Built to Sell Chapter 1: When Your Business Is a Total Mess

Chapter 1 opens and you immediately feel the stress. Alex Stapleton is running late to a meeting at MNY Bank. He’s sprinting through the lobby, checking his watch, catching his breath in the elevator. It’s 9:06 a.m. on a Friday and he’s already behind.

I’ve been in this situation. You probably have too. That feeling when you’re always six minutes late to everything because you’re doing the work of three people.

The Client Who Treats You Like a Student

Alex gets to the boardroom and meets his client, John Stevens. John is a middle manager at the bank. Pudgy, bald, no marketing training. But he acts like he’s the creative director. He dismisses Alex’s explanations, waves off the designer’s vision, and starts giving instructions about font changes and whether the red should be more orange-red or pink-red.

Eight design concepts. Weeks of work. John flips through them in under thirty minutes and basically asks for a redesign.

Here’s the thing. John is not an unusual client. Warrillow makes that clear. He represents the bulk of Alex’s clients: marketing managers with mediocre jobs who enjoy bossing around their agency. Alex leaves the meeting “feeling broken.” And he has to go tell his designer that her weekend is now gone.

I found this part painfully realistic. If you’ve ever worked in any kind of service business, you know this exact client. The person who has zero expertise in what you do but insists on controlling every detail. And you can’t say anything because you need their money.

The Agency That Alex Built (And Hates)

Warrillow gives us the backstory. Alex started the Stapleton Agency eight years ago after climbing the ladder at a big marketing firm. He dreamed of working on important campaigns, directing models between fancy lunches with CMOs. He wanted to be part of the scene.

Instead, he’s explaining to his designer that she needs to work the weekend because some banker wants a different shade of red.

The agency has a cool office in a funky part of town. Exposed brick walls, glass boardroom, twelve-foot table, mounted projector. Costs $4,000 a month. But here’s the problem. MNY Bank, his biggest client, always makes him come to their office. So the fancy setup just sits there burning cash.

Alex has seven employees. His senior designer Sarah is the only really good one. The rest are what Alex himself admits are “mediocre.” His two account directors got their titles because Alex knew that titles are cheap currency. One guy, Dean, got passed over for promotion twice at his old job. Easy to recruit when you can offer a bigger title. The other, Rhina, is organized but out of her depth on strategy.

And every single client wants to deal with Alex personally. His name is on the door. So he goes to every meeting, handles every relationship, manages every crisis.

A Day That Shows Everything Wrong

The rest of Alex’s Friday is a masterclass in business chaos.

After the MNY Bank meeting, he goes to lunch with Sandy, another client who runs marketing for a law firm. Sandy likes wine at lunch. Alex has too much to do but drinks with her because letting her drink alone would be awkward. They flirt a little because that keeps the projects flowing. It’s not exciting work. It’s survival.

Then comes the credit card moment. Alex pays the bill and sits there nervously waiting, hoping his card won’t get declined. He’d been late on his balance last month. The card goes through. He signs and gets out.

Back at the office, he writes a proposal for a new potential client, Urban Sports Warehouse. They want newspaper ads, radio spots, store banners, and a website. Alex knows his team can handle maybe half of it. The rest he’ll outsource. But the client doesn’t need to know that. He spends four hours estimating hours he knows will be completely wrong because creative work is too unpredictable to estimate accurately.

He misses the FedEx pickup. Drops the proposal at the depot on his way home at 6:30 p.m.

Then he calls his bank account manager, Mary, deliberately late so he gets voicemail. He’s bumping against his $150,000 credit line and wants to avoid another lecture about cash flow. He’s waiting on a check from MNY Bank that hasn’t arrived.

So to summarize: Alex’s biggest client owes him money, his credit is maxed out, and he’s dodging his banker’s calls. But on paper, the business made him $250,000 last year ($100K salary plus $150K bonus). Not bad. But the cash flow is terrible and unpredictable.

Sarah Quits (And Everything Falls Apart)

Saturday, Alex goes to the office while his wife and kids go shopping. He says it’s to catch up on paperwork but really he needs to supervise Sarah’s weekend work on the MNY Bank redesign.

Monday morning, he walks in and finds a note taped to his door. “Alex: We need to talk. Sarah.”

You know exactly what’s coming. Sarah tells him she’s going back to her old job at a rival agency. She’ll finish the current MNY Bank project, then she’s done.

Working the weekend to redo designs for a clueless client was the last straw. And Alex can’t argue. He knows she’s right. He makes “some weak attempts to thank her for her service” and that’s it.

With Sarah gone, his two average designers will need to work overtime. Dean and Rhina will need to handle more clients. Alex will need to recruit a new designer while doing everything else. His already-stretched team will be at their breaking point.

The Dream vs. Reality

The chapter ends with a gut punch. When Alex started his agency, he dreamed of attracting the best talent, paying them well, building something magical, and eventually selling it to a big multinational agency. Instead, he has “second-rate generalists working at the beck and call of ignorant clients.”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

And then, one simple sentence: “Alex was tired of the grind and decided it was time to sell his company.”

My Take

What makes this chapter work is that Alex is not a bad business owner. He’s hardworking. He cares about his employees. He’s been at this for eight years. But he built a business that is completely dependent on him. Every client wants him. Every decision goes through him. He can’t delegate because his team isn’t strong enough, and his team isn’t strong enough because the business model doesn’t allow him to hire better people.

It’s a trap. And if you’ve ever run a services company or worked at a small agency, you’ve seen this exact situation. Maybe you’ve lived it.

The scariest part? Alex is making decent money. $250K a year is not nothing. So it’s easy to keep going, keep grinding, keep telling yourself it will get better. But the cracks are showing. Sarah leaving is just the beginning.

Next chapter, Alex tries to sell. And that’s when things get really interesting.

Previous: Built to Sell: Introduction

Next: Chapter 2 - Finding Out Your Business Is Worth Nothing

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