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Asked to put two more years in before going to market, this founder said yes, then named the two fears out loud: the M&A window, and the firm’s biggest client.
A 25-year-old agency is weighing selling soon against building value for roughly two more years. The founder’s answer was a qualified yes, with the qualifications stated plainly.
“The things that concern me are, will the M&A market still be as strong then, and will our window close? Does that set us back another couple years, perhaps? We can’t predict the future, we don’t know what’s going to be happening that far out.”
The second fear is concentration, and it is not hypothetical. The firm’s largest client is a 14-year relationship that drives a huge share of the profit engine, and the firm has already watched another anchor relationship, nearly two decades old and considered close to untouchable, end anyway.
The answer that came back in the room split the two risks apart. Market timing is outside anyone’s control, so building a strategy around it is futile. Concentration is inside the firm’s control: contract terms, cancellation notice periods, and treating one giant account as what it actually is, many departments with many budgets, many stakeholders, and many work streams. And if both risks are genuinely worked, a third path opens that is not sell-everything-now: take some chips off the table and keep building.
Why it matters to you
A buyer will price your concentration whether or not the M&A window is open when you get there. That is what makes the two risks different: worrying about the window changes nothing, while working the concentration raises what the firm is worth in every scenario, sell in two years, sell later, or never sell at all. Founders who treat both fears as weather end up owning the one they could have fixed.
Your one thing
If your largest client gave notice today, what would your firm be worth tomorrow? Write down the three mitigation moves you have actually executed, not considered, against that risk.
Collective 54 is where boutique service firm founders go to make more money, scale with less friction, and build a firm worth buying.
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