, and digital talent firms in North America—in an eight-figure exit.
In this week’s episode of Built to Sell Radio, Ryan shares how they structured the deal, avoided resentment, and nearly lost the sale in the final hours.
Negotiating the sale of your company may be the highest-stakes conversation of your life. In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, part of our Mastering the Deal series, you'll learn how to stay composed when everything you’ve built is on the table.
Christopher Hadnagy, author of Human Hacking, teaches elite military units and Fortune 500 companies how to negotiate using psychological insights. In this conversation, he shares how founders can use the same tools to level the playing field with sophisticated buyers.
When Ben Leonard sold Beast Gear—a strength and conditioning equipment brand he built from his spare room into a business generating $6 million in revenue—he thought he’d made the deal of a lifetime.
He got 80% of the proceeds up front, agreed to a small earn-out, and became the face of Thrasio, the acquirer.
Then things started to go sideways.
You’ve built a valuable company. Maybe you’re even thinking about selling. But what happens after the wire hits? In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Alex Bean, co-founder of Divvy, shares what it felt like to sell his company for $2.5 billion—and why the real challenges began after the deal closed. This conversation will help you think more strategically about what you’re really building—and how to avoid the regrets that often follow a big payday.
Most acquirers want you to stick around. Roll equity. Hit targets. Train your replacement.
But there’s a different kind of buyer out there. One who wires 100% of the money at closing—and lets you walk.
Dan Mytels represents this type of buyer. Through his firm, Salt Creek, he’s acquired 100 businesses—most of them mature, profitable, niche companies where the owner was ready to move on. They don’t always offer the highest multiple, but they do offer something many founders value more: a clean break.
When Doug Lowenthal discovered that $1 million in EBITDA was the minimum threshold acquirers looked for in his industry, he had a goal. Then he learned that managed service providers—businesses that offer outsourced IT support—were trading for 6–8× EBITDA. That’s when he realized he was building something truly valuable.
But getting there required more than just strong financials. Doug had to rethink how he led his team, structured his business, and prepared for life after the deal.
Chang Kim—friends call him CK—sold his company Tapas for more than $500 million and walked away without an earn-out. Instead of jumping into his next venture, he did something few founders have the nerve to do: he took a year off.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, CK opens up about what life looks like when work becomes a choice, not a requirement. From cross-continental travel to difficult conversations with his kids about wealth, this is a rare, candid look at what happens after the wire hits.
Private equity firms are the most likely buyers for your business—and some do a fine job preserving what makes a company great. But many are financial engineers. They offer a generous multiple, then lever up the business, cut costs, and flip it within a few years. Longtime employees get let go. Culture erodes. You walk away with a check, but it can feel like selling out.
Most stories we cover involve eye-popping multiples or headline-making exits. They’re fun—but not always realistic.
Jeff DeGarmo’s story is different. No private equity windfall. No tech hockey stick. Just a well-run, 20-person service business built over 16 years and sold for a solid 5.5x EBITDA.
Greg Alexander sold SBI, his 30-person consulting firm, for $162 million. Since then, he’s had a front-row seat to 50 other service firm exits through his peer group, Collective 54. In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Greg breaks down what separates firms that sell from those that stall.
This is a Mastering the Deal episode of Built to Sell Radio—designed to help you punch above your weight in a negotiation to sell your business.
What makes someone want to buy an “unsexy” business?
Jon Pole has acquired 19 traditional radio stations. On paper, it’s an industry many assume is in decline. But for an experienced buyer like Pole, these deals are less about media trends and more about community, cash flow, and culture.
Sean McAuliffe didn’t invent anything. He was a distributor.
If you lost your car keys and went to a locksmith to cut a new set, chances are your locksmith got the replacement key from Sean’s business. He bought cheap keys from Asia and sold them to locksmiths. Nothing fancy. Like so many businesses, Sean was a middleman. He'd never really thought about selling—didn't think anyone would want to buy it—but when a private equity group offered him millions, Sean realized he was sitting on a potential goldmine.
What do acquirers really want?
Sequoya Borgman has acquired 19 companies and exited two. He’s raised capital on a deal-by-deal basis, working outside the traditional private equity model. In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Borgman explains how “independent sponsors” operate—and why more wealthy individuals are now pooling money to buy lower middle-market businesses.
You discover how to:
When Garren Hilow helped start Abveris, he didn’t have much—just a background in sales, a co-founder with a Harvard PhD, and a stock option representing 16% of the company.
Eight years later, he bought out his co-founder, bootstrapped the company with bank debt (collateralized by his house), and sold it in a stock deal that peaked at $190 million.
What would you do with $20 million?
That’s the minimum amount required to join Tiger 21, the exclusive network where ultra-high-net-worth entrepreneurs learn how to preserve and grow their wealth.
Michael Sonnenfeldt founded Tiger 21 after selling two companies and realizing that the skills that made him a successful entrepreneur didn’t translate into smart investing. He built the group to help other entrepreneurs avoid costly post-exit mistakes.
A new generation of buyers trained in Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) is looking for businesses like yours. Unlike private equity firms focused on roll-ups, ETA buyers are often searching for a single business to own and operate—making them a legitimate option for certain sellers.
For the first time ever, we recorded a Built to Sell Radio episode in front of a live audience at the Value Builder Summit—a gathering of mission-driven advisors dedicated to helping founders level the playing field as they approach their exit.
Rob Walling has started, built, and sold multiple companies. As an investor and conference organizer, he’s seen hundreds of founders exit—some thriving, others struggling. He teamed up with Dr. Sherry Walling, a clinical psychologist specializing in supporting entrepreneurs, to codify what separates a successful exit from one that leaves an owner adrift. Their insights culminated in their new book Exit Strategy.
Kristie Shifflette built a 13-location Orangetheory Fitness empire from scratch—bootstrapping a capital-hungry business, personally guaranteeing leases, and taking on risk most founders wouldn’t touch. In the end, it paid off for Kristie and in this episode, you’ll discover how to:
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Bootstrap a capital-intensive business without giving up control
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Reduce your risk when taking on an investor
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Attract entrepreneurial employees who will care as much as you do
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Think about the $10 million milestone (and why it matters to private equity)
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Know when to take some chips off the table—and when to double down
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Ace management presentations with an acquirer
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Play hard to get (even when you want to sell)
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Get an acquirer to bump up their offer
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Max out an earn-out payment—even if you don’t quite hit your targets
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Spot an acquisition offer that’s likely to be re-traded
When Frank Shultz co-founded Infinite Blue, he and his partner split ownership 50/50. The business thrived, but their working relationship soured. Frank wanted to buy out his co-founder, but with a valuation in the eight figures, he faced a daunting question: where would he get the cash?
An earn-out is a deal structure where part of the sale price is contingent on the business hitting future performance goals. For many owners, it feels like a gamble—where the payout is uncertain, and the risks are high.
But Bob Gilbreath flipped the script.
He navigated two complex earn-outs across two service businesses and turned both into massive financial wins. In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Bob shares how he turned the dreaded earn-out into his greatest asset.
Most founders focus all their energy on getting to an exit, but few stop to consider what comes next. In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Rood shares what he learned after selling Next Step Test Prep to private equity—and why he decided to write Beyond the Exit.
When Kevin Wagstaff and his brother bootstrapped Spectora, a SaaS platform for home inspectors, with just $2,500 each, they never expected to one day face an $80 million acquisition offer. Spectora transformed the home inspection industry by replacing outdated paper reports with a digital platform that streamlined workflows, saved inspectors time, and enhanced the client experience.
But when an acquirer attempted to re-trade the deal at the last minute—adding a $25 million seller’s note, a $10 million earn-out, and a 36-month call option—Kevin learned a hard lesson: just because an offer is on the table doesn’t mean the deal is done.
The acquirer assumed Kevin and his brother would be too invested in the deal to walk away. But thanks to their advisor’s guidance, they stood firm. The result? The acquirer backtracked, offering the original terms. Kevin and his brother still walked, ultimately selling a majority stake at a $90 million valuation to a better partner.
Selling your business to a Fortune 500 company is a dream for many founders. Strategic acquirers often pay the most because they can integrate your business into their larger ecosystem. It’s rare to pull off even once—Brock Weatherup has done it three times.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Brock reveals the strategies that helped him attract Fortune 500 buyers like PetSmart and Petco. This episode is a roadmap for anyone who wants to sell their business to a strategic acquirer.
That’s why we created the After the Deal series on Built to Sell Radio. This series explores life after selling a business—delving into the personal, financial, and emotional transitions that come when work becomes a choice, not a requirement.
In this episode, we speak with Preston Holland, author of Private Jet Insider and an expert in private aviation. Preston shares why private jet travel isn’t just for celebrities and explains how business owners use private aviation to buy back their most valuable asset: time.
This week on Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow interviews Blake Hutchison, CEO of Flippa, the world’s largest marketplace for buying and selling digital businesses. With experience overseeing thousands of real transactions, Blake offers a unique window into the minds of today’s acquirers.
Ben Landers built Blue Corona, an 8-figure digital marketing agency focused on home service businesses, into a data-driven powerhouse. When it came time to sell, Ben achieved something extraordinary: a clean exit with no earn-outs, a rare feat in the service business world where earn-outs are practically the norm.
Adam Kerrigan started as the owner of a managed service provider (MSP) business, which he built and eventually sold. After his exit, he joined the acquiring company to lead its M&A group, where he completed 16 deals and helped build a private equity-backed organization.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Adam pulls back the curtain on how acquirers often push for cashless deals, offering equity instead of cash—and how sellers can negotiate to ensure they get the deal they deserve.
As we gear up for 2025, I wanted to highlight the top strategies covered this past year on Built to Sell Radio. These insights are designed to help you increase the value of your business and position yourself for a successful exit.
Imagine personally guaranteeing millions in debt to fill a $28M order—only to have it yanked at the last minute. It nearly bankrupted founder Adi Gullia as well as Grace & Stella. Yet he overcame it all and sold at a 5.8x EBITDA multiple.
In this week’s episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow interviews Kaelon Egan, the founder of AccelaSchool, who successfully sold his company to PowerSchool—a giant in the K-12 education technology space.
For most founders, the ultimate dream is to sell to a strategic acquirer: a well-funded, industry leader with deep pockets. Egan shares exactly how he positioned his company to become a natural acquisition target, avoiding common pitfalls along the way.
James Ashford built GoProposal with a clear goal: to sell. From designing the logo with potential acquirers in mind to rallying his team around the vision, James executed his plan with precision. The result? An eight-figure sale to Sage, a FTSE 100 company. But what happened after the deal?
In this week’s Built to Sell Radio, part of our After the Deal series, James opens up about life post-exit. Selling a company can bring financial freedom, but as James reveals, it also comes with unexpected challenges.
If you’re a business owner, chances are buyers are considering your industry for a roll-up. From veterinary clinics to auto body shops, pharmacies to advertising agencies—you name the industry, there’s probably a private equity firm looking to roll it up.
This week’s episode is part of our Inside the Mind of an Acquirer series, where we dive into the strategies and motivations of different types of buyers. Jordan Dubin, co-founder of Guild, shares how he raised $35 million to create a roll-up of garage door companies and reveals what he looks for in a potential acquisition.
What does it take to turn nightlife into big business? Med school dropout Shane Neman cracked the code on the nightclub industry, transforming its back office into a finely tuned, revenue-generating machine. From pioneering one of the first SMS platforms for small businesses to setting up his companies for top-dollar exits, Shane shares the technical strategies that turned his ideas into high-value assets.
Few founders exemplify resilience like Mike Fata, co-founder of Manitoba Harvest. Growing up in a single-parent, low-income household, Fata dropped out of school in grade 10, struggled with health issues, and found himself weighing 300 pounds by age 18. A life-changing commitment to health led him to discover hemp as a nutritional powerhouse, sparking his path to founding Manitoba Harvest and building it into one of North America’s leading hemp food companies.
In his interview on Built to Sell Radio, Mike dives into the journey that saw him go from construction worker to the sale of Manitoba Harvest to Tilray for $419 million.
When Carrie Kelsch was encouraged to start a garage door business back in 2004, she had no experience in the industry.
By 2022, her company, A Plus Garage Doors, was generating $35 million in revenue with 30% EBITDA margins. This week on Built to Sell Radio, host John Warrillow shares Carrie’s journey—from her first steps in the home services industry to the personal tragedy that ultimately pushed her to consider selling.
Pete Neubig started his entrepreneurial journey buying $35,000 houses with small down payments. After amassing 60 homes, he realized there was more money in managing properties for others.
Pete shifted focus to building a property management company, handling maintenance and rent collection for over 1,000 homes, and eventually sold the business for $4.6 million or 1.75 times recurring revenue to an industry giant.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Jim Lindstrom discusses how he acquired BuzzWord, a company specializing in ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reporting. Lindstrom explains how he built a killer culture by transforming contractors into full-time employees and incentivizing them with a two-part profit-sharing scheme focused on cash flow and EBITDA, setting the business up for future sale.
Luke Peters started off by reselling everyday appliances like bar fridges online. Eventually he built a brand and shifted to selling his products on big e-commerce retailers. Peters grew NewAir to $80 million in revenue before selling it for a lifechanging windfall in 2022.
Matt Ebert’s path to founding Crash Champions didn’t start with a grand plan—it began with a car wreck. At 16, he found himself needing to fix his own car, sparking an unexpected passion that led to building one of the largest collision repair companies in the United States.
Aaron Levenstadt built Pedestal Search into a business worth selling by mastering one thing: SEO. While clients tempted him to offer other services, Aaron knew the real value lay in doing one thing better than anyone else. In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Aaron shares how focusing on one service helped him stand out in a crowded market and achieve a successful exit.
Jessica DeLuca co-founded Cult Beauty in 2008, creating one of the UK’s leading online beauty retailers. In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Jessica reveals the path that led her to selling the business for £275 million to The Hut Group (THG).
DeLuca’s background in tech shaped the business, with her love for data and precision leading to a meticulously curated platform. Frustrated by the lack of unbiased information in the beauty industry, she built a database of expert advice, allowing customers to search products tailored to their needs—an approach that set Cult Beauty apart from the competition.
Alex Bean sold his company, Divvy, for $2.5 billion. But after reaching this monumental milestone, why didn’t the sale bring him the happiness he expected? In this episode, Alex shares his journey and the lessons he learned about life after a business exit.
On this week’s Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow talks to Tim Schumacher, co-founder of SaaS Group, about the mindset of an acquirer.
Tim shares Peter Thiel’s “zero to one” versus “one to ten” concept and how knowing which one you are can shape your business.
n this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Jim Sebenius, the founder of the Negotiation Unit at Harvard Business School, shares his advanced negotiation strategies for selling a privately held business.
Jim's extensive experience includes his time at the Blackstone Group, where he negotiated on behalf of one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers with more than $1 trillion under management. He is also a frequent speaker to YPO and a consultant for privately held companies, helping them navigate complex negotiations.
Jim's insights are backed by his in-depth research, including first-hand interviews with former U.S. Secretaries of State such as Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, and Rex Tillerson. These interviews have provided him with unique perspectives on negotiation from some of the world’s most experienced dealmakers, making his advice invaluable for anyone looking to sell their company for maximum value.
Matt Matros built Protein Bar from a single smoothie shop into a fast-growing chain. In 2012, private equity firm L Catterton came knocking with a deal valuing his company at $44 million. Matt decided to roll 40% of his equity, expecting it to grow even more.
This week on Built to Sell Radio, William Brown shares his remarkable journey from selling a $50 Word document offering trading advice to building a multi-million dollar online education business that attracted serious interest from acquirers. Based in Dubai, William's story is a testament to how a simple, bootstrapped start can evolve into a highly valuable and sellable business.
Corporate buyers are notoriously secretive and rarely reveal their inner workings. This is why our latest episode of Built to Sell Radio is so valuable: It provides a rare look into the secretive world of corporate M&A.
Our guest is Christopher Vollmond-Carstens, Chief M&A Officer at Ntiva, where they help businesses keep their technology running smoothly, from managing their computer systems to protecting them from cyber threats. Christopher has bought fifteen companies in the last few years, and this week we take a walk inside his mind to understand how he thinks about buying companies.
This episode, part of our Inside the Mind of an Acquirer series, offers unique insights into the corporate development division of a big company.
Most people hear about spectacular acquisitions made by strategic acquirers or giant private equity groups. But the reality is, you’re likely to sell your company to a small business in your sector that nobody outside your industry has ever heard of.
In our latest episode of Built to Sell Radio, part of our Inside the Mind of an Acquirer series, we get inside the head of Kristi Herold. Kristi is the founder of Jam, a company based in Toronto that connects people through adult recreational sports leagues and corporate team-building events.
Kristi has successfully completed 11 acquisitions, making her a prime example of how small businesses buy other small companies.
Jeff Archibald founded Paper Leaf, a company specializing in developing websites, mobile apps and custom software. By offering a narrow scope of services to a variety of verticals, Paper Leaf built a reputation for handling challenging projects that generalist agencies couldn't. Jeff's commitment to simplicity and effective forecasting played a significant role in Paper Leaf's success. He used fixed payment contracts to ensure steady cash flow and offered a limited number of technologies, allowing his team to become experts. These practices stabilized the business and made it attractive for acquisition.
Nicole Osmer is the founder and president of Health+Commerce, a public relations and marketing agency for companies in medtech, biotech, and digital health. Nicole grew Health+Commerce from $1M to $10M in annual revenue over seven years.
Along the way, Nicole received an acquisition offer that seemed too good to be true. It turned out it was, and the deal fell apart. Nicole picked up the pieces, and in March 2024, Health+Commerce was acquired by Trinity Hunt-backed Supreme Group.
In this week’s episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow interviews Michael Lynch, the creator of TinyPilot, a hardware device that allows users to remotely control their computers without installing any software.
Like most small companies, TinyPilot was a Main Street business with around $1 million in revenue and roughly $250,000 in profit, so Michael’s story is a revealing snapshot of a typical exit for the majority of small businesses
In this week’s episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow interviews Kiri Masters, founder of Bobsled Marketing. Kiri’s marketing agency specialized in helping companies merchandise their products on sites like Amazon.com and Walmart.com.
Kiri successfully transformed a significant social media following into a valuable company.
In this week’s Built to Sell Radio episode, John Warrillow interviews David Sinkinson, co-founder of AppArmor. David and his brother Chris created a mobile app that allows students to alert campus security by pressing a single button on their phones. Their journey from developing AppArmor to selling their company for $40 million is packed with insight.
During the interview, you’ll discover how answering a simple question posed by an acquirer almost cost the Sinkinson brothers $20 million. Learn how they navigated this near-disastrous moment and what steps they took to recover and close the deal successfully.
Have you considered the psychological toll of building your business?
In this week’s Built to Sell Radio episode, John Warrillow sits down with Bill Hudenko, a psychologist, Dartmouth professor, and serial entrepreneur, to discuss the psychological impact of building and exiting a business. Bill shares his personal journey through multiple exits and offers insights into the mental health challenges that come with selling your life’s work.
As someone who has experienced these challenges firsthand, and as a professional with access to extensive data, Bill provides practical advice on how to avoid the common mental health pitfalls associated with selling your business.
In this week’s episode of Built to Sell Radio, we are joined by Tom Deans, a renowned expert on family business transitions and the author of the trilogy, Every Family's Business, Willing Wisdom, and The Happy Inheritor. Drawing from his extensive experience, Tom shares invaluable strategies to help you navigate the complexities of selling a family business.
This week on Built to Sell Radio, we feature Connor Tomkies, founder of Support Ninja, who shares his story of transforming an outsourcing firm into an industry leader. Support Ninja provides outsourced customer support services, handling tasks such as customer experience, social media management, and technical support.
In this week’s episode of Built to Sell Radio, we are joined by Ilya Strebulaev, a leading expert on venture capital and private equity and author of The Venture Mindset. Drawing from his extensive research and teaching at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Strebulaev shares strategies to help you think like a venture capitalist and make smarter business decisions.
Today’s episode of Built to Sell Radio features Anne Mahlum, a fearless entrepreneur who redefined the fitness industry. After wandering into a Pilates studio in L.A. and thinking, “I can do this better,” Anne threw all her savings—$175,000—into launching her own version of the company, founding [solidcore], a fitness powerhouse that she later sold for $100 million.
Anne shares her remarkable journey, detailing the strategies she used to transition leadership, navigate fundraising efforts, and build a company with enduring value.
This episode of Built to Sell Radio features Matt Dixon, author of the global bestseller, The Challenger Sale. Dixon became the de facto leader of the sales training world when Neil Rackham, author of "SPIN Selling," praised The Challenger Sale as "the most important advance in selling for many years.”
