Agency Equity, Leverage, and the Long Road Back to 100% Ownership

Agency Equity, Leverage, and the Long Road Back to 100% Ownership

EPISODE SUMMARY In this episode of Agency in Motion, host Tristan Pelligrino sits down with Brett Snyder, founder of Knucklepuck, for a candid look at one of the most consequential decisions an agency founder can make: giving up — and then fighting to reclaim — majority ownership of the business they built. Brett walks through the early days of Knucklepuck in 2014, the unexpected investor approach that led him to surrender control, and the years of operational friction that eventually forced him to renegotiate the terms of his own company. What makes this conversation different is Brett's willingness to break down the mechanics of the deals themselves — how the original investor partnership was structured around a $4M pro forma rather than a traditional valuation, how a single difficult board member became the catalyst for change, and how he ultimately bought back majority control via a seller-financed note before completing a full buyout in 2024. He's transparent about the leverage he had, the leverage he applied, and the moments where his calculus could have gone either way. The throughline is something most agency founders rarely hear discussed openly: ownership isn't just a number on a cap table — it's a daily question of energy, motivation, and whether the version of the business you're running still fits who you are. Brett's story offers a rare, unvarnished view into what it actually takes to change the deal you signed. GUEST-AT-A-GLANCE Name: Brett Snyder Role: Founder Company: Knucklepuck Background: Brett founded Knucklepuck in May 2014 after leaving a director-level role to go independent. The agency focuses exclusively on SEO, GEO (LLM/AI search optimization), and paid media for lead-generation businesses — particularly SaaS, professional services, and considered-purchase categories. Brett has navigated two major ownership transitions: bringing on partners in 2015 to accelerate growth, then negotiating his way back to 100% ownership across two transactions (2020 and 2024). He's a regular guest lecturer at Villanova's business school. Find Brett: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-snyder/] | knucklepuckmedia.com [https://knucklepuckmedia.com/] KEY INSIGHTS EQUITY DECISIONS ARE BETS ON THE FUTURE, NOT VALUATIONS OF THE PRESENT When Brett brought on investors in 2015, there wasn't much of a business to value — Knucklepuck was him, a junior employee, and roughly $25K in monthly recurring revenue. The real question wasn't "what is this worth today?" but "can this be worth 3x more with partners than without?" That framing is critical for founders weighing outside capital or strategic partnerships. The math Brett ran wasn't about getting the best price for what he had built — it was about whether the rocket fuel being offered would meaningfully accelerate the trajectory. Founders who insist on valuing current state often miss the more important question about what the partnership unlocks. THE PERSON ACROSS THE TABLE MATTERS MORE THAN THE DEAL ON PAPER Brett's relationship with his investors didn't sour because of bad terms — it deteriorated because of one board member who became impossible to work with. He describes pulling the other owners aside after a board meeting and delivering an ultimatum: "It's him or me." This is the part of agency partnerships nobody talks about in the deal memo. You can structure equity, vesting, and earn-outs perfectly, but if the day-to-day human dynamics break down, the legal structure becomes a cage. For founders considering investors, board members, or M&A partners, the personality and operating philosophy of the people you'll actually deal with matters as much as the financial terms. YOU CAN ALWAYS RENEGOTIATE THE DEAL — BUT YOU HAVE TO ACTUALLY APPLY LEVERAGE One of Brett's most repeated points is that no agreement is permanent. He calls it "changing the rules" — and he's done it twice, once to buy back majority control and again to complete the full buyout. But he's blunt that leverage alone isn't enough. Most founders can identify some form of leverage, but they hesitate to use it. Brett bet $450K on a single negotiation play (walking into a meeting with two signed deals in a manila folder), and he describes it as a poker hand: you have to know the player across the table, know what you're willing to lose, and have follow-up