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Get Acquired: McDannell's 7-Step Framework

Christine McDannell's chronological, self-serve playbook for selling a small business yourself, walked through in her own seven-step order.

This page summarizes Get Acquired: 7 Steps to Your Most Lucrative Exit by Christine McDannell (with Lauren Maldwin), 2024. McDannell runs The Magnolia Firm, a boutique M&A brokerage for digital and online businesses, and wrote the book to ungate a process that most brokers, in her telling, work hard to keep mysterious. If the book is useful to you, buy it from the author.

The book's organizing idea is the title's promise: a chronological seven-step process that mirrors the real order a deal unfolds, presented so an owner can run it without a broker. McDannell's recurring frames are "start from the end," "want number vs. need number," and a running "wrong way vs. right way" contrast. What follows is a walkthrough of her introduction plus the seven chapters that make up the framework.

The Introduction: Brokers Are Not Necessary, and the Information Should Be Ungated​

McDannell opens by positioning the book against her own industry. She argues that business brokerage is dangerously under-regulated (in some states only a real estate license, or nothing, is required) and that most brokers write books precisely to overcomplicate the process and drive owners to hire them. Her stated mission is the opposite: arm the owner directly, especially the sub-$1M owner whom no broker will represent.

"Whoever has the grit to grow a business of their own should have access to useful resources to sell it."

McDannell, Get Acquired, Introduction

She is candid that this stance is unusual coming from a brokerage. As McDannell puts it, this "might be one of the only books out there from a brokerage firm that is transparently telling you brokers aren't necessary, not even for the larger deals." She also warns that selling a company is not like selling a house, because there are no public comps and the work is "incredibly nuanced," which is exactly why she thinks brokers should be required to have built and exited their own company first. The introduction closes with her Richard Branson $1,000-check origin story, framing the whole book around her personal definition of success: freedom.

Step 1: How Exits Make Millionaires​

The first chapter is part origin story (her cleaning company, Cleanology, started in 2003 with $300 of supplies on a maxed-out credit card) and part argument for why selling is worth it. McDannell tells the story of her first broker-assisted sale to teach three lessons: the broker pressured her to take $50,000 under asking, used a fax machine to push a lowball she rejected (the same buyer later paid full price), and slipped a default three-month training provision into the agreement that she had to fight back down. That training trap is why she is now a stickler about specifying training time precisely in both the LOI and the purchase agreement.

She then lays out the reasons people sell: financial freedom, career freedom, lifestyle freedom, mental freedom, and clout. On burnout she is emphatic, and she ties it directly to bad outcomes.

"Burnout is a real thing, and you can't put a price on a healthy mental and emotional state."

McDannell, Get Acquired, ch. 1

McDannell argues the timing is unusually good for profitable-business sellers: after the 2021 startup fallout, buyers increasingly want to skip the startup phase and acquire an established, profitable business, which puts the owner in a seller's market.

Step 2: Start From the End (Reverse-Engineer Your Exit)​

This is the strategic core of the book. McDannell's thesis is that most exits fail before they begin because owners list impulsively to "test the waters."

"Most exits are destined for a below average sale the second they hit the market."

McDannell, Get Acquired, ch. 2

The alternative is the "exit-planned acquisition": define your ideal exit, then work backward to make it possible. She introduces the want number vs. need number distinction, urging owners to calculate the real personal-finance number they need to net rather than chasing a dream price. She walks through the "downward spiral of an unstrategized exit" (burned-out owner lists, leads eat time, business declines, listing goes stale, ends in a lowball or shutdown) and contrasts the "wrong way" against the "right way" line by line.

A central move in this chapter is removing the owner from the business. McDannell is blunt about owner dependence.

"A business that needs you isn't a flex, it's a disadvantage."

McDannell, Get Acquired, ch. 2

To fix that, she pushes documented SOPs (a "business playbook") so detailed that "a 12-year-old can pick it up and run your company," plus a team audit, a gap analysis between current value and the target, and assembling "three wise men or women" (a strong accountant, an M&A-savvy lawyer, and an optional intermediary). She also gives her valuation creed, learned from refusing two brokers who told her to drop her spa to a 2x-3x multiple before she sold at 4.5x all-cash in five weeks: "a company is worth what someone is willing to pay for." The chapter ends with her full "M&A process for sellers, self-serve" checklist, the bird's-eye version of the whole book.

Step 3: Financials​

McDannell calls clean financials the foundation of any sale and the single most important thing to buyers, while reassuring owners that almost everyone arrives embarrassed about their books. Her practical baseline: use accounting software (QuickBooks, Xero), keep a designated business account, separate personal and other-business expenses, and keep a bookkeeper. The reason the stakes are high is that deals most often die in due diligence when the numbers do not reconcile.

The chapter is largely a glossary the owner will need: P&L, trailing 12 / TTM / LTM, owner-operated vs. turnkey, EBITDA (roughly synonymous with net profit for small owner-operated firms), SDE (seller's discretionary earnings, which adds back owner pay for sub-$1M businesses), add-backs, and owner draws. On add-backs she explains legitimately raising the profit a new owner would see (personal car, interest, deal and legal fees, one-time costs like rebrands or conferences, even the salary of recently let-go excess staff), and recommends color-coding the gray-area ones so the buyer can distinguish them.

Crucially, she sets a hard disclosure rule: never release a full P&L before a phone call and a signed NDA, and ignore anyone who claims doing so is "standard practice." Misrepresenting numbers is fatal.