If you’re wondering how to get your people to sell as well as you do, this is your master class.
This episode of Built to Sell Radio, features Kevin O’Connor, a pioneer in digital advertising and founder of DoubleClick.
Kevin's vision transformed the online advertising industry, making DoubleClick a dominant force in digital marketing before its $3.1 billion acquisition by Google.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Seth Godin, a renowned entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker, shares insights gained from his experience, including selling his company, Yoyodyne, to Yahoo! He has authored 21 best-selling books, including notable titles like Permission Marketing, The Dip, Linchpin, Purple Cow, Tribes, This Is Marketing, and What to Do When It’s Your Turn (And It’s Always Your Turn).
Join us as Seth unpacks strategies to make your business more appealing to potential buyers and provides guidance for designing your successful exit.
In this week's episode of Built to Sell Radio, we are joined by William Ury, the co-founder of the Harvard Program on Negotiation and the International Negotiation Network with former President Jimmy Carter. Drawing from his extensive experience in high-stakes diplomatic negotiations, Ury shares invaluable strategies to help you punch above your weight in a negotiation to sell your business. From understanding buyer motivations to mastering negotiation processes, you will gain actionable insights from one of the world's foremost negotiation experts.
Brian Dean has been called an SEO genius for his search engine optimization courses, so it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise when Semrush, a publicly traded SEO software company, came knocking.
What was surprising was that Semrush paid $5 million for Brian’s one-employee company.
This week we’re featuring an interview with John Rood, who built Next Step, a test prep business that helped students prepare for the medical school admissions test (MCAT). John Rood built Next Step to almost $10 million in revenue, with EBITDA margins ranging from 20–40% before selling to New Harbour Group, a private equity business doing a roll-up of test prep companies.
Although it was a financial windfall for John, his exit left him feeling empty inside. John drifted and ended up having a difficult time processing his newfound life, which led him to consider if other founders struggled with life post-exit. He began interviewing other entrepreneurs who had sold and is now putting the finishing touches on a book called Beyond the Exit, which will come out later this year.
This week we’re bringing you an extraordinary story of resilience and determination as we delve into the lives of Payam and Frank Zamani. Starting their American dream with a mere $75, the brothers embarked on a venture that led to the founding of Autoweb, a groundbreaking lead generation service in the auto industry.
Autoweb’s journey to success reached its zenith with an IPO that valued the company at an astonishing $1.2 billion, with shares peaking at $50. However, the narrative took a dramatic turn as investor demand for a new CEO led to a steep decline, plummeting the share price to a mere 18 cents.
Through the turbulence, Payam Zamani’s story unfolds as one of unwavering spirit and the relentless pursuit of a vision despite formidable challenges.
Tune in to hear how Payam navigated the highs and the heartbreaking lows of Autoweb’s saga as he offers a treasure trove of lessons for capitalists.
Ned MacPherson started helping clients optimize their websites back in 2016. Demand for Ned’s time quickly outpaced supply, so he started building a team. Within seven years, Ned had 70 employees, more than $2 million a year in EBITDA, and multiple acquisition offers.
Jordan van Schyndel grew his service business to more than 30 employees without having anyone quit. He credits his unique culture for the loyalty of his team. Ultimately it was that team that caught the attention of Spiria, which offered to acquire van Schyndel’s business.
In 2015, 25-year-old Alexx Leyva was traveling around Thailand when a shocking phone call brought him back to the United States to take over his father’s $3 million business. Over the next five years, Alexx and his brothers tripled the company and ended up selling it for more than $20 million.
In recent years, "entrepreneurship through acquisition" courses at Ivy League MBA programs have surged in popularity, outshining traditional classes in marketing or corporate finance. This trend reflects a shift in aspirations among students, many of whom now prioritize acquiring a business over roles in consulting or banking. As a business owner, you're likely to encounter increased interest from these eager MBA graduates keen on acquiring your company with the backing of people who specialize in funding these first time entrepreneurs. For example, this week we interviewed Steve Divitikos a Harvard MBA who decided to acquire and build a small business using money he raised from investors. There are pros and cons of selling to an acquisition entrepreneur.
When it comes to your endgame, what’s your highest priority? Do you want to maximize your personal wealth and walk away? Or do you want to de-risk but keep some chips on the table? Or is your highest priority protecting your culture, your employees, and the legacy you have built? If your goal is to protect your culture, then selling to an individual investor may be worth considering.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, you’ll hear from Carl Allen, a former guest and HP executive who was responsible for acquiring companies for the tech giant. These days, Carl teaches individual investors how to buy their first business. You’ll get inside the minds of the individual investors Carl coaches to understand how they structure acquisition offers, and you’ll discover the telltale signs that an individual investor is either going to honor or ruin your company’s legacy.
Anastasia Koroleva is an experienced entrepreneur and former technology company CEO. After her first nine-figure exit, she went on to start three more businesses. Today she is the host of the podcast, Exit Paradox, where she talks to some of the most remarkable founders in the world about the lessons they learned about life after selling a business. This episode will help you design your ideal life post-exit.
Michael Lieberman built Datastay, a software company that helped brake manufacturers and distributors catalog their models. The application proved sticky with parts manufacturers, which is why Autodesk made an acquisition offer for Datastay of more than ten times its revenue despite Datastay having just nine employees at the time of the acquisition.
Adam Coffey spent 21 years as a CEO of three national service companies backed by nine private equity sponsors. During that time, he completed 58 acquisitions and generated more than one billion dollars of value at exit.
Adam’s book, The Private Equity Playbook, is a bestseller, and on this episode of Built to Sell Radio’s “Inside the Mind of an Acquirer” series, Adam teaches a masterclass on how private equity works.
Jason Swenk sold his marketing agency in 2011. Since then, he’s transitioned to the role of an acquirer, purchasing nine agencies. With experience on both sides of the negotiating table, Jason reveals his unique perspective on how to sell your service business.
Joe Khoubbieh is the Chief Investment Officer at Valsoft, one of the most prolific acquirers of software companies in the last few years. In 2023 alone, Valsoft completed 25 acquisitions in 10 countries. In total, Valsoft has acquired 95 companies and paid the founder 100% of their proceeds in cash in all 95 deals. In this week's episode of Built to Sell Radio, we get inside Joe's head and find out how he thinks about evaluating companies to buy, structuring a role for the founder post acquisition, the downside of selling to private equity, dealing with egos and what to do when an acquirer tries to re-trade.
In this episode featuring Mark Zweig, we explore the aftermath of selling his company, The Zweig Group, to a private equity group. Zweig Group, known for serving the architecture industry with magazines, reports, and trade shows, achieved remarkable growth, landing three times on the Inc. 5000 list. At its peak, the company reached $19 million in revenue. However, Mark's sale to a private equity group unfolded as a cautionary tale, showcasing the potential pitfalls when partnering with the wrong acquirer.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all the rage these days, but do you remember the cannabis craze? Basem Hanna sure does. He rode that wave to perfection, leaving his cannabis startup with a cool $25 million and shares that could be worth double that one day.
This week’s episode of Built to Sell Radio is a no-holds-barred chat (yep, expect some strong language) about making it big in the green rush.
Aaron Leibtag cofounded Pentavere Research Group, a digital health company that identifies patients not receiving the medications or interventions they should be receiving because critical data is buried in a patient’s electronic health record.
Despite having just 15 employees, they attracted an acquisition offer that valued Pentavere at $15 million
This week on Built to Sell Radio, we highlight the top strategies from the 10 most popular shows of 2023. In this episode, you’ll learn how to:
· Grow your email list.
· Compete with industry giants.
· Replace yourself inside your business.
· Implement a three part strategy for hiring high-potential employees.
· Get your customers to fund your growth.
· Use silence to help you get the upper hand when negotiating the sale of your business.
· Provoke a bidding war for your business.
· Use a surprising negotiating tactic to get an acquirer to increase their offer.
· Rebut a low-ball offer.
· Handle negotiation points that are non-starters for you.
If you've ever wanted to create recurring revenue inside your business you'll want to listen to today's episode of Built to Sell Radio. The show is the third in our three-part expert series and features a conversation between John Warrillow, the author of The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in any Industry, and Robbie Kellman Baxter, the author of The Membership Economy and The Forever Transaction -- two of the world's leading experts on subscription models in one episode.
Negotiating the sale of a business sale is intense and emotional for founders. Clear thinking is vital. In our second expert series installment, we feature Hasard Lee, a renowned clear-thinking expert.
Lee, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, authored the international bestseller, The Art of Clear Thinking. This Wall Street Journal bestseller, #2 in U.S. business books, has been translated into multiple languages.
As a flight commander in Afghanistan, Lee led over eighty combat missions, piloting two different jets on the same day in support of ground troops. Selected to fly the F-35, a cutting-edge, costly weapons system, he later became Chief of Training Systems at the world’s largest training base, innovating pilot training technology and methods.
Lee’s book translates combat lessons into daily life. Today he provides a mental toolbox for founders, guiding clear thought amid the emotional challenges of selling a business.
This week we have a special treat: an interview about negotiating the sale of your business with Chris Voss, the bestselling author of Never Split the Difference.
Chris used his many years of experience in international crises and high-stakes negotiations to develop a unique approach to negotiation and this week, he talks about how his approach applies to selling a business.
Prior to starting his training firm, The Black Swan Group, Chris was the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI.
Chris served as the lead Crisis Negotiator for the New York City division of the FBI. He was a member of the New York City Joint Terrorist Task Force for 14 years. He was the case agent on the TWA Flight 800 catastrophe. He also negotiated the surrender of the first hostage taker to give up in the infamous Chase Manhattan Bank robbery.
During Chris’s 24-year tenure with the Bureau, he was trained in the art of negotiation by not only the FBI, but also Scotland Yard and Harvard Law School. He is also a recipient of the Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement and the FBI Agents Association Award for Distinguished and Exemplary Service.
Chris has taught business negotiation in MBA programs at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, and at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. He also taught business negotiation at Harvard University and guest lectured at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, the IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the Goethe Business School in Frankfurt, Germany.
Kiran Merchant spent decades as a consultant to the aviation industry, so when a boss refused to grant him an $8,000 raise, he decided to leave his employer to start his own aviation consulting firm. Eighteen months later, he sold Merchant Aviation to Aeroport de Paris, one of the largest aviation companies in the world for a high single digit multiple of EBITDA.
Greg Romanzo and his partners spent 17 years growing a freight forwarding business. As the company expanded to 200 employees, the partners faced a realization: their decisions now impacted 200 families. This responsibility became overwhelming, and they decided to sell.
Chip Conley built the world's second largest boutique hotel chain to 3500 employees, but after a near death experience, Chip realized he wanted out. Chip went on to become Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy, where he mentored co-founder Brian Chesky. Conley went on to create MEA -- the Modern Elder Academy -- the world's first ‘midlife wisdom school'.
Jason Cohen is the founder of both SmartBear and WP Engine, both companies that have achieved a valuation of more than $1 billion, making them “unicorns” in the parlance of Silicon Valley. This is our first installment in a series we’re referring to as Legends of the Deal, which will chronicle the life lessons of extraordinary achievers in the world of value building.
Josh Anhalt started GreenPath Energy in 2007 to help oil and gas companies detect methane leaks in their pipes. Over the years, Josh tried and failed to sell his company three times only to have each deal thwarted for a different reason. By 2023 GreenPath was generating more than $8 million in revenue when they finally agreed to be acquired by a competitor for around 7 times EBITDA, 90% of which was paid in cash with the balance paid in stock of the acquirer.
Chad Maghielse treats his two French bulldogs like family. When their breath turned foul, he invented a dog breath spray. Within three years, he was making over $2 million in online pet product sales at a 35% profit margin. Then he sold his business.
Jay B Sauceda built a logistics company that helped brands like Howler Brothers ship online orders. At their peak, Sauceda's company had a 150,000 square foot warehouse, 150 employees and was on track to hit $14 million in annual sales when a fateful meeting at an industry conference led Cart.com to make an acquisition offer Sauceda couldn't refuse.
This week, we continue our series called Inside the Mind of an Acquirer. We started this special series of interviews with acquirers because we want you to understand the perspective of the person across from you in a negotiation to buy your business. This week, we sat down with Bakari Akil, who has acquired two $30 million businesses and now teaches Cornell MBA candidates about entrepreneurship through acquisition.
Mark Ferrier founded the marketing agency TRAFFIKGROUP and grew it to over $2M in EBITDA before agreeing to be acquired by the private equity group Onex in an eight-figure exit. Mark decided to sell when a friend revealed that most founders end up wishing they had sold 50% sooner for 25% less.
Mark Ferrier built the marketing agency TRAFFIKGROUP to more than $2 million of EBITDA before it was acquired by the private equity group Onex in an eight-figure exit. In this first of a two-part interview, Mark shares the story of how he got started in the marketing agency world and how a rift with his former partners left him on the wrong end of a $2 million lawsuit.
When Jon Cross founded Pondera Solutions in 2011, his goal was to reduce fraud in U.S. government programs like Medicaid and Unemployment Insurance. By 2020, Cross and his partners had built Pondera to more than $9 million in annual recurring revenue when they received an offer from Thomson Reuters for a reported $124 million.
In 2017 Lloyed Lobo and his partner, Alex Popa, founded Boast, a software application designed to simplify the process of applying for research and development tax credits. The bootstrapped company struck a chord with customers that found the process of applying for R&D tax credits cumbersome. By 2020 Lobo and Popa had built Boast to more than $5 million in revenue when they agreed to a $23 million majority recapitalization from Radian Capital.
At the age of 41, Rob Walling sold Drip, an email marketing software for enough money that he "would never have to work again".
His only problem? Figuring out what to do next.
In this special edition of Built to Sell Radio, we explore how to re-define your purpose and find happiness and fulfillment after you exit your business
Sarah Dusek and her husband started Under Canvass, which offered large-scale tented hotels (think “glamping”) outside national parks around the U.S.
The business got off to a successful start, and within five years, Dusek had four locations, which were collectively generating $3 million in EBITDA. Rather than sit still, Dusek decided she wanted to grow much larger and raised $16 million of capital made up of a combination of equity and mezzanine debt at a rate of 13%, which Dusek personally guaranteed.
The stress of having her entire net worth tied to her business eventually caught up to Dusek, and she decided to sell a majority stake of her business to a private equity group (KSL Capital). Dusek rolled 25% of her equity and stayed on as CEO. By the time she stepped down from her leadership role, Under Canvass was worth more than $100 million.
In 2015, Michia Rohrssen co-founded a SaaS business called Prodigy to help car dealerships sell online. He grew the company to $3.3M in annual revenue when he faced a difficult decision.
Rohrssen thought he could sell Prodigy for around 4-6 times revenue, but after paying off his investors, there wouldn’t be much left over for the founders. That’s when he decided to make a risky pivot to his business model. The change meant a short-term drop in Prodigy’s revenue, while also making it more attractive to strategic acquirers. Ultimately Rohrssen and his co-founder sold the smaller version of his company for a staggering $110 million, or around 65 times revenue.
Casey Cavell has plenty of party stories: he dropped out of college to become a professional poker player, tried his hand (successfully) at buying self-storage facilities and apartment complexes, and eventually found his way to the business of baseball. More specifically, a franchised baseball academy for 5-10 year olds that he grew to five locations.
Cavell essentially managed two exits from his D-BAT Academy franchises, first selling 66% of the business at a value of $1.5 million and then unloading his remaining equity at a $10 million valuation.
In 2017, Amman Ahmed founded MusicForPets, which launched the YouTube channels "RelaxMyDog" and "RelaxMyCat." Th ese channels aim to alleviate pets' anxiety, whether due to stress or their owners' absence.
Under Ahmed's leadership, the channels amassed over 2 million subscribers and generated a 7-figure profit, largely because of effective SEO. As the business saw a surge in paid monthly website subscribers, it garnered the interest of California-based hip-hop label, Create Music Group, which extended a lucrative 8-figure offer that Ahmed couldn't turn down.
In 2006, Chad Rubin built Skubana, a tool specifically designed to streamline the operation of his e-commerce store across diverse channels. Sensing the software's potential, Rubin decided to offer Skubana to other online store owners.
The platform rapidly resonated with e-commerce entrepreneurs, accumulating $5 million in annual recurring revenue by 2021. The company’s success drew the interest of prospective buyers, eventually culminating in an irresistible offer from 3PL Central, a premier provider of warehouse management software.
In 2014, Alex Macdonald co-founded Velocity Black, a global digital concierge service for affluent clients. Unlike the basic concierge services of some credit cards, Velocity Black leverages technology and expert knowledge to curate personalized services such as travel, entertainment, shopping, and dining, accessible directly from your phone.
By 2022, the business had expanded to $30 million in net revenue, attracting attention from potential buyers including Capital One which acquired Velocity Black for a reported $297 million.
Ian Fraser, a former professional golfer from Scotland, turned his expertise in fitting golfers with the right clubs into a successful venture, Tour Experience Golf (TXG), in 2016.
His aim was to bring PGA Tour quality club fitting to everyday golfers. As TXG began to flourish, Fraser realized he needed to expand his team and impart his unique skills to them. By devising an innovative hiring process and employing a creative teaching method, he was able to grow TXG to a team of 14 employees, a YouTube fan base of 150,000 subscribers, and revenue exceeding $2 million.
TXG attracted the attention of Club Champion, the United States' largest club fitting company with more than 100 locations.
In 2017, Chris Mole, based in the UK, founded Molzi, a full-service digital marketing agency catering to Amazon sellers. As pioneers in the field, the company witnessed significant growth. By 2020, amidst the lockdown-fueled e-commerce boom, Molzi doubled its team size to over 70 employees and generated revenues exceeding £4.5 million.
In 2021, their success caught the eye of Brainlabs, who acquired Molzi, paying 75% of the purchase price upfront and committing the remaining 25% to an earn-out agreement.
| In 2013, Paul Johnson founded Lemonaid Health, one of the first digital healthcare platforms designed to offer virtual medical consultations and prescription services online. While the company got off to a slow start, the pandemic accelerated the adoption of online healthcare. By the end of 2021, Lemonaid had agreed to be acquired by the DNA testing outfit 23andMe, for $400 million of cash and stock. |
In 2009, Steve Reardon sold Peldon Technologies, a company he founded which provided pharmacies and retailers with photo printers and multifunctional kiosks. Following his departure, Reardon developed a passion for running businesses, a path that ultimately led him to venture into acquisitions.
Now, Reardon serves as the CEO of Alpine Software Group (ASG), a branch of Alpine Investors. ASG's main objective is to acquire companies that specialize in vertical Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions.
This week on Built to Sell Radio, we're excited to feature a special episode with clinical psychologist, speaker, and author, Dr. Sherry Walling. Dr. Walling is renowned for her work with entrepreneurs, aiding them in navigating the mental and emotional hurdles of building and exiting a company.
In 2014, Mark Wright, who won BBC's The Apprentice, used the $250,000 prize to co-found Climb Online, a digital marketing agency, in collaboration with business tycoon, Lord Sugar.
Their collective reputation and expertise in the industry enabled the digital agency to flourish, eventually becoming one of the largest in the UK, with a workforce of 130 employees at its height. In 2022, Climb Online achieved a significant milestone as it was acquired by xDNA, a global digital agency group, for a value that amounted to 9.5 times its EBITDA. This acquisition marked the first successful business exit for a participant in The Apprentice.
After a 23-year journey building Non-Linear Creations into a marketing giant with more than 120 employees, Randy Woods sold it in 2017 to Valtech. Valtech is a distinguished digital agency offering marketing, digital technology, and business transformation consulting services.
Post-sale, Woods now serves as the SVP of Strategic Growth Opportunity at Valtech, a role dedicated to identifying potential acquisitions for the business. In the latest installment of Built to Sell Radio’s Inside the Mind of an Acquirer series, we sit down with Woods.
In 2011, Tyler Smith, one of the top three real estate agents in California, launched SkySlope, a software platform that enables real estate professionals to efficiently manage their transactions, documents, and communication in one centralized system.
Smith successfully bootstrapped the company to around $12 million in annual recurring revenue by 2016, attracting significant attention from potential acquirers. Among the interested parties, Fidelity National Financial emerged as the ideal fit, acquiring 67% of SkySlope in a deal valuing the company at over $80 million.
In 2017, Miles Faulkner partnered with Martin Cleaver to establish Blended Perspectives, a reseller specializing in Atlassian products, which offer software solutions for large teams.
