Built to Sell Radio Podcast
1) 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 bui...Show More
2) 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...Show More
3) 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 ...Show More
4) 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, ...Show More
5) Ep 525 How to Know When to Get Out: What to do when Shopify threatens, Selling vs. hiring a CEO. A controlled process instead of massive auction and getting your cash up front.
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 overnig...Show More
6) Ep 524 3 Non-Negotiables to Walk Away Clean, Turn Your Expertise into Recurring Revenue, and Avoiding a Deal-Killing Clause.
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 epis...Show More
7) Ep 523 15 x EBITDA for a Service Firm
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 wit...Show More
8) Ep 522 The difference between 4x vs.8x EBITDA, Customer Concentration Discounts, PE Re-trades with Eric Wiklendt on this special edition of Inside the Mind of an Acquirer
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...Show More
9) Ep 521 10x Outcome Selling TinyMCE to Private Equity and how to make the 'Cruise vs Double Down' Decision
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 comfort...Show More
10) Ep 520 How Chris Hutchins convinced Google to buy Milk—and Wealthfront to acquire Grove—despite not generating much revenue (and no EBITDA)
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 strate...Show More