Five keepers
from the last season
 

When I started in recruitment 15 years ago, my world was all about creativity. The people, the portfolios, the work.

As our clients grew, the conversations changed. They didn’t just want to hire people. They wanted to acquire businesses, take investment or sell their own companies.

So this season of GOOD CEOs has followed that journey. We’ve spoken to founders building something bigger than themselves, leaders who have sold their businesses, and advisers who help put those deals together.

For this issue, I’m pulling out the ideas that stayed with me. Plus a reflection on our own slightly uncomfortable quarter, and one prediction about how creative businesses will get paid.

Let’s get into it.

1. AI raises the floor.
Creativity raises the ceiling

James Greenfield, CEO and founder at Koto gave me that line back in Issue 10.

I keep coming back to it.

As competent execution becomes cheaper, producing more stops being much of a distinction. The questions turn into.

• How good is the thinking?

• How distinctive is the work?

• What does it actually do for the client?

The floor keeps moving. What felt impressive yesterday becomes something everyone can do tomorrow.

 
Spend more time thinking
about the strategic and creative
contribution that makes a brand
more valuable
 

James’s point was that we should spend more time thinking about the ceiling we can raise. The strategic and creative contribution that makes a brand more valuable, rather than the mechanics of how we produce its assets.

That doesn’t make the craft irrelevant. It makes knowing what the craft is for more important.

I found that reassuring. There is still an enormous opportunity for creative businesses. But we have to get better at explaining the value of what we make.

2. If it’s worth buying,
it’s worth protecting

A theme kept appearing across the conversations: don’t lose the thing that made someone want to buy your business.

Matt Lacey, partner at Waypoint put it simply: “Don’t sacrifice your strategy just to get a deal done.”

The excitement of a deal can make that harder than it sounds. You’re joining something bigger. There’s money, possibility and a new set of people with opinions about your future.

• But does their plan strengthen yours?

• Do they understand why your business works?

• What will you be able to do together that you couldn’t do alone?

Natalie Graeme, founder of Uncommon Creative Studio explained why it’s vital to sweat the small stuff: down to which IT provider you use.

That might sound minor. Until you consider how much of a company’s culture lives in its everyday decisions: the people it hires, the suppliers it trusts, the processes that help everyone do their best work.

• You don’t need to defend every habit

• You do need to know which ones matter

Ryan Honey, co-founder of Buck offered another version of the same principle: bring brilliant specialists together without erasing what makes them special.

His personal test for a potential partner: would he have them stay at his house?

 
Don’t sacrifice
your strategy in the excitement
of making a deal
 

Spreadsheets can tell you where the clients and capabilities overlap. They tell you rather less about whether you’ll enjoy building something together.

My bet is that the strongest groups will form around a shared philosophy, with enough independence for the individual businesses to thrive.

3. M&A,
but make it human

There is a lot of agency M&A happening. But why – and who’s vying for what?

Yes, a deal has to make financial sense. Shareholders may want to take money out of the business and reduce their exposure. But speak to passionate founders and there’s usually more to it. They want their business to thrive in ways it couldn’t on its own.

• More money to invest in people and projects

• Better relationships

• A bigger mission

• Inspiration

For me, the interesting starting point is the business at the centre of the group.

What makes it a credible home for everyone else?

World-class work matters. So do world-class relationships.

Look at businesses such as Buck, R/GA, Huge, Koto and JKR. Design and transformation work can put agencies close to the people making fundamental decisions about a business. When you’re defining the brand, the conversation can reach the CEO or founder.

 
Acquiring an influencer agency
could mean the business
continues being needed
for what it does best
 

At the other end of the marketing mix, media businesses have another advantage: proximity to where the money goes, and visibility into what performs.

Different starting points. But often a similar reason to acquire.

They’re buying what they’re sick of saying they can’t do.

The design agency that keeps handing the website to someone else. The digital product shop whose clients need AI consultancy. The media business that needs a constant supply of brilliant social creative.

Which brings me back to this question:

Who has a poverty of what you do have, and a wealth of what you don’t?

Who has the relationships you’d love to have, but needs your capabilities to serve them better?

We have ten live M&A briefs that broadly fall into three needs.