To distinguish themselves from other resellers, Faulkner devised an innovative product that set them apart from other Atlassian resellers.
By 2022, Blended Perspectives had achieved approximately $30 million in revenue. Recognizing an impending industry consolidation, Faulkner made the strategic decision to sell to Contegix, a competing Atlassian distributor, for a multiple far better than what a typical reseller usually fetches.
Josh Abramson has an impressive track record of building valuable companies. In 1999 Abramson started CollegeHumor.com and before he could even graduate, Abramson had received an offer of $9 million for the website. Abramson went on to start the popular video-sharing website Vimeo and apparel company BustedTees.com selling his collection of companies to Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp for a reported $20 million in 2006.
After a short stint reporting to Diller, Abramson left IAC and started TeePublic, an innovative online marketplace that serves as a platform for artists and designers to showcase and sell their distinctive designs on a wide range of products, including t-shirts and hoodies.
With Abramson at the helm, TeePublic grew to $41 million in revenue and $4.5 million in EBITDA before he decided to sell to RedBubble in a $41 million deal, $36 million of which was in cash.
In 1998, Lori Morton founded AerieHub, a customizable mobile app that helps facility managers efficiently control building information and operations, including compliance records, blueprints, and employee training.
Morton onboarded industry giants such as Netflix, Michelin Tires, GE, Bosch, and others reaching over $1 million in annual recurring revenue. Thanks to a rigorous onboarding process and exceptional customer service, Morton lost only two clients in 24 years.
In 2022, JDM Technology Group acquired AerieHub in a lucrative 100% cash upfront deal.
In 2017, Gamal Codner established Fresh Heritage, an e-commerce company that created grooming products specifically for men of color.
Codner grew Fresh Heritage quickly with Facebook ads and online reviews, but relying solely on paid customer acquisition almost bankrupted the company. Codner introduced a subscription program and turned one-time customers into automatic repeat purchasers, dramatically increasing the lifetime value of a customer.
As a result, Fresh Heritage's revenue skyrocketed to over $4 million. In 2022, BRANDED, a leading global operator of digital-first consumer brands, acquired Fresh Heritage from Codner.
In 2008, Brandon Lazar started A+ Gutter & Window Cleaning, servicing homeowners in British Columbia, Canada. Lazar successfully bootstrapped the business, generating nearly $1.5 million in revenue before being approached by an acquirer.
Lazar sold A+ Gutter & Window Cleaning to a private buyer in 2023 for approximately 3.5 times EBITDA, without an earn-out.
In 2016 Susanne Klepsch launched Meetfox, a scheduling and video calling solution that helps service professionals manage and monetize their time.
By 2021 Meetfox had acquired a user base of 25,000. As Klepsch observed competitors being acquired by large software companies, she recognized the need to partner with a major player to compete effectively with Calendly. Consequently, she initiated a merger and acquisition process, reaching out to over a hundred companies, including the venture-backed, all-in-one marketing software Sendinblue. Eventually, Sendinblue made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
In his role as an acquirer, Kevin McArdle has purchased 45 businesses, including three from former Built to Sell Radio guests.
In 2013, Dan Reich and his partners founded TULA, a digitally native, probiotics-infused skincare line.
Reich bootstrapped TULA to around $10 million in annual revenue when he realized he needed to replace himself as CEO.
The company thrived under professional management, and by 2022, TULA had achieved revenue of over $100 million and received an acquisition offer from Procter & Gamble.
In 2016, Jeremy Parker co-founded Swag.com to offer branded promotional products for businesses. Parker and his team developed a powerful online platform that enables customers to order products through their unforgettable website.
Thanks to Swag.com's innovative approach and memorable domain name, the company generated $30 million in revenue by 2020. However, when Parker began to explore acquisition offers, potential buyers viewed Swag.com as just a distribution company, which is typically valued in low single digits of EBITDA.
Fortunately, Parker met the founder of Custom Ink, who recognized that Swag.com was more than just a traditional promotional products business - it was a technology company.
Microsoft's recent announcement about integrating OpenAI's features into Microsoft 365 serves as a prime example of how finding a strategic acquirer for your company can bring significant benefits.
In this special edition of Built to Sell Radio, we will explore five reasons why larger businesses acquire smaller ones and provide tips on how to make your company more attractive to potential strategic acquirers.
In 2011, Tammer Kamel launched Quandl, a company that provided investors with data designed to give them a competitive trading edge. For example, Quandl offered subscriptions that let investors access private jet flight information for public companies as a predictor for M&A activity.
By 2018, Quandl had grown to 75 employees. Kamel saw industry giants entering the space, but knowing the time and capital investment it would take to build a competitive offering, he believed they would prefer to acquire Quandl.
Kamel began shopping the business around, and shortly after, Nasdaq acquired Quandl for a life-changing sum.
Kyle Scott launched Crossing Broad, a Philadelphia sports blog, in 2009. His irreverent and edgy writing style gained a significant following among Philly sports fans, resulting in thousands of daily readers. However, it wasn't until the 2018 Supreme Court ruling lifted the ban on sports betting in the US that the business flourished.
To capitalize on the ruling, Scott merged Crossing Broad with Warwick Gaming into CBWG, which owned and operated several popular sports and gambling websites. The company instantly became the largest independently owned US sports betting affiliate marketing network, generating $5 million in annual revenue.
In 2020, Ten months after joining forces, XLMedia acquired CBWG for $12 million in cash, $8 million worth of XLMedia shares, and the potential for another $9.5 million tied to a three-year earn-out.
In 2013 Mac Lackey licensed the FC Barcelona name to offer soccer camps and immersion trips to young athletes in the United States.
Lackey grew the business to over $10 million in revenue before accepting a lucrative buyout offer that included various desirable benefits for sports fans.
In 2015, Brad Lorge founded Premonition, a technology company that offers logistics software to streamline a company’s delivery operations. Rather than the traditional approach of financing their start-up through rounds of dilutive funding, Lorge asked his customers to pre-pay, allowing the founding team to retain 80% of the equity in their business.
By March 2022, Premonition had grown to $3 million in Annual Contract Value (ACV) which is when it was acquired by Shippit for $20.5 million -- an implied valuation of just under 7 times ACV.
Rachel Elsts Downey is the founder of Share Your Genius, a podcast production company that has been helping businesses increase their brand visibility since 2017. Over the years, Share Your Genius has grown into a successful business, generating $500,000 in revenue by 2021.
That’s when Downey was approached by one of her clients with an offer to acquire her business. The client wanted to hire Downey and saw the acquisition of Share Your Genius as the best way to recruit her. After some deliberation, Downey accepted the offer and agreed to be "acquihired". This deal valued Share Your Genius in the mid-six figures and provided Downey with cash for her business, a secure salary, bonuses, and some equity in the acquiring company.
In 2003, Ron Holt founded Two Maids & a Mop, a residential cleaning business. Thanks to an innovative employee bonus plan, Holt was able to grow his business to 12 company-owned locations.
That’s when a random encounter with Fred DeLuca, the founder of Subway, changed Holt’s life forever. Deluca gave Holt the inspiration and a roadmap for franchising his business which Holt used to grow Two Maids & a Mop from 12 to 91 locations across the United States and $40 million in revenue.
In 2021, eager to pursue the next chapter in his life, Holt began exploring selling Two Maids & a Mop. A short time after, JM Family Enterprises acquired the business in a lucrative deal valued at well over ten times EBITDA.
Sam Parr founded the Hustle, a media company that delivers business and tech news to millennials in an engaging and relatable way, in 2015. The business was an instant hit with readers, generating millions of page views in only a few months.
By 2020 Sam Parr had grown the Hustle to $15 million in revenue, attracting the attention of tech giant HubSpot. A few months later, the tech conglomerate acquired the Hustle in a lucrative eight-figure deal.
In 2016, Derek Morin founded Tabarnapp to create after-market sales applications for Shopify website owners. The company was an instant hit generating more than 1,000 paid customers in its first few months after launching on the Shopify platform.
In 2020, Morin acquired one of his partners' stake in Tabarnapp, valuing the company at $400,000. Two years later, Morin sold Tabarnapp for a much higher price, implying a tenfold increase in the company's value.
In 2012, Spencer Thompson founded Sokanu, a career assessment platform aimed at replacing the outdated assessments that existed at the time. Sokanu’s “Career Explorer” quickly became one of North America's most prominent assessment tools and was adopted by the U.S. Government and top colleges around the world.
The assessments were a huge hit with job seekers, yet Thompson struggled to generate sales. Rather than fix his revenue model, Thompson looked for an acquirer who would value his enormous user base. Soon after, Sokanu received a lucrative acquisition offer from Penn Foster, an online educational institute.
In 2011, Perry Rosenbloom started the web development company, Brighter Vision. After a few years of jumping from project to project, Rosenbloom had a breakthrough. Instead of doing web design for everyone, he decided to focus on creating websites exclusively for therapists.
His decision to niche down worked as revenue soared.
By 2020, Rosenbloom had thousands of customers and millions in sales, which was when Evercommerce made an offer to acquire Brighter Vision for $17.5 million.
In 2016, Marc Lafleur started truLOCAL, a subscription business allowing people to buy locally-raised meats online.
To ignite sales, Lafleur and his co-founder pitched the company on the popular Canadian TV show Dragon’s Den (similar to Shark Tank). The presentation was a hit as they received an investment of $100,000 from Dragon’s, Michele Romanow and Joe Mimran for 10% of the business.
As a result of their new partners and the free marketing that came from the show, revenues soared.
By 2020 truLOCAL had reached sales of eight figures when Lafleur began receiving interest from acquirers. A few months later, the company was acquired by EMERGE in a deal valued at $16.8 million.
In 2009 Simon Penson founded Zazzle Media, one of the first content marketing agencies in the U.K. Although the company was successful, Penson had difficulties winning large customer contracts due to the size of his agency.
To enhance his credibility, in 2015 he decided to merge Zazzle Media with Stickyeyes, which, at the time, formed the largest content marketing agency in the U.K.
Penson’s decision proved to be savvy.
This week on Built to Sell Radio, we highlight the top strategies from the 10 most popular shows of 2022.
In 2006 Kelby Zorgdrager started DevelopIntelligence, an outsourced training provider that helps programmers develop new skills and adapt to ever-changing technologies.
The business snowballed as Zorgdrager onboarded most Fortune 500 giants in his space. However, Zorgdrager had a problem. The company was too dependent on him.
To ensure the business could succeed without him, Zorgdrager implemented a four-step system to replace himself as the rainmaker of his company.
The strategy worked. By 2020 Zorgdrager had grown the business to $12.1 million in revenue, which piqued the interest of some acquirers. A year later, Zorgdrager signed an acquisition offer from Pluralsight in a deal valued at $48.9 million.
In 2016 Trevr Smithlin and Dave Hanley founded AdvertiseCast, a marketplace connecting podcasters with advertisers. The company experienced tremendous growth, doubling revenue year-over-year until 2020. That’s when the uncertainty triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic caused Smithlin and Hanley to consider their strategic options.
In March 2021, Smithlin and Hanley signed an acquisition agreement from Libsyn for $30 million.
In 2016 Channing Allen and his brother Courtland founded Indie Hackers, a blog and forum that encourages founders to transparently share their ideas and stories.
After only eight months, the brothers had grown the business to $8,000 in revenue when they received an unexpected email from Patrick Collison (co-founder and CEO of Stripe), who was looking to acquire the company.
Although tempted to keep building, Stripe’s offer was too good to refuse. The brothers agreed to be acquired by Stripe in March 2017.
In 2012, Jaclyn Johnson founded Create & Cultivate, a media company that educates and inspires women to succeed in business.
By 2018, Johnson had grown Create & Cultivate to eight employees when an acquirer offered her a staggering $40 million. Unfortunately, the deal was too good to be true. When the acquirer discovered her hands-on management style, they pulled out.
Learning from her mistakes, Johnson implemented a collection of strategies to ensure Create & Cultivate could thrive without her.
By the end of 2019, Johnson had grown to $14 million in revenue ($4 million EBITDA) when acquirers came knocking again. This time she was ready. Create & Cultivate was acquired by Corridor Capital in a deal valued at $22 million.
In 2002 Chuck Crumpton started Medpoint to help businesses bring medical devices and pharmaceuticals to market. The company quickly took off after Crumpton landed a prominent blue-chip client.
It was a blessing and a curse.
At one point, the blue-chip customer made up 83% of Medpoint’s revenue. Determined to reduce his customer concentration, Crumpton implemented a clever strategy to minimize his dependency.
The strategy worked as Crumpton successfully reduced his reliance below 50%, allowing him to sell Medpoint in 2020 for around five times EBITDA.
In 2009 Natalie Nagele and her husband, Chris, launched Postmark to help businesses deliver emails to their customers quickly.
A decade in, Nagele had grown the company to around 40 employees, which was when she began feeling burned out. The pull to explore new interests was the catalyst to accepting a life-changing acquisition offer from Active Campaign in 2022. In this episode, you’ll learn how to:
- Develop passionate employees that care about your company.
- Create raving fans that refer their friends.
- Decide when it’s time to sell.
- Distinguish between serious burnout and normal fatigue.
- Create a list of demands for an acquirer when selling your business.
- Think in decades when making big decisions.
- Establish a positive relationship with your acquirer.
In 2009 Natalie Nagele and her husband, Chris, launched Postmark to help businesses deliver emails to their customers quickly.
A decade in, Nagele had grown the company to around 40 employees, which was when she began feeling burned out. The pull to explore new interests was the catalyst to accepting a life-changing acquisition offer from Active Campaign in 2022. In this episode, you’ll learn how to:
- Develop passionate employees that care about your company.
- Create raving fans that refer their friends.
- Decide when it’s time to sell.
- Distinguish between serious burnout and normal fatigue.
- Create a list of demands for an acquirer when selling your business.
- Think in decades when making big decisions.
- Establish a positive relationship with your acquirer.
In 2020 veterinarian Dr. Joseph Marchell started Old Brown Dog Veterinary Partners (OBDVP) after identifying a unique opportunity to do a rollup of family-owned animal hospitals.
Marchell acquired three practices for around ten times EBITDA. He then implemented a streamlined operational strategy that resulted in the sale of OBDVP less than two years later for almost three times the purchase price.
In 2020 veterinarian Dr. Joseph Marchell started Old Brown Dog Veterinary Partners (OBDVP) after identifying a unique opportunity to do a rollup of family-owned animal hospitals.
Marchell acquired three practices for around ten times EBITDA. He then implemented a streamlined operational strategy that resulted in the sale of OBDVP less than two years later for almost three times the purchase price.
In 2015 Nick Santora founded Curricula, a cyber security awareness training program that helps companies defend themselves against hackers. Santora created fun, cartoon training videos in contrast to the dull content that existed at the time.
Companies happily embraced Santora’s approach. By 2021 he had grown Curricula to just over $2 million in annual recurring revenue when he accepted an acquisition offer from the cyber security giant Huntress for $22 million.
In 2008, Gavin Hammar started Sendible, a platform that allows companies to manage all their social media accounts from one place.
The company grew steadily until 2016, when Hammar hit a sales plateau. Challenged to combat a high churn rate, Hammar took several unique steps to humanize his business.
Becoming a more approachable brand worked. Sales increased by 30% year-over-year and by 2021, Sendible had 47 employees when they were approached by ASG with an acquisition offer Hammar couldn't refuse.
U.K.-based Nathan Winch started his career as a private equity investor after selling his first company, Winch Pharma, in 2017.
Since then, Winch has acquired over 20 businesses, with a focus on logistics and infrastructure companies. In the latest installment of Built to Sell Radio’s Inside the Mind of an Acquirer series, you’ll learn how to:
- Understand how an investor structures an acquisition.
- Build your management team to avoid an earn-out.
- Dodge the most common blunder made during due diligence.
- Avoid turning off an acquirer during the selling process.
- Prepare your company to be acquired.
In 2014 Tim Grassin founded Candy Banners, which designs ads that show up along the top, bottom, and sides of a website.
Grassin built a remote team in the Philippines to minimize his costs. Hiring inexpensive developers allowed Grassin to charge lower rates to agency owners, resulting in rapid growth.
The business had grown to over seven figures in revenue in 2020 when Grassin received an acquisition offer from one of his clients, Native Touch. The offer valued Candy Banners at around five times EBITDA, and the deal closed in 2021.
In 2015 Mike Winnet started U.K.-based Learning Heroes after recognizing that most e-learning programs were long and boring. Winnet saw an opportunity to transform the industry by creating short, engaging, animated training courses.
Winnet started by trying to sell his courses to job seekers, but when his efforts failed, he pivoted to selling to companies. Instead of a few hundred dollars a year from job seekers, selling to companies meant he was getting a few thousand dollars a year.
The switch from B2C to B2B worked, and in less than three years, Winnet grew his company to around £2 million in annual recurring revenue, which was when he was approached by Litmos, a learning management software provider. Winnet sold Learning Heroes to Litmos for approximately four times revenue.
In 2015 Mike Winnet started U.K.-based Learning Heroes after recognizing that most e-learning programs were long and boring. Winnet saw an opportunity to transform the industry by creating short, engaging, animated training courses.
Winnet started by trying to sell his courses to job seekers, but when his efforts failed, he pivoted to selling to companies. Instead of a few hundred dollars a year from job seekers, selling to companies meant he was getting a few thousand dollars a year.
The switch from B2C to B2B worked, and in less than three years, Winnet grew his company to around £2 million in annual recurring revenue, which was when he was approached by Litmos, a learning management software provider. Winnet sold Learning Heroes to Litmos for approximately four times revenue.
In 2013 South African entrepreneur Jason Bagley started Firing Squad, a lead generation company specializing in cold emails.
In 2020 Firing Squad signed an agreement to be acquired by Southern Web and was later rebranded to SiteCare.
The deal was something Bagley would later come to regret.
In 2013 South African entrepreneur Jason Bagley started Firing Squad, a lead generation company specializing in cold emails.
In 2020 Firing Squad signed an agreement to be acquired by Southern Web and was later rebranded to SiteCare.
The deal was something Bagley would later come to regret.
In 2012, Patrick Campbell founded ProfitWell to help SaaS companies increase revenue and reduce churn by managing their data in a single place.
After bootstrapping the business to 8-figures, Campbell decided it was time to raise money. While seeking a financial investor, Paddle approached him with an acquisition offer. Soon after, in 2022, Campbell sold ProfitWell to Paddle for over $200 million.
In 2012, Patrick Campbell founded ProfitWell to help SaaS companies increase revenue and reduce churn by managing their data in a single place.
After bootstrapping the business to 8-figures, Campbell decided it was time to raise money. While seeking a financial investor, Paddle approached him with an acquisition offer. Soon after, in 2022, Campbell sold ProfitWell to Paddle for over $200 million.
Ed Buckley started Peerfit, which allows companies to offer fitness classes as part of their employee benefits package. The company grew to more than 150 employees before receiving an acquisition offer for almost $100 million from a major fitness brand widely reported to be Peloton. As part of the deal, Buckley retained some of the IP, which, in a strange twist, he was able to sell in another eight-figure exit months later.
Ed Buckley started Peerfit, which allows companies to offer fitness classes as part of their employee benefits package. The company grew to more than 150 employees before receiving an acquisition offer for almost $100 million from a major fitness brand widely reported to be Peloton. As part of the deal, Buckley retained some of the IP, which, in a strange twist, he was able to sell in another eight-figure exit months later.
In 2012, Ryan Coon started Rentalutions, a platform to help landlords manage and communicate with their tenants more effectively.
The business showed steady growth, but Coon wasn’t satisfied.
Five years in, Coon rebranded the company to Avail and focused his marketing to target DIY landlords with under ten rental units to manage. The changes proved successful as Coon grew the business to around $7 million in revenue before selling to Realtor.com in 2020 for approximately five times revenue.
In 2012, Ryan Coon started Rentalutions, a platform to help landlords manage and communicate with their tenants more effectively.
The business showed steady growth, but Coon wasn’t satisfied.
Five years in, Coon rebranded the company to Avail and focused his marketing to target DIY landlords with under ten rental units to manage. The changes proved successful as Coon grew the business to around $7 million in revenue before selling to Realtor.com in 2020 for approximately five times revenue.
When Jodie Cook started her social media agency, nothing happened without her involvement.
Desperate to free herself up from the minutia of running her company, Cook started to systematize her business with Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). After a few missteps, Cook mastered the art of delegation.
When Jodie Cook started her social media agency, nothing happened without her involvement.
Desperate to free herself up from the minutia of running her company, Cook started to systematize her business with Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). After a few missteps, Cook mastered the art of delegation.
