In September 2023, William Brown wired-closed the sale of his e-learning company to a US private equity firm in a multi-seven-figure transaction. The business had reached $16.4 million in cumulative sales over six years, employed 16 people, and was running at roughly £819,000 per month at peak. It was one of only three online course business exits on public record.
Since then, Brown has built Build, Grow and Exit, written a 338-page bestseller on the playbook he used, and spent considerable time on his YouTube channel breaking down what the exit process was actually like — including what he wishes he had known going in.
What follows is a synthesis of the lessons he has shared most consistently across his book, his interviews, and his long-form video content. Founders considering an eventual sale of any service or information business will recognize most of the patterns immediately.
- The exit timeline is longer than you think — and starts earlier
Brown has been clear that his exit took roughly 11 months from the moment he decided to sell to the moment the wire hit. But the work that made the exit possible started years earlier. The financials, team structure, customer data, and operating systems that buyers asked about during due diligence were built — or not built — in the prior 24 to 36 months.
The lesson, in his telling: founders who decide to sell in a moment of burnout discover they’re 18 months late. Treat sellability as a feature you build into the business early, not a project you start when you’re ready to leave.
- The first buyer might walk. Plan for it.
Brown has spoken publicly about the fact that his first buyer pulled out of the deal — a moment he has described as genuinely demoralizing. A second buyer eventually closed at a
strong multiple, but only because the company had been built to be attractive to more than one type of acquirer.
Most founders go into the process emotionally tied to the first conversation. The mature version, by his account, is to expect at least one deal to break and to maintain operating discipline through the disruption. A founder who panics when a buyer walks usually ends up taking a worse deal from a less serious buyer six months later.
- Multiples are math, not magic
Brown’s deal closed at approximately 2.6x EBITDA. He has been deliberate about explaining the math behind that number on his YouTube channel — what counted as EBITDA, what got added back, and what got challenged in due diligence.
The point he repeats: founders romanticize multiples. They hear “10x revenue” stories from venture-backed software companies and assume the same logic applies to information businesses. It doesn’t. Knowledge businesses are typically valued on profitability, defensibility, and transferability — not on raw top-line. A founder who understands the actual valuation framework can build the business specifically to optimize for it. A founder who doesn’t will leave a meaningful percentage of their exit value on the table.
- The information memorandum is the first product you sell to a buyer
One of the most concrete lessons Brown shares is the importance of the information memorandum — the document that gets sent to potential buyers to introduce the business. He has described it as the single most important sales asset of the entire exit.
Most founders treat the IM like a formality and let a broker draft something generic. Brown’s argument is that the IM is the founder’s chance to frame the business on their own terms — to highlight the systems, the moats, the team, and the upside in a way that primes the buyer to see the company favorably before due diligence even starts. Get this document right, and
the rest of the process gets easier. Get it wrong, and you spend the next three months defending the company instead of selling it.
- Life after the exit is its own challenge
The least-discussed part of any exit is the part nobody prepares founders for: what happens after. Brown has been unusually open about the psychological dimension of selling a company you’ve built for six years. The wire hits. The papers are signed. And then the calendar that organized your life for years just empties out.
His own response, within four months of closing, was to start building again — Build, Grow and Exit, the coaching business he now runs full-time. That decision wasn’t financial. It was, by his own framing, a recognition that he genuinely enjoys the work and didn’t want to retire
at 30.
The broader point is that founders who treat the exit as a finish line often struggle in the months that follow. Founders who treat it as a transition to the next chapter — whether that’s another company, a new craft, or a fundamentally different life — tend to handle the post-exit period far better.
The takeaway
Exits are technical. They are also personal. Brown’s track record, and the lessons he has spent the last two years documenting publicly, suggest that the founders who navigate both dimensions well are the ones who build for the exit early, expect the process to be harder than it looks, and plan for the life on the other side as deliberately as they planned the business itself.
