Episode Details

How Raleigh Williams Sold His Business for $26M | Episode 59

He had a panic attack on the gym floor 30 days into his dream law firm job — and called his wife thinking he was having a heart attack. Turns out his body already knew what his brain hadn't caught up to yet: he was in the wrong life.

Raleigh Williams went from panic attacks at a prestigious law firm to building Williams Entertainment Group — escape rooms, trampoline parks, and entertainment concepts — then selling it all across nine transactions for $26 million. Now he runs Exit OS (a business brokerage for SMB founders) and Fierce Health and Fierce Longevity (telehealth and peptide clinics). He sat down with Stu live at the Startups with Stu retreat in Saint George, Utah to break it all down.

What he covers:

→ Having a panic attack 30 days into a prestigious law firm job — hoping it was a heart attack because a panic attack felt worse 

→ Trying and failing at faceless Instagram accounts, tax liens, and becoming a real estate agent before finding the right idea 

→ Reading a MarketWatch article about escape rooms and doing the back-of-napkin math that same night

→ Paying a European escape room $5,000 to license their puzzle sequences as a starting point → Running a Harry Potter-themed room ("Horcrux Hysteria") in violation of Warner Bros. IP for four years before getting a cease and desist 

→ Discovering that revenue correlated directly with number of rooms — not marketing spend 

→ Selling the entire business across nine transactions for $26 million (including real estate) when he realized he'd mentally checked out 

→ The four levers that determine your business's sale multiple: growth rate, operations, clean accounting, and defensibility 

→ Why founders should know their exit multiple from Day 1 — and what it means if your take-home salary times four is your retirement number 

→ GLP-1 peptides (Retatrutide), BPC-157 "Wolverine stacks," and how peptides helped him get in better shape at 36 than ever before 

→ His wife's two bouts of cancer — and how navigating the medical system pushed him into building Fierce Longevity 

→ "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek" — the quote he carries with him everywhere

🔗 CONNECT WITH RALEIGH WILLIAMS 

Instagram: @raleigh_williams 

🔗 CONNECT WITH STU

Instagram: @stu 

Website: https://startupswithstu.com

#entrepreneur #startups #founderstory #escaperoombusiness #businessexit #exitstrategy #peptides #glp1 #smallbusiness #startupswithstu