In 2016, Ryan Kulp launched Fomo because he saw marketers using aggressive popups on their websites.
Kulp reasoned that if he could show other people were shopping and interacting with a site, it would give new visitors confidence in the company.
Fomo allows businesses to show off real-time customer interactions (purchases, opt-ins, even pageviews) with a line of code the company installs on their site.
Kulp led Fomo to around $1 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) before deciding to step down as CEO in 2020. Two years later, an acquirer approached Kulp about acquiring Fomo. Initially, he wasn't interested, but after some soul-searching, Kulp decided to sell Fomo to Relay Commerce in a lucrative exit.
The economy has been a roller-coaster over the last quarter.
In this special episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow reveals the downside of trying to time the market and shares four alternative ways to know when to sell.
The economy has been a roller-coaster over the last quarter.
In this special episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow reveals the downside of trying to time the market and shares four alternative ways to know when to sell.
Rory Fatt began his entrepreneurial journey running marketing seminars for restauranteurs. After several owners approached Fatt to do their marketing for them, he decided to launch Royalty Rewards in 2005.
The business was a multimedia marketing platform that helped small businesses market their products and services by rewarding loyal customers. The company took off, hitting just over $2 million in revenue in its first year.
Inspired to achieve financial freedom, Fatt began to explore selling his company. In 2022, he accepted an offer from Schianti Partners that would set his family up for life.
Jeremy Nagel started his entrepreneurial career teaching clients how to get the most out of Zoho, a popular CRM platform. Nagel began cultivating a small following on YouTube by sharing his advice for Zoho enthusiasts.
Given his status in their ecosystem, Zoho approached Nagel about creating an SMS plug-in for their application to allow users to text their clients while using Zoho. Nagel developed the application while keeping his day job. Despite only dedicating one or two days a week to its growth, the feature quickly became one of the top five applications in the Zoho marketplace.
Two years later, Nagel received a LinkedIn message from the head of corporate development at MessageMedia with a lucrative exit offer he could not refuse.
Jeremy Nagel started his entrepreneurial career teaching clients how to get the most out of Zoho, a popular CRM platform. Nagel began cultivating a small following on YouTube by sharing his advice for Zoho enthusiasts.
Given his status in their ecosystem, Zoho approached Nagel about creating an SMS plug-in for their application to allow users to text their clients while using Zoho. Nagel developed the application while keeping his day job. Despite only dedicating one or two days a week to its growth, the feature quickly became one of the top five applications in the Zoho marketplace.
Two years later, Nagel received a LinkedIn message from the head of corporate development at MessageMedia with a lucrative exit offer he could not refuse.
Touraj Parang has experienced the highs and lows of selling a company.
In 2009, Parang sold his first company, Jaxtr, for pennies on the dollar. He took the lessons he learned and joined Webs.com, where he helped Haroon Mokhtazarda sell his company for over $115 million.
Parang left Webs.com and joined GoDaddy as a leader in their acquisitions group, where they acquired dozens of companies during his tenure.
In the latest installment of Inside the Mind of An Acquirer, Parang shares how companies like GoDaddy acquire companies.
Ten years ago, Timo Armoo was on a flight from his home country of Ghana on his way to live in a council flat in one of the U.K.'s poorest neighborhoods.
Motivated to live a better life, Armoo started Fanbytes, an influencer marketing agency dedicated to connecting brands with social media influencers.
The company took off.
Fanbytes reached 65 employees and hit revenues of 8-figures when he decided to sell the company to Brainlabs for around 3X revenue.
In 2015, Lorenzo de Plano co-founded Solace Technologies, one of the first vape manufacturers in the United States. The goal of the business was to create a discreet vape pen that customers could use as an alternative to smoking cigarettes.
The business boomed to revenue of more than one million dollars a month, but a looming threat had de Plano eyeing an exit. So, when a $15 million offer came in, he bit.
In 2007, Laura Roeder started selling online courses on how to market through social media. Her courses gained popularity, resulting in Roeder growing an email list of around 70,000 people. Inspired to further serve her customers, she decided to create social media scheduling software.
It was one of the first social media planning tools that allowed you to schedule your social media content. Piggy backing off the list she had built from her online course business, the company hit $1 million in recurring revenue in only 11 months.
In 2009, Raman Sehgal started a small marketing company called ramarketing. In 2015, frustrated with the company’s progress, Sehgal decided to analyze his business.
That’s when he discovered something interesting.
Ramarketing’s most valuable customers (low-maintenance, sticky, high gross margin etc.) were in the pharmaceutical industry. Sehgal immediately pivoted the company to solely serve clients in the pharmaceutical supply chain.
Focusing on big pharma worked. Ramarketing grew from $500,000 in revenue in 2015 to around $10 million by 2022, which is when Sehgal accepted an acquisition offer from NorthEdge Capital of more than 10X EBITDA.
In 2001, Haroon Mokhtarzada and his brothers started Webs.com, which allowed anyone to build a professional website. Eager to grow the company, they decided to raise money from a venture capital firm – a decision Mokhtarzada would later regret.
They ultimately grew Webs.com to over 50 million users and sold it in 2011 to Vistaprint for over 10 x revenue, totaling $117.5 million.
Hungry to start another company and learn from their mistakes in raising money for Webs.com, Haroon and his brothers began Truebill in 2015. The business was created to help people save money by managing their subscriptions from one platform.
Truebill snowballed, reaching $100 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in just seven years. In 2022, Truebill was acquired by Rocket Companies – again, for over 10 x revenue, totaling $1.275 billion.
In 1988, Tony Falkenstein started Just Life Group, one of the first water-cooler companies in New Zealand.
In 2016, Falkenstein identified the need to diversify into new service offerings and opted to start acquiring companies. Since then, Falkenstein has acquired six businesses, aligning with their overall focus of enhancing lives through healthy living and healthy homes.
Just Life Group is a publicly-traded company with a current market cap of $46.799M as of June 9, 2022.
In 2015 Josh Davis and a friend, Darryl Ee, decided to start Speedee Transport, a trucking company specializing in shipping products that need to be refrigerated.
Within three years of starting the business, they had grown from two to over forty-five employees, and an acquirer approached them. This kicked off an emotionally draining—and financially rewarding—journey to sell Speedee. In this episode, you’ll discover how to:
In 2017, John Whiting started Digital Kryptonite with the goal to provide business owners with more leads. Helping his clients mine LinkedIn, Whiting quickly grew his company from zero to seven figures within a year. The company was seeing massive growth month-over-month when suddenly Whiting received a message from his credit card processor that his account was being shut down.
In 2019, Jonathan Shroyer, alongside his Co-Founder Scott McCabe, started Officium Labs with the goal to help clients turn contact centers into profit centers.
After two years of seeing incredible growth, Jonathan was approached by three investors to acquire Officium Labs. Shroyer ultimately ended up selling to Arise for around 20X EBITDA.
What every owner should take away from Elon Musk's decision to press pause.
Enjoy this special edition of Built To Sell Radio.
Eddie Whittingham started a company called The Defense Works in 2016. His idea was to provide companies with information on how to avoid getting hacked. Whittingham created a series of animated video clips explaining cyber security best practices and offered his content on a subscription model to companies.
By 2020, Whittingham had bootstrapped his business to 8 full-time employees when he attracted an offer of 7 times revenue from Proofpoint, one of the largest players in the cyber security industry. Whittingham got Proofpoint up to 10 times revenue and agreed to the deal.
In 2016, James Ashford took what little was left after his business failed and invested £4,000 in developing proposal software for accountants which he named GoProposal. By 2020, GoProposal was a slick application with £1.5 million in revenue and hundreds of accountants using it. That’s when Ashford agreed to be acquired for a healthy 8-figure sum.
James Ashford had a burning drive to become an entrepreneur and start a successful business. After a failed attempt to grow a marketing agency, Ashford knew that to build the business he had always dreamed of, he needed to make some drastic changes.
In 2016, Ashford took what little was left after his business failed and invested £ 4,000 in developing proposal software for accountants which he named GoProposal. By 2020, GoProposal was a slick application with £1.5 million in revenue and hundreds of accountants using it. That’s when Ashford agreed to be acquired for a healthy 8-figure sum.
Paul Nielsen built HomeTech, a company focused on creating healthier homes by installing skylights for natural lighting and advanced systems for better air quality. The business was generating around $1.4 million in EBITDA when an industry competitor approached Nielsen about acquiring HomeTech.
This week, we’re featuring four recent guests and highlighting transferrable lessons they shared about exiting their company.
After graduating from business school, James Benham interned at one of the large accounting firms. Benham quickly realized corporate life was not for him. Instead, Benham started a business and lived on less money than he made as an intern for ten years.
In 2019, Ben Tossell was a frustrated entrepreneur, launching products nobody bought. His contacts showed little interest in his concepts but were curious about how he built his online offerings – especially because Tossell admitted he didn’t know how to code.
Anna Maste built Boondockers Welcome, a kind of Airbnb for RVers, to $100,000 in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) when she received an offer of 3.9 times ARR. Maste was about to accept the offer when some soul searching led Maste to believe she could do much better. That kicked off a two-year journey of building the value of her business.
Imagine turning your expertise into an 8-figure exit. That’s exactly what Sue Bryce did. Bryce built a $1 million photography studio in an industry where owners are often limited to low six-figure businesses that are dependent on them.
Imagine turning your expertise into an 8-figure exit. That’s exactly what Sue Bryce did. Bryce built a $1 million photography studio in an industry where owners are often limited to low six-figure businesses that are dependent on them.
This week, we're back with the latest Intel edition of Built to Sell Radio.
We feature four recent guests and dissect what made their companies built to sell.
Calvin Johnson built Lykki, an office supply company, to more than $7 million in annual revenue.
Johnson had two divisions, one had office kitchen supplies (e.g., coffee), and the other sold office supplies. The kitchen supplies business was more attractive to acquirers than the office supplies side, so Johnson decided to separate the divisions and sell them separately.
Calvin Johnson built Lykki, an office supply company, to more than $7 million in annual revenue.
Johnson had two divisions, one had office kitchen supplies (e.g., coffee), and the other sold office supplies. The kitchen supplies business was more attractive to acquirers than the office supplies side, so Johnson decided to separate the divisions and sell them separately.
Robert Glazer started an affiliate marketing agency called Acceleration Partners in 2007. Glazer never took outside capital and grew Acceleration to almost $28 million in sales before he sold a majority interest to Mountaingate Capital in 2020.
Robert Glazer started an affiliate marketing agency called Acceleration Partners in 2007. Glazer never took outside capital and grew Acceleration to almost $28 million in sales before he sold a majority interest to Mountaingate Capital in 2020.
Sandy Hansen-Wolff was a newlywed when her husband of only a few months, Randy Hansen, was diagnosed with leukemia. The doctors told Randy that one in four patients in his position succumbed to the disease. The couple scrambled to deal with the diagnosis and what would happen to Randy's feed business, which was generating revenue of around $1 million, if he were to pass.
Randy died a few months later, leaving Sandy with little more than a handwritten list of his assets, including a heavily leveraged business.
Melissa Kwan and her co-founder built Spacio, a company that helped real estate agents win and manage leads that come from hosting open houses.
Kwan built the company to roughly 100,000 agents using Spacio when a chance encounter at an industry conference led to an acquisition offer from HomeSpotter.
Melissa Kwan and her co-founder built Spacio, a company that helped real estate agents win and manage leads that come from hosting open houses.
Kwan built the company to roughly 100,000 agents using Spacio when a chance encounter at an industry conference led to an acquisition offer from HomeSpotter.
In 2013, Kate Field started The Kombucha Shop offering home-brew kits that people can use to make kombucha.
By 2018, the kombucha craze was in full swing and Field was invited to pitch her business on Shark Tank. Field asked for $350,000 in return for 10% of her company which was generating around $1.2 million per year selling kombucha kits. Field got an offer for $200,000 in cash and another $150,000 line of credit in return for 10% of her company from Barbara Corcoran and Sara Blakely, the Spanx founder who was a guest Shark that day.
Despite her success on television, a series of surprising events led Field to walk away from the Shark’s offer and sell The Kombucha Shop the following year. This episode is a raw account of the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial journey.
David Darmanin co-founded Hotjar, a software company that helps website developers and owners understand how their users interact with the sites they build.
Darmanin and his partners bootstrapped Hotjar to around $40 million in Annual Recurring Revenue before selling it in 2021.
David Perry co-founded Gaikai, a video game company that enables popular games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty to be played on just about any device.
Perry raised $50 million through three rounds of funding and sold Gaikai for $380 million to Sony.
Anthony Fracchia built Altruis Benefit Consulting to $2.5 million in revenue when he started to get unsolicited calls from potential buyers. He initiated conversations with an acquirer only to learn they planned to gut his staff and kill his brand.
Rafael Zimberoff built ShipRush, an application that helps businesses streamline their technology, to 12 full-time employees when he sold it to Descartes for $14 million, plus a $3 million earn-out.
This week’s episode of Built to Sell Radio is the Intel edition. We focus on four recent guests and highlight the strategies that made their companies built to sell.
In 2013, Jon Claydon started Streamline Marketing to help brands manage their affiliate programs. Claydon bootstrapped his business to around 30 employees but avoided hiring for some senior roles in favor of doing much of the work himself.
Prantik Mazumdar and his business partner Rachit Dayal built Happy Marketer, a digital marketing agency, to more than $10 million in annual revenue before they decided to sell to Dentsu Aegis Network. Mazumdar and Dayal agreed to sell for around 7 times EBITDA, 40% of which was paid up front with the remainder available in a four-year earn-out tied to the future profitability of Happy Marketer.
Josh Delaney started FAB CBD, a CBD e-tailer, in 2017. Delaney's Mom was his first customer, but his sales quickly went beyond family members. By 2020, through a combination of savvy marketing and good fortune, FAB CBD had risen to more than $10 million in annual sales. In early 2021, Delaney caught the attention of High Tide, a Calgary-based cannabis company that offered him $13 million in cash plus $8 million High Tide shares in return for 80% of FAB CBD (an implied valuation of $25.8 million).
Ben Kellie got his start in the aerospace industry, helping Elon Musk figure out how to get his rockets to land on a floating barge without blowing up.
In 2015, Kellie left SpaceX to start The Launch Company, where they supply hardware parts and consulting to a growing list of new aerospace companies like SpaceX. Less than five years after starting, Kellie was approached by Voyager Space, a private equity-backed group rolling up new space companies.
Kevin Waldron built Olympic Restoration, a disaster recovery business, to $24 million in annual sales before he decided to sell. Helping homeowners clean up from a fire or a flood was a good business, but after 17 years, Waldron was tired of fighting with insurance companies over claims.
Nick Leighton started a marketing agency called NettResults with the idea of helping technology companies access consumers in the Middle East. Based in Dubai, Leighton built NettResults to around $2 million in revenue when he decided to sell.
Leighton attracted a number of offers including one from a much larger agency that wanted an office in the Middle East.
Leona Watson started Cheeky Food Events, where they offered companies cooking lessons as a team-building activity.
Over 17 years, Watson produced 3,000 events for more than 85,000 people. Watson hit $3 million in sales when she realized it was time for her to start thinking differently about her business.
With Built to Sell Radio, you’ve grown accustomed to hearing entrepreneur exit stories from A to Z, but this week’s episode is a little different. We tease out four transferrable lessons from the latest batch of guests.
Arleen & Ted Taveras had been growing their insurance consultancy for twenty years when they received an unsolicited acquisition offer for 12.5 times EBITDA.
It was a tempting offer from an industry stalwart, but Arleen & Ted wondered if they might be leaving money on the table.
Back in 1998, siblings Pete and Alexa Ingram-Cauchi started iD Tech to offer summer camps for kids who wanted to learn about computers.
The business grew each year and by 2019, was generating $70 million in annual sales hosting camps from Stanford to MIT and beyond.
Jay Gould co-founded Yashi, a platform that helped advertisers buy ads on video content. Yashi grew to more than $25 million in revenue and more than $5 million in EBITDA when Gould received an offer of $33 million from Nexstar Broadcasting. The offer represented around 6 x EBITDA and Gould was conflicted. He knew he could probably get more, but he had also seen how quickly a successful company can go to zero.
Andy Cabasso co-founded JurisPage, a marketing agency specializing in helping law firms in 2013.
Three years later, JurisPage had service contracts with more than 200 law firms when they got a call from Uptime Legal, an Inc. 5000 business specializing in technology and practice management software for law firms.
Mehul Sheth started VMS Aircraft in 1995 with a plan to sell spare parts to airlines. Sheth had just $25,000 to invest in inventory, so VMS got off to a modest start. However, by 2016 Sheth had crested $8 million in revenue. VMS counted some of the largest airlines in the world as customers.
Paul J. Farrell built Nehemiah Security, a software company that helped organizations understand and calculate the risks associated with a cyber-attack.
In just two years, the business grew to around $1.2 in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) despite sales cycles of up to nine months.
Back in 2006, Michael Kaplan and his partners bought into a Zerorez Carpet and Living Surfaces Care franchise. The business was generating $300,000 in revenue and losing $40,000 a year.
By 2019, the company was generating $17 million in revenue when Kaplan and his partner had an irreconcilable dust-up which led to Kaplan triggering their shotgun partnership agreement.
In 2017, Justin Adams co-founded Digitize.AI to help hospitals get paid. They used artificial intelligence to get medical treatments pre-approved by insurance companies ensuring their patients could pay their medical bills.
The business was hungry for cash, and Adams and his wife put everything their young family had into the idea. At one point, Adams was so short of money that when their clothes dryer broke, the Adams family started hanging their laundry because they couldn’t afford the repair.
Cheryl Contee co-founded Attentive.ly along with Rosalyn Lemieux. Together, the partners offered a Software as a Service (SaaS) app that helped non-for-profit organizations perform “social listening”. Their offering was used by organizations to identify and drive engagement among their influencers.
By now, you're accustomed to hearing John Warrillow ask the tough questions.
Every month, we turn the tables and grill John on his favorite anecdotes and transferrable lessons from the latest batch of guests on Built to Sell Radio. In this episode, Dr. Jeremy Weisz gets John to reflect on what stood out, any missed opportunities, and how each story imparts the Built to Sell Methodology.
Michèle Hecken built Alpha Translations up to $4.4 Million (USD) in revenue and almost a million dollars in EBITDA before she sold it in 2019 for $6 million cash (6.7 x normalized EBITDA).
It was a fantastic exit for Hecken who got her start in University translating legal contracts from German to English.
In 1994, Robert Hartline started selling phones in the back of his car. By 2019, he had built Absolute Wireless into a chain of 56 wireless stores and 350 employees.
Hartline was able to systematize his business while he grew by creating employee onboarding videos and delegating key processes.
Like many young couples, Ben & Ariel Zvaifler got a puppy and found themselves trying to figure out how to train it. They wondered what toys were safe and what kind of food to give to their brand-new puppy.
The couple figured they weren't alone and decided to launch PupBox, a subscription box for new puppy owners that offered owners training guides, treats, and toys for puppies appropriate for their age and stage of development.
Nick Huber was a track star at Cornell when he fielded a call from a parent that would change his life. A fellow student needed to store their stuff over the summer, and Huber was offered money to pick up his classmate’s stuff and keep it until the fall. Huber realized that other students who lived out-of-state might need a similar service, and Storage Squad was born.
On this month's episode of Built to Sell Intel, John will be sharing key insights from the latest group of entrepreneurs interviewed on Built to Sell Radio.
John recaps his favorite anecdotes in this monthly live broadcast, highlighting helpful strategies and transferable lessons.
Cary Moretti is the founder of NewSportMedia, an IT consulting company that does work with sports leagues. Along the way, Moretti created a software application called LeagueStat. The app helped hockey leagues like the AHL and CHL provide fans, journalists, parents, and scouts with real-time statistics on their favorite teams.
Dr. Kristin Kahle helps businesses pick a benefits program for their employees.
She started three insurance agencies and the first two were service businesses that sold for a modest 1.5-2 times EBITDA.
With her third business, Kahle wanted to attract a higher multiple, so she decided to transform it into a technology company.
In 2011, Jodie Cook started an eponymously named social media agency, JC Social Media. Over the next nine years, Cook built the business up to 16 employees. Then, she decided to sell at the end of 2020 and thought her company could be worth in the 5-7 times EBITDA range.
Along with three friends, Sebastian Johnston co-founded TheAmazeApp in 2014. The idea was based on a simple idea. Social media influencers could upload a picture of what they were wearing and tag the clothing on TheAmazeApp’s database of e-commerce retailers. Then, when one of their followers purchased the item, TheAmazeApp would receive a commission they shared with the influencer.
