Power 50 Publication - Flipbook - Page 27
Page 27
04
BUYING
INTO AN AGENCY
The final route to agency ownership is buying an agency, either
through investment into a business, a management buyout or
acquisition.
Management buyout
Laura Pace joined Yellow Fish as managing director in March 2020 at
the start of the global pandemic and ended up taking ownership of
the business within a year. Not only was she new to the agency, she
came from brand experience agency Hot Pickle, which focuses on
consumer activations, so she was also new to the business events
and incentives sector.
So, was it difficult coming into an established agency as MD from
outside the sector to start with? “There isn’t a massive difference
between consumer and corporate to be honest. It’s the same
process. It’s about understanding the client objective, and then
understanding the audience and finding the best way to communicate. Before the job at Yellow Fish came along, I never really thought
about the B2B world because I was so heavily involved in the B2C
world. When a head-hunter approached me about the Yellow Fish
role, and I looked at what the agency did, it seemed like a fantastic
opportunity, and I felt there was a lot I could bring to the table,” she
explains.
If you are joining an agency straight into the MD role, Laura advises
getting to know the agency you are going to be working with as well
as you can before you get started. “I almost treated it like a
stakeholder interview process. I interviewed all the team and made
sure they felt listened to. I also interviewed some of our existing
clients to understand what their perception of Yellow Fish was. By
having that insight, I was able to make changes, but changes that
were justified, and changes that the team felt part of.”
She admits that coming into an agency that is already well
established with people who have been there a long time does
throw up challenges because they are used to working in a
certain way.
“It has made me realise how important it is to be the best
communicator you can be. Don’t be scared to make changes,
just be aware of the justification for making those changes
because it helps if you take everyone on the journey with you.”
Maria Valentine, Yellow Fish founder, ended up moving to Ibiza so
was further away, at the same time as the agency was innovating in the digital space and broadening its offering amid the
pandemic. “She came to the realisation that her heart wasn’t in
the digital space as much and the conversation of a management buyout started quite naturally from there. If you had told
me not even a year into the role that I would be buying the
agency, I probably would have laughed in your face. My
ambition was to get some experience as an MD, and either look
to work with Maria to buy her out after a few years, sell the
agency together, or start my own thing. This was quite a
curveball, but it just felt right from day one, and I think it felt right
for Maria too.”
She adds: “My advice for anyone looking at buying someone out
is to surround yourself with people you can trust who know what
they are talking about, because it’s not a process I had been
through before. I leaned on people in the industry, and people in
my life who knew about the legal and financial side of things
and could help me make the deal work for both parties.”
Investing in an agency
When Anna Green and her husband Matt joined forces with the
owners of Broadsword, they were considering setting up their
own events agency. Like Laura, Anna came from outside the
sector – she trained in technical theatre but had her children
young, so decided to go into teaching and was a primary school
