Powerful ideas from top nonfiction
Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 5,500+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trial
Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Listen to the Intro
Built to Sell summary
John Warrillow
Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You
15 mins
What is Built to Sell about?
Built to Sell details key strategies for growing a small service company and preparing the business for a future sale. These blinks illustrate these insights by telling the story of Alex Stapleton, owner of a marketing agency, and his advice-giving friend Ted Gordon, who is a successful entrepreneur.
Table of Contents
Built to Sell
summarized in 8 key ideas
Audio & text in the Blinkist app
Key idea 1 of 8
Business success lies in specialization in a single service.
Let’s say you’re an entrepreneur who’s just launched a service business, like a design agency. How can you make it successful? Should you concentrate on one service or take any business you can get – even offers requiring services that aren’t your speciality?
Some people would accept every offer. But that’s not the right strategy for long-term success.
Here’s why: A focus on one service allows clients to see the company’s core strengths. As a result, people will come to you with specific problems that you can solve better than anyone else.
When clients can’t go to other firms to receive the same quality of service, you’re positioned to negotiate higher prices.
Furthermore, when the results are good, clients will recommend you. Word of mouth will earn you new business.
Here’s an example: Alex’s business used to fulfill a broad range of requests – designing brochures, copywriting and search engine optimization. Taking a friend’s advice, Alex decided to concentrate on designing logos. He excelled at the work and his clients loved the product. As a result, Alex became a top logo designer.
There’s another benefit to specializing: It allows you to hire the best people for the job.
Why? Firms that provide multiple services have to hire experts for different fields. Smaller firms can’t afford to hire as many experts. Instead, they hire generalists to execute different tasks.
However, since the employees don’t concentrate on a single field, they can’t deliver the best possible product. The quality never matches what’s produced by other firms, which can employ experts.
Luckily, there’s a solution for smaller companies: by specializing, they can hire a few experts in a single area.
Specializing helps your company produce excellent work, which puts you in a better position to negotiate with clients.
And, perhaps more importantly, your company will run smoothly without too much oversight from you, because everyone will be responsible for discrete tasks.
Want to see all full key ideas from Built to Sell?
Key ideas in Built to Sell
More knowledge in less time
Read or listen
Get the key ideas from nonfiction bestsellers in minutes, not hours.
Find your next read
Get book lists curated by experts and personalized recommendations.
Shortcasts New
We’ve teamed up with podcast creators to bring you key insights from podcasts.
Best quote from Built to Sell
Clients will never know youre serious about specialization until you say no to other work.
—John Warrillow
Who should read Built to Sell?
- Anyone who’s interested in entrepreneurship
- Business owners thinking about selling their company in the future
Categories with Built to Sell
Books like Built to Sell
People ❤️ Blinkist
Sven O.
It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.
Thi Viet Quynh N.
Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.
Jonathan A.
Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.
Renee D.
Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.
People also liked
Start growing with Blinkist now
26 Million
Downloads on all platforms
4.7 Stars
Average ratings on iOS and Google Play
91%
Of Blinkist members create a better reading habit*
*Based on survey data from Blinkist customers