Brad Costanzo: Build the Business You Would Want to Buy
Would you buy your own business? Not sell it. Buy it. With your own money, after looking under the hood.
Most owners cannot answer yes. They have built a job that collapses the day they step away, and they do not find out until a buyer shows up with a due diligence checklist. I know, because I walked away from a $5.1 million offer for a company I had built, and the only reason that offer existed was the systems that ran without me.
I recorded this conversation with Brad Costanzo in 2020 and released it as Episode 92 of The Purpose Chasers. It is the clearest explanation I have heard of the difference between a business and a company.
The Advice That Changed How Brad Builds
Brad buys businesses and builds them. When he told his friend Vinnie Fischer, who runs an outsourced CFO firm, that he was building an ecommerce brand to sell it, Vinnie corrected him.
"Don't build a business that you want to sell. Build a business that you would want to buy."
The nuance is small and the impact is huge, because it forces one question: what would I actually want to buy?
"I would ideally want to buy something that is well run, has good SOPs, that the owner doesn't need to be there every day, that has great systems and procedures, and it's just a well oiled machine."
Build that and you may never sell. But if you do, you will not be caught with one foot out the door and lipstick on a pig.
Due Diligence Wipes the Lipstick Off
Brad has sat on the buying side of the table, and he is honest about what happens there.
"If you've ever tried to sell a business, you get into due diligence and people wipe that lipstick off real quick and they see you got a pig on your hands."
As a buyer he loves finding a pig in lipstick, because he tears the valuation apart. As an owner, that should scare you into building the real thing now.
Revenue Is Fuel for Systems, Not a Finish Line
This part of the episode is for every trades company that has been sold the idea that more leads will fix everything. Roofing, HVAC, solar: they get pitched lead generation, Facebook ads and YouTube ads, and nobody asks whether the business can handle the influx.
"The smart entrepreneur takes that revenue and invests in the systems."
Brad is clear that early on, revenue matters more than business cards and websites. Go sell something. But the owners who wait to build systems until they hit some revenue number never get there, because by then the last thing they can do is relax.
"You end up growing yourself to death because things fall apart."
And when things fall apart, it shows up in public.
"Those customers talk bad about you and they get on Angie's List or Yelp or whatever and they start giving you negative reviews and now it's harder to get customers."
That is the hidden cost of growing without systems: you burn the one asset that compounds, which is what your customers say about you.
The System That Made My Company Worth Buying
The business I walked away from selling started at -$403,276 in the accounts. The thing that made it worth $5.1 million to a buyer was not the revenue line. It was that demand was predictable, and demand was predictable because customers sold it for us on video, every project, as a documented process. That process is the Social Proof System, and it is the most buyable asset I know how to build inside a company.
What Owners Say When the Systems Are In
Bud Heaton talks about spotting the small opportunities most owners overlook: where leads come from, communication, the sales process and the systems behind it. His phrase for it:
"Get the water to the end of the road, so to speak."
Sarah Jones had wanted to get her business online for a long time and did not know how to start a landing page. We built two full landing pages and every automation in Go HighLevel, then recorded a walkthrough so she was comfortable running it herself. In her words:
"He did a great job and I'll definitely be using him again."
More real stories on the Happy Check client results page.
Keep Listening
Judd Armstrong on building Jaybird from broke to a $95M exit
Joseph Hughes on why buying leads kills a contractor's reputation
The hierarchy of needs for entrepreneurs: cash flow, pay yourself first, chain of command, systems
How I scaled with Go HighLevel automation and the customer testimonial waterfall
Want a Business Someone Would Want to Buy?
On The Purpose Chasers I sit down with people who are building something that matters. In my business, The Happy Check, I help coaches, creators and service businesses turn that same kind of real story into video testimonials and content that bring in clients.
If you want to take your marketing to the next level, book an organic marketing audit call with me.
Or start with the free Happy Check book and learn who to ask, when to ask and how to use what they say.
Keep reading: how to scale with customer testimonials, why The Happy Check is not another marketing system.
