5 (+1) Podcasts on Selling Your Business
Selling your business can be a slog through seemingly endless considerations around goals, types of buyers, confidentiality, valuation, advisors, financial structures, fees, and paperwork. Whether you’re just dipping your toe in the water or ready to hit the ground running with a transaction, considering the sale of some or all of your business can feel pretty lonely – even though you know that businesses are bought and sold all the time.
Most small business-focused podcasts have a handful of episodes dedicated to selling your business – prepping for sale, finding the right buyer, negotiating, or navigating post-close. But if you’re serious about (eventually) selling your business and planning an exit, you’re going to want more than an hour or two of tips, tricks, and red flags.
So we’ve rounded up podcast recommendations that are dedicated to discussing the ins and outs of selling a business. From interviews with founders and owners to discussions on the aftermath of getting acquired to deep dives on the terms and documents and people involved in a transaction, these shows make selling seem a little less daunting and a little more doable.
Here are our 5 (+1) picks for podcasts on the business of selling your business.
How do you handle a low-ball offer? How do you “you-proof” your business? How do you maintain your leverage after you sign an LOI? How do you make peace with your decision to sell? Built to Sell host John Warrillow brings on individual founders and owners to dissect why and how they sold their business, including what went right – and what they’d do differently if they could do it again. Episodes zoom in on strategies to prepare your business for sale from the outset, backstories of individual exits, and the nitty gritty of negotiations.
Best for: Lessons learned from other small business owners and entrepreneurs who have been there before.
Currently an eight-part series, How to Buy & Sell a Business pairs Wichita-based business attorney Sam Foreman with Jacob Wayman, the owner of local OrangeTheory Fitness branches to talk through both buying and selling a business. It’s a lucid conversation walking through the process and requirements – everything from priorities of buyers and sellers to key terms in a transaction to the documents involved in a deal – of transactions from people who have been on all sides of the table.
Best for: Getting your head around the nuts and bolts of the deal process.
Insights from UK-based investing firm United Capital on how to sell your business. The focus in The Selling Sessions is on what potential investors see when they look at a business and how to navigate a sale. They do it with the help of outside experts, including HR lawyers, financial executives, employment law experts, and other investors, bringing a high level of detail and nuance to the question of how to sell your business. The specifics may not always translate to a US context, but the core considerations are universal.
Best for: Going deep on what people who buy businesses are actually looking for – and how to deliver.
The Exit host Steve McGarry presents 30-minute episodes meant to introduce you to the world of exits – one he calls “occupied by a small few, but accessible to many.” Featuring founders, owners, and serial entrepreneurs, this show focuses on drawing personal stories and lessons on starting, growing, and selling businesses from people who have one specific thing in common: they’ve successfully exited.
Best for: Compact insights on the hows and whys of exits from operators who have sold a business.
Yes, there are stories from “founders who don’t follow the Silicon Valley narrative” of how they went about building businesses, prepping and optimizing them for sale, and negotiating the decision-making, diligence, and the transaction. But They Got Acquired host Lexi Grant is most effective at getting to the next part – what it meant for small business owners and what that time freedom and financial stability allowed them to do.
Best for: Stories of unsplashy – but meaningful – business sales.
It’s a bonus because, well, it’s ours. Season 1 of Permanent Podcast was “The Messy Marketplace,” based on our book of the same name. In it, we outline the buyers, the process, and the emotional journey involved in selling a small or midsize business. For most owners we talk to, selling their company is a once-in-a-lifetime event. There’s no reason you should know what to expect, how to think through your options, how to negotiate, who needs to be involved, or what happens after the paperwork is signed. We’ve peeked behind the curtain at thousands of companies and use that experience to untangle transactions from the seller’s point of view and make the path forward a little clearer.
Best for: Demystifying the selling process and the market for smaller companies to make better decisions and achieve better outcomes.
Want to start a conversation about selling your business?
