How to maximise your agency’s exit value
TL;DR: This post describes how to maximise your agency’s exit value by reducing buyer risk, building repeatable growth systems, strengthening leadership beyond the founder, and creating real market credibility. It shares lessons learned from building and selling agencies, and later acquiring them, to show what buyers truly value and why it materially affects your multiple. It also explains how those experiences led to the creation of the 2Y3X framework, helping founders understand valuation drivers, build scalable systems, and prepare for a clean, profitable exit.
I want to share some secrets about how to maximise your agency's exit value that no normal agency acquirer will tell you. I am doing this because I was an agency founder and CEO. I sold a bunch of agencies. I scaled a ton of agencies. Then I started buying agencies, and now I scale the ones we buy. And I wish I had known what I now know when I was building my first agency. So if you're planning to sell yours and want to get your exit strategy right, you might find my story interesting.
The journey from founder to serial agency owner and seller
In 1994 I had blue hair and no job, so I started an agency. Hyperinteractive was one of the world’s first digital agencies. I sold it three years later. My second agency, HEAD, became the digital arm of Lowe Worldwide (now MullenLowe). Over twenty-one years I co-founded six agencies and was CEO of four of them. I eventually became CEO of a small agency group. I ran that for three years until retiring, heading off on a tour of festivals, and ending up at my first Burning Man. Just another agency founder.
When I eventually floated back to earth I realised that if I wanted to have a portfolio career, I would have to do something different. Like agencies, consultants need clear competitive differentiation. And ideally a distinct competitive advantage.
Turning experience into a real advantage
My differentiation (long-gone blue hair aside) was that I had founded, led and sold more agencies than pretty much anyone else. Now, some of that was because I had screwed up. I made some catastrophic errors of judgement and had to find a buyer to rescue one agency. Some I had been able to exit because our people had done extraordinary work. We were almost always a Drum Elite Agency, and HEAD was the world’s most awarded digital agency at one point. Or we’d already scaled an agency and achieved stellar growth.
Becoming a chair and stepping toward M&A
Having done so many deals I was an old hand. And each of the sales, no matter what drove them, were successful. My M&A lawyer, the brilliant chair of Lewis Silkin, Jo Evans, has worked with me for over twenty years. Jo helped me fashion some remarkable exits.
I realised I had too many brilliant competitors if I were to become a consultant. So I became an agency chair, helping agencies prepare for sale. That was eight years ago. I have mostly moved on to buying agencies, the secrets of which I will talk about in a second.
What I learned about preparing agencies for sale
Over the years I had countless conversations with pretty much every agency broker in the book. I came to understand that there are rules to selling your own agency. Everyone in the business will tell you what they are: sort out your discount factors, build a track record of profitable growth for three years; create fame.
Building fame, reducing risk, and driving buyer demand
I was already good at the fame bit because I have a bit of a passion for differentiation. And reputation, an essential part of fame, is incredibly important; integrity opens all the doors. So I would find a niche, build an agency in it and make the agency famous somehow. Then my network would find us buyers who really wanted to fill the gap the agency addressed and we would set them competing for it to drive up the price and maximise agency valuation. I thought I was the bees knees when it came to doing deals. But it was not until I crossed to the buyer’s side that I really understood how critical having both a plan and a track record is.
Developing a repeatable growth system
In the meantime I was gaining a nice reputation as an agency chair. They were using a growth framework I had developed. They would win agency of the year awards and then two years in they would sell for a significant premium. The growth framework took shape really quickly, a reliable process for scaling an agency fast. The framework became the 2Y3X programme.
How the 2Y3X Programme scales agencies and prepares them for exit
2Y3X (two years, triple the revenue) is built around a very simple set of ideas. These include well established science, the rules of selling an agency, and an insight that had become clear in my new career as a chair. My insight? As chair, you are not in charge. It is not your business. You do not manage people. So you cannot tell anyone what to do. And yet you are hired to help them scale and exit.
So 2Y3X works on the basis of establishing a growth team, helping them create a plan of action, and holding them to account to make sure they follow the plan. Classic chairing.
What brokers really look for in an agency sale
The starting point for the plan of action was to address a potential buyer’s discount factors. It turns out there is a more or less universal list of these. Every broker you go to will do a quick evaluation of where you stand against each item in the list, to establish how much a buyer will be likely to pay when you sell your agency.
Here is the basic list:
Business plan
Profitability
Scale
Growth path
Client security
Succession
Fame
I will come back to this list in a while. But first let me explain why this list is so important. Every item on it, except the last one, are really about risk. The reason it is called a discount factor is not because that is what it starts out as. It is called a discount factor so brokers can manage your expectations and hopefully sell you some consultancy services. It starts out as a measurement of risk.
