Built to Sell Radio

Most founders think they're not great negotiators. John Richardson thinks they're wrong. Richardson has spent decades teaching negotiation at MIT's Sloan School of Management and before that at Harvard Law, where he was an associate at the Harvard Negotiation Project and co-authored foundational texts with Roger Fisher and Howard Raiffa. His new book is called Never Settle. In this episode, you discover how to 

use a "best guess" about a buyer's motivations to get them talking, even when they're deliberately keeping their cards close 


reframe yourself as the first offer at the table, so you walk into every conversation with leverage you already own 


prepare for the emotional flood that hits founders in high-stakes negotiations, and the neuroscience-backed technique that short-circuits it 


tell the difference between a buyer who's genuinely nervous about AI disruption and one who's using uncertainty as a bargaining chip 


respond to a retrade without blowing up the deal, including the exact language Richardson recommends 


avoid the trap of stating a non-negotiable term too early, and why doing so often ends negotiations before they begin 


find out why the highest offer is not always the best deal, and how to build a personal scorecard that reflects what you actually want

Murray Kent had no background in electrical conduit fittings when he paid $40,000 for a four-person business that, as he put it, looked like a bit of a crack den. What he did have was Value Builder's 8 drivers -- pinned to the wall next to his desk as a literal road map for every decision he made. 

In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, you discover how to negotiate a clean exit with no earn-out complications and no equity rollover. 

You'll learn: 

Why posting the eight drivers next to your desk changes the decisions you make every day 


How Murray reduced his biggest customer from 50% of revenue to the low 20s -- and why even that required extra meetings to satisfy the buyer 


The counterintuitive reason a surprisingly high offer should make you more cautious, not less 


How Murray turned a proposed earn-out into a simple 12-month warranty holdback worth less than 5% of the sale price 


Why Murray broke the news to staff in small groups rather than a town hall -- and how he kept each group from spoiling it for the next 


Why open-book management and profit sharing made his team part of the business, not just employees of it 


What Murray wishes he had known going in: the one negotiation skill no podcast can fully prepare you for

Jay Richards spent five months deep in an acquisition process. He had a letter of intent. He had mentally checked out. He was planning what came next. 

Then issues surfaced in diligence and the deal collapsed. 

This week on Built to Sell Radio, Jay walks John Warrillow through the full story of selling Imagen Insights, a qualitative research platform with clients like Visa, Google, and Amazon, and how you discover how to navigate two very different acquisition conversations and come out the other side with a deal you are genuinely happy with. 

You'll learn why: 

an LOI means far less than you think, and how problems in your books can kill a deal 


founders who shop their company can signal desperation, and what Jay did instead 


the eventual buyer valued the business on EBITDA instead of revenue, and why that worked in Jay's favor 


Jay accepted an earn-out worth more than half the deal, and why he was comfortable with it 


handing out equity without vesting created a problem at the worst possible moment 


a long-standing accountant relationship does not guarantee clean books, and how this nearly killed the deal 


the moment the DocuSign came through did not bring relief, but a flood of new ideas

David Sinkinson and his brother Chris built AppArmor over eleven years without taking a single dollar from outside investors. They bootstrapped it by running side businesses, plowing the profits back in, and staying lean through long sales cycles and compliance-heavy buyers. By the time they were ready to sell, they had over 250 universities on the platform and roughly $6 million in annual recurring revenue — profitable, with no cap table to split with anyone. 

Then an acquirer asked them a simple question, and they answered it. That answer nearly cost them $20 million. 

Recorded live at the Value Builder Summit, this is David Sinkinson's second appearance on Built to Sell Radio. This time he goes beyond the mechanics of the deal — into the surprising struggles he faced after the sale, and a take on employee equity that is going to challenge what most founders believe.

When Sharon Gillenwater built Boardroom Insiders, she was doing something nobody else wanted to do: manually researching the personal work styles, business initiatives, and habits of Fortune 500 executives so that enterprise sales teams could finally get a meeting with the C-suite. It was hard, painstaking work — and that was exactly the point. 

After more than a decade of bootstrapping, consulting on the side to fund payroll, and raising just $275,000 from three people she knew personally, Sharon sold Boardroom Insiders to London-based public company EuroMoney for $25 million — all cash at close, no earn-out. In this episode, you discover how to build and sell a business where customers love you so much they follow you from company to company. 

You'll learn: 

Why a cold call from a PE firm offering $48 million was actually the worst thing that could have happened to Sharon — and what she did instead 


The one overheard side conversation that changed her negotiation posture entirely and helped her push from a $17–20M offer to $25M 


Why Sharon insisted on all cash at close — and why her angel investor told her a lower number in cash beats a higher number with strings attached 


What convertible notes look like after a decade — and why her investors converted their notes just six months before the sale 


Why Sharon cried on her birthday, the day she was quietly walked out of the company she had spent 13 years building 


How she watched the acquirer run Boardroom Insiders into the ground, tried to buy it back — and then decided to rebuild from scratch anyway 


The land-and-expand growth strategy that took Boardroom Insiders from zero to $5 million ARR without ever cracking the demand generation problem