AGENCY GROWTH CLUB
Chris Dreyer (Rankings.io ) on the Hidden Cost of Acquiring an Agency
Guest: Chris Dreyer
Guest: Chris Dreyer
Chris Dreyer, Founder and CEO of Rankings.io, did not go shopping for an agency acquisition. Gladiator came through a long-standing relationship, and the fit was strategic: deeply trusted client relationships, complementary legal-marketing capability, and people who cared about service.
In this Agency Growth Club conversation, Chris explains what must be true before an agency can buy another agency, the diligence items that actually change risk, why culture is more decisive than integration mechanics, and why acquisition finance should be arranged before the opportunity appears.
Pulled from the supplied transcript’s timestamps and matched to the start of each substantive topic.
| Time | Chapter |
| 0:00 | Cold open: PE incentives, sticky clients, culture, and EBITDA |
| 1:01 | Why Chris acquired an agency |
| 2:43 | What made Gladiator a strategic fit |
| 3:51 | Finance leadership, deal structure, and readiness |
| 5:02 | SBA financing, banking relationships, and leverage |
| 7:04 | Cash-on-cash return and the talent-acquisition case |
| 8:22 | Agency acquisition due diligence checklist |
| 11:18 | Deal timeline and why capital readiness matters |
| 12:51 | Valuation: EBITDA multiples in context |
| 13:57 | Chris’s view on selling to private equity |
| 17:56 | Culture, systems, and employee transition |
| 20:43 | What Chris would do differently next time |
| 22:25 | Client communication during the acquisition |
| 23:29 | Brand architecture: merge or keep the acquired brand? |
| 25:39 | The biggest acquisition lesson |
| 26:38 | What to build internally before pursuing M&A |
| 27:36 | Service expansion and the rise of in-house teams |
| 31:04 | GEO, LSA, and search-everywhere optimisation |
| 34:12 | The ability to absorb change |
Chris had completed smaller asset purchases before, but he was not actively hunting for a full agency acquisition when Gladiator entered the conversation. He had known the prior owners, Adam Draper and Lisa Vaughn, for years; their representative approached him. That relationship was important because the target fit Rankings.io’s core priorities: strong service, a well-protected reputation, legal-sector capability, and operators Chris regarded as good people.
The strategic case was larger than revenue. Chris highlights a category of highly “sticky” clients whose relationships are difficult or impossible to win through the ordinary routes of content, outbound sales, or traditional marketing. Acquiring the existing business can make those relationships accessible. He also treats acquired talent as part of the return: a team may include high-potential people who have not yet had the operating environment or leadership opportunities to grow.
“There are certain clients that are very sticky that you will only have the opportunity to acquire through acquisition. You won’t be able to get them through traditional marketing [or] outbound sales.” — Chris Dreyer
Actionable advice: Treat a potential acquisition as a three-part strategic question. First, identify the client relationships you could not realistically win organically. Second, determine whether the target’s people add scarce expertise or leadership capacity. Third, confirm that the target’s service standard is compatible with your own before attributing any value to its revenue.
Chris’s answer starts with finance leadership. Rankings.io had a CFO with prior financing and M&A experience—someone able to evaluate and structure a transaction, challenge assumptions, and understand the diligence work that should happen before an LOI. Chris also used an LLM at the time to pressure-test questions and deal logic. His framing is measured: AI can help an owner prepare, compare assumptions, and develop a checklist, but it does not replace an accountable finance professional who understands the company and the economics of the transaction.
The second precondition was financing capacity. Gladiator was acquired using an SBA loan. Chris notes that the process took longer than he wanted because Rankings.io had to reactively develop stronger banking relationships after the opportunity arose. With the benefit of hindsight, he would establish that capacity earlier: know the company’s borrowing power, understand possible leverage, and maintain banking relationships before pursuing—or receiving—a live opportunity.
“If you’re going to do M&A, have established means of getting capital in advance before you start pursuing it.” — Chris Dreyer
| Readiness area | What Chris says it should provide | Why it matters |
| Finance leadership | Deal-structure evaluation, data extraction, KPI questions, and diligence discipline | It converts broad interest in a deal into an informed underwriting process. |
| Banking relationships | Known borrowing capacity, potential lines of credit, and a quicker route to capital | A credible acquirer can move at the speed of a relationship-led opportunity. |
| Clean operating history | Financial history and quality of earnings that support lender confidence | It increases available financing options and strengthens negotiating position. |
| Owner attention | A realistic comparison of the acquisition’s return against other uses of capital | A deal should beat the owner’s viable alternatives, not merely feel exciting. |
Chris’s diligence lens is practical and agency-specific. He looks at retention and churn first, then client concentration, because a concentrated client base can turn a stable-looking revenue line into a fragile one. He considers the target’s policy on exclusivity and the difficulty of changing customer expectations after closing. The question is not simply whether the target has good clients; it is whether the economics and contractual reality of those relationships are sustainable under new ownership.
