I spent 13 years building my agency before I sold it. The exit itself took about 18 months from first conversation to final signature. But the exit planning? That started two years before the first conversation. And honestly, I wish I had started it five years earlier.

Most agency owners think about exit planning the way they think about writing a will. Something you know you should do. Something you keep putting off. Something you assume is for “later.”

Then later arrives. A buyer approaches. A health scare happens. You wake up one morning and realise you are tired. And suddenly you are trying to compress years of preparation into months.

That compression costs money. Real money. I have seen it wipe six figures off a sale price. I have seen it collapse deals entirely.

This guide is everything I know about exit planning, from selling my own creative agency and from working with agency owners who are building towards their exits right now. It is UK-focused. It is practical. And it starts with the thing most founders get wrong.

What Is Exit Planning?

Exit planning is the process of preparing your business to either be sold, passed on, or structured so you can step away with maximum value and minimum chaos.

It is not the same as putting your business on the market. That is a sale process. Exit planning happens before the sale process. Sometimes years before.

Think of it this way: selling a house is one thing. Renovating the kitchen, fixing the roof, and sorting the garden before you sell it is another. Exit planning is the renovation. The sale is the listing.

Good exit planning answers three questions:

  1. What is the business worth today? Not what you hope. Not what you need. What a buyer would actually pay.
  2. What could it be worth with preparation? Usually significantly more. I have seen 12 to 24 months of focused work add 30 to 50% to a valuation.
  3. What needs to change to get there? This is where most of the work lives.

Why Exit Planning Matters (Even If You Are Not Selling)

Most people miss this. Exit planning is not just for people who want to sell. Everything that makes a business sellable also makes it a better business to run.

Recurring revenue. Documented systems. A team that delivers without you standing over them. Diversified clients. Clean financials. These are not just exit criteria. They are the foundations of a business that does not consume your entire life.

I started exit planning because I wanted to sell. But what I actually built was a business that gave me my time back. I took a month in Malaga with my family, working maybe two hours a day. The business ran. Revenue held. Clients were happy.

That was the moment I knew the exit plan was working. Not because a buyer would like it, but because I liked it.

So whether you plan to sell in two years, ten years, or never, the exercise of exit planning forces you to build something better.

When to Start Your Exit Plan

The honest answer: now. Regardless of where you are.

The practical answer: the minimum lead time for a well-prepared exit is 18 to 24 months. That gives you enough time to fix the big issues, demonstrate improved performance to buyers (they want to see trends, not one good quarter), and navigate the sale process itself.

Here is the timeline I recommend:

24+ months before exit: Start planning. Identify gaps. Begin fixing the structural issues (founder dependency, client concentration, lack of systems).

18 months before: Your numbers should be improving. Recurring revenue building. Key person risk reducing. Start having informal conversations with brokers or advisors to understand your market.

12 months before: Financials need to be clean. Adjusted EBITDA calculated. Management accounts up to date. This is when serious preparation for due diligence begins.

6 months before: Go to market. Engage a broker or start conversations with potential buyers. Your information memorandum (the document that describes your business to buyers) should be ready.

0 to 6 months: Negotiations, due diligence, heads of terms, legal completion. This part is a grind. It will take longer than you expect.

If you are reading this and thinking “I am nowhere near that timeline,” good. You are exactly who this is for. Starting early gives you the luxury of fixing things properly instead of papering over cracks.

The 6 Things Buyers Actually Look For

When I went through due diligence, I was surprised by what buyers focused on. It was not my portfolio. It was not the awards on the shelf. It was the mechanics of the business.

Here is what moves the needle on valuation:

1. Recurring Revenue

This is number one for a reason. A business that starts every month at zero is a gamble. A business with 70% of revenue on retainers or contracts is predictable. Buyers pay more for predictability.

When I was building towards exit, I restructured our service offering around retained work. Not because a coach told me to, but because I was sick of the feast and famine. Turns out that what fixed my stress also increased my valuation.

If you are project-only right now, start layering in retainers. Monthly design retainers. Ongoing brand management. Website support packages. Even a maintenance retainer at a few hundred a month adds up. I have seen agencies go from 0% to 40% recurring in under a year just by restructuring how they pitch existing clients.

2. Owner Independence

Can the business run without you for four weeks? Not survive. Run. Revenue comes in. Clients are served. Problems get solved. Decisions get made.

If the answer is no, you do not have a business. You have a job with overhead.

I spent two years systematically removing myself from delivery, then client contact, then day-to-day decisions. The framework I use now with clients is what I call the Owner Extraction Method: you extract yourself from delivery first, then client relationships, then operations, then strategic decisions. In that order.

Every step you take away from the centre of the business increases its value.

3. Client Diversification

Your biggest client is your biggest risk. If any single client accounts for more than 25 to 30% of revenue, a buyer will either discount your valuation or walk away. Because if that client leaves after the sale, the business they just bought is not worth what they paid.

I had this happen at my agency. My top client was close to 40% of revenue. They took their creative work in-house. I did not sleep properly for a month. That experience shaped everything I do now when working with agency owners.

The fix: set a ceiling. No client over 20% of revenue. If you are above that, the priority is not winning new clients. It is winning the right new clients to rebalance.

4. Financial Clarity

Buyers want clean numbers. Monthly management accounts. A clear P&L. Adjusted EBITDA calculated properly (adding back owner salary, one-off costs, personal expenses run through the business).

I have seen deals stall because the seller could not explain their own numbers. “I think we made about this much” is not what a buyer wants to hear.

Get an accountant who understands M&A. Not your mate who does your self-assessment. Someone who can prepare your financials in a format buyers and their advisors expect.