Eytan Wiener started Quantum Networks as a simple Amazon Reseller of technology gadgets. The business model was basic. Resell a semi-known brand’s product on Amazon, or source a device people wanted in China and resell it on Amazon at a slim margin.
This past month, we've interviewed four riveting guests on Built to Sell Radio.
John shares the transferable lessons on Built to Sell Intel, a monthly live webinar hosted for our listeners.
In this 1-hour, jam-packed session, we’ll be discussing:
- How Ben Leonard’s 95% sales channel dependency on Amazon cut Beast Gear’s valuation.
- The danger in being “too committed to the deal” and how this affected Marc Elkman’s sale of Fresh Meal Plan.
- How Wes Mathew’s doubled an offer without turning off the acquirer.
- Mike Agugliaro’s strategy to save his business partner from quitting which helped increase revenue from $700,000 to $32 million.
Carrie and Dave Kerpen started Likeable Media, a social media agency, in 2006.
The business grew to more than 50 employees when the couple met for their annual partner's retreat. The Kerpens realized their business had blossomed into a big success which they estimated was close to 90% of their net worth.
Shawn Finder built email marketing platform Autoklose to $1 million in revenue when a chance encounter at a conference led to an acquisition conversation with VanillaSoft. Finder thought his company was worth much more initially than VanillaSoft did – their valuations were quite far apart and both sides had to negotiate to ultimately meet in the middle.
Mike Agugliaro is an electrician by trade and over 12 years built Gold Medal Service to around $700,000 in revenue with his partner Rob Zadotti.
The days were long, which was one reason Zadotti decided to quit.
Agugliaro took a few days to consider how things had gotten so bad. He realized they had been making a lot of mistakes and knew they could do better. Agugliaro convinced his partner that if he would stay, they could build a better company together.
Zadotti agreed, and that kicked off a journey that would see Agugliaro and Zadotti build Gold Medal Service into a $32 million company with double digital profit margins.
Marc Elkman built Fresh Meal Plan, a meal delivery service for healthy eaters, from an idea to $20 million in annual revenue in just three years.
Still in his twenties, Elkman earned a # 70 spot on the Inc 500 list of fastest-growing companies in America. Then he caught the attention of New Heights Capital, a private equity group focused on the fitness industry. New Heights acquired the controlling interest in Fresh Meal Plan in 2016 and Elkman continues to hold a minority stake.
Over the last month, we've interviewed four fascinating guests on Built to Sell Radio.
John Warrillow shares the transferable lessons with you on Built to Sell Intel, a monthly live webinar hosted for our listeners.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz hosts this Q&A and asks for John's take on four successful exits.
Wes Mathews built High Level Marketing, a digital advertising agency, to $6.5 million in annual revenue. The business was thriving, but when COVID hit, Mathews started to question the risk he was shouldering employing 49 people. It was around that time that Mathews received an email that would change his life forever.
This week on the show, we tried something a little different.
Instead of interviewing an owner about their exit, we canvassed founders for their questions about building to sell and asked the host of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow, to answer them.
In this episode, John draws on his experience interviewing more than 300 founders on Built to Sell Radio to answer five essential questions.
Ben Leonard is a fitness enthusiast who found himself in bed with a heart problem in his early 20's (he's fit and healthy now). His doctors told him to rest. Said not to go to the gym, he cleared out his bag and noticed some of the accessories he used had worn out prematurely.
The experience sparked an idea. Leonard decided to launch a brand of fitness accessories made to last longer and cost less than the alternatives. He named his fledging company Beast Gear.
James Prebble co-founded Palladium Digital, a consultancy helping companies think about their digital strategy.
The company experimented with various business models until they landed on helping private equity groups get a return on their investments. Private equity groups hired Palladium to perform "digital due diligence" before they invested. Along with identifying any flaws in a target company's digital strategy, Prebble and his team were also asked to identify any untapped digital assets that, if adequately exploited, had the potential to transform the business being considered for investment. Discovering these so-called "Rembrandts in the attic" is what private equity groups often look for to jack up their return on investing in your business.
Andrew Gazdecki was born in Detroit and lost his father as a young boy. He and his Mom grew up using food stamps. In College, Gazdecki created an online marketplace for freelancers (think a tiny version of UpWork). He sold his online marketplace for $50,000 and said it "felt like a trillion dollars" at the time.
Back in 2013, on the heels of building a successful online dating application, Darrell Lerner decided to apply his experience in the dating industry to pet adoption. He built a website and mobile app called AllPaws which allows users to find a pet based on a variety of criteria important to people considering adopting an animal.
Jim Estill is one of the most successful entrepreneurs you've probably never heard of.
In 1975, Estill started EMJ Data, a technology distribution company, from the trunk of his car and grew it to $350 million in sales before taking it public.
Henry Hyder-Smith and Steve Denner started UK-based Adestra in 2004. Adestra is a digital marketing software that helps big companies handle email campaigns, among other things.
The company grew nicely. By 2016, it had around $9 million in revenue and a client list that featured some of the U.K.'s best companies. Hyder-Smith and Denner decided it was time to go beyond their borders and enter the U.S. and Asian markets. To fund the effort, they raised $7.2 million from the Business Growth Fund (BGF), one of the U.K.'s largest private equity groups. BGF's investment valued Adestra at around $35 million — a little shy of four times revenue.
Before Zoom, when you wanted to meet with a group of people remotely, you used a teleconferencing service. If you lived in Canada during the early 2000s, you probably used one of Frank Cianciulli's lines.
These days, you're just as likely to watch a football game on a mobile phone as you are on an old-school TV. The technology that enables you to watch your favorite show on whatever device you have handy was made possible by Jason Flick. Flick co-founded a company called You.i TV with a vision to "own the glass." He struck deals to provide the user interface, which enabled content to be viewed across devices with the likes of the NFL, NBA, and just about anyone else who produces original content.
In 2014, Adii Pienaar started an email marketing platform for retailers, which became Conversio. By 2019, Pienaar had $2 million in revenue and 14 employees.
In 2004, Cesar Quintero started Fit2Go, a meal delivery service in Miami. The business delivered healthy meals to office workers in South Florida, and by 2017, Fit2Go was earning 12% profit on $3 million in revenue. That’s when Quintero decided to sell half of his business based on a four times EBITDA valuation.
Mike Malatesta built Advanced Waste Services, a company that helped businesses dispose of their industrial waste, to $45 million in annual sales before a fateful lunch changed his life forever. It was with a division president of Covanta (NYSE: CVA) who saw acquiring Malatesta's company as the perfect way to enter the industrial waste industry.
Despite starting with just $10,000 in 2004, Jon Morris built Rise Interactive, a digital marketing agency, to more than 100 employees before deciding to sell part of the business to Quad, a global marketing services provider.
At age 36, Greg Alexander decided to start Sales Benchmark Index (SBI), a sales consultancy. Over the next eleven years, Alexander built the business to 30 employees who collectively generated about $30 million in consulting fees per year.
Pete Martin built EntryPoint Consulting to 34 employees when he sold it to KPMG for a staggering 12 times earnings — without an earn-out.
Jack Rivlin co-founded The Tab, a U.K. based media company that published digital campus newspapers across the U.K.
After ten years, The Tab had earned almost 6 million unique visitors and raised $10 million of capital from the likes of investors, including Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Things were looking up for The Tab, but when an attempt to crack the U.S. market failed, things started to unravel.
Ryan Daniel Moran built Sheer Strength, a supplements business, up to a run rate of around $10 million per year when he decided it was time to sell.
Saud Juman built PolicyMedical, a company enabling hospitals to document their procedures and policies, into a software company growing 100% a year when he sold it for 7.2 times revenue. It was a remarkable exit for a business Juman started in his mother’s basement.
Tyler Jefcoat co-founded Care to Continue, which provides in-home care for seniors, in 2012. Jefcoat built the company to more than 100 employees when he got an offer from a private equity group for more than five times EBITDA. Jefcoat was thrilled. The only problem? His partner wasn't ready to sell, which kicked off an acrimonious battle ending with Jefcoat selling his shares back to his partner.
Todd Kaufman and his partner Justin Searls started Test Double, a custom software development company, in 2011. The business was a success from the start and grew more than 25% a year. By 2019, Kaufman and Searls were generating more than $10 million in annual revenue and putting more than $3 million to the bottom line each year. An outside valuation consultant suggested if they ever wanted to sell, Kaufman and Searls could get around 6.5 times profit for their business or around $20 million.
In 2002, Lee Richter and her husband bought Montclair Veterinary Hospital in Northern California. Californians were embracing alternative medicine, and the Richter’s wondered if their affluent customers would invest in holistic therapies for their pets.
Mark Timm built Cottage Garden, a company selling decorative music boxes, to $8 million in revenue and around $1 million in EBITDA when he decided to sell it.
Timm sold the business for around 4.5 times EBITDA. He got half of his cash up front, with the other half paid over a five-year earn-out. Timm not only stayed for his earn-out, but when the acquirer decided to move the offices of Cottage Garden, Timm agreed to repurchase the business, only to sell it two years later, for a second time.
If you're feeling exhausted from running your company, you can take a little solace from Michael G. Dash. Dash built Parallel HR Solutions, a staffing company, up to around $5 million in revenue with clients like Overstock.com, Goldman Sachs, and Discover Channel.
If you're feeling exhausted from running your company, you can take a little solace from Michael G. Dash. Dash built Parallel HR Solutions, a staffing company, up to around $5 million in revenue with clients like Overstock.com, Goldman Sachs, and Discover
Rob Walling started an email service provider named Drip back in 2012. Walling bootstrapped his growth to almost $2 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) when, in 2015, Clay Collins, the founder of Leadpages, came knocking.
Stephen V. Smith built WordSouth, a marketing communication agency to 30 employees before a rare condition landed him in the Intensive Care Unit of his local hospital for seven weeks. Close to death, Smith gathered his team and began the heart-wrenching process of delegating his business's critical pieces to trusted employees. Little did he know at the time, that decision would be an essential element of building a sellable company.
Stephen V. Smith built WordSouth, a marketing communication agency to 30 employees before a rare condition landed him in the Intensive Care Unit of his local hospital for seven weeks. Close to death, Smith gathered his team and began the heart-wrenching process of delegating his business's critical pieces to trusted employees. Little did he know at the time, that decision would be an essential element of building a sellable company.
In 2015, Nathan Hirsch and his partner started FreeUp.com, an online marketplace of virtual assistants. Four years later, Hirsch and his partner were billing more than $12 million when they received an acquisition offer from a customer they couldn’t refuse.
In 2001, Adam Torres started Team Dynamix, a software used by colleges and universities to keep their IT department organized.
David Jondreau built American Sign Language, a company that supplied interpreters on contract, to $2 million in annual revenue when he decided it was time to sell.
Tom Farinacci built Houston Green Leaf up to 35 employees when he solid it to Grounds Control, a national landscaping company, for around four times EBITDA.
Tom Farinacci built Houston Green Leaf up to 35 employees when he solid it to Grounds Control, a national landscaping company, for around four times EBITDA.
Kim Walsh-Phillips founded Elite Digital Group, a marketing agency for clients looking to leverage social media. Walsh-Phillips built her firm to $3.2 million in revenue, but she got stuck when she reached 30 clients.
Kim Walsh-Phillips founded Elite Digital Group, a marketing agency for clients looking to leverage social media. Walsh-Phillips built her firm to $3.2 million in revenue, but she got stuck when she reached 30 clients.
Kim Walsh-Phillips founded Elite Digital Group, a marketing agency for clients looking to leverage social media. Walsh-Phillips built her firm to $3.2 million in revenue, but she got stuck when she reached 30 clients.
Gary Nealon started selling ready-to-assemble kitchen cabinets under the RTA Cabinet Store brand. It was around the time HGTV was taking off on a steady diet of home improvement shows. Nealon was contacted by one of the show's producers who had a last-minute request for a shoot where they needed kitchen cabinets. Nealon scrambled his team and delivered.
Peter Carlin started Logicearth to improve how companies teach their employees online. They built e-learning courses that were almost as good as being there in person. They caught the attention of a marketing agency called The Creative Engagement Group (TCEG), which had clients that needed online courses.
Alex Rink built 360pi, a software application that provided online retailers with competitive pricing information.
360pi grew into a multi-million-dollar company with 40 employees when Rink began hearing his business might be worth as much as 3-6 times revenue.
Jonathan Evans was an air ambulance helicopter pilot when he started to think about how drones could safely navigate the sky around him. Commercial pilots had rules of the sky, but there were no guidelines for drones despite companies from Amazon to Walmart beginning to experiment with using drones.
It’s a big week at Built to Sell Radio as we celebrate our 250th episode. That’s 250 entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, and owners who have shared their stories and their time over the last 5 years.
To mark the event, Built to Sell Radio’s producer, Shawn McDonald, takes over the mic to highlight insights from some of the most talked-about, most popular, and most memorable episodes from the course of the show.
Back in 2007, Aric Bandy saw Google investing heavily to compete with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and so decided to pivot his company, Agosto. Instead of offering general IT consulting, Bandy focused on helping clients move their businesses online using something Alphabet calls the Google Cloud Platform.
David Yaffe was working at Google when he spotted an opportunity to connect advertisers with smaller publishers competing for online advertising dollars. He and two friends started Arbor, raised more than $2 million in seed capital and built a prototype. Two years later, Arbor had grown to 25 employees when LiveRamp acquired them for more than $100 million.
The format for Built to Sell Radio typically features our host, John Warrillow, interviewing an owner who has recently sold their business. This week, we’re going to try something different. Today’s episode features John’s analysis of four of the exits we’ve featured on the show. John will break down his key takeaways and transferable lessons.
When Matt Schmeltz and his partners acquired CloudCraze, it was a simple software application helping businesses that use Salesforce.com manage their customer relationships. CloudCraze generated $2 million in annual recurring revenue, but Schmeltz & Co. figured it could do much more.
In 1995, with just $5,000 in start-up capital, Ashok Vasudevan launched Tasty Bite offering ready-to-eat Indian entrees to American consumers.
Twenty-five years later, Tasty Bite is America's largest brand of prepared Indian food sold everywhere, from Walmart to Whole Foods. In 2017, Vasudevan announced he had sold the company to Mars, which has a portfolio of beloved brands including everything from Uncle Ben's to Skittles.
Peter Demangos has started two businesses in the Human Resources sector. One was a bootstrapped insurance brokerage where they sold employee benefits programs to large clients. The other was an HR software company called Collage, where Demangos and his co-founders raised $3.5 million of investment capital and sold three years later for $15 million.
Debbie King was running on a treadmill so familiar to service company owners. Her company, Association Analytics, helped associations make sense of their member data, and she was wasting time on proposals that often did not get accepted. Then, when King did win a project, she was creating a custom solution for every job that required her to hire senior-level staff and personally get involved in client work. The model put a cap on her business, and when she reached 20 employees, she decided it was time to get out.
Lee Gregory built Sir Lines-A-Lot, a company that paints lines on highways, to 40 employees. It was blue-collar work, so when Gregory learned his company could be worth north of eight figures, he decided it was time to sell. During this interview, Gregory
Josh Davis started Spirit of Women, a marketing agency selling content about women's health to hospitals. Davis built the company up to almost $10 million in annual revenue when he kicked off a process to sell it, which he hoped would garner an offer of a
David Lekach started Dream Water; a natural sleep aid bottled in a 5 oz shot similar to the famous 5-Hour Energy Drink.
Lekach built Dream Water up to almost $10 million in annual revenue before selling it to Harvest One, a cannabis company, for $34.5 million in cash and Harvest One stock.
This week's episode of Built to Sell Radio features David Amigo. He co-founded Carolina Country Homes, a modular home dealer. Amigo grew his company to $10 million in annual revenue but never loved the modular home business where red tape and financing challenges are commonplace.
Before the pandemic, fancy salad bars were popping up in major cities across the US, making the category one of the fastest-growing sectors of the restaurant industry. Despite their popularity in major cities, when Ana Chaud moved to Portland, Oregon, she was surprised to see a shortage of good salad options.
When we discover a vaccine or reliable treatment regime for COVID-19, there will inevitably be an unscrupulous gang of counterfeiters trying to make a quick buck by selling fake remedies.
Systech International could provide a defense against these crooked operators. Systech has developed technology that allows drug makers to create a unique bar code for each of their products, which stops counterfeiters from ripping them off. The technology is used by drug manufacturers and just about any company that needs to ensure its packaged products are safe and authentic.
Michael Spinosa and Scott Greenwell started a digital marketing agency called Unleashed Technologies at the start of the 2007 financial crisis. Spinosa believes the recession helped Unleashed get started because their flexibility and lower fees enabled them to pick up business from larger rivals who were losing customers amid cost-cutting. By 2019, Unleashed had grown to over $6 million in revenue when they were approached by LINC Partners, a private equity-backed group looking to do a role up of digital marketing agencies.
Anson Sowby started Battery, a creative advertising agency in 2013. Battery quickly won assignments from companies like Netflix and LEGO featuring A-list celebrities such as LeBron James, fuelling their growth to 50 employees by 2019. That's when Paris-based Havas decided to make an offer to buy Battery.
In 2012, Gabriela Isturiz co-founded Bellefield Systems, a company offering a timekeeping application for lawyers. Over the next seven years, Bellefield grew to 45 employees when Isturiz decided to hire an advisor to find a strategic investor. Given Bellefield's growth and success, Isturiz was hoping the process would garner a valuation of 5-7 times Bellefield's Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).
Ganesh Ramakrishna and Mike Watson built Opex Analytics to 140 employees before they sold it to PE-backed LLamasoft in the fall of last year.
Adam Ochstein started an HR software company called StratEx in the depths of the 2008 recession. CEOs were asking HR managers to do more with less and Ochstein's software promised to help HR managers do just that. Despite the challenging economic environment, StratEx was an early success and was particularly popular with restaurants. Ochstein decided to focus on the hospitality sector and forged a partnership with Toast, one of the fastest-growing Point of Sale (POS) providers serving restaurants. The collaboration was a success, and StratEx ballooned to 160 employees.
Nashville-based Bryan Clayton was running Peachtree, a landscaping business, when the financial crisis of 2008 hit hard. Customers stopped spending money overnight. Clayton gathered his employees together and told them the world had changed and asked each to re-commit to the company. Clayton told them that the road ahead would be challenging, but he would do everything in his power not to cut staff.
If you're working from home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, you've probably received a few packages from Amazon. As more people order essentials to deal with "shelter at home" restrictions, Amazon has seen a sudden spike in activity, which is causing them to hire more than 100,000 fulfillment center workers.
It's ironic that Joshua Dick lives in Italy, one of the country's worst hit by COVID-19 deaths. He moved to Italy with his family as a reward for selling his business, Urnex Brands. Urnex was in the unglamorous business of selling cleaning supplies for coffee makers. As is often the case, the least attractive companies are often some of the most profitable, and when Urnex ticked passed $5 million in EBITDA, Dick decided to sell.
Staffing-industry veteran Will Gilbert co-founded Socium – a U.K.-based company supplying workers to companies that needed them – in early 2019. Within six months, Socium was generating more than 7 million U.K. Pounds in revenue.
Aater Suleman co-founded an IT services company called Flux7 in 2013, built it to 70 employees and sold it in 2019 to NTT DATA, the Fortune 500 IT giant.
The action sports business is fuelled by big brands which is why, when SPY Optics built a style popular with irreverent teens, eyewear bemouth Bollé decided they had to own them.
When Scott Moore's job as a VP at Winn-Dixie was eliminated in 2012, he decided to start a restaurant with his friend Gus Evans in Jacksonville, Florida. They called it The Maple Street Biscuit Company and offered what they refer to as "comfort food with a modern twist."
Back in 2004, John Moore started 3D4Medical.com, a company that created three-dimensional models of the human body, photographed them and licensed the images to textbook publishers. When the Great Recession hit, Moore’s business took a turn, and he realized he needed to re-invent the company.
Arvid Kahl and Danielle Simpson were living together in Berlin when Kahl noticed his partner struggling to complete feedback reports about the students to whom she was teaching English as a second language.
Grant Munro started FlashStock in 2013 to help big companies produce content (photos, videos) for advertising campaigns. In 2015, Instagram exploded, and online marketers became desperate for more content, which helped fuel Munro's business from a handful of employees in 2014 to more than 100 in 2017. That's about when Munro agreed to sell FlashStock to Shutterstock for $65 million.
