Built to Sell Radio
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.
- Update frequency
- every 7 days
- Average duration
- 53 minutes
- Episodes
- 512
- Years Active
- 2015 - 2025
Ep. 31 Cut Your Earnout
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 of…
Ep. 30 Exiting the Automatic Business
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, Sch…
Ep. 29 The DIY Disaster
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…
Ep. 28 The Shotgun Deal
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 t…
Ep. 27 The 9-Figure Exit
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 sa…
Ep. 26 3 Hidden Factors That Impact Your Business Valuation
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 yo…
Ep. 25 The Phantom Buyer
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 si…
Ep. 24 How a Non Compete Almost Derailed The Sale Of This $14M Business
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 avo…
Ep. 23 How to Sell Your Sweat Equity
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 compa…
Ep. 22 Engineered to Sell
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…
Ep. 21 To Sell or Not to Sell?
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 tolera…
Ep. 20 - The $192M Exit
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 li…
Ep. 19 The Question
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 cons…
Ep. 18 Tied At The Hip
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 ph…
Ep. 17 The ADHD Entrepreneur
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 Eng…
Ep. 16 The Pivot
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 rea…
Ep. 15 The Outsider
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 mainstrea…
Ep. 14 The $10 Million Membership Model
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 co…
Ep. 13 The Boomerang Sale
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 w…
Ep. 12 The 26-Million-Dollar 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 …