Built to Sell Radio

This episode is part of our Inside the Mind of an Acquirer series, and it unpacks the ETA (Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition) wave now flooding the market. 

For business owners, ETA is a double-edged sword. On the upside, more buyers courting you means more choice, more urgency, and more liquidity. On the downside, many ETA buyers are first-timers who lean on heavy leverage and seller financing. If they misread your business or hit a snag they can't handle, the part of the deal you financed can quickly become the part you never collect.

We often think of a "successful exit" as handing over the keys to a perfectly oiled machine—a business that is growing, profitable, and operationally sound. 

But what happens when the machine starts to sputter? 

What if the margins are too thin, the operations are exhausting, and you are simply burned out? 

It is easy to assume that a broken business model means a worthless company. But as this week's guest on Built to Sell Radio proves, sometimes the individual parts are worth more than the whole. 

Meet Jason Patel. 

Jason built Transitions Education, a college counseling marketplace. On the surface, it looked great: upper six-figure revenue and a noble mission. But under the hood, customer acquisition costs were eating his margins, and he was carrying $250,000 in personal debt to keep it afloat. 

He was ready to walk away. He assumed he had zero leverage. 

Then, a "Micro Private Equity" firm reached out. They didn't want his headaches. They didn't want his operations. They didn't even want his business model. 

They wanted his "parts." 

Specifically, they wanted his SEO ranking, his blog traffic, and his 5-star reputation. They realized they could strip away the expensive service delivery and plug his high-performing marketing assets into their own portfolio. 

In this episode, Jason breaks down how he structured an asset sale that allowed him to: 

Sell the high-value "parts" (marketing assets) without the operational baggage. 


Avoid a grueling earn-out (because the buyer didn't need him to run the company). 


Pay off his debt and fund his next venture. 


If you feel like your business model is grinding you down, this episode will open your eyes to the hidden value sitting on your balance sheet right now.

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.