options if the bluff doesn't land. For agency founders considering a buyout, restructure, or exit, the lesson is that the deal you signed is a starting point — not a verdict. PROFITABILITY BUYS YOU OPTIONALITY Throughout the conversation, Brett emphasizes that Knucklepuck has been profitable every year except the two COVID years (2020–2021). That profitability wasn't an accident — it was a deliberate operating philosophy tied to a modest personal lifestyle and a refusal to run the business as a maximum-extraction machine. The strategic value of this discipline became clear during the buyback negotiations: he had financial flexibility, he wasn't desperate, and his partners knew the business was healthy enough to keep growing without them taking losses. For founders thinking about future transitions, the message is that how you run the business today directly shapes the menu of options available to you tomorrow. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS THE SPARK: WANTING THE BALL [00:01:14] Brett describes the moment he decided he wasn't built to be an employee — not because the work was wrong, but because he wanted control over what got prioritized. After moving from Atlanta to DC with his wife, he transitioned out of his director role and officially formed Knucklepuck on May 9, 2014. The framing here is important: he didn't start an agency to chase a market opportunity. He started one because he couldn't tolerate watching things go unaddressed. Brett Snyder: "I wanted the ball, right? I wanted the chance to control my own fate. It's been a humbling experience. I have a lot more respect for the things that my boss didn't do early on because he had other priorities." SITTING ACROSS FROM EIGHT INVESTORS AND ASKING WHAT A VESTING SCHEDULE IS [00:12:55] Brett recounts the moment a pseudo-private-equity group flew him to Orlando to pitch him on a partnership. He sat alone across a conference table from eight to ten people — and had to interrupt the meeting to ask what a vesting schedule was. The story is a powerful reminder that founders going through major deals are often doing it for the first time, without the vocabulary or context that institutional players take for granted. Brett Snyder: "I had to stop the conversation to ask what a vesting schedule was because I had no plans to bring on partners. I didn't go out there to try to grow the business. I didn't go to business school." "IT'S HIM OR ME": THE BOARD MEMBER ULTIMATUM [00:25:28] One specific board member — appointed by his investors — became the catalyst for Brett's decision to reclaim control. Brett describes asking for ten minutes alone with the other owners after a quarterly board meeting and delivering an ultimatum. It's one of the rawest moments in the episode and illustrates how a single misaligned relationship can unravel an otherwise functional partnership. Brett Snyder: "I had to sit down and I was like, 'It's him or me.' I cannot coexist with this person... my job, which was already extremely difficult in an early stage startup, it just made it untenable." THE MANILA FOLDER PLAY [00:44:45] Brett walks through what is arguably the most dramatic moment of his negotiation career: walking into his investors' office with two manila folders, each containing a signed deal — his price and theirs — and forcing them to choose. The maneuver was based on a poker player's read of the room, not a textbook negotiating tactic. Notably, every advisor he consulted beforehand told him not to do it. Brett Snyder: "I signed both. I signed your deal and I signed mine. I'm gonna go back to work tomorrow either way, but you should recognize that if you sign your deal, then we will have a transactional relationship until such time as I move on to something that is more suitable for me." CLOSING THE LOOP [00:38:38] Four years after buying back his majority stake via a seller-financed note, Brett completed the full buyout in 2024 — purchasing the remaining 20% and retiring the note at a discount. He frames the transaction as a "divorce" rather than a battle, and credits the relative size of Knucklepuck within his partners' broader portfolio as a key piece of leverage. The expediency of wiring funds the day after signing was, in his telling, more valuable to his partners than maximizing the dollar figure. Brett Snyder: "Let's just divorce amicably... we've decided that our lives, our professional lives are no longer entwined. And then it just came down to numbers."

