Built to Sell Radio

Dane Pan and his wife built Monet Brands to $1.3 million in revenue with two employees, selling a $24.99 skincare tool that cost them $6.10. 

When they took the company to market in 2025, nine buyers cleared the proof-of-funds screen and four of them wrote an LOI. The best offer came in close to four times SDE with a holdback attached. Dane countered for all cash at close, watched two of his four offers disappear, and signed at 3.6

One of the fastest growing groups of acquirers is the self funded searcher. A searcher is not a competitor nor a private equity group. A searcher is usually one person, often recently out of an MBA program, who puts ten to twenty percent down from personal savings, borrows the rest from a bank, often asks the owner to finance part of the purchase price, and signs a personal guarantee for the debt. 

Owners find searchers appealing for good reasons. They may pay your asking price, and they promise to look after your employees rather than fold them into someone else's operation.

In 2016, Janessa White and her business partner started Simply Eloped, a marketplace that planned elopements and small weddings for couples in 35 cities across the United States. They also decided, before they had a single customer, which company they wanted to sell it to. The Knot Worldwide, the largest wedding platform in the world. 

Over the next seven years, White told The Knot exactly that, met with their corporate development team every quarter for four years, and shared her revenue and margins with them along the way. When she finally emailed to say she was ready, the letter of intent arrived within a week.

There are four types of financial buyers who might make an offer on your business, and more often than any other type, the one approaching you is an independent sponsor. It is an unhelpful label for a group that raises the money for a deal only after the seller has signed an LOI, which is also when the seller's leverage is at its lowest. 

Travis Jamison runs Capital Pad, where investors fund independent sponsor deals. He sees dozens of them for every one he approves. Independent sponsors are now behind roughly 28% of lower middle market acquisitions, which is more than traditional private equity does.

One day, you're going to sell your business, and when you do, you'll experience a step function increase in your net worth. Navigating that moment is something Adam Katz has spent his career helping owners do. He spent twenty years at Merrill Lynch as a Private Wealth Advisor to ultra high net worth families before he and his team left in 2018 to build KORE Private Wealth, an independent firm that grew to five billion dollars in assets. Just four years later, they sold. His new book, Making the Zeros Count: A Field Guide for Decamillionaires, Centimillionaires, and Billionaires, distills what he's learned into a playbook for owners who come into sudden wealth. 

Katz says the greatest benefit of wealth isn't what it buys. It's the freedom of never needing anyone again. Not your clients, not a boss, not a buyer. He argues that kind of independence is impossible to understand until you're on the other side of the deal, which is why, even after decades of coaching founders through liquidity events, he admits he is still adjusting to it himself.