The Brutal Reality Of Building A Business To Sell - James Ashford

How to sell your business: James Ashford built GoProposal from a WordPress plugin and exited to Sage. This is the full story.

For founders, agency owners and accountants who want a business that runs, grows and sells without them.

James Ashford turned a pricing problem in one accountancy firm into GoProposal, software that let the most junior team member price and sell complex services in under five minutes. In this episode he answers the questions every founder types into Google at 2am: how do I know if I have a business or just a job? How do you actually sell a software company? And what happens to your mental health after the exit? He also opens up about the breakdown that followed the sale, and the inner child work that rebuilt him.

Buy his book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1781339872?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_GQR6D38EGKM6069R9J0J_3&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_GQR6D38EGKM6069R9J0J_3&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_GQR6D38EGKM6069R9J0J_3&bestFormat=true

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet James Ashford, Serial Entrepreneur
• 00:03:19 The Sales Problem: Why Business Owners Can't Let Go
• 00:05:59 The Restaurant Analogy: How Accountants Price Like Amateurs
• 00:08:05 The Accountancy Breakthrough: Solving the Same Problem Over and Over
• 00:14:01 The Four Grand Launch: Building a SaaS Business on WordPress
• 00:16:32 The Waiting List Strategy: 100 Customers in 30 Days
• 00:19:54 The Shock and Awe Pack: Customer Retention Through Physical Gifts
• 00:22:03 The Five Million Pound Goal: Getting Your Wife on the Journey
• 00:23:49 Taking Over the Space: The Conor McGregor Mentality
• 00:27:07 The Discounting Problem: How You Train Bad Clients
• 00:29:30 The Sticking Points: When Revenue Hits a Wall at 18K and 53K
• 00:34:21 The Competitor Blindside: Losing 25 Percent of Customers Overnight
• 00:37:11 The Oversuite Launch: Turning Crisis Into a New Product Line
• 00:38:12 Built to Sell: Manifesting the Acquisition From Day One
• 00:40:26 The Negotiation That Started Everything: Could We Buy You Instead
• 00:44:03 Putting On Your Best Suit: Going to Market With an M and A Firm
• 00:46:02 The Day the Money Hits: Why Everything Felt Exactly the Same
• 00:47:40 The Loss No One Talks About: Purpose, Team, and Identity
• 00:48:42 From Apple Tree to Apples: The Shift From Making to Managing Money
• 00:49:14 Playing to Win Versus Playing Not to Lose: The Corporate Shock
• 00:51:31 The Breakdown: On Your Hands and Knees at the Side of the Road
• 00:57:57 The Inner Child and Small T Trauma: Understanding What Drives Us
• 00:59:49 Equine Therapy and Breath Work: The Journey to Healing
• 01:00:45 The Final Question: Where Is the Gift in This Moment

FRAMEWORKS COVERED
The Restaurant Pricing Method | Built to Sell | "Where's the Gift?" | "Who Do I Need to Be?" | The 2-4% Finance Rule | Small t Trauma and Inner Child Healing

ABOUT JAMES ASHFORD
James Ashford is the founder of GoProposal, the pricing and proposal software acquired by Sage. He now invests in businesses and mentors entrepreneurs, with a focus on founders raising young families.

Find James on LinkedIn and Instagram, and @thejamesashford on TikTok.

https://jamesashford.com/

YOUR HOSTS
Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson are the co-founders of We Have A Meeting, the B2B sales agency behind the Sales Is Therapy method.
🌍 https://wehaveameeting.com
📖 Get the book: https://salesstherapy.com

THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY NOOKS
The AI dialler that helps your sales team have more conversations: https://www.nooks.ai/wehaveameeting

SUBSCRIBE for weekly conversations with founders, sales leaders and psychologists: https://www.youtube.com/@wehaveameeting?sub_confirmation=1

If you're searching for how to sell your business, how to build a SaaS company with no funding, how to price your services, or what a business exit actually feels like, this episode covers it all. James Ashford shares the GoProposal story from WordPress plugin to Sage acquisition, including value pricing for accountants.