In the Now: Glenn Grant

Glenn Grant has personally achieved the dream of many entrepreneurs — he started a company, scaled, and sold it. Now, he shares his journey and the lessons learned about growing a valuable business with other aspiring entrepreneurs. The question is: Should you build to sell or build to last? 

Watch the full interview with Glenn Grant here and read an excerpt from the interview below. 

Nowspeed: My name is David Reske, Founder and President of Nowspeed Digital Marketing. Welcome to this episode of In the Now where we focus on uncovering the myths and misunderstandings of marketing and leadership with some of the world’s most interesting people. My guest today is Glenn Grant, an entrepreneur coach and Chief Visionary at Selfassembled Ventures. He will be talking about the comparison of selling your business or building it to last. Welcome to the show. 

Glenn: Thanks for having me, Dave. Excited to be here. 

Nowspeed: Glenn works with business owners as a coach, building greater business value and world class leadership teams. He has started, scaled, and ultimately sold his previous business G2 Tech Group to Great Hill Partners so he has a lot of interesting insights to share. Glenn, as you know, I like to start these conversations with what I call a mythbuster question. The question that you and I’ve been talking about is that most entrepreneurs really want to build their companies to last but you built yours to sell and you coach other entrepreneurs to also think about building to sell. Should entrepreneurs build to last or build to sell?

Glenn: Great question, and it’s not mutually exclusive by any means. Not to date anyone, but I think it might be generational. Did you read built to last first or did you read built to sell first? I read built to sell first. They are overlapping in complementary approaches. 

Nowspeed: Well, let’s unpack this a little bit. So, what about the built to last concept, what is that all about? What are entrepreneurs thinking about? 

Glenn: It’s on a high level a long-lasting company that’s going to continue on without you, even after you’re gone. And I connect that to built to sell because those companies are also designed to carry on.  I’m not an enterprise guy; I’m a scrappy-startup-tech-company guy. Enterprise is not my jam but it’s all interrelated. I tend to feel that built to last is the enterprise dream. I want to build the next GE, I want to build the next Ford, I want to build these big companies that are going to go on and on forever. But I think that the business climate and the ecosystem has changed, driven by technology; things change so fast. But I still think it’s a very valid platform. 

Apple, for example, is probably in that built-to-last category, for sure. What do people think of them now? Most of the time, people will think of phones and then laptops. When they first started, they were just desktop computers and I would say, now, they probably sell the least of all their products. 

But anyway, it’s an enterprise that has evolved over time and I think one of the core philosophies in the built-to-last saga is that you’re essentially building excellent leadership teams and you’re also creating a culture backed by your credo or your mission, and then also encouraging innovation into that mix. So it’s a company that has got a great team, great leaders, and you’re not resting on your laurels, you’re creating new products and services, and you’re allowed to iterate. And I think that’s what makes a company last a very long time. 

Nowspeed: Yeah, we’re going to talk more about that. I want to go back to your example of Apple. 

I think that small business entrepreneurs often are asked to look at examples of enterprise companies that were built to last. Hey, how did Microsoft do it?  How did Apple do it? How did Tesla do it? Those are the examples that make the business press. 

But as you pointed out, it’s not often that those small companies, the founder/entrepreneur, grow to that level, let alone being able to sell their company. More often, the companies you’re working with grow and then sell, right? It is fair to be looking at examples of Apple and Microsoft and Tesla as aspirational examples of what we entrepreneurs should be building toward? 

Glenn: I don’t necessarily think yes or no. They are not privately held companies so I would argue they were sold. Maybe the founding entrepreneur is still there at the helm and has the largest single shareholder status of 5% but people didn’t invest in your company because it wasn’t built to sell. You sold a big chunk of it, you’re just still there. You’re not selling and going off into the sunset. 

Nowspeed: That makes a lot of sense. So what is the concept behind built to sell?  

Don’t miss this useful conversation. Listen to the full interview here.