Griffin Thall and Paul Goodman, two Southern California friends traveling through Costa Rica on a post-college graduation trip in 2010, crossed paths with two bracelet artisans, Jorge and Joaquin, who were living in poverty. Jorge and Joaquin made beautiful, colorful handmade bracelets that seemed to capture the essence of their journey. Thall and Goodman asked the artisans to make 400 bracelets to take home with them.
Nick Gray built Museum Hack, a company that offers fun museum tours in major cities, to almost 3 million dollars in annual revenue when he had an idea.
Pathfinder Health offered software to therapists helping patients with Autism. The company founder was creative, but the company had reached a plateau.
In the last two weeks, we’ve seen a passenger jet shot out of the sky. A super-bug has emerged in Asia. A bun fight in the democratic primaries which will look like a schoolyard tussle compared to the bare-knuckle cage match we’re about to witness in the race to become — or remain — the leader of the free world.
When Scott Raymond started buying real estate, he looked for a property management company to maintain his buildings. He couldn't find anyone to care as much as he did, so Raymond decided to start his own property management business.
Wes Winham was a co-founder and shareholder in PolicyStat, a software company that helps hospitals keep track of their Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), including everything from dress codes to how to handle life and death procedures.
Marc-Andre Seguin launched JazzGuitarLessons.net in 2009 to share his knowledge as a guitar teacher.
Zain Hasan started an insurance agency called National Insurance Consulting Group (NICG), in 2014.
Jean-Eric Plamondon was in the scrap metal business where the stereotypical operator is a shady character buying metal by the ton with a blow torch in one hand and a wad of cash in the other.
Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey built Barefoot Cellars to sales of more than 600,000 cases of wine per year when they got the attention of R&J Gallo, America’s largest winemaker.
In 2013, Alex McClafferty co-founded WP Curve, a company that provided IT support for people with a WordPress site.
Starting from humble beginnings, Sherry Deutschmann built LetterLogic into a $40 million juggernaut which she sold recently for more than seven times EBITDA.
Ian Silverberg was considering acquiring a health club when he discovered a surprising lease that all but guaranteed his acquisition would be a winner.
Luxer One went from around $1 million in sales in their first year to an incredible $37 million in 2018 without suffering the dilution of accepting a round of venture capital in part by charging property managers up front for his system. Here’s how he did it.
Tom Pisello built Alinean, a consulting company which offered a set of tools to help salespeople express the value of picking their solution. The business was cruising with about half of its revenue coming from recurring licensing fees and the other half from consulting when disaster struck the Pisello’s family.
Sunny Vanderbeck was growing Data Return 40% every quarter when he took the company public in 1999 on the way to a market capitalization of more than $3 billion. Until the bubble burst.
O’Neil-Dunne was able to patent his technology and create a competitive advantage by learning the “patois” of his industry. Here’s how.
In 1999, Peter Kelly was at Stanford business school when he and two partners spotted an opportunity to remake an industry – used cars.
Mark Deutschmann started Village Real Estate in 1996 and by 2018 he had grown it to 350 salespeople. Then six of his agents decided to compete with him. Anyone would be upset, but you’ll be surprised at what Deutschmann did next.
Glenn Grant always assumed he would sell his company for a multiple of EBITDA… until private equity firms started talking multiples of revenue. He decided to learn more.
After falling ill, Nation Leagues owner, David Heimlich, needed to sell his business – but to his surprise, it was worthless. He learned the hard way why you can’t be the center of the business.
When Tommy Berretz had his successful swimming pool company valued, he had just one (big) problem: he didn’t like what he found out.
John MacInnes pulled his business out of a rut by evolving into a subscription-based model. Here’s how he did it.
From a standing start, Dinesh Dhamija grew European online travel agency eBookers to more than one billion in sales in just five years.
Matt Slaine used his wisdom from Wall Street to buy the perfect company, and later sell it for a perfect price.
James Roman grew iVelocity’s revenue by a whopping 1000% - was the stress that ensued worth it?
Kristin Delwo co-founded Stacks, a software used by librarians. Though the software was still early in its life, Delwo wanted to scale quickly and decided to look for a deep-pocketed acquirer.
Sometimes you don’t have to look far to find the perfect buyer – but you do have to be flexible.
Altia systems has just crested 20 employees and was fine tuning the latest version of its camera system. So how on earth did it sell for $125 million?
Want to bring in a President to run your company day-to-day? Here’s how to get it right.
So, your business is ready to sell. But are you? Here’s the other side of the ledger you may have forgotten to consider.
We talk a lot about how you sell a business, but the real satisfaction comes when exit and expectations match.
How does an event with thousands of attendees, millions of dollars in revenue, and keynote speakers like Richard Branson give its founder nightmares?
CJ Whelan and his co-founder evolved a typically “free service” into something that customers were more than willing to pay for – and remain loyal.
Alex Bates’s company used Artificial Intelligence (AI) to predict the future, but even he couldn’t have anticipated a 10X payday when he sold his business.
Andrew Lamppa wanted to sell his restaurant within two years of buying it, but it would take another twelve before he had something an acquirer wanted to buy.
Kogentix’s product and service offerings may be complex, but their huge growth resulted in an ending that’s easy to understand—an acquisition by the biggest digital marketing agency in the world.
Find out how Erik Van Horn went from running a business for only two hours a week to making an eight-figure exit.
Kenan Hopkins spent 7 years paying what he calls “the idiot tax”, until he learned the more efficient way to run a business.
Strategic acquirers will pay more for your company—here’s how to make your business irresistible to them.
From the acquirer to the seller, Ross Buhrdorf bought more than 25 companies at HomeAway, then sold his business to Expedia for a whopping $3.9 billion. Now, he’s sharing his secrets – from both sides.
Connie Fenyo went all in, risking everything to purchase Dye & Durham. And when buyers came knocking, her gamble paid off.
Building a sellable business doesn’t have to take years. Drew Kraemer received his first acquisition offer nine months after he started Marketplace Strategy.
The two founders of Stelligent were burnt out running their consulting business until they agreed to stop doing one thing that changed just about everything.
From an agile SMB to the big, corporate environment of one of the Big Four auditors – this business owner learned negotiating a price is only half the battle.
Turning business down can be tough for an entrepreneur, but Mitch Durfee learned the hard way that saying ‘yes’ can lead to disaster.
From raising $28 million to dealing with a less-than-friendly departure of a partner, find out how Mitchell Reichgut built Jun Group to sell.
Procrastinating the sale of your business? One entrepreneur shares a cautionary tale that reveals the best time to sell your company may be when someone’s willing to buy it.
There are two sides to every success – the business owner, and the buyer. This week, we’re putting on new shoes and looking from the buyer’s Point-of-View.
How do you place a fair valuation on your company when one partner wants out while the other is ready to continue?
When is the best time to start thinking about an acquirer? For one company, they had it on their agenda since day one.
You’re excited to get an offer for your company, but it’s not what you had hoped for. You’re tempted to react with righteous indignation – but is that really the best way to maximize an acquisition offer?
Philip Williams’ environmental consulting company was going to be sold to one of the biggest players in the oil industry. But just as the check was about to be signed, the deal took a strange turn
Washington state’s legalization of recreational marijuana sounded like an entrepreneur’s dream, but the reality had Brandon Neth looking for an exit after only 5 years.
Tyler Tringas maintained his independence from beginning to end, starting with bootstrapping his SaaS company and then ultimately navigating the sale alone.
Buying a business in 48 hours is a risky move, but Carl Allen did exactly that and turned his purchase around for a tidy sale in just three years.
John Warrillow is back with answers to five more questions from Built to Sell Radio listeners that will help you build your business to sell.
What are the top 10 questions every entrepreneur has when selling their company? It’s John Warrillow’s turn in the hot seat this week, and he’s got answers.
Steve Murch’s BigOven sale is his latest in a series of successful multi-million-dollar exits. Find out how he did it.
Backing out of a deal is never easy, so when Keith Weigand discovered his acquirer was going to buy his company and terminate his employees, he had a tough decision to make.
ConnectedYard took an old idea and brought it into the 21st century. When they started looking for new funding, they found a buyer instead.
The story of Tiny Devotions is a cautionary tale about the importance of getting out while you’re ahead.
Data analytics provider Zodiac was preparing to raise an A investment round for its customer lifetime value software when NIKE decided they wanted to buy the company.
From a service no one wanted anymore to a growing business and a strategic buyer, find out how AMI was rebuilt to sell.
Angela Mader started selling her fitbook through retail giants like CVS, Target and Walgreens. Little did she know, Mader was also attracting the attention of one of the world largest acquirers.
When a health scare sent Jim Remsik looking for a buyer for his company, he had to decide whether to sacrifice a high-multiple exit for his personal priorities.
Mergers can be painful. But when Mitchell Feldman was approached by Microsoft about merging with another company, the result was a match not even HP could resist.
David Hauser’s Grasshopper is a masterclass in building a business to sell. With no venture funding and fewer than 40 staff, Grasshopper was acquired 12 years after its founding for $165 million in cash and $8.6 in Citrix stock.
A service-based company can be a tough sell, so Eric Enge found a buyer while his best asset was still on the table: himself.
Sophie Howard built and sold a 7 figure Amazon e-Commerce business in less than two years. Here’s how she did it.
Stephen Heese buys fallen iconic brands and brings them back to life. Find out how he turns big personal risk into great rewards.
Nathaniel Broughton grew Spread Effect to a $4 million company in only four years -- so why would he sell for a rock bottom multiple?
Ross Hoek built Impres Engineering into a $2.5 million company and got a fair acquisition offer. Little did he know, it was too good to be true.
It can be tempting to expand your niche to grow your business, but the broader the market you serve, the less valuable you may be to an acquirer.
Despite having distribution at Whole Foods, Kroger, and Safeway, salsa-maker Julie Nirvelli found herself on the brink of bankruptcy. She sent a last-ditch email to four potential acquirers – and you won’t believe what happened next.
With celebrity endorsements like Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, Viviscal hit €50 million in revenue…so, why would the CEO want to sell it?
Chemco Industries’ customers included Walmart, eBay, and Amazon, which is one reason they were so irresistible to an acquirer.
Ross Organic was a family business so when Stephanie Leshney took over from her father, she knew she had to make some changes if it was going to grow into a more valuable company.
Tom Hannon’s publishing company grew rapidly, and he received 4 offers. So why does he wish he handled his exit differently?
Pete Borum practically invented the term “influencer marketing.” So how did Borum raise $15 million dollars and attract multiple acquisition offers in an industry that didn’t exist before he showed up?
Digital marketing agency Blast Radius went from 10 people to more than 400 in less that 10 years, ultimately attracting the attention of WPP who acquired them in 2007. Here’s how they did it.
Gorny built his first business- and lost it. He was determined not to let that happen again.
What started as a part-time job to get through college turned into over 100 franchises.
Teetering on the brink of liquidation, a key hire at Dimple led to a dramatic turnaround that resulted in a $13.4M exit.
Embanet broke just about every rule there is for running a company and still sold for $200M.
Oribe sold in early 2018 for $441M, but in 2008 they were just a few sketches of shampoo bottles on a piece of paper. Tev Finger shares the surprising tactics they used to drive revenue.
Impact LABS had no hard assets and little intellectual property, so why would ContextLabs want to acquire them for millions?
Finding an acquirer for your business feels a lot like searching for an investor, but as Moritz Plassnig found out, there is one crucial difference.
Harpaul Sambhi’s company was 8 days away from bankruptcy. So why would LinkedIn want to buy it for millions?
While Michael Pedone survived off of food stamps as a kid, he dreamed of living a lifestyle where money wasn’t scarce. Fast-forward a few decades, and Pedone sold his first company for $1.2MM.
Scott Miller knew that telling his employees he wanted to sell his $3M company, Miller Restoration, could get messy. But he wasn’t prepared for what actually happened.
Back when mobile phones had green screens with black dots on them, Andy Nulman founded Airborne Mobile. In one year, the company went from $2M in revenue to $20M, driven by the explosion in the adoption of mobile devices. Leveraging his client list, Nulman sold 85% of Airborne Mobile for over $100M and retained 15% of the company—a position he would later expand in a strange twist of fate.
Richard Manders co-founded iAutomation and built it up to $12M before deciding it was time to recapitalize. Manders sold 75% of his company for almost 8 times EBITDA to a Private Equity (PE) and held 25% interest in the company after the sale.
After a motorcycle accident shattered Jon Read’s collar bone into 6 pieces, he wasn’t able to follow-through on his post-surgical rehabilitation appointments because of his busy travel schedule. Knowing he needed to do something to augment the home program the therapist gave him, Jon used his technical skills to hack together what would become the first prototype for Keet Health.
Four years ago Nexalogy CEO Claude Théoret was counting the employees he had to lay off. His company had burned through their $600,000 seed round of investment and he was running out of cash. An ugly split with a former co-founder had divided his team, and Théoret had to turn to his wife for a $40,000 loan.
Courtney Reum left Goldman Sachs in 2007 to start a Vodka business. He built VEEV up to more than $10 million in annual sales before he sold the company for more than seven times revenue.
The market for digital assistants is booming. Apple has Siri, Amazon has Alexa and Google has Google Assistant. Now, thanks to Charles Jolley, Facebook has Ozlo, a digital assistant designed to outsmart Siri and Alexa at their own game.
David Fairley estimates he has sold more than 20 online properties but admits it was the sale of Hammocks.com—one of his first exits—that taught him the most.
Drew Goodmanson started Monk Development as a custom website development shop and evolved it into a product enabling churches to establish an online presence. With more than 300,000 churches in the United States, Goodmanson’s company took off and he grew it to more than $3 million in recurring revenue per year, leveraging the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model
Cindy Whitehead started Sprout Pharmaceuticals and created the drug ADDYI, which has become known as the “female Viagra”.
Anthony Lacavera has started 12 businesses, six of which he has exited. His exits have ranged in value from the $6 million he got for one of his recent start-ups to the $1.3 billion that Wind Mobile sold for.
Back in 2013, Dave Ripley became fascinated with Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency market was gaining notoriety and Ripley and a friend decided to start Glidera, a company focused on creating tools to help developers integrate cryptocurrency.
Chris Muench started C-Labs in 2008 to go after the burgeoning opportunities presented by the Internet-of-Things (IOT). He began by writing custom software applications that allowed one machine to talk to another. In 2014, he got the industrial giant TRUMPF International (no, not Trump) to acquire 30% of C-Labs, which gave him the cash to transform his service offering into a product.
Jim McManaman started his accounting firm in a small town of 3,000, so when he decided to sell, he had to figure out how to do it without tipping off his employees. McManaman is well known in town, so he relied on secret, out-of-town meetings with buyers and Sunday sessions in his board room to keep things quiet.
Etienne Borgeat co-founded PCO innovation, an IT consulting firm, in 2000. By 2016, the firm had 600 full-time employees and offices around the world, which is when Accenture knocked on their door.
Tom Franceski and his two partners built DocStar up to 45 employees when they decided to shop the business to some private equity (PE) investors. The PE guys offered four to six times Earnings Before Interest Taxes Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA), which Franceski deemed low for a fast-growing software company.
Susan Hrib started an oil and gas industry consulting firm called Signum back in 1994. Recently Hrib received a call from an industry contact who said they would be interested in buying Signum. After more than 20 years in the same company, Hrib decided she was ready to move on.
In 2014, Hank Goddard got an offer of one times revenue to buy his software company, Mainspring Healthcare Solutions.
Goddard said, “No, thank you”.
A year later, the acquirer came back and doubled their offer to two times revenue. Again, Goddard declined.
Sohail Khan built J.V. Global Consulting into a $3 million consulting business, offering training boot camps and consulting on how to set up joint venture partnerships. Khan was approached by one of his clients wanting to buy his business. Khan rejected their initial offer, but when they came back with a deal worth in excess of eight figures, Khan couldn’t refuse.
Jay Steinfeld started selling blinds online in 1993. The e-commerce pioneer went on to build Blinds.com into a $100 million category killer before Home Depot decided enough was enough and made Steinfeld an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Dan Martell started Spheric Technologies to help Fortune 500 companies build website portals, an emerging business back in 2004. Within four years, Martell had scaled the business to 30 employees when he received an acquisition offer that would change his life.
Terry Lammers took over the family oil wholesaling business in 1991. By 2010, Tri-County Petroleum was selling $42 million worth of gas and oil, when Lammers decided it was time to cash in.
Brian Ferrilla started Resort Advantage in 2006 to help casinos adhere to new anti-money laundering laws. Criminals were laundering money through casinos and Ferrilla’s software helped casinos help spot the bad guys.
In 2012, Randy Ambrosie was hired to run 3Macs, a Montreal-based wealth management firm with $4 billion in assets under management at the time.
If you own Chicago Bulls sunglasses—or sunglasses from just about any other NBA team—you owe your eyewear to Jason Bolt.
In 2011 Josh Holtzman, the founder and CEO of American Data Company, gathered his employees into a conference room to announce “Fifteen Cubed”, a company-wide initiative to grow to $15 million in revenue by the year 2015.
Entrepreneurs can be categorized into two groups. On one hand, you have the doers. These are the people who organically grow a business over time. They plod along for years, or even decades in the same business. They look for small, incremental improvements every day. Their natural tendency is to say no to new ideas and they have to be thoroughly convinced before they change strategy.
A few weeks ago, Shaun Oshamn sold iSupportU, a Colorado-based IT support business. Oshamn started the business at the age of 32 and knew he wanted to sell before his 40th birthday. As that milestone approached, Oshamn started getting his business ready to sell.
Jill Nelson built Ruby Receptionists, a call answering service, into an $11MM business when she met with an investment banker who told her the technology she had built to answer calls could be worth a mint.
Joey Redner started Cigar City Brewing in Tampa Bay in 2009 with a vision of being the first quality craft beer in Tampa at a time when craft beer was gaining popularity across the country.
Ari Ackerman started Bunk1 in 1999 to give parents a way to keep in touch with their kids while they were at summer camp. Over 17 years, Ackerman grew his technology business into one of the biggest brands in the summer camp industry, which is about the time they were approached by TogetherWork, a company backed by a billion-dollar private equity giant.
Dan Faggella started Science of Skill, an e-commerce website selling self-defense videos and paraphernalia, in 2013. His goal was to sell the business as soon as possible, and he started soliciting offers just 14 months later.
Shelley Rogers started Admincomm Warehousing to help companies recycle their old technology. Rogers purchased old phone systems and computer monitors for pennies on the dollar and sold the gear to recyclers who dismantled the technology down to its raw materials and sold off the base metals.
SnapSaves was created by Toronto-based company Buytopia, which has a deal-of-the-day business model similar to that of Groupon.
In the early 2000s, Carl Gould gained notoriety in New Jersey for building upscale modular and log homes under the banner Outdoor Imaging. Gould invested heavily in growing his reputation in the New Jersey market. When Gould went to sell his business, the buyer wanted his hard assets and for Gould to sign over the development contracts he had commitments on, but the buyer did not want to take Gould’s company name.
Adam Glickman started hawking “Jumbo Brand Condoms” from his Tuft’s dorm room in 1989 under the moniker “a safe jumbo is a happy jumbo.” His brand grew across campus and, upon graduation, Glickman started America’s first retail condom shop in New York City. Based on the success of the Manhattan store, Glickman expanded to Los Angeles and in 1996 became an e-commerce pioneer.
Melbourne-based David Trewern grew DT, a digital advertising agency, to $10 million in annual revenue before he sold it to STW Group in 2007 for almost 10 times profit after tax. Trewern was able to get maximum value for his business and preferred terms because he started to look at the world through the eyes of his would-be acquirer.
Lois Melbourne and her husband started Acquire Solutions, a software business that helped large companies manage their employees. After 18 years, the self-funded business had grown to 85 people and the Melbournes received an offer from a private equity firm rolling up software companies in the human resources field.
Acquirers are a secretive bunch. They typically operate behind confidentiality agreements with their motives and tactics disguised from the public. That’s one reason I enjoyed my interview with Rocky Romanella so much.
Anthony Amos and his brother started HydroDog, an Australian company offering a mobile dog washing and grooming service. For $10, the Amos brothers would show up at your door with a giant dog bath on the back of their trailer and wash your dog.
How many people will you have to approach about buying your business before you end up getting an offer?
In this week’s episode, you’ll hear from John Arnott who gives you a breakdown of the statistics on how many people he approached, the conversion rate of those approached to those who signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), what proportion of people under NDA requested a face-to-face meeting and, of the people he met with, how many offers he received.
