The Journey So Far

Hey entrepreneurs,

Welcome to the Better Business Brief, where I share takeaways from:

running a business I’m building to sell for millions
my consulting with business owners building to sell for millions
tips and tricks you can use to do the same

I started building this company more than a year ago now. I didn’t know what it was going to be or where it was headed. I just knew there were things I wanted to learn and people I wanted to help. It has since evolved into something pretty interesting:

So today, in less than 5 minutes, I’ll give you:

📈 What Scale for Sale has Become

🤔 Why I’m “Building in Public”

📑 The Results of My Social Media Experiment

As I started Scale for Sale and began working with business owners, I had a pretty big assumption: I assumed that everyone that was thinking about selling their business would want to do everything possible to maximize the price they could sell for. I was wrong and right.

I found a lot of people who did, but also a lot who didn’t. To my utter surprise, I found a lot of people who just wanted out. Some of really great businesses. At first, I found myself trying to talk them out of this, or trying to help anyway, but the further I’ve gotten into this, the more I realize I can’t “save” everyone, and many people just don’t have the same expectations of their business that I do if I look at it. AND that’s ok. Nowadays, I prefer to work with people who do have a similar expectation and outlook for their business to what I see when I look at it.

But the work has evolved. About a month ago, my business partner and I actually took equity in our first “client” company. This is because we wanted to be able to have more impact. The eventual play here is that we will have equity in a few different companies, and we will package them together and sell them all for a big multiple.

The thing I realized along the course of this journey is that Scale for Sale so far had been private equity on training wheels. I was coming into these businesses and doing the same types of things I’d do if I owned them and was trying to make them into a sellable asset, and having success. But I was doing it for a simple retainer fee and didn’t really have any skin in the game. It turns out that a lot of business owners actually do prefer if you have some skin in the game for this type of work.

So I decided “what if I just did own them?” There will be more updates to come, but my aim is to be intentional about sharing more of this process so that people can learn from it, both mistakes and failures, and so that anyone who wants to be involved can see what’s going on and see if it’s right for them. That’s why I’m “building in public”. When this thing eventually has some big success to speak of, I, selfishly, want to be able to look back and pinpoint what happened along the way to get me there. But I also realize that I could never do this whole thing alone, and I have found that building in public attracts the people I need on my team to bring this all together.

For over a year of doing this, I’ve been posting on social media to share what’s going on and share some education. To be honest with you, for a lot of that time, I’ve felt like I was banging my head against the wall to try to figure out what could work to actually help me grow and reach more people. I’ve had success, I’ve had growth, I’ve even found clients and a business partner from doing all of this, but it all felt slower than I expected, and felt like I wasn’t doing it in the highest leverage way possible. That is, until the past week:

For one full week before writing this, I’ve posted a short video on both TikTok and Instagram every day that is a “day in the life” style breakdown of what I did in the day. The series is called “building a private equity company from scratch. The results have been pretty astounding to me. All of my videos are outperforming most of my videos from before in most metrics. Especially on TikTok.

Across both platforms, I’ve gained about 150 or so followers in just a week completely organically, just from this. Engagement has been great. But the real win has been outside of the platforms. I’ve received something like 10-15 applications from aspiring interns that want to be part of this. They are coming from great schools with very high level educations and backgrounds, and they just like the way I’m going about all of this. It’s honestly the coolest thing in the world to me.

I hadn’t expected to be taking on any kinds of interns any time soon, but the way this is going, I figure I might as well. This brings me back to an old proverb I love: “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I want to go far, and I can’t get that far on my own. My goal is to continue doing these every day and allow the results to compound, ultimately bringing the vision together faster than I could’ve ever expected.

Outside of just intern applications (which is not enough to build this company), I’ve had a number of people that have actually had considerable private equity experience (one in particular who has started and scaled 6 funds over 4 years) who have reached out because they see what I’m doing and want to help. How cool is that?? That, in my opinion is what will really drive the results here because someone who has gone through the mistakes and challenges of this 6 times can help me do this way smoother than I would’ve done my first time around otherwise.

To go back to another thing I mentioned above in passing, I have a business partner that is working very hard on building Scale for Sale with me (shoutout Grant) that I found only because I was building in public. We didn’t know each other at all until we met through Instagram DM’s. We happened to be in the same town, and he, a much more experienced entrepreneur than me, just liked what I was building and wanted to be part of it. Flash forward, we have been able to do things together that I didn’t think would be possible for another 3-5 years for me.

As I write this, I couldn’t be more grateful for what life is becoming. It all started because I put myself out there. It hasn’t been a smooth road here, but it has been rewarding nonetheless, and I can’t wait to keep it rolling. I hope this has been helpful for you in your journey. If reading this sparked ideas about a play you think you can make in your business, or if you still have questions about what I’m doing and how you might be able to get involved, I’d love to talk about it: Grab some time here and we can talk about how I might be able to help.

Be great. Keeping growing and aspiring. And as always: I hope you got something from this.

If you did, share it with a friend who may too, as this is the best way for me to grow it and make this better.

They can even sign up here :)

Happy value-building to all of you!

See you next time for Better Business Brief,

-Brody