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.

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

• Spot the "capped upside" moment when your time becomes the constraint
• Feather back from four days on the tools to three, then two, then zero
• Time each reduction using numbers, not hope
• Transition customers off the owner without breaking trust
• Remove key-person risk by ensuring no one producer dominates revenue
• Keep cash flow steady while you trade personal production for enterprise value

The result: Filosi sold his practice and collected 100% of his cash at closing, which is almost unheard of in dentistry.

Built to Sell Radio just dropped a year-end special that pulls the strongest moments from 2025 into one episode.

Across four formats (Exit Story, Inside the Mind of an Acquirer, Mastering the Deal, and After the Deal), you discover how to

• Choose exit value over lifestyle income before comfort caps valuation
• Spot the "founder-dependent" trap that scares off serious buyers
• See how buyers price risk, not just revenue and EBITDA
• Use imperfections as leverage instead of liabilities
• Build leverage before a first offer quietly sets your ceiling
• Create real alternatives so negotiations stop feeling one-sided
• Prepare for the identity shift that hits after the wire clears

If you're feeling a little queasy about the pace of change, you're not alone. AI is accelerating competition in almost every market, and it's making some business models feel irrelevant almost overnight.

In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow talks with Ryan O'Leary, who saw a similar wave coming in payments when Shopify started bundling merchant processing into its plans. O'Leary chose to sell before the shift crushed margins, structuring a deal that put most of his cash in hand up front. In this episode, you discover how to

• Decide whether to raise capital, hire a CEO, roll equity, or sell
• Spot the early signals that a platform is about to "bundle" you into irrelevance
• Run a tight sale process with a short target list and still generate multiple LOIs fast
• Negotiate for deal structure that protects you, not just a higher multiple
• Limit earnout risk by keeping the earnout short and the rules hard to game
• Separate emotion from the numbers so you can negotiate clean
• Keep your team aligned through the transition by sharing upside, including the earnout