From Generalist Hell to Niche Authority: Building an Agency Around One Service

EPISODE SUMMARY In this episode of Agency in Motion, host Tristan Pelligrino sits down with Kris Yankov, Founder of Above Apex, to unpack the decision that transformed his agency from a struggling generalist SEO shop into a focused, specialized link building partner for SaaS and B2B companies. Kris walks through what he calls "generalist hell" — the early days of taking on bad-fit clients on Upwork — and how a deliberate six-month obsession with link building turned his weakest service into his core offering. The conversation moves through the operational realities of niching down: building SOPs from scratch through hundreds of iterations, treating customer communication "like a boyfriend and girlfriend," and making the hard call to turn away expansion opportunities from enterprise clients in order to protect focus. Kris reflects honestly on the trade-offs of bringing on his first team member during a high-pressure client engagement, the patience required to teach others what came naturally to him and his co-founder Deyan, and how perspective — not just hustle — became his most valuable mindset shift. The episode closes with Kris's current inflection point: a deliberate pivot toward brand awareness and visibility across AI search platforms, and a candid admission that he wishes he'd started building Above Apex's brand two years earlier. It's a peer-to-peer conversation about the compounding cost of waiting, the discipline of focus, and what three years of agency ownership teaches you about yourself. GUEST-AT-A-GLANCE Name: Kris Yankov Role: Founder Company: Above Apex Context: Kris co-founded Above Apex with his business partner Deyan after transitioning out of generalist SEO freelancing. The agency specializes in link building and off-page SEO for SaaS and B2B companies, with Upwork serving as their initial client acquisition channel. In under three years, they've scaled the team, built a repeatable delivery model, and are now expanding into multi-layered search visibility (including GEO and AI search platforms). Find Kris: * Website: aboveapex.com [https://aboveapex.com] * LinkedIn: Active five days a week with founder-level content [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristyan-yankov/] KEY INSIGHTS NICHING DOWN IS A TRADE-OFF DECISION, NOT A MARKETING TACTIC One of the most clarifying moments in the conversation comes when Kris describes the framework he and Deyan use to evaluate expansion opportunities — even when a large enterprise client asks them to take on more work. Rather than chasing short-term revenue, they explicitly measure the upside against the downside of breaking focus. As Kris puts it, taking on adjacent services means stepping into "another field" where the team can't be as efficient, can't predict outcomes from past reps, and can't deliver with the same confidence. For agency founders wrestling with whether to expand their service menu, the insight is sharp: focus isn't a positioning exercise — it's an operational moat that compounds the longer you protect it. THE FIRST HIRE DOESN'T REDUCE YOUR WORKLOAD — IT DOUBLES IT Kris is refreshingly honest about what happens when you bring on your first team member. The expectation that a hire takes work off your plate is, in his experience, completely wrong — at least in the short term. When Above Apex landed a major client, he and Deyan onboarded their first hire within two days, which meant simultaneously delivering for a high-stakes account and training someone from scratch. Kris frames this through Alex Hormozi's trade-off lens: the upside is a future growth lever, the cost is months of working twice as hard. For founders romanticizing their first hire, this is a useful corrective — the ROI is real, but it lives on the other side of a brutal onboarding period. CUSTOMER COMMUNICATION IS A RETENTION ENGINE, NOT A COURTESY Kris repeatedly returns to the idea that proactive, almost-daily communication with clients is one of the highest-leverage activities an agency can invest in. He compares it to maintaining a romantic relationship — small, consistent updates compound over time into a feeling of partnership and trust. The strategic insight: it's far easier (and cheaper) to maintain a good client relationship than to repair a soured one. For agencies operating in commoditized service categories where churn is the silent killer, treating communication as a deliverable in itself — with its own SOPs, cadences, and exit interview process — can be the difference between a 6-month engagement and a 2-year one. BRAND-BUILDING COMPOUNDS — AND WAITING COSTS MORE THAN YOU THINK The most reflective moment in the episode is Kris's admission that, if he could go back two years, he would have started investing in Above Apex's brand authority from day one. He watches competitors who started earlier dominate the conversation and acknowledges the painful math of compounding: the brand you build today won't pay off for 12-24 months, which is exactly why most founders never start. This is particularly urgent in 2025, as search shifts toward AI-driven discovery (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews), where brand mentions, citations, and authority signals directly determine visibility. The lesson for any agency founder still operating purely on outbound: every quarter you delay brand-building is a quarter your competitors widen the gap.

