John Warrillow - Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You

Table of Contents

Having built and sold four successful companies, John knows the secrets to creating a sellable business. John shares his own experiences and lessons learned, and talks about his new book, Built to Sell.

E-Myth Worldwide

What do buyers look for when buying a business, and what should entrepreneurs be doing if they want to sell their firm? If you want to know, I strongly suggest you pick up a copy of Built to Sell, by John Warrillow. Covering every important aspect of the process, from attracting multiple bidders to getting the most for your business, this book easily explains what you must know and do if you want to create a business you can sell.

Steve Strauss, USA Today

A terrific boon to all the folks I deal with on a day-to-day basis that are lurching from customer to customer trying to get out of the quagmire. Some terrific lessons which go far beyond my How to catch a Leprechaun chapter in my book which chronicles basically the same observation about the lack of preparedness of most business owners for the sale of their business. One of the strengths of the book is the continuity. It was great following Alex through his trials and tribulations. Very real-life. I fully intend on sharing with my customers and TEC. Im sure it will be a tremendous success!

Bruce Hunter, Chair, TEC (Vistage) Canada

John Warrillows story gets business leaders to focus on a critical question: If others wouldnt pay a fortune for your business, do you have a business worth growing? This is essential reading for owners looking to build a valuable business.

Verne Harnish, founder, Gazelles, and bestselling author of The Rockefeller Habits

By contrast [to Michael Gerbers book The Most Successful Small Business in the World], in Built to Sell, Toronto-based serial entrepreneur John Warrillow, a columnist with the Globe and Mails Your Business section, is much more grounded, focused and effective on how to turn your business into one you can sell. Its a well-told, sensible approach, with lots of tips clearly demarcated within the fable for entrepreneurs to ponder and follow as they dress up their business for sale and then take it through that complicated, delicate process, with millions of dollars at stake.

Harvey Schachter, Globe and Mail (Toronto)

Your business just might be worthless if you dont read this book.

John Jantsch, bestselling author of Duct Tape Marketing

FANTASTIC! Small businesses need this book. So many business owners have the dream of building a business thats bigger than themselves, and getting away from the tyranny of constantly putting out fires. Johns book is an entertaining, to-the-point way of showing them how to do it. They might just find they like their business much better and not even want to sell later. But if they do sell, theyll get much more value from following the books advice.

Anita Campbell, editor in chief, Small Business Trends

As weve always advised at StartupNation, the end depends upon the beginning. Built to Sell, like other great business books, brings into clarity the game-changing importance of clearly envisioning the destiny of your business. But even more, it tells you how to bring that destiny to life.

Rich Sloan, cofounder and chief startupologist, StartupNation

Built to Sell reminds me of Eliyahu M. Goldratts The Goal, in the way that the valuable lessons about successfully exiting a service business are intertwined with Alex Stapletons compelling story. Alexs story drew me in immediately. Any current or aspiring service business owner should read Built to Sell and take heed of John Warrillows valuable lessons and Alex Stapletons enriching and engaging experience.

Mike Handelsman, general manager, Bizbuysell.com

In almost three decades at Inc. magazinefirst as senior editor, then executive editor, then editor at largeI have had many great mentors, and theyve given me an extraordinary education in entrepreneurship. Among the many things Ive learned from them has been the fundamental paradox that lies at the heart of company-building, at least as it is practiced by the smartest entrepreneurs: You should always run a company as if it will last forever, and yet you should also strive constantly to maximize its value, building in the qualities that allow it to be sold at any moment for the highest price buyers are paying for businesses like yours.

Thats the philosophy of Jack Stack, the cofounder and CEO of SRC Holdings Corp. in Springfield, Missouri, with whom I have written two books, The Great Game of Business and A Stake in the Outcome, that explore the mechanisms he and his colleagues have used to create such an enterprise. Its also the philosophy of Norm Brodsky, the serial entrepreneur with whom I have written another book, Street Smarts (formerly The Knack), as well as a long-running column in Inc. of the same name.

And its the philosophy of John Warrillow. John, in fact, refers to this approach as having an options strategy, as opposed to an exit strategy. The idea is to have as many choices in the future as possible. When you follow an options strategy, he says, you build systems and a management team around you so that if a buyer comes along, or you decide its the right time to get out, you have a sellable business. Or so that you can install a president and move into a chairmans role, which is a kind of quasi-exit. Or so that you can stay involved day to day and work on building an enduring company that can go on without you.

The point is that the best businesses are sellable, and smart businesspeople believe that you should build a company to be sold even if you have no intention of cashing out or stepping back anytime soon. If you share that belief, this book is right up your alley. John does a masterful job in Built to Sell of illuminating the qualities that business buyers look for in a company, and he does it in a thoroughly enjoyable and engaging manner: by telling a story. Although Alex Stapleton, the lead character in the story, owns an advertising agency, the fundamental lessons he learns apply to any business, and reading about them can only serve to sharpen your thinking about how to make your own company sellable, no matter what type of business you are in.

John is certainly the right person to turn to for advice on this subject. Few people know the world of small business better than he does. I first heard about him in connection with a conference that his business, Warrillow & Co., organized every year to help Fortune 500 marketers figure out how to sell to small companies. The conference had acquired a reputation as the premier event for learning what smaller businesses wanted and how best to reach them. In addition to the conferences, Warrillow & Co. produced in-depth research papers on small business, based on annual surveys of some ten thousand business owners. A hundred giant corporations paid the firm substantial fees for access to those papers, as well as for the insights John and his associates had developed along the way. John himself hosted a nationally syndicated radio show on entrepreneurship. Thats actually how he came to start his business: Big companies began approaching him for advice on reaching the small business market. He went on to sell Warrillow & Co. in 2008, which he couldnt have done without building a company that could continue to thrive without him.