He also examines service concentration, recurring versus project revenue, employee tenure, client contracts, potential legal liability, average deal size, margins, pricing, and how the agency obtains new clients. These are interlocking tests. For example, a target that prices below the acquirer’s normal level may contain upside, but repricing carries meaningful churn and sentiment risk. A company without an inbound engine or outbound sales team may be an opportunity—or a reason the brand needs substantial reinvestment.
| Diligence area | The question Chris is asking | Risk or opportunity revealed |
| Client retention and churn | Are departures unusually high, and are client exits being distinguished from agency-initiated exits? | Service stability, pricing pressure, and the strength of the client relationship base. |
| Client concentration | Could a small number of accounts materially disrupt the acquired revenue? | Revenue fragility and the priority for post-close retention planning. |
| Service mix | How much revenue comes from SEO, paid media, design, or other services? | Capability depth, cross-sell scope, and exposure to a single line of business. |
| Employee tenure | Do people stay long enough to develop sector and client knowledge? | Culture quality, institutional knowledge, and integration risk. |
| Contract mechanics | Can ownership transfer? Are obligations being met? Is liability understood? | Whether the buyer can actually retain the economics it believes it is acquiring. |
| Pricing and margin | What is the target charging, and where is it operationally squeezed? | Repricing opportunity versus client churn and margin-compression risk. |
| Client acquisition | Does growth come from inbound, outbound, events, referrals, or relationships? | The real cost of preserving or scaling the target’s brand after close. |
Actionable advice: Avoid treating a generic diligence template as a substitute for a commercial thesis. For every diligence item, record both sides of the finding: the downside to protect and the specific value-creation opportunity it might unlock. Chris’s approach is useful precisely because it connects the two.
Chris estimates that the period after the LOI was around four months, longer than his preferred 60–75 day due-diligence window. The extension was not framed as a failure of the relationship; the sellers were patient and the parties communicated. The more transferable lesson is preparation: an owner who waits to form banking relationships until after a signed LOI risks losing speed, negotiating leverage, or the opportunity itself.
When Josh asks about valuation, Chris grounds the conversation in EBITDA rather than casual top-line multiples. He says an agency close to $1 million in EBITDA might generally be in a 4–5x range, with the multiple ticking up from there; he also notes that there are exceptions where revenue is relevant. This is a perspective from one operator’s deal experience, not a formula that can value every agency. Quality of earnings, risk, growth, structure, concentration, and the buyer’s specific strategic rationale can all influence an actual transaction.
“If you can get to close to that $1 million in EBITDA, you’re looking at four to five generally, and it starts ticking up from there.” — Chris Dreyer
Editorial note: Keep the word “generally” wherever this idea appears. The episode does not support publishing a blanket claim that every agency with $1 million of EBITDA is worth 4–5x.
Chris is unusually direct about the human work of integration. Rankings.io and Gladiator had compatible values, which was a major reason the deal made sense. Even so, the transition created real change: content processes evolved; some account-management and project-management responsibilities were separated; and people moved between tools and operating systems. Some team members adjusted and thrived; some did not want the new system. Chris says the company tracks voluntary and involuntary employee churn, rather than treating all departures as the same signal.
His view is that process integration is not mysterious—it is time-consuming. The actual non-negotiable is cultural compatibility. If employees at the acquired agency care about clients in a similar way, that gives the acquirer a foundation to improve systems without eroding the customer experience. If the values are misaligned, every operational change becomes harder to sustain.
“Just make sure the culture is right. That’s the biggest thing. The integration, all that stuff’s easy. It just takes time.” — Chris Dreyer
Chris also shares one hindsight improvement: he would have conducted more client interviews before closing. Rankings.io made strategic decisions to exit or reprice some lower-value relationships. Those decisions may be commercially sound, but Chris acknowledges they create a risk of negative sentiment and reviews. Direct client conversations could have supplied a clearer picture of the relationship health and the right change-management path.
Actionable advice: Do a values audit before a systems audit. Speak with leaders and frontline team members, review how the target runs its client work, and identify where client promises sit in the operating model. Then prepare a client-listening plan before making broad pricing, service, or staffing changes.
Client communication was shared rather than delegated away. Chris says Adam Draper and Lisa Vaughn were heavily involved as the teams worked through accounts, divided responsibilities, and aimed to ensure that service quality maintained or improved. He reports very low voluntary client churn following the transition. The message for acquirers is not that owners must remain indefinitely; it is that trust transfers more credibly when the people who established it are visibly involved in the handover.
