Built to Sell Radio
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.
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Ep 555 How to Avoid an Earn Out and Get Your Employees to Sell Like You, Featuring the World's Leading Positioning Expert, April Dunford
07/17/2026
Ep 555 How to Avoid an Earn Out and Get Your Employees to Sell Like You, Featuring the World's Leading Positioning Expert, April Dunford
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.
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Ep 554 $325M Exit After Coke Walked Away From Suja Juice | Built to Sell Radio
07/10/2026
Ep 554 $325M Exit After Coke Walked Away From Suja Juice | Built to Sell Radio
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.
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Ep 553 Why 17.5% of Owners Are Burnt Out and Want to Sell
07/03/2026
Ep 553 Why 17.5% of Owners Are Burnt Out and Want to Sell
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.
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Ep 552: What to Know Before Selling to an ETA Buyer | Built to Sell Radio
06/26/2026
Ep 552: What to Know Before Selling to an ETA Buyer | Built to Sell Radio
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
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Ep 551 Cameron Passmore Sold Half an $8 Billion Firm—Then Acquired 5 More Businesses
06/19/2026
Ep 551 Cameron Passmore Sold Half an $8 Billion Firm—Then Acquired 5 More Businesses
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.
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Ep 550 The One Phrase That Can Ruin a $10 Million Business Sale
06/12/2026
Ep 550 The One Phrase That Can Ruin a $10 Million Business Sale
"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
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Ep 549 How a $105 Million Business Sale Revealed the Second Most Important Number in an LOI
06/05/2026
Ep 549 How a $105 Million Business Sale Revealed the Second Most Important Number in an LOI
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.
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Ep 548 The Threat and Curse of AI
05/29/2026
Ep 548 The Threat and Curse of AI
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.
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Ep 547 How to Get Your Partners to Buy You Out
05/22/2026
Ep 547 How to Get Your Partners to Buy You Out
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: Open the conversation with your partners without triggering a defensive reaction or a stall Anchor your price to a prior valuation event so the number is hard to argue with Use a deliberately low ask as leverage to get speed, certainty, and 100% cash upfront Identify which one of your partners is most likely to write the check, and approach them first Source the cash from a platform partner, franchisor, or custodian who holds the underlying assets Negotiate a "ceasefire" non-compete that protects the buyers without trapping you Read inbound acquirer silence as market signal before you push the group toward a full sale Spot the partner who is too eager to buy, and what that eagerness usually means
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Ep 546 $14M Raised, A Car-Changing Exit
05/15/2026
Ep 546 $14M Raised, A Car-Changing Exit
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.
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Ep 545 $15M for 15 Employees — How Aaron Leibtag Structured His Pentavere Sale to HealWell
05/08/2026
Ep 545 $15M for 15 Employees — How Aaron Leibtag Structured His Pentavere Sale to HealWell
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.
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Ep 544 Why He Regrets Selling for 3.5X EBITDA
05/01/2026
Ep 544 Why He Regrets Selling for 3.5X EBITDA
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.
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Ep 543 From $32M Valuation to Fire Sale — How Ret Taylor Sold Ned After an Apple Update Crushed His Margins and Re-Invented Himself as a Spiritual Guide
04/24/2026
Ep 543 From $32M Valuation to Fire Sale — How Ret Taylor Sold Ned After an Apple Update Crushed His Margins and Re-Invented Himself as a Spiritual Guide
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. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: Curious what your business is worth?
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Ep 542 The 15X Multiple That Let Him Walk Away in 12 Months
04/17/2026
Ep 542 The 15X Multiple That Let Him Walk Away in 12 Months
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. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: Curious what your business is worth?
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Ep 541 Mastering the Deal: 7-Figure Negotiation Mistakes Founders Make When Selling Their Business with MIT's John Richardson, Author of Never Settle
04/10/2026
Ep 541 Mastering the Deal: 7-Figure Negotiation Mistakes Founders Make When Selling Their Business with MIT's John Richardson, Author of Never Settle
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 Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: Curious what your business is worth?
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Ep 540 From $40K to 8 Figures -- How Murray Kent Sold His Electrical Conduit Business for 6.2x EBITDA
04/03/2026
Ep 540 From $40K to 8 Figures -- How Murray Kent Sold His Electrical Conduit Business for 6.2x EBITDA
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: Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: Curious what your business is worth?
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Ep 539 Deal Collapsed at LOI, Sold for 6x EBITDA Anyway
03/27/2026
Ep 539 Deal Collapsed at LOI, Sold for 6x EBITDA Anyway
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: an LOI means far less than you think, and how problems in your books can kill a deal founders who shop their company can signal desperation, and what Jay did instead the eventual buyer valued the business on EBITDA instead of revenue, and why that worked in Jay's favor Jay accepted an earn-out worth more than half the deal, and why he was comfortable with it handing out equity without vesting created a problem at the worst possible moment a long-standing accountant relationship does not guarantee clean books, and how this nearly killed the deal the moment the DocuSign came through did not bring relief, but a flood of new ideas
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Ep 538 How 2 Brothers Bootstrapped AppArmor to a $40M Exit — The Answer That Almost Cost Them $20M
03/20/2026
Ep 538 How 2 Brothers Bootstrapped AppArmor to a $40M Exit — The Answer That Almost Cost Them $20M
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.
