Built to Sell Chapter 10: Getting a Blank Check for Growth

Alex has his process. He has his numbers. The business is running without him at the center of every decision. Now it’s time for the part that makes most business owners nervous: preparing for the actual sale.

This chapter is about thinking big, choosing words carefully, and understanding who will pay top dollar for what you built.

Write a Plan Like You Have Unlimited Money

Peggy, Alex’s M&A advisor, asks him to write a three-year business plan. Financial projections, target market, the whole picture. Alex has never planned more than one year ahead. He sits down and starts writing. By year three, he feels like he’s writing fiction. He projects 20% revenue growth per year and keeps his 20% profit margin.

He sends the draft to Ted.

Ted does not talk about the plan right away. Instead, he takes Alex to Starbucks. Not because he likes coffee. He ordered water. He wanted to talk about Starbucks as a business.

Here’s the thing. Starbucks built thousands of identical stores. They created their own language that millions of people learned. They scaled something simple into something massive. Ted tells Alex: put some of that thinking into your plan.

Alex doesn’t understand at first. His plan is realistic. Conservative. The kind of plan a careful business owner writes.

Ted pushes back. He says: imagine you have a blank check. Unlimited resources. How big could you grow the Stapleton Agency if money was not a problem? Could you open offices in every major city? Double the sales team? Sell logos over the phone to small businesses in rural areas?

The point is not lying. The point is that a potential buyer will be much bigger than Alex. They already have the offices, the salespeople, the infrastructure. If they plug Alex’s logo process into their existing machine, growth could be way faster than what Alex can do alone.

So Alex rewrites the plan. He imagines satellite offices in Houston, Chicago, LA, New York, and Atlanta. He adds a phone sales team of eight reps targeting small businesses. The new plan projects $12 million in revenue within three years.

And the more he writes, the more he believes it could actually happen with the right partner.

A Small Word That Makes a Big Difference

Ted reviews the new plan and likes it. But he has one correction. Alex labeled this year’s numbers as “Forecast.” Ted says change it to “Current Year.”

Why? Because by the time they get to the offer stage, Alex will be most of the way through the year. If his numbers are on track, he wants buyers basing their offers on $5 million revenue and $1 million profit, not last year’s smaller numbers. Calling it “Current Year” instead of “Forecast” signals confidence. It says: these are not guesses, this is what we are doing right now.

Small change. Big impact. I’ve seen this in IT projects too. The way you label things shapes how people perceive them. Call something a “prototype” and everyone treats it like it might break. Call it “version 1.0” and suddenly people take it seriously. Same thing, different label.

The Teaser and the Book

Alex meets Peggy at her office. She explains the selling process. First, she writes a “teaser,” a one or two page anonymous description of Alex’s business that gets sent to potential buyers. It announces the company is for sale and describes the opportunity. But it doesn’t name the company. Privacy matters here because employees and customers shouldn’t find out through the grapevine.

If a company is interested, they sign a nondisclosure agreement. Then they get the “Book,” which is the full description of the business with all the details and the three-year plan.

Peggy plans to send the teaser to about twenty companies. Not random companies. She and Alex spend two hours going through a long list and narrowing it down to twenty-three companies that have a real strategic reason to buy.

Strategic Buyers vs. Financial Buyers

This is an important concept in the chapter. Peggy explains two types of buyers.

Strategic buyers are companies that can actually use what you built. They have resources, offices, sales teams. If they buy your business and plug it into their operation, one plus one equals three. They pay more because your business is worth more to them than it is on its own.

Financial buyers are basically investors. They bring a checkbook. That’s about it. No offices, no sales teams, no synergies. They just want a return on their investment. So they pay less because they need to make their money back on the deal itself.

Alex wants strategic buyers. That’s where the best price comes from.

I think about this whenever I see small IT companies getting acquired. The ones that get good deals are bought by a larger company that can immediately use the product or the team. The ones bought by pure financial investors usually end up squeezed for profit while the original team slowly leaves.

Stop Saying “Client”

The last part of this chapter seems small but it’s actually important. Ted tells Alex to stop using the word “client” and start using the word “customer.”

Alex thinks this is ridiculous nitpicking. But Ted explains the logic.

Service companies say “clients.” Product companies say “customers.” Alex has spent months turning the Stapleton Agency from a messy service business into a scalable product business. If he walks into meetings still using service company language, buyers will mentally put him in the service company box.

And here’s the problem with the service company box. When a big company acquires a service business, they structure the deal with a long earn-out. You get a little money up front, then you work for three to five years trying to hit targets to earn the rest. The buyer takes most of the reward. You take most of the risk.

Ted wants Alex in the product company box. That’s where you get more cash up front and a shorter earn-out.

So: “clients” becomes “customers.” “Firm” becomes “business.” “Engagement” becomes “contract.” Every word should tell buyers that the Stapleton Agency is a real, scalable product business, not a bunch of freelancers with a shared office.

My Take on This Chapter

Three things stand out.

First, the blank check exercise is brilliant. Most business owners plan conservatively because they’re used to operating with limited resources. But when you’re selling, the buyer doesn’t care about your limitations. They care about the potential. Writing a plan that shows what’s possible with their resources is not lying. It’s showing them what they’re actually buying.

Second, language matters more than you think. I spent over twenty years in IT. I watched companies position themselves as “consulting firms” and get treated like replaceable labor. Then I watched companies with the same skills call themselves “platform providers” and get valued ten times higher. The work was similar. The words were different. The outcomes were very different.

Third, this chapter shows that selling a business is not just about having good numbers. It’s about presentation, positioning, and psychology. Alex’s business didn’t change between draft one and draft two of his plan. The numbers were the same until he started thinking bigger. The only thing that changed was how he framed the opportunity.

The pieces are moving into place. Alex has a plan, an advisor, and a list of buyers. Next comes the hard part: actually telling people what’s happening.

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