It’s the first time that we at Built to Sell Radio have received such specific conversion rate statistics on a single deal. Arnott’s story is treasure trove of hard-fought wisdom, including:
- How to figure out “your number.”
- How to time your exit.
- A detailed breakdown of what’s included in an Offering Memorandum (OM).
- How to prepare for a face-to-face meeting with a potential acquirer.
Dan Lok packaged a set of table tennis video tutorials into a membership website and charged a subscription fee to join. Over eight years, Lok managed to build a five-figure recurring revenue stream from subscribers to Table Tennis Master.
Table Tennis Master was one of 20 businesses Lok was developing simultaneously when tragedy struck his family. That’s when he decided to simplify his life and sell off some of his business interests.
In Lok’s case, speed and ease of transaction were more important than maximizing his financial take, so in this episode you’ll hear the story behind the sale of Table Tennis Master and learn some unconventional tactics, such as:
- How to sell your business in a few weeks.
- A sure-fire way to tell if you should keep or sell your business.
- How to identify and engage friendly acquirers who can make a quick offer.
- How to structure your deal when speed and efficiency are more important than value.
The Mortgage Reports publishes information about mortgages for home owners. Site founder Dan Green, capitalized on the internet traffic they generated by selling leads to mortgage lenders.
Within three years, Green crested a million dollars a year in annual revenue. That’s when he began to worry about new regulations and compliance as his business went from being a hobby to a major player in the mortgage leads industry. Green decided to sell and quickly got three offers from the companies he was selling leads to.
The first offer was mostly cash. The second was for half cash and the other half “at risk” in an earn-out tied to meeting lead volume goals in the future. The third offer included a small payment up front with a rich potential earn-out if Green was able to send the acquirer enough quality leads. You may be surprised to learn which of the three offers Green picked.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- The difference between being a core product and an add-on feature
- The importance of breaking bread with your potential acquirer
- What terms and conditions to include in an earn-out contract
- How to vet a potential buyer when an earn-out is involved
Laura Gisborne has started nine companies and sold six of them, including The Art of Wine, the subject of this week’s episode. The Art of Wine is a tasting room with a subscription-based wine club division. With a little more than $1MM in annual revenue, The Art of Wine was still a relatively small business, but when the lease came up for renewal Gisborne reasoned it was the perfect time to look for a new owner.
Gisborne channeled her experience from six exits into the sale of The Art of Wine, and in this episode you’ll learn how to:
- Attract a steady flow of inbound offers for your business
- Pick your number (hint: it may be lower than you think)
- Ensure a competitor does not get their hands on your private information while marketing your business
- Use your location to attract a buyer
- Use the buyer’s ego to your advantage
- Build systems to you-proof your company
Most sellers want to be paid all of their money up front, and most buyers want to avoid paying anything up front. Deals usually get done somewhere in the middle, where the seller agrees to accept some cash and to be paid some of their proceeds over time.
Eric Weiner, for example, started All Occasion Transportation in college and by the time he turned 35, his company was grossing more than $3MM a year. That’s when Weiner decided he wanted out.
Weiner found a buyer and agreed to accept half of his money in a five-year consulting contract, which sounded great in theory but ended up becoming hard to enforce. In this cautionary episode, you’ll learn:
- How to structure a vendor take back
- How to market your business for sale without competitors finding out
- How to create sticks and carrots to ensure your deal is honored
- The definition of recourse and why you need some in any non-cash offer
- How to pick a walk-away number and use it to accelerate your negotiation
- The biggest blooper in structuring a consulting contract with an acquirer
Have you ever noticed the ads that run before you watch an official online video clip from shows like Saturday Night Live or Jimmy Kimmel? You can thank Nicholas Seet for that. Seet developed the video player that hosts both the content and the ads for some of the world’s biggest media companies. His business, Auditude, was recently acquired by Adobe for more than $100 million according to UCLA's Anderson School of Management.
Although a spectacular exit, Seet had to give up a large chunk of the company—and the CEO title—to scale up, so in this episode of Built to Sell Radio we ask the age-old question: 'Is it better to own a big chunk of a small company or a small slice of a big company?' You may be surprised by Seet’s response.
You’ll also learn:
- How to handle the customer who wants exclusivity
- The biggest mistake most engineers make when building a company
- The benefits of a “Super Angel”
- Who the “Goose Society” is and why you might want them as investors
- How to avoid the dilution of common shareholders when venture capitalists insist on preferred shares
Ian Ippolito started Rent a Coder as an online marketplace for hiring technical talent. He quickly expanded to go beyond technical professionals and re-branded as vWorker. Ippolito built vWorker up to $11.5MM in annual revenue before he received an acquisition offer from Australia’s Freelancer.com
Freelancer.com had been courting Ippolito for months but their original offer was too low in Ippolito’s view. That’s when Ippolito decided the only way for him to get any real negotiating leverage was to seek out a second bidder. In this episode, you’ll learn:
- the dangers of a proprietary deal
- what to do when you get a low-ball offer
- why a BATNA is critical to every deal
- how to time your exit
- strategic stalling and how to do it
- why 90% of earn-outs fail
Peter Shankman started Help A Reporter Out (HARO) to connect experts with journalists who needed people to quote for stories. HARO sent a simple email three times a day to subscribers and because every email had the potential to be a reporter from a media outlet like The New York Times, the email open rates were close to 80%. Most days Shankman worked from his sofa with two employees helping him remotely.
Within three years, Shankman was generating $1.5MM from selling simple text ads on his email blasts. That’s when Shankman’s largest advertiser approached him to buy HARO. In the episode you’ll learn:
- the remarkable relationship between ADHD and entrepreneurship
- the surprising upside of selling instead of scaling your business
- the truth about who is most likely to buy your business
- the best way to find a strategic buyer for your company
Bobby Albert took over the family moving business when his father died unexpectedly. Determined to succeed, he transformed his father’s five-person business into a fast growth company, eventually employing 150 people before The Albert Group of Companies was approached by a strategic acquirer.
Rather than simply accept their first acquisition offer, Albert patiently negotiated the offer up by more than 100% before he agreed to be taken over.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
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The difference between an abundance and a scarcity mindset.
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What distinguishes your company’s core values from the founder’s core values.
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How to 5X your revenue.
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The secret to getting discretionary effort from your employees.
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The difference between a values-driven company that gets results and a results-driven company that has values.
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Why aspirational values kill a company’s culture.
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How to more than double your next acquisition offer.
Julie Pickens and her partner Mindee Hardin created Boogie Wipes, a moistened tissue Moms use so their sick kids can avoid a raw nose in cold season. They patented their formula and won orders from Rite Aid, Walmart and Target leading to annual revenue of $15 million.
But all was not well in Boogie land—in fact, the partners’ relationship became strained when Hardin announced she wanted out, forcing Pickens to find a buyer for their company. The result would leave Pickens disappointed with her exit while partner Hardin had to file for bankruptcy.
What follows is a cautionary tale of what happens when partners decide to go their separate ways.
Bert Martinez is a best-selling author and a national radio host who has sold a dozen businesses in his career. In this episode, you’ll hear the story of Accelerator, a supplements company he sold for just under $1.6MM in 2014.
Accelerator’s main supplement was ephedra, a weight loss pill that was selling well despite a growing group of customers who were getting sick from misusing it.
Martinez started to worry that ephedra could be banned so he put his business on the market, only to realize it was worth a lot less than he thought.
Rajiv Kumar and Brad Weinberg started ShapeUp, a software company designed around getting people to improve their health. Instead of going direct to consumers, they decided to license the platform to large Fortune 500 companies looking to reduce their insurance expenses by getting employees to improve their health.
The partners sold 20% of the company for $300,000 in start-up capital and went on to raise five more rounds of capital at increasing valuations. They got the business up to $20 million in recurring revenue when they got a call from Richard Branson-backed Virgin Pulse.
Kumar was able to gin up Virgin’s initial offer by 50% based on some savvy negotiation skills. In the episode, you’ll learn:
- The definition of fixed cost leverage.
- Why you should start with pitching your worst investor first.
- What "escape velocity" means and how it impacts your company’s valuation.
- How optionality gives you negotiating leverage.
- When companies are bought vs. sold.
- The difference between an evergreen fund and one with a liquidity horizon.
In 1992 Stephanie Breedlove started a payroll company to make it easier for parents to pay their nannies. It began small and she self-funded their growth, which averaged 20% per year.
By 2012 they had hit $9 million in annual sales when she got a call from Sheila Marcelo, the CEO of venture-backed Care.com. Marcelo wanted to buy Breedlove’s company and offered her almost $40 million—more than four times Breedlove’s revenue, an astronomical multiple that only serves to underscore Breedlove’s audacity when she turned it down.
Breedlove wanted more and ultimately settled on a price of $55 million for her $9 million business. In this episode, you’ll learn:
- how to strategically walk away from an offer.
- what to do when you reach a negotiation impasse.
- three criteria every owner should consider when selling.
- the pros and cons of accepting stock as compensation.
When you get an acquisition offer for your business, it is natural to focus on the offer price, but your employment contract can be a key element of your remuneration.
I know, you don’t want to be an employee but, when you sell, you’ll likely have to sign on for a transition period or earn-out where you will officially be an employee again. The terms of this employment contract are a key element of any deal.
Just ask Eric Sit.
Sit’s company was acquired by Detection Technologies in 2013. Six months later, Detection was acquired and Sit lived to regret the employment contract he had signed.
Barry Hinckley founded Bullhorn with his two partners Art Papas and Roger Colvin. The software company built an application recruiters used to manage candidates and clients. Bullhorn raised three rounds of financing and went on to sell for $135MM in 2012. Hinckley and his team raised money from family, friends, and venture capitalists and have the scars to prove it. In this interview you’ll learn:
- what to do when a venture capitalist wants to fire the founders.
- the difference between raising money in good and bad markets.
- the tricks venture capitalists use to try and dilute your equity.
- the tactic some venture capitalists use to wipe out the equity of investors of a family and friends round.
- what re-trading is and how to stop it.
The first book I ever read about entrepreneurship was The E-Myth by Michael Gerber.
I loved it.
Gerber’s knack for simplifying the complex art of starting and growing a company resonated with me immediately. Although I’ve never met Michael, I consider him to be one of my very first teachers.
I have not read his more recent books so when his publicist contacted me last week to see if I would interview Michael on Built to Sell Radio, I was keen to hear what he had been up to since The E-Myth.
In this interview, you’ll get a summary of his new book, Beyond The E-Myth including:
- Why every company should be built as a product to sell.
- The four stages of building a sellable company.
- How to engage “the beginner’s mind”.
- The four rolls of every founder.
- The hierarchy of growth.
For the better part of 40 years, Michael Gerber has been encouraging business owners to work “on, not in” your business. That’s exactly what we do with owners that leverage The Value Builder System™. Each month, you’ll get focused time with one of our Certified Value Builders to help you build your company as if it were a product to sell. Get started by completing your Value Builder questionnaire.
Frank Cottle led an investor group to buy Hi-Mark Software for 10 times EBITDA. Cottle then sold a chunk for 15 times and ultimately sold his last tranche of equity for more than 16 times EBITDA to Lufthansa. In this interview, you’ll get deep inside the mind of a private equity buyer and learn:
- three reasons acquisition deals fall apart.
- the difference between your reputation and your brand and which one acquires value most.
- the definition of “suicide by investor” and the dangers of getting into bed with a private equity group.
- how stock clawbacks can dilute your position to zero in the company you started.
- how a stock re-capitalization works.
- one key decision every entrepreneur must make in growing their company.
- why cross-selling as an investment thesis is flawed.
Most of our Built to Sell Radio episodes have been success stories but this week’s show is a cautionary tale of what happens when you don’t plan ahead. It features Dan Bradbury, a young entrepreneur who was growing a successful business right up until the day he had a cycling accident and ended up in a coma.
Bradbury made a full recovery after seven months, but his business didn’t make out as well. It suffered in his absence, and instead of committing to build it back up upon his recovery, Bradbury decided to sell it, reasoning he needed to safeguard his family’s finances should anything bad happen again. After a long search, Bradbury found a buyer but the offer he received revealed his weakened negotiating position.You’ll hear Bradbury's cautionary tale along with:
- How to build leverage into your negotiations.
- Why you need a BATANA (Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement) when exiting your business.
- How you can you-proof your business.
- How you can use accretive value to your advantage.
Mark Stephenson and his partners grew their conference business, Media Edge Communications, to north of $10 million in annual revenue when they were approached by an acquirer. They agreed to a deal that was just shy of eight times EBITDA—85% of the deal was in cash with 15% in an earn-out. If Stephenson had the deal to do over again, he would change his earn-out structure to avoid leaving money on the table. You’ll learn about Stephenson’s earn-out mistake along with:
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The emotional impact of selling.
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How buyers try to grind you down during diligence (and how to counter).
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How to tell the difference between a time-kicker and a serious acquirer.
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How long it takes to negotiate the sale of a business.
Steve Huey bought The Learning House, a company that creates online courses on behalf of colleges, for $2.7MM in 2007 because he saw the opportunity to professionalize the sales and account management of the business. Five years later, Huey sold the business to Weld North, a private equity company for $27.5 MM earning his shareholders an 8 to 1 return.
In this episode, you’ll hear Huey’s advice on:
- how to raise a $4MM angel round in 7 days
- an inexpensive way to figure out what your business is worth
- buying a business with little of your own money down
- Handling a buyer who drops their offer after signing an LOI
- Differentiating between an earning out an escrow
Joe Saul Sehy is the host of Stacking Benjamins, a popular personal finance podcast on which he has interviewed everyone from Jean Chatzky to David Bach.
Sehy’s journey to becoming a podcasting sensation was a little unusual: he started as a financial advisor, building a firm with $65 million in assets under management. Then, on his 40th birthday, Sehy received a letter from a friend which was the trigger that made him want to sell his business. His friend’s letter became a catalyst for him to switch careers and become a professional podcaster. In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Sehy describes the sale of his financial planning practice and you’ll learn:
- How to use employee systems to “you-proof” your business.
- How to hire people inclined to follow systems (rather than renegades who want to re-invent your business).
- How to sell a franchise.
- The one thing Sehy wished he had done, which he estimates could have boosted the value of his business by 15–25%.
- What to do with your money after you sell your business.
- Why the 4% rule of investing may be too conservative for most entrepreneurs.
Doug Chapiewsky built CenterPoint Solutions Inc. into an Inc. 500 company with $5 million in revenue and more than $3 million in EBITDA before he sold it to Israeli-based Nice Systems. In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Chapiewsky describes how to:
- scrutinize the various currencies used by acquirers (cash vs. stock vs. options).
- dress up your company to sell it.
- use an office manager to increase the perception—and ultimately the value—of your company.
- stimulate an unsolicited offer for your business.
- structure your employment agreement to keep control of your employees after you sell.
Manny Fernandez started HomeBuyingCenter.com in 2007, just as the real estate market started to wobble in the United States. As it turned out, his timing was perfect as his site helped underwater homeowners unload their real estate.
In fact, Fernandez was generating so many opportunities for one real estate brokerage, that he received an unsolicited offer from them to purchase his business. He took their offer and parlayed it into a competing offer that helped provide the competitive tension to get a deal done – proving once again, it often takes two offers to maximize the value of your business.
Of course you want an all-cash offer at a beefy multiple with no strings attached, but what do you really need from the sale of your company?
That’s a question Dr. Frank Gibson thought a lot about. He had a successful healthcare business but had stumbled on a new opportunity in a related field. He wanted to sell his company to fund the new idea and, at the same time, needed to retain the rights to some intellectual capital in his old business.
James Garvey and his partner grew Objective Loyalty from a standing start in 2005 to $2.5 million in EBITDA before they decided to sell their email marketing platform.
Garvey’s investment banker spent six months shopping the deal without a single offer. Then Garvey decided to switch tactics and approach the strategic partners who already knew the company well.
Garvey got an offer and was able to double it quickly through some shrewd negotiation. Find out how Garvey 2X'd his original offer by listening now.
An earn out is a way to bridge the gap between what you want for your business and what a buyer is willing to pay. In an earn out, a portion of the sale price of your business is set aside for payment in the future if you reach certain goals the acquirer sets for your business. You’ll need to stay on for a few years as an employee of the acquiring company to lead your team to hit the earn out goals.
Most owners would prefer all of their cash the day they sell their business and most buyers would prefer to pay the entire amount contingent on future performance. Deals get done in the middle where some portion of your money is paid up front with another slice available if you meet your goals as a division of the acquiring company.
Traditional earn outs are typically tied to the profitability of your company as a division of your new owner and they are fraught with problems. Buyers may thwart you ability to hit your number in any number of ways. In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, you’ll hear from Mac Lackey, a veteran entrepreneur who took an alternative approach to structuring his earn out which put up to 80% of the sale of his company, Kyck.com, at risk.
You’ll learn the surprising approach Lackey took to structuring his earn out to maximize his shot at hitting his number.
Peach New Media was launched in 2001 by Dave Will, who carried the title “Chief Peach” until he sold the business in 2015. Will had built his learning-management software company up to 40 employees when he received an offer from the private equity group Accel-KKR that he simply could not refuse. In this interview, Will shares his wisdom on:
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How to create a company acquirers will want to buy.
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How to figure out when to sell.
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How to look at your business as an investor would.
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Cup-holder ideas and how they impact your company’s value.
Jim Beach sold American Computer Experience for $200 million, which sounds like a fantastic exit, but when I asked Beach if he had any regrets I was surprised by how long a list of lessons he had to share including:
How creating new divisions can help grow revenue but reduce the overall value of your company.
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The dangers of raising venture capital.
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Why growing faster than your cash flow may end up costing you more equity in your business than you want to give up.
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The perils of partnering with a celebrity entrepreneur.
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Why you should never take an angel investment from a friend or family member.
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How to avoid a $250,000 legal bill when selling your company.
In 1999, Andrew Weinreich sold Six Degrees, a social networking site based on the same idea that sparked the likes of LinkedIn and Facebook, for $125 million. In the following years, he went on to sell three other companies including one to IBM and another to Match.com.
Most founders are lucky to have one successful exit, but Weinreich has already had four. In this interview, you’ll learn:
- The common denominator among all four of Weinreich’s exits.
- Where to find the company with the highest probability of acquiring you.
- How to hire an M&A professional for a “Dual Track” mandate.
- The mistake most entrepreneurs make when they assemble a board.
- The simple technique Weinreich used to let buyers know he was interested in being acquired (without sounding desperate).
Intellectually, you know you need recurring revenue, but how do you build an annuity stream in an industry where subscription billing is not the standard?
Take a look at the example of Laura Steward, the founder of Guardian Angel Computer Services. She was in the business of fixing her clients’ computer problems when a valuation specialist told her that Guardian Angel was worth less than 50% of one year’s revenue. Determined to get more for her business, she underwent a makeover focusing on her Angel Watch subscription program.
Steward went on to sell her business two years later for four times what the valuation consultant thought it was worth. In this interview you’ll learn how to:
- Switch customers from hourly to subscription billing.
- Overcome the objections hourly customers have for making the switch.
- Ensure customers stop asking for your personal attention on their job through one simple idea.
- Maximize the value of your contracts in the eyes of an acquirer.
Rod Drury is the founder and CEO of Xero, a cloud-based accounting platform that competes head on with Intuit’s QuickBooks.
Started in 2006, Xero now boasts 700,000 subscribers and a market capitalization of almost $3 billion. Xero was picked by Forbes as the World’s Most Innovative Growth Company in 2014 and 2015.
Drury got the capital to start Xero from selling another software company, AfterMail, for $15 million plus another $30 million in a potential earn-out—not bad for a company with a little more than $2 million in revenue.
Drury offers all kinds of insight in this interview including:
- How to avoid the mistake he made in structuring his earn-out, which ended up costing him $30 million.
- The definition of R&D by acquisition.
- How to use public company arbitrage to increase the value of your company.
- How to transition from offering a service to a product.
- How to get an acquirer to come to you.
- How to exhibit at a trade show if your goal is to get acquired by someone in your industry.
Have you ever stayed in a fancy hotel and wondered how much they pay Aveda for those little bottles of shampoo? Turns out, there is a company called Pacific Direct that acts as a middleman between the hotel chain and the company supplying the shampoo.
U.K.-based Pacific Direct was earning £3.3 million when founder Lara Morgan decided to sell. She got multiple offers for her company and ultimately sold it to a private equity group for £20 million. During our interview, Morgan shared her wisdom on how to sell your company, including:
- What to do if your acquisition falls apart at the last minute.
- How to reward your employees when you sell.
- How a “drag and tag” clause in a sale to a private equity acquisition works.