Why Creative Agencies Need Systems, Not Headcount

EPISODE SUMMARY In this episode of Agency in Motion, host Tristan Pelligrino sits down with Robb Wagner, founder of Stimulated-Inc., to trace the unlikely journey from broadcast post-production supervisor to architect of a fully decentralized creative operations system. Robb shares how early career experiences — from building a searchable footage database for reality TV to managing visual effects on Michael Jackson's This Is It — planted the seeds for a fundamentally different approach to running a creative agency. The conversation moves through the painful aftermath of the 2008 recession, when Robb was forced to close his brick-and-mortar studio and rethink everything about how creative work gets done. The heart of the episode centers on a pivotal gamble: saying yes to a massive immersive stage project with a fixed budget and timeline, then building an entirely new platform — Stimulated Works — to break the project into discrete briefs and distribute them to specialist talent around the world. Robb describes the terrifying moment of turning the system on for the first time and watching notifications roll in from Buenos Aires, London, and Los Angeles. What followed was a revelation — not only did the work exceed expectations, but Robb found himself home for dinner with his family for the first time in years. The conversation closes with a forward-looking discussion about how AI fits into this model, why the word "outsource" misrepresents what orchestrated global talent actually looks like, and what agency founders need to do now to future-proof their operations. Robb makes a compelling case that the real bottleneck in most agencies isn't talent — it's the absence of systems that allow talent to do their best work without friction. GUEST-AT-A-GLANCE Robb Wagner * Role: Founder * Company: Stimulated-Inc. * Notable Accomplishments: Creator of the Stimulated Method and Stimulated Works platform; career spanning broadcast post-production, visual effects (including Michael Jackson's This Is It), and large-scale immersive entertainment for cruise lines and concerts; author of a book on the Stimulated Method; has managed millions of creative files across global projects without losing a single one in 13+ years * Where to Find Him: Stimulated-Inc.com [https://stimulated-inc.com] KEY INSIGHTS THE BRIEF IS THE PRODUCT — NOT JUST A STEP IN THE PROCESS Most creative agencies treat the brief as a formality — a loose document that kicks off a conversation. Robb Wagner argues that the brief should be so thorough it eliminates the need for a conversation entirely. His team runs every brief through a 16-point bulletproofing process and circulates it internally multiple times before it reaches any external talent. When work comes back off-target, Robb estimates that 95 times out of 100, the error traces back to the brief, not the artist. For agency founders, this reframes quality control as an upstream discipline rather than a downstream correction — and it's the single practice that makes decentralized creative production possible at scale. SEPARATING CREATIVE FROM PRODUCTION UNLOCKS BOTH One of the most counterintuitive ideas Robb presents is that creative directors become better at their jobs when they stop hovering over production. The traditional model — walking around the studio, adjusting colors over an artist's shoulder — feels like creative direction but often introduces inefficiency and dependency. By forcing himself to articulate his full creative vision before any production begins, Robb discovered that artists given clear direction and autonomy frequently exceed expectations. This separation doesn't diminish the creative process; it elevates it by demanding that creative leaders do the hard intellectual work of translating vision into language before anyone opens a project file. SYSTEMS, NOT HEADCOUNT, ARE THE TRUE SCALING MECHANISM Robb makes a pointed observation about how agencies traditionally scale: they hire more people. But the overhead of sourcing, onboarding, briefing, and managing talent — before any creative work even begins — creates enormous drag. His platform, Stimulated Works, collapses that entire pre-production cycle into something that can happen in a single day. The implication for agency founders is significant: if it takes your shop three weeks to spin up a new project, you're not just slow — you're structurally disadvantaged. The agencies that will thrive are those that invest in operational infrastructure rather than simply adding bodies. "OUTSOURCING" IS THE WRONG WORD — IT'S ORCHESTRATION The stigma around outsourcing persists in agency culture, often carrying connotations of detachment or quality compromise. Robb rejects the term entirely, preferring "orchestration" to describe how he coordinates specialist talent around the world. His model maintains a core in-house team that serves as both the creative brain and the safety net — if an external contributor fails, the internal team can absorb the work. This hybrid approach acknowledges that some work genuinely requires shoulder-to-shoulder collaboration while recognizing that forcing all work into that model is both expensive and unnecessary. For founders wrestling with how to talk about their team structure to clients, Robb's reframing offers a more honest and strategically sound vocabulary.

