acasa helps people run a shared home without the usual friction. It started as a simple way for housemates to track and split rent, bills, and groceries, then added payments and utility setup so households could manage recurring bills in one place.
When Nick Katz tried to sell acasa on his own, the downside wasn’t just a slow process. It created a setup where buyers had the leverage: they could keep asking for information, keep “exploring,” and never commit to an LOI.
Nick Telson-Sillett and his co-founder built what you could call “OpenTable for bars and nightclubs” in the UK.
Instead of chasing the US (the move most founders are told to make), they went big fish, small pond: dominate their home market first. That focus helped them build DesignMyNight into a business that sold for more than $40M.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Nick shares what happened, so you discover how to:
Turn one clear customer frustration into a business idea you can explain fast
Choose focus over hype when everyone tells you to chase the biggest market
Set a “financial freedom” number and use it to make cleaner decisions
Run a sale process without tipping off competitors too early
Negotiate an earn-out tied to revenue so the targets stay in your control
Plan for the morning after the deal, when your identity gets reset
The fastest way to make a service company unsellable is building it around a personal brand.
When clients hire you—because of your reputation, your name, and your specific expertise—you haven't built a business; you’ve built a high-paying job.
And as Gavin Bell realized, you can't sell a reputation.
Gavin was known as the "Facebook Ads Guy" in the UK. He was making good money, but he knew that to build a sellable asset, he had to fire himself as the face of the company.
He rebranded his firm from "Gavin Bell" to "Yatter," productized his service, and systematically removed himself from sales and delivery.
The result? He sold Yatter to a larger agency, Velstar, in a deal that closed just one minute before a major tax deadline.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Gavin breaks down exactly how he made the switch.
Some of the richest founders don’t run trendy companies. They run dirty ones. The kind of work you’d never brag about at a dinner party, but that quietly throws off real money because it’s hard, risky, and most people won’t do it.
This Built to Sell Radio episode follows Shenar Wood, who built an underground power business by taking on personal risk, earning trust job by job, and eventually selling when he hit a ceiling that had nothing to do with demand, you discover how to:
Recognize the hidden ceiling that has nothing to do with demand and everything to do with your balance sheet
Stop confusing “more revenue” with “more value” when margin and risk aren’t improving
Build a reputation flywheel where customers feed you better work because they trust how you operate
Separate assets from value so you don’t overestimate what a buyer will pay for “stuff”
Fix the financial story before a buyer forces an expensive cleanup under pressure
Negotiate earn-out terms so the buyer can’t hit your results by moving costs onto your books
Decide when it’s smarter to sell now than grind for years just to add a rounding error to valuation
Most business owners hit a fork in the road.
Stay “on the tools” and keep making great money. Or start feathering back your personal involvement so the business can grow beyond you.
In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Dr. Michael Filosi walks through how he made that shift in a dental practice, without jeopardizing cash flow. He didn’t rip the band-aid off. He reduced his patient days one day at a time while the practice added clinicians and transitioned patients carefully. Over a few years, his billings went from roughly 43% of revenue to single digits, and he only went to zero once the business was already producing most of his take-home income.
In this episode, you discover how to
The result: Filosi sold his practice and collected 100% of his cash at closing, which is almost unheard of in dentistry.