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    Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You
    Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You
    Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You
    Audiobook4 hours

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

    Written by John Warrillow

    Narrated by Erik Synnestvedt

    5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A business parable about how to create a start-up that won't trap you when you want to sell it.

    According to John Warrillow, the number one mistake entrepreneurs make is to build a business that relies too heavily on them. Thus, when the time comes to sell, buyers aren't confident that the company-even if it's profitable-can stand on its own.

    To illustrate this, Warrillow introduces us to a fictional small business owner named Alex who is struggling to sell his advertising agency. Alex turns to Ted, an entrepreneur and old family friend, who encourages Alex to pursue three criteria to make his business sellable:

    * Teachable: focus on products and services that you can teach employees to deliver.
    * Valuable: avoid price wars by specializing in doing one thing better than anyone else.
    * Repeatable: generate recurring revenue by engineering products that customers have to repurchase often.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAscent Audio
    Release dateApr 29, 2011
    ISBN9781596598119
    Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You

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    Reviews for Built to Sell

    5/5

    134 ratings12 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 5/5
      Excellent. Gave me a greet insight ahead of looking to build my company to sell. Highly recommend

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Good book, good to value your business, a must read

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      It is a very interesting book for entrepreneurs. By reading it, I've identified some weak spots in my business and the strong ones. It can make you have a clear idea about your business, and I realized I didn't know much about what selling your business really means. I see people who are trying to sell their business every week and are asking prices that generate hilarious comments from the community, underlining the fact they don't know anything about their own business and think that they can get a lot of cash by selling them. I've learned that selling your business is not easy, and it takes years to prepare it. But the most important thing I've learned from this book is to add more value to my business, and even though I'm not planning to sell it in the near future, I started already to adjust it following the ideas presented in the book, aiming for the target: your business should thrive without you at the steering wheel.
    • 5/5
      Excellent.
      I will listen to it again.
      I learnt a lot on how to scale the business.
      I love the product versus service thinking.
    • 5/5
      Very good and direct advices, I learned a new working concept
    • 5/5
      Amazing book. It gives a newbie to this topic a lot of information and insights on how not to make common mistakes.
    • 5/5
      This is a Great book. Lots of valuable info on getting ready to sell a business
    • 5/5
      This was a really good listen. I learned a lot
    • 5/5
      Great book. Brilliant guide for small business owners that work as costant firefighter.
    • 2/5
      The voice talent has a weird and annoying way of ending sentences. Very unpleasant to listen to.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 3/5
      The book is good, but the narrator has an extremely annoying voice.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Like many modern business books, the business lessons that John Warrillow teaches are embedded into a parable which makes for quick reading. The story is about a harried entrepreneur, Alex Stapleton, who owns a marketing agency. As the story begins, he is getting fed up with bad clients, underperforming employees and poor financials. He's ready to sell.The rest of the book is about his taking on a mentor, Ted, who helps him to understand how business buyers evaluate companies. Ted helps Alex create value in the company and, in the process, create a much more enjoyable and profitable business. The story culminates with Alex going through the process of selling the company including the hurdles he faces and overcomes along the way. Throughout the story, the author includes 17 tips to follow for creating value. Some of the tips are no-brainers and some are gems that come only from experience (e.g., hire two sales people instead of one). After the parable is an eight step process for creating a business that can thrive without the owner. The lessons from experience are worth the price of the book alone.