Built to Sell Radio just dropped a year-end special that pulls the strongest moments from 2025 into one episode.

Across four formats (Exit Story, Inside the Mind of an Acquirer, Mastering the Deal, and After the Deal), you discover how to

• Choose exit value over lifestyle income before comfort caps valuation
• Spot the "founder-dependent" trap that scares off serious buyers
• See how buyers price risk, not just revenue and EBITDA
• Use imperfections as leverage instead of liabilities
• Build leverage before a first offer quietly sets your ceiling
• Create real alternatives so negotiations stop feeling one-sided
• Prepare for the identity shift that hits after the wire clears

If you're feeling a little queasy about the pace of change, you're not alone. AI is accelerating competition in almost every market, and it's making some business models feel irrelevant almost overnight.

In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow talks with Ryan O'Leary, who saw a similar wave coming in payments when Shopify started bundling merchant processing into its plans. O'Leary chose to sell before the shift crushed margins, structuring a deal that put most of his cash in hand up front. In this episode, you discover how to

• Decide whether to raise capital, hire a CEO, roll equity, or sell
• Spot the early signals that a platform is about to "bundle" you into irrelevance
• Run a tight sale process with a short target list and still generate multiple LOIs fast
• Negotiate for deal structure that protects you, not just a higher multiple
• Limit earnout risk by keeping the earnout short and the rules hard to game
• Separate emotion from the numbers so you can negotiate clean
• Keep your team aligned through the transition by sharing upside, including the earnout

Most experts who start a practice or studio end up trapped by their own success. The schedule is packed, the waitlist is long, but every dollar still depends on them showing up.

In this week's episode of Built to Sell Radio, John talks to a physical therapist who turned a fully booked, owner-dependent practice into a boutique fitness business with recurring revenue, a second-in-command, and a clean exit on her terms. After a first deal collapsed on closing day thanks to a last-minute bank clause, she went back to market with three non-negotiables and still got a seven-figure outcome.