Built to Sell Radio

This week's episode of Built to Sell Radio features David Amigo. He co-founded Carolina Country Homes, a modular home dealer. Amigo grew his company to $10 million in annual revenue but never loved the modular home business where red tape and financing challenges are commonplace.

Before the pandemic, fancy salad bars were popping up in major cities across the US, making the category one of the fastest-growing sectors of the restaurant industry. Despite their popularity in major cities, when Ana Chaud moved to Portland, Oregon, she was surprised to see a shortage of good salad options. 

When we discover a vaccine or reliable treatment regime for COVID-19, there will inevitably be an unscrupulous gang of counterfeiters trying to make a quick buck by selling fake remedies. Systech International could provide a defense against these crooked operators. Systech has developed technology that allows drug makers to create a unique bar code for each of their products, which stops counterf...

Michael Spinosa and Scott Greenwell started a digital marketing agency called Unleashed Technologies at the start of the 2007 financial crisis. Spinosa believes the recession helped Unleashed get started because their flexibility and lower fees enabled them to pick up business from larger rivals who were losing customers amid cost-cutting. By 2019, Unleashed had grown to over $6 million in revenue...

Anson Sowby started Battery, a creative advertising agency in 2013. Battery quickly won assignments from companies like Netflix and LEGO featuring A-list celebrities such as LeBron James, fuelling their growth to 50 employees by 2019. That's when Paris-based Havas decided to make an offer to buy Battery.

In 2012, Gabriela Isturiz co-founded Bellefield Systems, a company offering a timekeeping application for lawyers. Over the next seven years, Bellefield grew to 45 employees when Isturiz decided to hire an advisor to find a strategic investor. Given Bellefield's growth and success, Isturiz was hoping the process would garner a valuation of 5-7 times Bellefield's Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).

Ganesh Ramakrishna and Mike Watson built Opex Analytics to 140 employees before they sold it to PE-backed LLamasoft in the fall of last year.

Adam Ochstein started an HR software company called StratEx in the depths of the 2008 recession. CEOs were asking HR managers to do more with less and Ochstein's software promised to help HR managers do just that. Despite the challenging economic environment, StratEx was an early success and was particularly popular with restaurants. Ochstein decided to focus on the hospitality sector and forged a...

Nashville-based Bryan Clayton was running Peachtree, a landscaping business, when the financial crisis of 2008 hit hard. Customers stopped spending money overnight. Clayton gathered his employees together and told them the world had changed and asked each to re-commit to the company. Clayton told them that the road ahead would be challenging, but he would do everything in his power not to cut staf...

If you're working from home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, you've probably received a few packages from Amazon. As more people order essentials to deal with "shelter at home" restrictions, Amazon has seen a sudden spike in activity, which is causing them to hire more than 100,000 fulfillment center workers. 

It's ironic that Joshua Dick lives in Italy, one of the country's worst hit by COVID-19 deaths. He moved to Italy with his family as a reward for selling his business, Urnex Brands. Urnex was in the unglamorous business of selling cleaning supplies for coffee makers. As is often the case, the least attractive companies are often some of the most profitable, and when Urnex ticked passed $5 million...

Staffing-industry veteran Will Gilbert co-founded Socium – a U.K.-based company supplying workers to companies that needed them – in early 2019. Within six months, Socium was generating more than 7 million U.K. Pounds in revenue. 

Aater Suleman co-founded an IT services company called Flux7 in 2013, built it to 70 employees and sold it in 2019 to NTT DATA, the Fortune 500 IT giant. 

The action sports business is fuelled by big brands which is why, when SPY Optics built a style popular with irreverent teens, eyewear bemouth Bollé decided they had to own them.

When Scott Moore's job as a VP at Winn-Dixie was eliminated in 2012, he decided to start a restaurant with his friend Gus Evans in Jacksonville, Florida. They called it The Maple Street Biscuit Company and offered what they refer to as "comfort food with a modern twist."

Back in 2004, John Moore started 3D4Medical.com, a company that created three-dimensional models of the human body, photographed them and licensed the images to textbook publishers. When the Great Recession hit, Moore's business took a turn, and he realized he needed to re-invent the company.

Arvid Kahl and Danielle Simpson were living together in Berlin when Kahl noticed his partner struggling to complete feedback reports about the students to whom she was teaching English as a second language.

Grant Munro started FlashStock in 2013 to help big companies produce content (photos, videos) for advertising campaigns. In 2015, Instagram exploded, and online marketers became desperate for more content, which helped fuel Munro's business from a handful of employees in 2014 to more than 100 in 2017. That's about when Munro agreed to sell FlashStock to Shutterstock for $65 million. 

Griffin Thall and Paul Goodman, two Southern California friends traveling through Costa Rica on a post-college graduation trip in 2010, crossed paths with two bracelet artisans, Jorge and Joaquin, who were living in poverty.  Jorge and Joaquin made beautiful, colorful handmade bracelets that seemed to capture the essence of their journey.  Thall and Goodman asked the artisans to make 400 bracelets...

Nick Gray built Museum Hack, a company that offers fun museum tours in major cities, to almost 3 million dollars in annual revenue when he had an idea.

Pathfinder Health offered software to therapists helping patients with Autism. The company founder was creative, but the company had reached a plateau. 

In the last two weeks, we've seen a passenger jet shot out of the sky. A super-bug has emerged in Asia. A bun fight in the democratic primaries which will look like a schoolyard tussle compared to the bare-knuckle cage match we're about to witness in the race to become — or remain — the leader of the free world. 

When Scott Raymond started buying real estate, he looked for a property management company to maintain his buildings. He couldn't find anyone to care as much as he did, so Raymond decided to start his own property management business. 

Wes Winham was a co-founder and shareholder in PolicyStat, a software company that helps hospitals keep track of their Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), including everything from dress codes to how to handle life and death procedures. 

Marc-Andre Seguin launched JazzGuitarLessons.net in 2009 to share his knowledge as a guitar teacher.