EP628 - The Art of Building a Business to Sell - John Warrillow

In this episode of the Millionaire Mindcast, we have an superb guest John Warrillow who shares a lot of valuable insights on strategies and ways to pull your business in a position to extract the most value out of it, why growing revenue is not always being the most important thing, how business landscape have changed since COVID, the difference between saleable and unsaleable companies, the three types of business owner profile, how long you need to commit to the business you want to build, and diversification of business trends moving forward!

John Warrillow is an entrepreneur, investor, expert in setting up a business, the founder of The Value Builder System, a simple software for building the value of a company used by thousands of businesses worldwide. He wrote amazing resources and books and information around businesses that are setup to sell. He authored The Automatic Customer, The Art of Selling Your Business, and the bestselling book, Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You, which was recognized by both Fortune and Inc magazines as one of the best business books of 2011. Also, host of Built to Sell Radio that interviewed hundreds of founders about their exit. Forbes ranked this as one of the ten best podcasts for business owners.

Starting a business with a proper foundation is vital in order to thrive and succeed. Majority of business owners focus on multiplying revenue and clients. Thinking it’s enough to be called as high-value business. However, according to John, none of these matters if your business is relying on you because you can’t sell it. Therefore, create a valuable company that is built to sell. He suggests to form standard operating procedures to follow your employees when you’re not around. This will grow your company beyond your involvement. Moreover, sale a few things to lots of people. It is planning one thing that you can absolutely own and doubling down on. These are the main ways to boost the value of a company.

Some Questions I Ask:

How you got into the game of building, executing, and selling businesses? (05:26)

What is the most important variable in a successful business? (07:56)

How do you guys audit the overall health or the ability to be a saleable company? (10:22)

Is company valuation process something that people should be factoring into their business plan and their model? (17:51)

Is there a perfect business model? (21:53)

What are the best business frameworks that you’ve seen that have been built to sell? (28:54)

What is the overall average timeline you see for these successful businesses? (40:16)

What kind of mentality mindset should someone have in terms of commitment in building their business? (44:42)

When is it time to thrown the town, pivot and adapt? (47:15)

What is your diversification look like? (51:56)

What are some of the opportunities or challenges that you see for businesses in the landscape post-COVID? (53:34)

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

Monopoly control: the main way to boost the value of the company (12:10)

The three traditional ways of company valuation (19:39)

Three psychographic profiles of business owners (22:58)

The aspiration that entrepreneurs must have in their companies (31:12)

Definition of wealthy (34:31)

Two common reasons why business owners decide to sell their company (59:03)

Quotes:

“Every additional service you offer is going to make you less attractive to acquire.”

Connect with John Warrillow on:

Built to Sell

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