Agency Exit vs. Lifestyle Freedom: What Founders Get Wrong About Their Endgame

EPISODE SUMMARY In this episode of Agency in Motion, host Tristan Pelligrino sits down with Stephen Firth, an exited agency founder turned advisor, for a candid conversation about the decisions agency owners face when growth plateaus, partnerships strain, and the allure of an exit starts to feel like the only way forward. Stephen built and ran Gravity Thinking, a social content agency that worked with blue-chip automotive, beverage, and entertainment brands, for over a decade before selling to a New York-based brand consultancy — a decision he now openly says he shouldn't have made. The conversation traces Stephen's full arc: from the early investor-backed years, through a period of rapid growth and pitch-winning momentum, to the plateau that triggered an acquisition process he wasn't fully prepared for. Stephen describes the emotional cost of watching his team and culture erode post-acquisition, the painful realization that he'd been carrying an unsustainable sense of responsibility for everyone in the business, and the coaching breakthrough that helped him reframe his relationship with agency ownership entirely. What emerges is a nuanced counter-narrative to the dominant "build and exit" playbook that pervades agency culture. Stephen and Tristan explore what it means to build a "freestyle business" — one that serves the founder's life rather than consuming it — and why the questions founders should be asking aren't about multiples and earnouts, but about motivation, lifestyle, and what a comfortable future actually requires. The episode is both a cautionary tale and a practical framework for any agency owner questioning whether the path they're on is the one they actually want. GUEST-AT-A-GLANCE Stephen Firth Exited Founder & Agency Advisor, The Agency Adventure Stephen co-founded Gravity Thinking, a social content agency that grew to 30–40 people and served major automotive, beverage, insurance, and entertainment brands. After more than a decade of ownership, he exited through an acquisition by a New York-based brand consultancy. He now works with agency founders through The Agency Adventure, helping them avoid the mistakes and "scars" he accumulated during his own journey — with a particular focus on aligning business strategy with founder psychology, motivation, and lifestyle goals. Find him on: LinkedIn (search Stephen Firth) KEY INSIGHTS THE EXIT MISNOMER: MOST AGENCY FOUNDERS DEFAULT TO M&A WITHOUT EARNING — OR NEEDING — IT Stephen makes a provocative but well-supported claim: virtually every agency founder, regardless of size, will tell you their endgame is an M&A exit — yet roughly 99% never build a business attractive enough to acquire, and many who do exit aren't fulfilled by the outcome. This insight matters because it exposes a collective blind spot in agency culture where "exit" has become a default aspiration rather than a deliberate strategy. For founders in the one-to-three-million-dollar revenue range, this is especially critical: the gap between wanting an exit and being structurally ready for one is enormous, and the emotional and financial cost of pursuing it prematurely can exceed the cost of simply never trying. The real question isn't "how do I exit?" but "do I actually need to?" FOUNDER PSYCHOLOGY IS THE MOST UNDERRATED VARIABLE IN AGENCY STRATEGY One of the episode's most significant throughlines is Stephen's argument that agency strategy should begin not with market positioning or revenue targets, but with a deep understanding of why the founder started the business and what they need from it today. Most founders, he observes, never formalize this — 90% don't even have a business plan. This matters because when founders don't understand their own motivations, they make reactive decisions: chasing growth they don't need, pursuing exits that strip away the things they love, or burning out trying to be a CEO when their genius is creative direction. The implication for any founder reading this is direct: before you plan your next strategic move, you need to honestly answer what you want your life to look like in ten years, and then reverse-engineer your business to serve that vision. THE POST-ACQUISITION IDENTITY CRISIS IS REAL — AND PREVENTABLE Stephen's most personal insight is his account of what happened after the acquisition: the culture eroded, key people left, the work suffered, and he found himself trapped in a painful cycle of trying to hold everything together out of a misplaced sense of responsibility. This is a story that plays out repeatedly in agency M&A, but it's rarely told this honestly. For founders considering a sale, the lesson is that ceding control doesn't just change your org chart — it can eradicate the very things that made the business meaningful to you. The antidote, Stephen suggests, is to understand before you sell whether the things you love about your agency can survive the transition, and to plan your post-exit identity with the same rigor you'd apply to the deal itself. THE "FREESTYLE BUSINESS" AS A LEGITIMATE ALTERNATIVE TO EXIT Stephen and Tristan surface an increasingly relevant model: the agency that is deliberately structured to serve the founder's life without requiring an exit to unlock value. Stephen rejects the term "lifestyle business" as carrying a negative connotation — agency ownership is too demanding to be called "lifestyle" — and instead frames it as a "freestyle business" where the founder works within the business on their own terms while extracting value tax-efficiently over time. This reframe matters because it gives founders permission to opt out of the growth-at-all-costs narrative without feeling like they're settling. Stephen's colleague Tom at The Agency Adventure put it starkly: many founders who go through the full build-and-exit cycle end up with less total compensation than if they'd simply held a senior leadership role at a larger agency. That math alone should force a reconsideration of the default playbook.