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  • Built to Sell

  • Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You
  • By: John Warrillow
  • Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
  • Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (484 ratings)
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Built to Sell cover art

Built to Sell

By: John Warrillow
Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
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Summary

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.

©2011 John Warrilow (P)2011 Gildan Media Corp

What listeners say about Built to Sell

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant book, odd narration

Really enjoyed the book and found it very thought provoking and useful
The narration was quite clunky and cringeworthy.
Don’t give up though. It’s worth battling on!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent content

A truly great story that makes you think about really vital questions. The narrators style is pretty terrible, but you just learn to ignore it. It's an inspirational read.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

An enjoyable business book

Rather than just say here's a number of things to consider if you want to sell or scale your business, the book is written in a story format with relatable scenarios to make it far more engaging I wanted to keep listening.

The story based around advertising agency was well suited to my own which was also great.

Took me a while to get over the narrators voice as was a little bit irritating in the first chapter when rolling all the last words of sentences but the story allows you to get over that - so plough on.

Great read. Good info and interesting story.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

good book to give you an idea of direction

I do reccomend reading but the only problem I found was it jumps into treating your business like it is almost established.... so not really related to a new, one man-startup business.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

It changed the way I build my business

Now I feel more clear and confident about my business, love the way it is told

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant book, poor narration

Hated the narrator's style, over accentuating the end of every single sentence in the book. Loved the content though. Well worth a read, but if you can find a version narrated by someone else get that instead.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Exit Strategy

This book really highlights the importance of having an exit strategy. So many of us take no notice of when people say have an exit strategy but this book points of why you need one. Written as a story so it is easy to follow along and listen to

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
  • ID
  • 30-11-18

I learnt a lot. great book.

I learnt a lot. great book. I would recommend this book to anyone wishing to reduce their workload of running a business as well as to those who wish to sell.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Good parable, annoying narrator

The story had some really good concepts to consider for business owners who either want to sell their business or simply work their way out of the daily grind of working in their business.

The narrator however seems to be doing a bad impersonation of William Shatner playing James T kirk. That stilted style that ends every sentence the same annoying way. And don't get me started on his attempt at an English accent when a Brit enters the story line and his weird pronunciation of certain words.

If you can get past the awful narration the book is actually well worth a listen. I would be tempted to recommend the buying the written word instead of the audible.

Bottom line, book is good, narrator is pretty poor.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great Book!

Using a story to teach practical principles made this book even more compelling. I had great difficulty taking breaks from the audio-book. The practicality of the principles gets you hooked!

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