You often hear stories about how companies like Facebook declined to sell their companies at an early stage.

Other times, you hear about how Mark Cuban took the money and ran when he sold Broadcast.com.

The one thing these companies have in common is that people wanted to buy them.

So how do you build a company that people want to buy for a lot of money?

Read on.

While I don’t have tons of experience buying and selling companies, I do have some experience on the acquisition side. Here is my most notable acquisition (made when I was in college for $115,000).

Implement Repeatable Systems

My 2nd favorite books of all time is E-Myth, by Michael Gerber. In this book, he shares how his incredible first experience at a barbershop went downhill due to a lack of systems.

There is a barbershop in town and Gerber decides to get his haircut.

The business is new, so there is little foot traffic. The barber offers him a coffee while he waits and reads a brand-new magazine.

Gerber thinks to himself that this is perhaps the best barber shop he’s been in. He enjoys time to relax, drink his complimentary coffee, and read something prior to his appointment.

The barber uses a new dry cut tactic because it doesn’t “tear the end of your hair.” At the end, the haircut looks fantastic.

He vows to go back forever to this barber shop.

When he returns 4 weeks later the shop is busier (because it’s successful) and he finds that he’s not offered a coffee.

At the end, the haircut is the same, but small details like the coffee and magazine quality is lacking. Still, he decides to go back for a third haircut.

When he returns again, the barbershop is a ghost town, there’s no coffee made, the barber says the receptionist is out of town and calls Gerber back to the chair.

The barber doesn’t use the special dry cut method. Instead, he wets Gerber’s hair and cuts it normally. Again, another great haircut.

These small details start to add up. Gerber makes a decision. While the result of the haircut is great, he decides he will no longer return to the barbershop.

It had nothing to do with the haircut.

So why am I sharing this story with you?

Because the barbershop had tremendous potential and a great offering, but their customer service was lacking.

Why was it lacking? Because they had no repeatable systems to enable a consistent customer experience.

The barber could have created a system in which his receptionist offered coffee to customers every 25 minutes.

He could have created a system in which new magazines were delivered to the store every two weeks.

These, in addition to other systems, would have standardized the experience for the customer.

What systems can you implement in your business?

Up next is a crucial part of business. Automation.

Develop Automation

Automation is important because it saves time, reduces payroll, and removes yourself from many monotonous / repetitive tasks in your business. You should be spending more time on strategy and big picture initiatives instead of sending out quotes or organizing receipts.

Some automations have become so common that, as consumers, we think there’s something wrong if we don’t receive one.

For example, order confirmation emails. Just about every company uses order confirmation email automations. What do they accomplish?

Not only do they provide order confirmation, shipping info, extra information, etc., but they also save the employees / owners of the company a ton of time.

If you have 100 customers, sure you can spend 30 minutes sending out confirmation emails manually. How about 10,000 customers? Not as easy.

Here’s another example I use in my business. With the help of my software developer, we have created an automation that helps us build out our pickup / delivery routes.

This automation is incredibly complex, but it saves us hours of making these schedules by hand.

Implementing automation allows your business to scale AND allows you to remove yourself from tasks that can be completed with the help of technology.

Make Key Hires

This topic is last because you should focus first on systemization and automation.

For this topic, I will talk about my experience hiring for my company Greenbox Storage. Here is my 2023 Org Chart:

Here is 2024:

As you can see, we have tripled the size of our full-time team.

In 2021 (and 2020, 2019) I wore ALL the hats. I had to. It’s really the only way to start a company.

I did customer service, I organized logistics, I kept the books, I posted on social media, etc. I did EVERYTHING.

Over the past year or so, I’ve been working like crazy to fire myself from as many jobs as possible. I no longer have to do those tasks, which gives me time to focus on the big picture.

Increasing revenue. Increasing profits.

When you get to this point, you must relentlessly determine the next job to fire yourself from, and figure out the best way to do it.

Greenbox is not yet where it needs to be. As you can see, the Director of Operations position is still red. We have yet to hire this position.

This hire will be crucial to remove myself from the day-to-day operations of the company, and grow Greenbox into a truly self-reliant company.

A company that someone might be interested in acquiring.

If you can build a business with these three tactics, you are well on your way to building a valuable company that you can sell.

Even if you don’t want to sell, you’ve built a company that provides you income while not taking up a lot of time.

It’s a win-win.

Cheers,

Collin Rutherford

PS. Oops! You should definitely know this shorthand!