I bought a $3.5M brand agency with a cold email. That's the headline. The whole story is the part that'll actually help you.
Here's the real sequence. My first move into agency ownership wasn't a check, it was a SEED deal, Sweat Equity and Earn-In, into a $350K PR firm. Instead of buying in with cash, I earned my equity by doubling the revenue, learned the business from the inside, and used that platform to 10x into Born & Bred through the cold-email acquisition I'm about to walk you through. No broker. No banker. I'm telling you all of it because most agency owners have no idea how the buyer's side of the table actually thinks, and that gap costs them millions when it's their turn to sell.
I've been building businesses since I was 7
This didn't start with a cold email. It started with sweet corn. I sold it at the farmers market at 7, and the summer I was 12 my dad charged me COGS and overhead on my own crop, my first lesson in real numbers. From there: news photographer at 16, an eBay arbitrage company called AuctionPlace Pro that I ran out of a barn in Kansas, and 20 years in digital media at Yahoo and Basis, where I built 127 agencies for media companies. The throughline never changed: buy or build something, systematize it, make it worth more. I've been running that loop my whole life.
Why I buy instead of build
Eventually the math gets obvious. Through an acquisition you can solve most business problems faster and cut two to five years off the climb. Building is noble. Buying is faster.
The cold email
People hear "I bought a $3.5M agency with a cold email" and picture one lucky message. Here's what it actually took: 1,000s of cold outbound emails. 150+ email conversations. 70 deeper Zoom conversations with agency owners. Five months. One conference. And one unforgettable moustache phase.
I started the outreach in October 2023. I wasn't pitching, I was interviewing owners about their businesses and what they actually wanted next. Most of it went nowhere, and that was fine, because every conversation taught me what the market really looked like.
In November, George replied. He ran Born & Bred, an award-winning brand agency with a client roster most firms would kill for, and like a lot of brilliant founders, he was carrying more of it on his own back and had expected more success than he'd realized so far. In February 2024 he came out to DealCon and we spent real time together. By April, we'd closed.
The deal: your price, my terms
George got his number and his multiple. I got terms that made the risk acceptable to me, with most of the value tied to the agency's future growth so we were both rowing the same direction after closing. He won on price, I won on risk, and we both won on what we built next, together. That's what win-win actually means, and it's the same conversation I have with every owner now. The exact mechanics? Those I walk through on the DealCon stage and across the table, because that's the value of being in the room.
What I look for in an agency
Four things. First, I buy agencies that lean heavily on the owner, have a concentration issue, or are just ready for the next thing in life, because that's exactly what creates the discount and exactly what I know how to fix. Second, I plug them into shared infrastructure for real cost savings. Third, we cross-sell across the portfolio for growth neither of us gets alone. Fourth, we build something together, because the owner usually stays on, on their terms. Freedom for them, growth for the group.
What sellers get wrong
After close to a thousand conversations with agency owners, I see the same four mistakes again and again.
- You built a business that can't run without you. If you're the rainmaker and the head of delivery, you're not selling a business, you're selling a job, and the buyer knows it.
- You never built for the exit. It starts with your books and financials. Run everything through the business if you want, but if they're not coded to show what you actually earn, you've created months of pain at the worst possible moment.
- Your process lives in your head. You're selling client contracts, your people, and your systems. If that third bucket isn't written down and repeatable, you're handing the buyer risk instead of value.
- You take the valuation personally. An owner thinks the agency's worth ten million. The math says three. That number has nothing to do with your worth as a human or a founder. Sometimes it's just math, and the owners who can hear that are the ones who actually get deals done.
The thread through all four is trust. Owners get on that first call and try to boil it all down to price. It isn't about price. It's about whether we trust each other enough to be honest about what you really want, which for most owners is a good home for their team first, and the money second.
The people are the heart of the deal
Buying the agency took months. Making it work is the real job, and it's why my coaching expertise matters more than my spreadsheet. The numbers are easy. People are hard. An owner's identity is usually fused to the business, and untangling that with respect is the difference between an acquisition that compounds and one that craters.
If you're wondering what's next
I'm talking with agency owners every week about partnering, selling, or finding growth capital. Even if we never do a deal, you'll leave the call knowing what your agency is actually worth and what would make it worth more.