Sell the Potential, or Realise It Yourself?

Brent Beshore never set out to be a private equity investor. He had no Wall Street background, never took a finance class, and once had to look up the term “due diligence”. He was an operator building a marketing firm from scratch — until a founder offered to sell him their business. That deal became the seed of his investment firm, Permanent Equity.

Years later, he has built it into one of the more respected acquirers of privately held businesses, but his approach is the opposite of traditional private equity. No debt at completion, no quick flip. The firm raises very long-dated funds and often holds businesses indefinitely. Rather than cutting teams to lift margins, it invests in people to grow value over time.

At the heart of his model sits a simple truth: most founders leave money on the table when they sell.

The upside hiding in plain sight

Take a pool company he acquired. Its website had no way for prospects to make contact — no enquiry form, no call to action. With the seller's blessing, his team reworked the site, and it generated 16 qualified leads on the first day. Over the next few years the company doubled. That is the kind of growth that is obvious to a professional investor yet left untouched by the founder.

The real decision

And this is where the choice lies. If you are a founder approaching your endgame, you have two paths. You can sell with some meat left on the bone, leaving the upside for the next owner — which gives you certainty and liquidity now. Or you can think like an investor, make the improvements yourself, and capture the value you have built.

Neither is wrong. But if you still have energy and runway, there is a strong case for what Beshore calls being “long-term greedy” — delaying gratification, doing the work, and building a business that commands a premium. As he tells founders: if you are truly convinced the business is about to triple, the daftest thing you could do is sell it to him.

So ask yourself honestly. Are you ready to sell the potential, or are you willing to realise it? If you have gas in the tank, it may be time to stop thinking like a seller and start thinking like your own investor — and that, more than anything, is what the Inspire Framework is built to help you do.