Built to be Bought · Free 30-Day Email Series
"They just let
us all go."
Amber ran operations for me. Four years. She knew every customer by name and stayed late to fix things nobody had asked her to fix, because she cared about the place.
That text came six months after I sold my first company. My whole team, gone in a morning.
I was pulling into the garage when it hit my phone. My daughter was in the back seat. My wife was inside with our other two. I could hear the dog barking, waiting for us to come in.
I just sat there.
And I wasn't angry at the buyers. I was angry at myself.
Because six months earlier they had looked me in the eye and said "we're keeping the team, that's why we want this business." And I believed them. Not because I'm naive. Because I wanted to believe them.
I was so focused on getting that first exit. On walking into the next roundtable and being able to say I'd sold a company. I wanted the win.
So I didn't push. I didn't get it in writing. I never called anyone who had sold to them before to ask what actually happened after closing.
I just wanted the deal done.
There's a huge difference between
selling your business and selling it right.
Thirty mornings. Everything I learned the expensive way, so you don't have to learn it the same way.
One email each weekday · 5 minutes · Free
thought it was worth
expenses in my books
on one employee
after closing
What you'll walk away with.
Thirty days from now, three things exist that don't exist today.
By Day 7 you'll have a one-page document with your real number, your timeline, and the things you refuse to compromise on. Most owners never write this down, which is exactly why they negotiate from weakness when the call finally comes.
The middle two weeks are the work that actually moves a valuation. Clean books. Less dependency on you and on any one employee. Documented systems. None of it is glamorous and all of it shows up in the offer.
You'll understand why a $5 million offer can be worth more than a $7 million one, which terms in an LOI matter beyond the price, and what a buyer is really doing during due diligence.
Three stages, thirty mornings.
Most founders stumble into an exit reactive and unprepared. Someone makes an offer and they scramble. We're doing it in the other order.
Your real reason for selling, not the one you tell people. What the business is actually worth today. The metrics buyers ask for that most owners aren't tracking. And whether your best customer is quietly your biggest liability.
What buyers actually pay for, which is rarely what founders think. Books clean enough to survive a CFO. Cutting key person risk, including your own. Then deal structures, LOIs, non-competes, and what really happens in diligence.
A teaser that gets responses. The questions every buyer asks in the first meeting. Protecting your team in writing instead of on a handshake. What you're still liable for after closing. And what the day after actually feels like.
Six lessons, and what each one cost.
Fifteen years building businesses. Proptech, manufacturing, HVAC, lawn care. Some I owned outright, some I held equity in. I've sold my own and helped other owners sell theirs. Here's a sample of what's in the thirty days.
He told me the business was worth about 40 percent less than I'd been telling myself, and my first reaction was that he didn't understand what we'd built. But the market doesn't care about your sleepless nights or the weekends you missed. It prices two things: future cash flow and risk. Once I stopped defending the number and started fixing what caused it, we took a business from a 3.2x multiple to 4.8x in three years. Same company, better structure.
Five hundred thousand at closing, the rest on a three-year earnout tied to aggressive growth targets. Then the buyer changed his pricing, moved him onto their infrastructure, and reassigned half his team. He missed every target, and they controlled every lever that decided whether he'd hit them. I discount everything that isn't cash at closing now. Earnouts, assume you get half. Stock, assume it could go to zero.
I'd run it through the business, along with my wife's car lease, because I was loose with that stuff back then. During diligence their CFO found all of it and normalized my EBITDA downward. Every personal expense they pulled out came off the valuation at a multiple, not dollar for dollar. Six months of clean books before going to market would have paid for that vacation forty times over.
He knew every client, every process, every quirk of our systems. Every buyer asked what happens if he leaves and we didn't have an answer. Offers came back 25 percent low. One buyer said it plainly: we're not buying a business, we're buying him with some equipment around him, and he can leave anytime. We spent six months getting what was in his head onto paper and cross-training around him. The next round of offers came in 30 percent higher.
A sales tax nexus issue in a state where we'd done one project. I had signed a representation that all taxes were filed and paid, because I assumed they were and our accountant handled it. I never verified. That signature made it my problem long after the wire had cleared, and I wrote the check plus legal fees.
First real one in seven years, and my team almost panicked when I told them. The business ran fine without me. A few small fires, and they handled every one. That's when I understood I'd been the bottleneck, and that routing every decision through myself was quietly destroying the value of what I'd built. When we eventually sold, the buyer asked how many hours a week I was working. I said about ten. His eyes lit up.
How it works
Five minutes with your coffee.
Grab a notebook and keep it somewhere you'll see it. Some of the questions are uncomfortable, and that's the point. If you don't have one, reply and tell me. I'll mail you one. I keep a stack for exactly this.
Why I write this
So it doesn't take you six months to find out.
I didn't start Missing Capital to run a process. I started it because I know exactly what it feels like to sit in a driveway and realize the thing you were most proud of cost people their jobs, and that you had every chance to prevent it.
Everything in these thirty days is something I got wrong, or watched a founder I know get wrong. None of it is theory. All of it is fixable, but only if you start before somebody makes you an offer.
Start tomorrow morning.
Day 1 lands at 5am. It's free, and you can unsubscribe from any email in the series.
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30 Days · One Email Each Weekday · 5 Minutes · Free