Ep. 206: John Warrillow: Build Your Business to Sell

Spot On Insurance

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John Warrillow is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and President of The Value Builder System, a solutions platform that helps small business owners boost their company's value. Their platform incorporates various tools to measure, analyze, and interpret data to help improve business value by as much as 71%. He is the man behind the bestselling books Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You and The Art of Selling Your Business: Winning Strategies & Secret Hacks for Exiting on Top. John is also the host of the Built to Sell Radio, a weekly podcast for entrepreneurs who want to sell their business.

John joins us to share how his entrepreneurial drive started as a kid selling drinks in school. He discusses some of the motivators that ultimately led him down the path of entrepreneurship. He explains why he wrote books focused heavily on selling businesses and why they both virtually revolved around the concept of recurring revenue. He describes some of the reasons why this year is the best time to sell a business, especially if that business was running throughout 2020 and discusses why he believes new entrepreneurs should chase partnerships over sole ownership. John also explains why trying to sell your business at the very top is a double-edged sword and shares a real-life story of what happens when it goes wrong.

"The best time to sell is when somebody’s buying.” - John Warrillow

Today on Spot On Insurance:

• How John's entrepreneurial spirit started when he was young.
• What recurring revenue is and how it affects company value.
• What inspired John to write his books around recurring revenue.
• How entrepreneurs can sell their businesses like the big players.
• When should business owners consider selling their business?
• Why businesses that operated during the pandemic should consider selling now.
• What is pre-diligence in entrepreneurship?
• Why it's not advisable to always ride the company over the top before you sell.
• Partnerships and why John thinks entrepreneurs should do them.
• Why we need to be very cautious of when an acquirer can talk to our employees.
• What is Majority Recapitalization and what happens when it goes wrong for the owner?

Key Takeaways:

• Exiting a business can both be a fairytale story and a story of enduring hardships.
• Most owners are going to have to stay on after selling to reach their earn-out.
• There's no effort without error and shortcomings.
• When your competitors find out your employees are looking elsewhere, it undermines your leverage.

Resources Mentioned:

• Care.com

Connect with John Warrillow:

• Built To Sell
• The Value Builder System
• Built to Sell Radio
• Twitter
• The Art of Selling Your Business: Winning Strategies & Secret Hacks for Exiting on Top
• Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You

This episode was brought to you by…..

Insurance Licensing Services of America (ILSA), America’s Premier Insurance Compliance and Licensing experts. To learn more about ILSA and their services, visit ILSAinc.com.

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