The design behemoth

They’ve helped define the brand. They have the trust of the CEO. Then the website, digital product and campaign go elsewhere.

They’re looking for a growing digital product business or AI consultancy that can build what clients keep asking for. Or a social-first creative business with a record of growing brands.

You gain access to relationships that might take years to build.

They gain the capability to say yes.

The modern media mogul

They know where the money goes. They can see which creative works. And their performance increasingly depends on a reliable supply of strong social and creator content.

They want a growing social creative or influencer agency that knows how to earn attention and keep it.

For the right business, that could mean bigger clients, bigger briefs and a continuing need for what it does best.

The creative dragon

They know how to make people care about a business. They want more involvement in shaping it in the first place.

They’re looking for a growing design or creative agency with a clear specialism—something they can build more of the client relationship around.

Helping decide what a brand should be gives you a very good reason to stay involved in what it does next.

Across all three, the useful question for a founder is:

What type of acquirer or investor would accelerate our growth?

If you run a growing influencer, creative, design or AI consultancy, I’d love to understand what’s stopping you from reaching the next level.

Pop me a note. 📧

The buyers behind these briefs are seeking businesses with £1m–£8m EBIT and a minimum annual growth rate of 20%.

4. You can’t change the
model without changing
the mindset

One of the stories from my conversation with Lisa De Bonis, Brandtech UK CEO, involved an investor asking why clients who wanted a website wouldn’t use Squarespace rather than a full-service creative agency.

Quite a question to ask about a business whose value you’re meant to understand.

Her point stayed with me: know who you’re getting into bed with. Do they understand what clients are buying? Do they value the judgement, relationships and creative work behind it?

 
Know who
you’re getting
into bed with
 

Her second lesson was about changing the business itself:

“You cannot change the business model without changing the mindset.”

Changing how an established agency charges is difficult. You’re rewiring the house while keeping the lights on.

We’ve felt a version of that at Unknown. Over the past year, we’ve changed our pricing, structure, how we pay people and how we bill. And we’re only around 20 people.

A new model needs more than a new rate card. People have to understand it well enough to use it, explain it and believe in it.

The language matters too. How you describe the work shapes how your team thinks about it—and how your clients understand what they’re buying.

5. Stop starting.
Start finishing

Our goal is 35% annual growth for the next nine years.

That number comes from our experience: we’ve grown at that rate for the past six. It also reflects the kind of company I want to run. Ambitious, but still a business where I can stay close to our people, clients and the talent we place.

We had our best first half on record, roughly 45% ahead of the previous year.

We celebrated.
Then we had a soft Q3.

Briefs slowed. Decisions moved down the road. We were still adjusting to our new model. Too much time went into tending existing opportunities, and not enough into creating new ones.

Six weeks can disappear very quickly. Suddenly, you’re looking at the quarter and realising you can’t recover it.

So Q4 has a clear instruction: stop starting, start finishing.

We don’t need more ideas. We need to execute the ones we already have.

That applies to me. Being in the meetings. Staying consistent. Getting into the data and understanding what needs to change.

The other instruction is equally important: what’s fun gets done.

This will be a demanding quarter. I want the team to feel that we’re doing it together, that they’re contributing and growing, and that we can still enjoy ourselves.

I want to build a business that is good enough to attract investment. I also want us to enjoy running it when we get there.

 
Listen to full episodes →

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And if there’s a decision you’re wrestling with, hit reply. I’d love to tackle it in a future episode.

 
 
Ollie

My bet: licensing

One prediction this time.

We’ve spent years talking about changing the creative business model. Moving beyond time and materials. Finding better ways to get paid for the value we create.

I think we’re going to hear much more about licensing.

Recent conversations about intellectual property have made me think there’s a bigger opportunity here. If a creative business produces something that continues to be useful, why should its income end when the initial work is finished?

Licensing creates the possibility of recurring payments from one piece of work. The client keeps paying while it remains valuable. The creator earns from its continued use.

Music and film already give us familiar examples of that principle.

There are questions to answer about what gets licensed, who owns it and how it’s priced. But I think we’ll see more creative businesses putting this into practice.

That’s my bet. I’d love to hear yours.

And keep the questions coming. We have another Q&A on the way, so reply with whatever you’d like us to tackle next.

See you in a fortnight!