Built to Sell Radio

In 2017, John Whiting started Digital Kryptonite with the goal to provide business owners with more leads. Helping his clients mine LinkedIn, Whiting quickly grew his company from zero to seven figures within a year. The company was seeing massive growth month-over-month when suddenly Whiting received a message from his credit card processor that his account was being shut down.

In 2019, Jonathan Shroyer, alongside his Co-Founder Scott McCabe, started Officium Labs with the goal to help clients turn contact centers into profit centers. After two years of seeing incredible growth, Jonathan was approached by three investors to acquire Officium Labs. Shroyer ultimately ended up selling to Arise for around 20X EBITDA.

What every owner should take away from Elon Musk's decision to press pause. Enjoy this special edition of Built To Sell Radio.

Eddie Whittingham started a company called The Defense Works in 2016. His idea was to provide companies with information on how to avoid getting hacked. Whittingham created a series of animated video clips explaining cyber security best practices and offered his content on a subscription model to companies. By 2020, Whittingham had bootstrapped his business to 8 full-time employees when he attracted an offer of 7 times revenue from Proofpoint, one of the largest players in the cyber security industry. Whittingham got Proofpoint up to 10 times revenue and agreed to the deal.

James Ashford, the founder of GoProposal, shares his remarkable journey from a failed venture to selling his proposal software company for an impressive eight-figure sum. He discusses the emotional rollercoaster of navigating acquisition talks and the vital metrics like customer churn and conversion that influenced his success. Ashford offers insights into the meticulous preparations needed for a sale, including financial diligence and targeting the right acquirers. He reflects on the importance of maintaining relationships and community support post-acquisition, rounding off with lessons from his new book.

James Ashford had a burning drive to become an entrepreneur and start a successful business. After a failed attempt to grow a marketing agency, Ashford knew that to build the business he had always dreamed of, he needed to make some drastic changes. In 2016, Ashford took what little was left after his business failed and invested £ 4,000 in developing proposal software for accountants which he named GoProposal. By 2020, GoProposal was a slick application with £1.5 million in revenue and hundreds of accountants using it. That's when Ashford agreed to be acquired for a healthy 8-figure sum.

Paul Nielsen built HomeTech, a company focused on creating healthier homes by installing skylights for natural lighting and advanced systems for better air quality. The business was generating around $1.4 million in EBITDA when an industry competitor approached Nielsen about acquiring HomeTech.

This week, we're featuring four recent guests and highlighting transferrable lessons they shared about exiting their company.

After graduating from business school, James Benham interned at one of the large accounting firms. Benham quickly realized corporate life was not for him. Instead, Benham started a business and lived on less money than he made as an intern for ten years.

In 2019, Ben Tossell was a frustrated entrepreneur, launching products nobody bought. His contacts showed little interest in his concepts but were curious about how he built his online offerings – especially because Tossell admitted he didn't know how to code.