Core agency exit framework
In practice, preparing an agency for exit boils down to consistently delivering on a small set of fundamentals:
Build a clear business plan and track record
Deliver predictable profitability
Scale team capacity and capability
Construct a repeatable growth system
Ensure client security and diversification
Establish succession so the agency does not rely on the founder
Build fame and market positioning
Reduce perceived risk for acquirers at every stage
Understanding risk through the buyer’s lens
Not having a business plan is risky because it indicates you are flying by the seat of your pants and do not know what is going to be happening in two years time. Lack of scale is risky because if an important team member leaves that could lead to a cascade of staff or clients. Lack of client security, which may include client concentration, is risky. Lack of succession is especially risky, because as nobody founded their agency to have a new boss, owners frequently bail post-deal.
Why does the buyer want to reduce risk? That would seem self-evident. They are going to pay you a lot of money to acquire your agency. Quite naturally they do not want to buy something that could be worth less than they paid for it. Or worse, they could lose their investment. But it turns out that is not the whole story.
From scaling agencies to acquiring them
2Y3X grew, establishing an incredible track record of successfully doubling or tripling revenue. After a while I wrote a book about how 2Y3X works. Scale at Speed: How to Triple the Size of Your Business and Build a Superstar Team was published worldwide by Hachette. It is now in its second edition.
Many of the agencies in the programme had gone on to sell. We had gained even more experience helping them do so. We became adept at introducing them to the best brokers, lawyers and tax advisors and holding their hands as they went through the sale process, including helping them understand valuation methods and calculate their agency’s exit value.
And then I got an email from Austin, Texas. Peter Lang wanted to have a call. Now, Peter is an agency M&A genius. Using his own agency as a starting point he had built up his own knowledge of the mechanics, risks and financing of acquisitions. He actually wrote the playbook in the US; his Digital Agency Business M&A course is (I think) the best in its field. Peter wanted to join forces and combine programmatic M&A with programmatic scaling. We brought in an extraordinarily talented CEO. Tom Shipley had built up The Foundry, an Amazon aggregator, as well as a couple of billion-dollar consumer brands. And eighteen months ago we set to work.
I went to the dark side. We became a buyer of agencies.
Why reducing buyer risk multiplies your exit value
Here is the thing. It is not so much about how much capital you risk on acquiring an agency, though that is of course hugely important. It is important for your reputation. It is important that you are seen by investors as a safe bet. Of course you cannot fail. However…
Say your agency is doing £400k EBITDA. In the UK that might translate, for the very best agencies, to a multiple of 4x. In the US it is at best half that, partly because there are a huge number of small agencies for sale at any given time.
Your acquirer might have £10 million in EBITDA. And because the risks are diversified and maybe they are listed on the stock market, they might command a multiple of 20x. So your value at 4x £400k is £1.6 million. The second they acquire you, your EBITDA gets aggregated with theirs, and your EBITDA’s multiple goes from 4x to 20x. Your hard-fought sale value of £1.6 million has become £8 million the moment you signed on the dotted line.
That is why they do not want any risks that could reduce your value post-deal. Yes, we definitely do not want to have any failures because they are very hard work and they make it more difficult to attract investors. But we do not want to suddenly find we lost £3 million in value because the founder left without a succession team in place. Or your biggest client decided they preferred an independent agency and went out to pitch.
So if you want to sell, you need to understand quite how deep the motivation is to mitigate risk. If you can successfully address every item on the discount factors list, you can make the sale of the century and everyone will be delighted. You as the seller, and yes, the buyer too.
Applying 2Y3X to deliver exit multiples
The 2Y3X programme was designed around addressing the discount factors. And by addressing risks, you will quickly build confidence and morale. By empowering your team you will also build a fantastic culture of high-performing superstars.
As buyers at Scale at Speed Group we want great performers. And in the US if we acquire an agency that is not already doing it, then we apply 2Y3X to it post-deal. The results for everyone, the teams, the buyers, the investors, and the agency founders, are stellar: A master class in how to build value, structure your exit plan, and improve your agency sale outcome.
Frequently asked questions
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The main factors buyers consider are called “discount factors”: business plan, profitability, scale, growth path, client security, succession, and fame. Addressing each reduces buyer risk and increases your potential multiple.
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Ideally, start preparing at least 1–2 years before you plan to sell. Building repeatable growth systems, client security, and succession plans takes time, and a strong track record over a few years materially improves exit value.
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Both matter. Predictable profitability demonstrates financial health, while a repeatable growth system signals scalability. Buyers value agencies that can deliver consistent revenue and have a clear path to expansion.
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Mitigate risk by establishing strong client relationships, ensuring team succession, diversifying revenue, and documenting repeatable processes. Even without changing your core services, these steps reassure buyers and preserve valuation.
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Succession planning ensures the agency doesn’t rely entirely on the founder. Buyers pay a premium for businesses that can continue thriving post-acquisition, which protects both your exit and the agency’s long-term success.
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Yes, but it’s considered higher risk. Buyers will factor in the possibility that your departure could disrupt operations. Mitigating this risk with clear succession, strong team structures, and documented processes improves confidence and value.
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Agencies with documented, repeatable growth systems can demonstrate predictable scalability. This reduces perceived risk, accelerates buyer confidence, and often results in a higher multiple when negotiating a sale.