The separate question was whether Gladiator should remain an independent brand. Chris describes the familiar options: a house of brands, where separate businesses retain distinct identities, or a branded house, where a central brand leads. Rankings.io considered segmenting personal-injury work under Rankings.io and non-PI work under Gladiator. But keeping Gladiator separate would have required the company to build a larger leadership layer, funnel, and client-acquisition engine around a brand whose historic growth was concentrated in conferences and relationships. Rankings.io ultimately merged the business into its primary brand.
| Brand decision | When it may make sense | Why Rankings.io merged Gladiator |
| Keep a separate acquired brand | The target owns a distinct segment, has a repeatable independent demand engine, and can justify dedicated leadership and operations | The cost of building the brand’s own funnel and leadership infrastructure was too high for the strategic value of separation. |
| Merge into the acquirer’s brand | The offers, delivery model, and customer trust can be integrated without creating unnecessary market confusion | Rankings.io could consolidate the backend, tech stack, and go-to-market investment while protecting service continuity. |
Chris is not looking to sell Rankings.io, despite receiving acquisition interest. His argument is about incentives, not a claim that every private-equity transaction is identical. He believes that some PE ownership structures place pressure on a shorter cycle of value creation and resale, making it harder to make long-horizon, client-first investments when they hurt near-term financial results. He contrasts that with the freedom he believes an independent owner has to accept a difficult client outcome to protect a reputation built over years.
“Everything’s driven off of incentives. It’s no longer client first.” — Chris Dreyer
For the episode page, frame this carefully as Chris’s operating philosophy and concern about incentive alignment, not as financial or legal advice, or as a universal diagnosis of PE-backed agencies. His deeper point is useful regardless of ownership model: when evaluating any buyer, ask what decisions the ownership structure rewards when client experience and short-term margin are in tension.
Chris sees in-housing as a growing competitive alternative for agencies. As firms gain more access to tools, knowledge, and AI systems, outsourced providers need to show why an external partner can produce more value than an internal build. Rankings.io’s answer is an expanded service mix, including paid social, YouTube, media, and a search offer Chris describes as SEO, GEO, LSA, and Google Search.
The episode does not argue that classic SEO has disappeared. Chris’s point is that visible search real estate and consumer attention have fragmented. In his description, LSA, paid ads, maps, organic results, user-generated content, video, social platforms, and LLM-influenced discovery all shape the present search journey. He calls this search-everywhere optimisation, a useful editorial framing for the broader article because it connects service expansion back to the central agency question: how do you keep creating provable value as the client’s alternatives expand?
Rankings.io isn’t just a name we drop on a podcast. They’re our client.
When Chris needed to move fast on three Paid Search Specialist roles, without compromising on quality, his team came to us. We filled all three positions in 21 days. No job boards. No generalist recruiters. Direct access to the passive talent his team couldn’t reach on their own.
After that, we helped Rankings.io hire a Tech SEO specialist in 21 days, a hire who has since been promoted to lead a team of four and directly contributed to a 30% increase in client retention for their group. That’s the compounding effect of getting the right person in the right seat.
You can find the link to both case studies, respectively, below:
The full conversation between Josh Peacock and Chris Dreyer is on the Agency Growth Club, available on YouTube and all major podcast platforms.
If you’re a legal SEO agency founder thinking about scaling through acquisition, building toward an exit, or just trying to understand how the most respected operator in the space thinks about growth, this is the episode.
Rankings.io pulled off a successful acquisition and maintained a 5.0 reputation score by hiring the right people, and being disciplined enough not to hire the wrong ones.
At Search for Hire, we work exclusively with SEO, Paid Media, and Growth agencies and brands who need specialist talent, not generalist placeholders. We’ve placed the people behind some of the fastest-scaling digital agencies in the US and UK, including Rankings.io.
If you’re a legal SEO agency owner thinking about the team you need to build to get to your next milestone, let’s talk.
Search for Hire is a specialist headhunting firm for SEO, Paid Media, and Growth roles. We work exclusively or not at all, because the right hire changes everything.
Agency Growth Club is available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
He looks at retention and churn, client and service concentration, recurring versus project revenue, employee tenure, contracts and potential liability, pricing and margin, average deal size, and how the target agency acquires clients. These tests help a buyer understand both risk and where it can realistically create value after close.
Chris highlights finance leadership with M&A experience, established access to capital and banking relationships, clean financial history, and the ability to assess return on capital compared with other investment opportunities. He says a strong internal CFO is especially valuable for extracting data, framing KPI questions, and managing diligence.
He says that, as a general illustration from his experience, an agency approaching $1 million in EBITDA may be in a 4–5x range, with higher EBITDA tending to increase the multiple. He also notes that some deals can use top-line metrics. This is an episode-specific operator perspective, not a universal valuation benchmark.
Rankings.io considered keeping Gladiator as a separate brand, including a potential personal-injury versus non-PI split. The company ultimately decided that retaining it as a standalone brand would require too much investment in leadership, demand generation, and brand infrastructure relative to the benefit of separation.
Culture fit. Chris says that integration mechanics and systems take time but can be managed; shared employee values and a shared approach to client care are the decisive foundation. His tactical lesson is to establish financing relationships earlier than he did.
Chris uses it to describe the fragmented modern discovery environment: traditional organic search now sits alongside local service ads, paid ads, maps, video, social platforms, user-generated content, and LLM-shaped search behaviour. Rankings.io is evolving its offer to reflect that broader landscape.
Chris was not actively searching for a deal. The opportunity emerged from a long-standing relationship with Gladiator’s owners. He saw an unusually strong fit in client service, legal-sector capability, valuable client relationships that might not be available through ordinary marketing, and talent that could add to Rankings.io’s team.
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