5. Documented Systems

If the knowledge of how your business operates lives in your head, or worse, in a single team member’s head, that is key person risk. Buyers hate key person risk.

SOPs. Process documentation. A training library. These are not boring admin tasks. They are assets. I built a Loom video library for every key process in my agency. Client onboarding, project briefing, design QA, client reporting, finance workflows. Took months. Added tens of thousands in value. And it meant new hires could get up to speed without me spending a week showing them the ropes.

6. A Team That Delivers

In an agency, the team is the product. A strong, stable team with low turnover signals a healthy creative business. A revolving door signals problems.

Buyers will meet your team during due diligence. They will assess culture, capability, and retention risk. If your best people are likely to leave after the sale, the buyer has a problem, and they will price that into the offer.

Invest in your team. Not just salary. Culture, development, autonomy. The agencies that sell for the highest multiples are almost always the ones where the creative team is genuinely good and genuinely staying.

How to Build Your Exit Plan: A Step-by-Step Framework

I use a framework with every agency owner I work with. It is built around four pillars: Sales Function, Delivery Function, Client Relationships, and Strategic Direction. Each one gets scored, and the combined score tells you how exit-ready you are.

Here is the simplified version you can work through yourself:

Step 1: Baseline Your Current Position

Be honest. Score yourself on:

Be brutal. This exercise only works if you are honest about where you stand today. Not where you want to be. Not where you tell people you are.

Step 2: Identify the Gaps

The baseline will show you exactly where the problems are. Most agency owners I work with have two or three areas that are significantly weaker than the rest.

Common patterns I see in creative and digital agencies:

Pick the two biggest gaps. Those are your priorities for the next 12 months.

Step 3: Build a 12-Month Roadmap

For each gap, define what “fixed” looks like and work backwards.

Example: if your biggest gap is recurring revenue and you are currently at 20%, your target might be 50% recurring within 12 months. The actions: redesign your retainer offering, pitch retained work to existing project clients, and restructure your new business process to lead with retainers instead of one-off projects.

Example: if your biggest gap is owner dependency and you currently run all client meetings, your target might be one client relationship fully managed by your account manager within 6 months, then three by month 12.

Make it specific. Make it measurable. Review it monthly.

Step 4: Fix Your Financials

This one is non-negotiable. Your financials need to be clean, current, and adjusted.

At minimum:

If your accountant cannot provide this, find one who can. This is the foundation of every valuation conversation.

Step 5: Get a Valuation

You need to know what you are working with. A formal valuation is not necessary at this stage (save that for when you are going to market), but you should have a realistic range.

The formula for most creative and digital agencies: Adjusted EBITDA multiplied by a multiple between 3x and 6x, depending on the quality of the business. Two agencies with identical revenue can sell for wildly different prices. I have seen it firsthand. If you want the detail on what drives multiples up or down, read the full breakdown on EBITDA multiples by industry.

Knowing your number gives you a target. It also gives you motivation. When you can see that fixing your client concentration problem could add £150K to your exit value, it stops feeling like admin and starts feeling like building wealth.

Step 6: Review and Adjust Quarterly

Exit planning is not a one-off exercise. It is a quarterly discipline.

Every 90 days, revisit your baseline scores. Have they improved? Where are you stuck? What has changed in the business that creates new gaps or closes old ones?

The agency owners who exit well are the ones who treat this like a priority, not a project. It sits alongside revenue targets and client delivery. It is part of how you run the business.

The Mistakes That Cost Founders Money

I have made some of these. I have watched clients make others. Every single one is avoidable with planning.

Waiting too long to start. The most common mistake. You cannot create two years of recurring revenue trends in six months. Start before you think you need to.

Ignoring adjusted EBITDA. Your business might be doing £1M in revenue. If your adjusted EBITDA is £80K, your valuation is probably between £240K and £480K. Revenue is vanity. Profit, specifically EBITDA, is what buyers pay for.

Founder dependency. “I will stay on for a year after the sale” is not a solution. It is a discount. Buyers want businesses that work without the founder. If you are required to stay, they will structure the deal to protect themselves, which usually means less money upfront and more tied to earnouts.

No professional advisors. Trying to sell a business without a broker or M&A advisor is like representing yourself in court. You might save the fee. You will almost certainly leave money on the table. A good advisor pays for themselves several times over.

Emotional attachment. Your agency is not your baby. It is an asset. A buyer does not care about the late nights, the awards, or the story of how you started in your spare bedroom with a copy of Photoshop and no clients. They care about the numbers, the team, and the growth potential. The sooner you can separate your identity from the agency, the better the outcome.

What Happens If You Do Not Plan?

Two scenarios. Both bad.

Scenario 1: You try to sell unprepared. A buyer does due diligence. They find client concentration issues, founder dependency, project-only revenue, and messy financials. They either walk away or offer significantly below what the business could have been worth. I have seen agencies leave 30 to 40% of potential value on the table because of avoidable issues.

Scenario 2: You never sell. You work in the business until you cannot or do not want to any more. Then you close it. All that value, all those years of building, generates nothing beyond what you paid yourself along the way. The asset you built has zero residual value.

Neither scenario is inevitable. Both are avoidable. The difference is planning.

Your Next Step

If you have read this far, you are probably thinking about where you sit. That is the right instinct.

I built a free Agency Valuation that scores your business across four pillars: sales function, delivery function, client relationships, and strategic direction. It takes about three minutes. It will not try to sell you anything. It will show you exactly where the gaps are.

If you want hands-on support through the entire exit process, explore my Exit Advisory programme. Or if you would rather start with a conversation, book a call. I will tell you honestly where I think your business stands and what I would focus on first. No pitch. Just clarity.

The best time to start exit planning was two years ago. The second best time is today.

Further Reading