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Ep 537 Why this $5M Business Sold for $25M
03/13/2026
Ep 537 Why this $5M Business Sold for $25M
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: 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 The one overheard side conversation that changed her negotiation posture entirely and helped her push from a $17–20M offer to $25M 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 What convertible notes look like after a decade — and why her investors converted their notes just six months before the sale Why Sharon cried on her birthday, the day she was quietly walked out of the company she had spent 13 years building How she watched the acquirer run Boardroom Insiders into the ground, tried to buy it back — and then decided to rebuild from scratch anyway The land-and-expand growth strategy that took Boardroom Insiders from zero to $5 million ARR without ever cracking the demand generation problem
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Ep 536 Mastering the Deal: 3 Types of Sellers, 3 Very Different Deals — Which One Are You?
03/06/2026
Ep 536 Mastering the Deal: 3 Types of Sellers, 3 Very Different Deals — Which One Are You?
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: 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 What a buyer learns about you when they ask whether you would sell to your biggest competitor for the same price 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 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 Why pushing for agreement after a sale closes is the fastest way to destroy a partnership — and what to focus on instead What working capital and normalized earnings actually mean, and why founders who gloss over both almost always regret it How to clarify the role you want after closing before it becomes the source of tension no one saw coming
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Ep 535 Inside the Mind of an Acquirer: When Your Buyer Is Risking Their House
02/27/2026
Ep 535 Inside the Mind of an Acquirer: When Your Buyer Is Risking Their House
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: spot the tells of a real buyer versus "capital partners" theater pressure-test proof of funds without turning it adversarial use a seller note as a credibility filter, not just a concession understand why individual buyers consistently misread the cash down, seller note, bank structure and how to use that to your advantage ask questions that surface risk early, before lawyers get involved
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Ep 534 Why a “short list” of acquirers may be a trap
02/20/2026
Ep 534 Why a “short list” of acquirers may be a trap
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: Spot the "hidden ceiling" in a business that looks like it’s doubling—right up until it isn’t. Move a cap table from a failed bet into a new one without lighting your professional relationships on fire. Understand liquidation preference in plain English (and why it can erase a founder’s take-home pay at exit). See why a banker’s real value isn't just managing the process—it's forcing pressure and widening the field of potential acquirers Avoid the "I can sell this myself" mindset that often results in a year of free research for buyers and zero leverage for you.
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Ep 533 Inside the Mind of an Acquirer: The Anatomy of a Failed Deal
02/13/2026
Ep 533 Inside the Mind of an Acquirer: The Anatomy of a Failed Deal
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.
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Ep 532 Is Your Business Worth More Dead or Alive?
02/06/2026
Ep 532 Is Your Business Worth More Dead or Alive?
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: Sell the high-value "parts" (marketing assets) without the operational baggage. Avoid a grueling earn-out (because the buyer didn't need him to run the company). 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.
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Ep 531 The #1 M&A Mistake Founders Make with Nick Katz
01/30/2026
Ep 531 The #1 M&A Mistake Founders Make with Nick Katz
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.
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Ep 530 $40M for a Big Fish in a Small Pond
01/23/2026
Ep 530 $40M for a Big Fish in a Small Pond
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: Turn one clear customer frustration into a business idea you can explain fast Choose focus over hype when everyone tells you to chase the biggest market Set a “financial freedom” number and use it to make cleaner decisions Run a sale process without tipping off competitors too early Negotiate an earn-out tied to revenue so the targets stay in your control Plan for the morning after the deal, when your identity gets reset
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Ep 529 The Personal Brand Trap and how to slash a 3-Year Earn-Out to 9 Months Without Giving Up Value
01/16/2026
Ep 529 The Personal Brand Trap and how to slash a 3-Year Earn-Out to 9 Months Without Giving Up Value
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.
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Ep 528 The Dirty Businesses that Create Quiet Millionaires
01/09/2026
Ep 528 The Dirty Businesses that Create Quiet Millionaires
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: Recognize the hidden ceiling that has nothing to do with demand and everything to do with your balance sheet Stop confusing “more revenue” with “more value” when margin and risk aren’t improving Build a reputation flywheel where customers feed you better work because they trust how you operate Separate assets from value so you don’t overestimate what a buyer will pay for “stuff” Fix the financial story before a buyer forces an expensive cleanup under pressure Negotiate earn-out terms so the buyer can’t hit your results by moving costs onto your books Decide when it’s smarter to sell now than grind for years just to add a rounding error to valuation
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Ep 527 How to Avoid an Earn-Out (Even in a Service Business)
01/02/2026
Ep 527 How to Avoid an Earn-Out (Even in a Service Business)
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.
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Ep 526 Best of 2025: 4 Moments That Change How You Exit
12/26/2025
Ep 526 Best of 2025: 4 Moments That Change How You Exit
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
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