"It only takes one white lie to have a buyer not trust you."

McDannell, Get Acquired, ch. 3

Step 4: Listing for Sale​

McDannell's first instruction here is to try not to list at all. Off-market and private-party deals, she argues, are often the best transactions, so an owner should work their network, deal communities, LinkedIn, and even employees first. With competitors she gives an exact script ("If I ever planned on selling in the future, would you have any interest?") to feel them out without revealing that the business is for sale, and she warns against telling employees too directly (frame it as bringing on an investor or partner).

If you do go to market, she covers the NDA (customize it to your business but do not put the business name on it, or "you've doxed your company before they've even signed it"), the data room versus the separate due-diligence folder, and listing copy. She treats the listing as marketing, where every detail attracts the right buyer and repels the wrong one.

"Every piece of information that you have here is going to attract or repel specific buyers."

McDannell, Get Acquired, ch. 4

She offers her "R words" for the copy (relocatable/remote, recurring revenue, retention, removal of owner), compares the major platforms (BizBuySell as the flat-rate classic she favors, plus Acquire, Flippa, Empire Flippers, and DealStream with their varying percentage takes), and gives tactical advice on photos (use a stock or AI image, never a real photo that can be reverse-image-searched), going live, and refreshing both the listing and the data room as months pass.

Step 5: Leads and Inquiries​

The fifth chapter is about handling buyers, opening with the four buyer types, each requiring a different pitch. As McDannell frames them: the individual buyer (motivated by income and freedom, wants low risk), the financial buyer such as private equity (driven by ROI, often retains management), the strategic buyer (the ideal purchaser who pays a premium for market share, cross-sell, or an acquihire), and the industry buyer or competitor (often a last resort who pays the least and "won't pay for goodwill").

Her vetting flow is strict and sequential: inquiry comes in, get them on the phone fast, then NDA, then data room access only after both a phone call and a signature. The chapter is built around relentless follow-up.

"Your goal shouldn't be to disqualify them. It should be to give them information and let them disqualify themselves."

McDannell, Get Acquired, ch. 5

At the same time she warns against over-gatekeeping (demanding IDs, credit scores, and proof of funds just to enter the data room is "absolutely overkill," and often just lazy brokers). She devotes a careful section to selling to a competitor, who may feign interest, or even submit an LOI, purely to harvest your P&Ls, customer LTV, and lead sources. Her protections are a custom NDA in your favor and a non-refundable deposit, while acknowledging that deterrents only deter. Throughout, she stresses keeping the business growing while you sell, because the numbers are your leverage.

Step 6: The Art of LOIs​

Here McDannell treats the offer stage as the moment things "get real." She defines the LOI (a non-binding written offer, except parts like confidentiality, signed by both sides) and distinguishes it from an IOI (used for larger, $10M-plus deals). She walks through the financing vocabulary the owner must understand: seller carry/seller's note (cap it at 20%, charge 6-12% interest), earnouts (she "personally tries to avoid them at all costs," cap them at 20%), earnest money and deposits (around 5% of price, held in escrow, structured as a non-refundable breakup fee if the buyer walks by choice), working capital, and the mechanics of SBA versus private loans.

Her single most repeated point in this chapter is that price is not the deciding factor.

"The highest price offer is not necessarily the best one... it's about the best deal with the highest likelihood to close."

McDannell, Get Acquired, ch. 6

She frames comparing offers as her signature line: "having multiple offers on the table is not like comparing apples to apples. It's more like comparing apples to carrots to candy bars." To generate that competition she sets an offer date to cluster LOIs and create FOMO, while insisting you never lie about competing offers. She also covers exclusivity (negotiate modified language so the listing stays live as "under offer, accepting backups" and you keep collecting backup leads), provides an LOI template to reduce buyer friction, and reminds the seller of their leverage at every turn.

Step 7: Close and Transfer​

The final chapter is McDannell's warning that the hardest part is still ahead.

"It's not finding the buyer that's the hardest part. It's from LOI to the date that money is wired into the account."

McDannell, Get Acquired, ch. 7

She names deal fatigue as a real force that wears sellers down during due diligence and makes them vulnerable to retrading (a buyer dropping the price near close). Her prevention, which she credits for never having had a retrade, is to declare at LOI signing that retrading will not be tolerated and that you are willing to walk away. She breaks due diligence into financial, operational, and legal scrutiny, advises waiting for the buyer's checklist (often "95% N/A"), and keeping vendor and customer names private until close. Honesty remains the throughline: "if they catch one lie, the first thing they're going to think is if they're lying about this, what else are they lying about?"

She then walks the purchase agreement component by component (price and payment terms, reps and warranties, indemnification with caps and time limits, narrow and specific non-competes she favors at two years, termination rights, and dispute resolution in your home state), plus zeroing out the balance sheet (do not pay off debt before listing; clear it at close), handling prepaids and gift certificates, and the closing-day handoff (wire funds, transfer all logins, tell the team that day, personally transition key clients). She finishes with practical post-sale advice on training, an hourly consulting rate ($75-$250/hr) without nickel-and-diming, setting aside 30%-plus for capital gains and paying immediately, considering a trust on $1M-plus proceeds, and remembering that personal expenses once run through the business now become out-of-pocket. The book closes on its real thesis: "Use this opportunity to re-architect your life."

Further Reading​

Sources: McDannell, Get Acquired Introduction; ch.1; ch.2; ch.3; ch.4; ch.5; ch.6; ch.7.