When an agency sells, the buyer pays for the billings and loses the judgement.

This tells you, honestly, how much of your firm's value would survive the deal, and how much walks out of the door with you.

With my partners I have bought and sold, and supervised the years after the deal closes, when the buyer finds out what they actually bought. The relationships, the judgement and the new business that made the firm worth buying turn out to live in one person, and that person is the one the buyer cannot keep. This is the diagnostic I run with founders, and with the teams acquiring them. It will not value your firm. It will tell you which parts of it are transferable, and which walk out of the door with you.

Who this is for: agency founders and owners weighing a sale, now or in the next few years, and the buyers and private equity teams on the other side of the table. If you are years from any of this and simply curious, that is fine, but the questions assume you mean it. About four minutes. No login, no preamble.