Today, I'm announcing the biggest effort in Bootstrapped Giants' history, but before that, a story:

In October 2015, 6 years after I left my fancy job at Goldman Sachs - I closed the biggest sale of my life.  We closed on a secondary sale of ~20% of Ampush to Red Ventures.

Secondary means they bought the stake from the founders. So rather than the cash going into the business (we were profitable so didn't need their cash), the cash went straight into my bank account.

I was 31.

It was a sign we had built something super valuable over 6 years.  And it was a moment that my life and my family's life were secured. I took a big risk and I delivered.

And it was all the result of one skill: The Relationship-Based Sale.

Let’s back up…

The year is 2011.

After 12 months of trying to figure out a business model, we stumbled onto "Facebook Ads" - we learned how to use them and then quickly scaled our business.

My co-founder Chris Amos had done investment banking with a guy named Alex Kanji.  Alex worked at General Atlantic and they had just closed a deal investing $150M in a digital marketing company called Red Ventures. (Also all secondary!)

Alex said, "Wow, this Facebook stuff is interesting - I want to introduce you to Ric Elias and Dan Feldstein, the founders of Red Ventures."

We 3 Ampush founders hopped on a redeye from San Francisco to Charlotte.  We waited in a conference room.  We had prepared a deck and a demo.  We thought this could be a big client/partnership.

45 minutes in and it was clear: Ric and Dan and Me/Nick/Chris were all brothers from another mother!  Everyone loved each other and was clearly impressed.

The Shocking Offer

We asked if they could be a client.  Ric said: I'll do you one better.  I want to buy the company.

The whole flight home we debated whether we were ready to sell (2 years in).  By the time we got back to SF, it was clear: I called Ric and said "We think it's too early to sell. This FB thing is going to be huge."

He quickly said, "Well let's stay in touch."

Every quarter or so, I would send Ric and Dan an email.  I saw Ric at conferences.  All the while, Ampush kept growing.

Finally, by 2015, we WERE ready to cash some chips in.  It took Ric and the RV team less than a week to say "Yes, we want to do this."  The life-changing deal was closed months later.

Cool story Jesse - sounds like all kinds of stars aligned for you to make this happen, Right?

Wrong.  This is an example of a system I used everywhere: The Relationship-Based Sale.  In this case, the outcome was obviously extraordinary.

But I was consistently doing these elements:

+ Knowing who my customers were

+ Using my network to get introductions and meetings

+ Carefully crafting a narrative and preparing for meetings

+ Following up

+ Negotiating and asking for the sale

What’s coming

And that leads us to the announcement… For the first time: I'm going to take all my knowledge of how I do this process and share it with people outside my companies.  Andrew, Bootstrapped Giant's CEO, has helped me put together an amazing B2B Sales Accelerator to teach it.  He's spent hours with me unpacking every part of the process.

So if you:

+ Have $1-5M in sales

+ Are looking to scale to the next level

+ Feel like your sales process is holding you back.

Then the B2B Sales Accelerator is built for you.

Interested in learning more?  Andrew and I are hosting a webinar to talk more about it and share some of the secret sauce.  This is a high-value way for you to see if this accelerator would be a fit.

Sign up here for the (free) webinar, here.

jesse