What is Agency Acquisitions?

So I just realised the other day that I haven't really sat down to tell you what Agency Acquisitions is, or why I built it.

So let me do that now.

The mission is simple: help 100 agencies scale to $10M+ or reach $1M in profit per year.

I use those numbers interchangeably because they represent the same thing - an agency that's working properly.

The vision is that every agency runs off what I call the Agency Economics operational model.

It's a way of thinking about and running an agency that I've developed over 15+ years of building, scaling, and acquiring them.

Dashboards, people management, client retention, capacity planning. culture & high performance - all of it interconnected, all of it designed to maximize profit while minimizing the chaos that makes most agency owners miserable.

The purpose of Agency Acquisitions is two things, held together:

First: To help agency owners get the most from their hard work.

I've seen too many founders pour years of their life into a business and end up with nothing to show for it. Working 60-hour weeks, stressed about payroll, taking home less than they'd make at a job. That's not entrepreneurship. That's self-imposed suffering.

Second: To create work environments for agency employees where they get what they deserve.

This one is personal for me.

I've been the employee who worked hard and got nothing on the back end. I know what it feels like to deliver results and watch someone else take the credit, or worse, watch the company squander the gains through poor management. I hate office politics. I believe deeply that if you put in the work and you get results, you should be rewarded for it.

When agencies become more profitable, they can pay their people more. The employees who do the work get compensated fairly. The vendors get paid on time. Everyone wins.

But that can only happen if the agency is making money. You can't pay people what they deserve if there's nothing left after the bills.

So these two purposes aren't separate - they're the same thing. Profitable agencies create environments where people thrive. Struggling agencies create environments where everyone suffers, owner and employee alike.

I'm not interested in helping someone build a $10M agency that makes the owner miserable and underpays the team.

I'm interested in building agencies where everyone involved - owner, leadership, employees, clients - is getting a fair deal.

That requires profit.

And profit requires doing the hard operational work that most people avoid.

We operate on a principle I call 51/49. It means we always try to give more than we receive.

In practice, that means I'm not trying to extract maximum value from every interaction. I'd rather over-deliver and build something that lasts than squeeze every dollar and burn the relationship.

It also means I'll tell you the hard thing, even if it's uncomfortable. If your agency isn't ready to work with us, I'll say so. If your problem isn't something I can help with, I'll point you elsewhere. Radical truth and transparency - that's the only way this works.

One more reason I do this, despite running (and having sold) multiple agencies, is the simple fact that I just love this stuff.

I love figuring out puzzles, specifically, the agency's puzzle of people and systems.

And when we can help an agency make more money (like Wallop, who came to us at -10% profit and went to a peak of 46.7%. They've had months where they cleared over $300K in profit): the owners can pay their people more and help their people live better lives, it makes me feel good.

That’s all it’s about really.

Nick

P.S.

Agency owner working 65 hours a week for 3 years straight after quitting his 40 hours a week corporate job:

P.P.S.

In case you missed it, I wanted to link my latest YouTube video below 👇️