[Top Agency Series] Growth Through Acquisitions – What is Your KPI and Northstar? With Jason Swenk

Jason Swenk is an agency coach, mentor, and advisor. He helps agency owners grow their agencies faster by setting up the right strategies and systems.

Jason is also a board Member and Partner at Republix, a $20 million+ dollar agency building the world’s leading Growth as a Service Platform to provide customers a one-stop-shop for all their growth needs with guaranteed results.

When Jason is not advising agency owners directly, he’s helping them through his two podcasts: The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast, where he shares strategies and stories from real agency owners, and the SwenkToday, which is a weekly show that documents how you can grow your digital agency.

 

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• What Jason Swenk looks out for when acquiring an agency
• Jason talks about Republix and their vetting process for agency acquisition
• How to earn out of an acquisition
• Jason shares what he looks for in the founder of an that’s agency up for acquisition
• What Jason has learned so far in the process of acquiring companies
• The critical numbers to know about your agency before trying to sell
• How to find out your net promoter score and the ideal net profit to strive for if you want to sell your agency
• Jason discusses an example of a typical agency acquisition deal structure
• The benefits that comes with joining a bigger parent company
• The most in-demand agencies today and why you need to build out your team in order to grow your agency

In this episode…

If you’re looking to grow your agency through acquisition, there are key performance indicators that you need to look out for in order to make sure that the venture becomes successful. According to agency coach, mentor, and advisor, Jason Swenk, hitting these KPIs is a non-negotiable. Whether you’re looking to sell your agency or wanting to acquire one, you need to know your targets and your numbers to get the best possible result out of a deal.

So what are the things you need to look out for both as an agency looking to sell and as an agency looking to acquire for growth?

On this episode of Inspired Insider as Dr. Jeremy Weisz talks with Jason Swenk about all the things you need to know about growing your agency through acquisitions. Tune in as Jason discusses what a typical agency acquirer like Republix looks for in an agency and its founder before they close on a deal, the numbers agency owners need to know about their own firm, and the value of building out your team in order to grow your agency.

Resources Mentioned on this episode

• Jason Swenk’s Website
• How To Get The Best Deal When Selling Your Agency by Jason Swenk
• Foot in the Door Framework by Jason Swenk
• The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast
• SwenkToday
• Jason Swenk on LinkedIn

Special Mention:

• Ian Garlic on LinkedIn

 

Episode Transcript

Jeremy Weisz

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders and lately you know Jason I’ve been having top VCs investors on and Zac Zeitlin of NewGround Ventures invested in PipeDrive Kovida but what I like to ask his biggest misses, so he said the biggest missed was Peloton and he explains why they passed on Peloton. Yossi Vardi, he passed on Wazes, which ended up selling for a billion dollars to Google and Jon Medved passed on Salesforce. He was personal friends with Marc Benioff, who brought him like before I don’t know how early on, but say hey, do you want to invest in this thing I’m thinking of it’s called Salesforce and he passed on that. So that was a big mess. So check out that many more episodes on inspiredinsider.com. Before I talk, today’s guest Jason Swenk. And you could check out another episode that we did this one’s specifically on Growth Through Acquisition because he started new venture it’s you know, growing very rapidly. So we’re gonna talk about that. But this episode is brought to you by Rise25 and what we do is we help b2b businesses give to and connect to your dream 100 partnerships and clients and help you run your podcast. Jason is touted the amazing things about a podcast so have I for the past over 10 years, it’s been the best thing that helps me give to my best relationships and profiled them and their thought leadership and give to the amazing relationships I have. So if you thought about starting a podcast, do it whether you use us or not just do it. But if you have questions you can go to Rise25.com um, today’s guests also want to thank Ian Garlic, who’s our giant tall friend mutual friend Iangarlic.com and whenever you know seriously Jason, whenever I listen, we were talking before I hit record, whenever I listen to you, Ian and Jason’s advice. You know, we have a smoother onboarding process with clients and we help them we help their business grow, which helps our business grow. So I encourage everyone to go to JasonSwenk.com follow, like all of his advice, really like just don’t ask questions. You can ask questions that follow the advice. Okay. So we have Jason Swenk. He helps agencies owners grow their agencies faster he created the resource he wish he had when he added his agency and sold it. Go to JasonSwenk.com he has two podcast Smart Agency Masterclass and SwenkToday. You know you can check out the past episode we talked about how he ended up quitting his job launching a digital marketing engine growing to multi-million dollar operation having clear customers clients like At&t, Hitachi, Lotus many more. Now he right now helps agencies but he also they buy agencies so you can go to Jason Swenk.com/sellagency. And I also Jason want to mention, you know, we follow and we listen to your advice on blueprints and actually making the client onboarding process easy and seamless. And having a great experience. I just got off one, like 10 minutes ago, and people love the process. And it’s a process that’s a foot in the door, right? It gets you showing them value. So you can go to JasonSwenk.com/footinthedoor and look at him and I and walking them through walking you through that process. So Jason, thanks for joining me.

Jason Swenk

Oh, thanks and talking about big whips like you know, Salesforce and all that. Yeah, big whiff was on Elf on the Shelf. There we can Yeah, what is website? Can you do this website and take ownership or take part ownership? I was like, Nah, this is dumbest idea ever. And every holiday I’m hiding that demo.

Jeremy Weisz

You know what? I could totally see myself doing the exact same thing. Is that typical? Will people offer equity for or do you? What’s your recommendation for an agency? Who goes yeah, like, I’ll pay you something. But I want to give you some equity in his opinion. Last, what do you recommend?

Jason Swenk

I mean, most of the time, I always say no, like, yep. I’ve said yes, in the past and got burned. And then that opportunity comes. I mean, that was just like, you know, driving by the gas station, that one a million dollar ticket. And you did, you’re kicking yourself because you’re like, I didn’t buy a ticket, but you never buy a ticket. Right? So I can’t really kick my

Jeremy Weisz

Yeah, right. It was like, same thing like I had Nolan Bushnell, right. He was Steve Jobs mentor, and he said, Steve Jobs offered him 33% of Apple for $50,000. And he said no, so like, he’s like, Jeremy, you understand at that time, that money was worth maybe 300 400,000. And it’s like a 21 year old punk kid, like how would you know he would start for the next apple. But you still kick yourself. You know?

Jason Swenk

It’s a good story.

Jeremy Weisz

Yeah, it makes a good story. Um, so let’s talk about growth or acquisition, you know, cuz you live this, you’ve talked about a lot recently, and I’m looking for, you know, people can check that out. But what are what do you look for, I guess in an agency when you’re buying?

Jason Swenk

Well, first off, you have to be profitable A lot of times, especially at the times we’re going through now, right? Like, there’s a lot of uncertainty for a lot of different people. And people are like, Oh, I want to take advantage of people and by these agencies that are struggling, and I’m like, that’s the wrong move, right? Like you want to buy, you don’t want to buy something to fix it, you want to buy something where two plus two equals 16. Right. And so we’re looking for profitable agencies that are over a million in EBITDA, which is like net profit, you know, that they have a high value in monthly recurring revenue. They have they’ve been growing their accounts over time, right. They’re what we call average expense and revenue, you know, they have an average contract term, that’s two plus years, right. Your clients are with you for at least two years and more. So you know, so those are some of the things that we’re looking at. But, you know, with Republix, you know, we’re just trying to build that, in that world leading, you know, growth service platform. So we’re buying agencies and technology companies, and just making sure that we can be that one stop shop for all that growth. And it’s really exciting about how fastly, it’s actually grown.

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