- How to evaluate multiple offers to buy your business.
A direct competitor can often be the most likely buyer for your business. A competitor already knows your industry and may see your company as a way to consolidate market share and gain more pricing control. They may also be able to buy your business and eliminate redundancies in your back office, meaning your business is worth more in their hands than in those of many other potential buyers.
The challenge with negotiating the sale of your business to a competitor is, if the deal falls through, you can end up regretting all the secrets you shared with them in the process.
John Bodrozic is the co-founder of Meridian Systems, which offered project management software to the construction industry. In 2005, Bodrozic began negotiations with a direct competitor and ended up living to regret it.
Part of building to sell is knowing who you are going to sell to.
If you don’t start thinking about your potential buyers list early, you may end up growing an entire appendage of your business that an acquirer will neither want nor value.
Take Northern Lights as an example: Michael Glauser started Northern Lights to offer low-fat frozen yogurt through a growing wholesale distribution network of stores selling his desserts. At the same time, he built up a network of 60 company-owned stores under the Golden Spoon brand. The company-owned stores were expensive to start and complicated to manage.
Glauser went on to sell Northern Lights to Cool Brands International for five times net income. Cool Brands turned around and immediately sold or shut down the 60 company-owned stores because they wanted Northern Lights’ wholesale distribution channel – not a bunch of expensive retail stores.
During our interview, I couldn’t help but wonder how much more Glauser and his shareholders would have gotten for their company had Glauser figured out what a buyer would value and then invested all of his limited resources into building his brand and its wholesale distribution channel from the start.
If you run a service, my guess is you’ve dreamt of owning a product business instead.
Service businesses are such a mess – demanding clients, scope creep, and more often than not, slow growth.
Which leads many service company founders yearning for a product. They tinker with a product on the side, often sucking cash and other resources out of the service business to fund the development of a product, which can compromise the health of the service business.
But there is an alternative: why not sell the service side of your business to have the cash and the freedom to properly invest in your product idea?
That’s exactly what Talia Mashiach, the founder of Eved, did.
Have you thought about when you want to sell your company?
A lot of owners think selling equates to retirement, but selling your business and retiring are not the same thing.
Sure, some people sell because they want to play more golf but many others sell because they want to go do something else.
Take Josh Latimer as an example, he started Birds Beware, a Michigan-based window cleaning business. He built his company up to $800,000 in sales and decided to sell it so he could move his family of three young kids (with a fourth on the way) to Costa Rica.
When Mark Carlson put Minnesota Mailing Solutions on the block, he got two offers for around $3 million, which represented about four times his pre tax profit – a respectable price for a postage meter reseller turning over $4.5 million in revenue.
But Carlson wasn’t satisfied, and in this week’s episode you’ll hear the one simple tactic he used to get the acquirer to boost their offer by 50%.
When the time comes, do you want to sell your business externally, or internally to your employees or family members?
Once you decide, a little piece of you may always wonder how the other option would have played out. That’s why the story of Barry Wood is such an interesting case study. Wood is a door guy, who started M&I Door Systems in 1995, sold M&I in 1998, and then started another – virtually identical – door business in 2003, only to sell it in 2013.
Wood sold his first door business externally and his second internally, so his two exits allow us to see clearly the differences between these two types of sale with an as close to apples-to-apples comparison as possible. The pros and cons of selling externally rather than internally may surprise you.
Mike McCarron sold MSM Transportation to the Wheels Group for $18.6 million. After receiving the letter of intent (LOI) he signed it immediately. If McCarron had the opportunity to do it all again he’d handle this request differently. Listen now and find out why.
For most of its 17 years, Imaging Path was a successful IT services contractor that peaked at more than $16 million in sales.
Imaging Path founder and CEO Corey Tansom kept a close eye on his business until, a few years prior to its sale, Tansom went through a divorce that caused him to spend a lot of time away from the office. Tansom was distracted, costs ballooned and margins shrank. Imaging Path started losing about $500,000 a year.
The situation at Imaging Path got worse when Tansom’s bank decided to pull its financing. Tansom decided his best option was to sell his business – but who would buy a money-losing company?
Carl Silbersky sold his facial recognition software company Polar Rose to Apple in 2010 for a reported $29 million. The negotiation was relatively smooth but Steve Jobs would not budge on one deal point. Learn how one of the savviest deal-makers of our time approached his strategic acquisition.
Katherine Hague, co-founded ShopLocket in 2011 and sold her business two years later to PCH, a billion dollar Irish company.
Hague was a prodigious fundraiser in her two years from idea to exit. She sold 2% of her company to a friend before she had a product, another 10% to an incubator before selling an even bigger chunk in a million dollar funding round.
In our interview, Hague describes some of the landmines to avoid when raising outside capital and why she still has one regret about the sale of ShopLocket to PCH: listen now.
Dennis Hart sold his advertising agency, Apex Media, for 7.1 times EBITDA.
Selling for 7X sounds like a great exit but it disguises the complexity of the negotiations. Hart felt like he knew precisely how much EBITDA he generated until the buyer started questioning his math, adding back extra expenses, and driving down his EBITDA.
Hart walked away from the negotiating table twice. Eventually both parties were able to agree on a set of “add backs,” but this is a good reminder that, when it comes to selling your business, your EBITDA can be subjective.
How much would someone have to pay you to buy your business today? That’s the question Kris Jones was asked when billionaire Michael Rubin approached him about selling. Jones’ answer to Rubin’s question may surprise you.
Back in 2011, Nathan Latka started Heyo, a social media company that helped businesses advertise on Facebook. By 2016, Heyo had raised $2.5 million in seed and venture capital financing and, by all accounts, it was a growing and successful business.
Then Latka sent an unusual email that would ultimately garner him seven offers to buy his business – with the winning bid amounting to an incredible 11 times revenue. Listen to Latka describe the content of the email.
When John Bowen received a $37 million offer to buy his business, he thought it was too good to be true.
As it turns out, it was.
Bowen had received a non-binding letter of intent from a global bank, who made their bid with no actual intent to buy his business. Bowen came to believe their offer was a decoy designed to disguise their real objective: to understand Bowen’s strategy so they could compete better with him. Bowen got wise to their strategy and ended up selling his business to another buyer, Assante Wealth Management, for $25 million.
Bowen reveals his three strategies for evaluating the authenticity of an offer to buy your business during our interview.
John Maddox co-founded the digital agency Ten Fast Feet in the depths of the financial crisis. Despite his timing, Maddox was able to grow the business to $2.3 million in sales by 2013, when he got a call that would change his life forever.
If you have ever put a label on a sippy cup, chances are Julie Cole’s company, Mabels Labels, produced it. Cole and her three partners built Mabel’s Labels into a $10 million business providing labels for kids’ clothing and accessories before being acquired in early 2016 by C.C.L. Industries, the parent company of Avery Labels.
Cole and her partners were able to add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the price they got for their business using a negotiation technique called “normalization” – listen to find out how.
Natalie Susi started Bare Organic Mixers to supply low-cal cocktail mixers to bars and restaurants in southern California. Susi got her product into 300 locations before she decided to sell her company to a strategic acquirer in the organic foods industry. In order to maximize her take from the sale, Susi had to decide whether she was offering an acquirer the chance to buy her company or her product.
Aaron Houghton sold iContact in 2012 for $180 million. The first round of growth was financed by something called convertible debt, which Houghton recommends to any entrepreneur for its simplicity. To hear how Houghton parlayed an initial investment of $250,000 into a $180 million exit.
In eight years Ryan Born built Audio Micro, which began operations in his spare bedroom, into an Inc. 500 company. Born went on to sell his business for more than $20 million in 2014 – a deal that only happened because he had the foresight to put an expiry date on the "no shop” clause on his Letter of Intent.
Jeff Hoffman sold Competitive Technologies, a business intelligence company serving the travel industry, to American Express in a nine-figure exit. After the Letter of Intent (LOI) was signed, American Express proposed paying part of the acquisition in an earn-out, and you’ll never guess what Hoffman did next.
Most financial acquirers will arrive at an offer for your business by calculating the profit they expect you to make and deciding what they are willing to pay today, for your profit stream in the future. Because you are competing with lots of other places that the acquirer could invest their money, multiples are usually in the low to mid-single digits of your pre-tax profit.
A strategic acquisition is an entirely different animal.
A strategic acquirer will value your company based on how much more of their product they can sell, which is exactly what Business Objects (now SAP) did when they bought Nick Kellet’s business, Next Action Technologies, for more than eight times revenue.
Yvonne Tocquigny built her Austin-based advertising agency up over 35 years working with clients like Jeep, Dell, Hitachi, USAA and Caterpillar. Then in 2015, she got a call from New York wondering if she would consider selling. The problem was that her agency had become part of who she was. She had become something of a local celebrity and an inspiration for young female entrepreneurs in Austin. In selling, Tocquigny feared she would give up part of who she had become.
Trevor McKendrick had created the best-selling Spanish-language Bible app when he was approached about an acquisition offer. Salem’s original offer was 3.5x revenue but Trevor got them up to 5x with a combination of chutzpah and a knack for reading the fine print.
Stephan Spencer went to sell his consulting business in the late 1990s but buyers all wanted him to sign up for a long, painful, and risky earnout. Keen for a clean exit, Spencer took the business off the market and set out to make it less dependent on him personally. In the episode, he details the three unique strategies he pursued for withdrawing from the day-to-day operations of his business. By 2010, Spencer had the business running so independently that at one point he was able to take a six-month sabbatical. That’s when he knew he could sell without such a lengthy earnout. Ultimately, Spencer sold his business to Covario in 2010 for a combination of cash, stock and a six-month earnout—an earnout so short it's almost unheard of for a marketing services business sale.
Ian Schoen built Two Tree International, up to $4 million in revenue before he sold it in a multimillion dollar exit in 2015. Despite only working in the company for a handful of hours each week, Schoen was able to attract a number of buyers because he had created an operating manual employees could follow.
I loved watching David Price pitch for the Toronto Blue Jays in last year’s pennant race, so I was sad to see him sign a seven year, $217 million contract with The Boston Red Sox a few weeks back.
Of course, it wasn’t Price himself sitting across the negotiating table from the Red Sox brass. He was represented by his agent, Bo McKinnis. Price—like just about every high stakes professional athlete—has an agent in his corner because there are just too many things that can go wrong, too many egos with the potential to be bruised, and too many zeroes at stake to negotiate on your own behalf.
The same is true when you sell your business. When there are more zeroes involved than selling a home, you need someone representing your best interests. That’s a lesson Alexis Martin Neely found out the hard way when she tried to sell her company on her own. What started out as a promising relationship with a buyer ended up as a DIY disaster.
A shotgun deal is the most brutal form of capitalism. When you can’t stand your partner anymore, you offer them a price for their shares. They have two choices: accept your offer or buy you out for the same amount. Triggering a shotgun deal can have explosive results, as Kim Ades found when she offered to buy out her husband’s share of Upward Motion.
Usually a nine-figure exit takes more than a year to complete but when Blackberry found itself behind schedule on the launch of its tablet, RIM founder Mike Lazaridis saw Jakobsson’s business as a saviour. This led Blackberry to a $150 million acquisition in less than six weeks—that has to be the fastest nine-figure exit ever.
When you get an acquisition offer your eye will immediately go to the offer price. That’s only natural. But — there could be two other negotiating points that could have just as large an impact on your windfall of selling your business.
Jack Groot discovered all three when he went to sell JP’s Coffee Shop — a business that USA TODAY® voted one of the top 10 coffee houses in America.
When negotiating to sell your company, the single fastest way to spike your earnings is to introduce a competing offer. But you don’t always have the luxury of multiple buyers. It may be better to simply fake it, which is exactly what Trent Dyrsmid did to boost his take for the sale of his company in 2008.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio John Warrillow interviews New York Times best selling author and serial entrepreneur, Kevin Kruse. As Kruse went to exit Axiom, the ultimate buyer wanted to avoid competing with Kruse down the road…and that’s where the negotiation hit a giant snag.
When you start a business from nothing, it can be hard to place a value on your “sweat equity”. This is where Phil Carson found himself when he decided to get out of the diabetes testing supply company he and his partner had built from the ground up. He estimated his shares might be worth $250,000 but, through a fortunate sequence of events and some shrewd moves on his part, he was able to capture $1.2 million for his stake.
In this week’s episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow interviews Beate Chelette, the founder of a Beate Works, a creative company that she sold to Bill Gates for a significant premium in 2006.
Would you rather have one million dollars in the bank today or a chance to have ten million a decade from now? It’s a philosophical question that comes down to the time value of money and your tolerance for risk.
After starting and exiting BabyCenter.com, Mark Selcow built Merced Systems into a profitable business after year one. Ten years later he sold Merced for $192 million, equating to over 3 times top line revenue.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio you’re going to hear from Erik Huberman, who started Swag-of-the-month, a T-shirt business he quickly scaled from start-up to sale in 18 months.
Huberman considers the exit a success, but during negotiations there was one question the acquirer asked that Huberman wishes he had never answered
Rick Day built Daycom Systems into a $26 million dollar business over a 17-year run. Daycom sold phone systems but the company had a problem: it had become too reliant on one supplier.
Daycom sold phone systems but the company had a problem: it had become too reliant on one supplier in a business where the technology was changing fast. Motivated by the fear of becoming obsolete, Day decided to assemble an advisory board to help him prepare the business to sell. The board helped him to see his business through the eyes of a potential buyer and exposed a number of things that Day needed to fix.
Mark Patey started Prodigy Engineering in 2010 to help companies leverage hybrid engine technology. Four short years later, Patey accepted a multi-million dollar offer to buy the company.
Prodigy Engineering is the latest in Patey’s pattern of starting businesses for the purposes of scaling them and then quickly flipping them. Patey has flipped six companies, and his approach could be considered the counterbalance to the prevailing view that businesses should be built to last a lifetime.
When you get to know Patey, his compacted timelines start to make sense. He – like so many successful entrepreneurs – suffers from ADHD, a blessing and at times a curse. Patey credits his ADHD with much of his success at selling businesses.
Andrew Yang had built Manhattan GMAT into an $11 million business when Kaplan Test Prep, an 800-pound gorilla in the education business, threatened legal action against his company.
Rather than react defensively, Yang sought to build a relationship with Kaplan executives, who would eventually go on to buy Manhattan GMAT for more than 8 times EBITDA.
To see how Yang turned a potential crisis into a clean offer of more than 8 times EBITDA.
Derek Sivers sold CD Baby for $22 million dollars and decided to do something interesting with the money.
As an independent musician, Derek Sivers was blocked from selling his music through mainstream distribution channels, so he decided to start a company that would give his band, and other artists like him, a way to sell their music online.
The business grew as Sivers entered into distribution deals with iTunes and Amazon.
Ten years later, Sivers sold CD Baby for a cool $22 million dollars – and you’ll never believe what he did with the money.
Small service-based businesses are typically not worth very much, but Walter Bergeron made one simple change to his business model that garnered a $10 M acquisition offer.
Bergeron started a small company servicing circuit boards for large food processing plants. It was a “break/fix” business with lumpy demand and cash flow.
Struggling to grow, Bergeron starting offering a membership model where instead of calling when they had a machine to repair, subscribers paid a monthly fee so they could have their circuit boards serviced at any time.
The switch to a membership model transformed the business and Bergeron quickly grew the company to $7 million in annual sales, at which point he was offered $10 million to sell it.
The first time David Phelps sold his dental practice, he ended up in a legal battle that cost him more than $100,000. Phelps eventually got his practice back and was determined to sell it the right way the second time around.
David Phelps started his dental practice in 1986 and built it for 20 years before his daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia. Fighting for his child’s life, Phelps decided to sell his practice in a hurry.
He agreed to provide financing to the new owner to buy the practice, which would end up being a decision he would come to regret.
Bobby Martin had built First Research up to $6.5 million dollars in revenue when he sold the business to a Fortune 500 company for 26 million dollars. But despite getting four times revenue for his business, Martin ended up feeling empty after the sale.
In this week’s episode of Built to Sell Radio, I interview Bobby Martin. Bobby built his business from the ground up and had a great exit. He sold his business to a Fortune 500 company for $26 million dollars – four times his top line revenue at the time.
Martin’s exit was a financial success but life after the sale took a big turn for the worse.
John Ratliff started Appletree Answers in a spare bedroom of his house in 1995 and by 2012 had grown it to 650 employees and 24 locations when he decided it was time to sell.
John Ratliff was able to scale Appletree Answers by buying small competitors for around 3 times EBITDA using borrowed money. He quickly went from 1 to 650 employees in less than twenty years while his EBITDA went from nothing to more than $5 million a year. Then one day, he got a call from a strategic acquirer that would change his life forever.
Finding a buyer for Killer Shade was relatively easy. Closing the deal -- and getting paid -- was a whole lot harder.
Mike Campion had built Phoenix-based Killer Shade up to more than $3 million in sales and $700,000 in profits when he decided he wanted out. Killer Shade was in the business of constructing shades and awnings for playgrounds, patios and parking garages. They did large, profitable jobs but city hall paid slowly and Campion was always stressed about cash.
Campion was able to find a buyer and agree to a price, but that’s when the problems started.
Rick Martinez is a military nurse who stumbled into the staffing business by accident and grew his company to 600 employees. Then, when he decided to sell his business, he took a surprisingly zen-like approach to negotiating the deal.
It typically takes a hard-nosed, sharp-elbowed entrepreneur to build a 600-employee company but Rick Martinez built a successful staffing business with no previous entrepreneurial experience. Years later, when he went to sell his company, he took a low-key approach to negotiating the sale. Rick’s story provides a welcome alternative to the often adversarial business of selling a company.
Kevin Sullivan was riding high running one of Seattle’s largest printing companies when the 2008 recession hit. Within months, sales tanked and Sullivan was forced to slash his work force from 185 down to 90. Nine hundred thousand dollars into a million dollar line of credit, the bank called and demanded Sullivan and his two partners re-capitalize the business. That’s when he decided he wanted out.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio you’ll hear how Sullivan and his team pulled the business out of the ditch and eventually got it back to profitability, which is when he and his partners decided to sell. His partners were happy to just get their names off the debt the business was carrying but Sullivan thought they could do much better, He turned down the 2 - 3 times earnings he was offered by financial buyers in search of an offer closer to six times…in the end - he was able to do even better.
Selling internally is not the first thing that comes to mind when an entrepreneur thinks about an exit strategy, but it could be the best fit. After all, who knows your business better than someone who is a part of it? In this episode of Built To Sell Radio, you’ll hear how Heather Osgood smoothly exited her business along with some ups and downs while selling her business to a partner.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, you’ll hear how Jason Swenk built up his digital advertising agency from nothing to thirteen million dollars in sales before he sold it to a strategic acquirer in 2012. Swenk then went to work for the new owner — but the new owner’s business got acquired nine months later by an even larger firm. Swenk found himself two levels away from power and struggled to hit his earn out. What follows is a success story with a cautionary tale about the dangers of agreeing to an earn out as part of the sale of your business.
At the age of 27, Aaron Walker sold his business to a Fortune 500 company. He thought the money would make him happy, but life after selling was a lot harder than he thought. In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Aaron Walker shares his story of rags to riches to depression and how he climbed back out. He also provides three tools you can use to help visualize your life after selling so you can avoid the trap that many cashed out entrepreneurs fall into.
In this episode of Built To Sell Radio, you’ll hear an interview with Jeff Davis, who sold his business Legal Artworks back in October 2014. Learn how Jeff got to the point of only going into the office once a week, how he avoided the ‘key man discount,’ and why he didn’t sell his business to the highest bidder.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, you’ll hear the lessons Bo Burlingham has learned after interviewing hundreds of entrepreneurs regarding their business exit experiences. Some good, some bad. You probably know Bo because he is the editor-at-large of Inc. Magazine. If you are an entrepreneur you've no doubt seen his most famous book, Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big, which to me, is one of the best books ever written on entrepreneurship. His latest book, Finish Big, is about how you exit a business on top. Bo is a friend, an amazing writer, and interviewer.
Along with her father and brother, Laura Coe grew Litholink into a $10 million business with 50 employees. Then one day, a multi-billion-dollar business called.
After building his business for twenty years, Stuart Crane sold it for $43M, which includes an extra million he got by using this one simple technique.
Built to Sell Radio is a weekly podcast for business owners. Each week, we ask a recently cashed out entrepreneur why they decided to sell, what they did right and what mistakes they made through the process of exiting their business. Built to Sell Radio is the ultimate insider's guide to approaching the most important financial transaction of your life.