Ep 563 Heath Adams Said No to the Biggest Offer of His Life, Then Doubled It

Heath Adams bootstrapped TCM into a company with two revenue lines: hacking into companies' systems to expose vulnerabilities, and selling courses and certifications that trained others to do the same work. He owned every share, raised no outside capital, and never relied on outbound sales. Every lead came through a YouTube channel that grew to more than a million subscribers. 

A competitor then raised $50 million and began matching TCM on price and quality. On the advice of a friend who had sold his own company, Heath started answering the acquisition emails he had been deleting for years. One became a letter of intent for more money than he had ever seen. Half of it was an earnout, so he turned it down, hired a sell side firm, and put the company in front of 300 buyers. Four wrote letters of intent. The one he signed was worth more than double what he had turned down. In this week's episode of Built to Sell Radio, you discover how to 

• Turn the acquisition emails you've been ignoring into free valuations and a rehearsal for diligence 

• Tell the difference between the money in an offer and the promise attached to it 

• Pass on the highest offer and pick the buyer instead 

• Build a walk away number backwards from the life you want to fund rather than a multiple of earnings 

• Hold diligence at arm's length so it does not paralyze the company you are selling