John Warrillow

"The former owner who turned sellability into a fable — and a score."

John Warrillow is a Canadian entrepreneur and writer who sold a market-research business, then spent years interviewing founders about what makes a company actually sellable. He wrote Built to Sell as a fable for service-firm owners who are still the product, and later built the Value Builder System and Built to Sell Radio around the same question: can the firm thrive without you?

1 book·Sellable service firms

Books by John Warrillow

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Key Ideas & Recurring Themes

A business that needs you is a job

If the owner is still the rainmaker, the doer, and the manager, buyers are purchasing a person, not a firm.

Teachable unique offering

Specialize until the product has a name, a process a junior person can follow, and a price that does not require you in the room.

Notable Quotes

"If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business — you own a job."
— Built to Sell

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Book Author John Warrillow