Jessica Tindel and her partner started Dream Enrichment Classes, a business offering after school programs in math and art 13 years ago. Tindel built the business to 60 part time instructors and 5 full time office staff when a new business caught her attention. Stretched thin and drawn to the potential of her new idea, she decided [...]
When a company has over 20 owners, how do you get everyone onboard for a sale? The answer – for Wayne Colonna, who purchased Automatic Transmission Service Group (ATSG) – was a lot easier to bring to fruition than he imagined. When Colonna was approached by a strategic buyer in 2018, he wasn’t looking to sell. [...]
Nobody likes paying for a hundred TV channels when all you want is a few, which is why so many people are dropping cable in favor of a subscription to only the select channels they'll watch. Similarly, no investor wants to buy a business with a hodgepodge of product lines if they can’t figure out how [...]
Can you exit your business if you’re in a declining industry? The answers - according to CJ Whelan, who co-founded Adigo, a teleconferencing business, is yes — on one condition: you must have sticky customers. In the absence of an innovative product, acquirers may still buy your business if you can prove you have a loyal [...]
Alex Bates co-founded Mtell in 2006. The software company used artificial intelligence to predict when a piece of heavy machinery like an oil rig was about to fail so workers can preemptively fix what’s about to break. If that sounds like a niche service offering, it was. Bates and his co-founder were able to grow the [...]
Andrew Lamppa bought the 44th Street Diner in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2004. Within a couple of years he wanted out, but his first attempt at finding a buyer (…and his second, third, fourth and fifth) was unsuccessful. Did Lamppa have really bad luck? …or a business that was too dependent on him? Find out how he [...]
Boyd Davis – and his three co-founders – created Kogentix with a mission to provide the same behaviour data that recommends the ‘next show to watch’ on Netflix… in industries like banking and groceries. They started as a consultancy and soon realized in order to grow they would need to transform their services offering business into [...]
Built To Sell Radio speaks to many different business owners with unique stories. Some share cautionary tales of the mistakes they still dwell on today; others share a great story about what they believe was (and will remain as) the best day of their life. But beyond the different stories, there is one consistent theme across [...]
Can you actually thrive in an industry you don’t know much about? According to Erik Van Horn, former franchise owner of Sola Salon Studios, you sure can. Achieving his success as a franchise owner always looking for the next deal, Van Horn stumbled across the salon industry in 2014. Though a new-found territory, Van Horn and [...]
Kenan Hopkins founded his delivery food service company, Blue Ridge To Go, with no real management skills, no idea how to run a business, a lump of personal credit card debt, and the worst branding ever – all his words. Though off to a rough start, he was able to transform his messy company into a [...]
