Gavin Bell had achieved the freelancer dream. He was known as “the Facebook ads guy” in Edinburgh, pulling in £30k/month with almost no overhead.
It was incredibly lucrative. It was also a trap.
While rewarding, his business was completely unsellable. His customers weren’t buying an agency, they were buying Gavin.
The wake-up call came when his accountant asked a question most owners avoid: “Are you building a lifestyle business, or a company you can sell?”
Gavin realised that a personal brand is impossible to transfer. If the company was Gavin, there was nothing left when he stepped away.
So, he made the radical decision to dismantle his successful freelance operation and rebuild it into a sellable asset. Here is the four-step blueprint he used to remove himself from the revenue engine:
Turning a Lifestyle Business into a Sellable Company
Step one was a clean break. Not a name tweak, but a new brand: Yatter. He hired a branding agency to create the name, tone, and look. As a marketer, he could have done it himself. He didn’t want the option. The spend forced commitment and reduced the odds he’d drift back to the easy path: selling “Gavin.”
Step two was the pivotal change: sales moved off the founder’s desk. Gavin met a salesperson at a conference who already understood digital marketing services. They started commission-only. While finding a skilled rep willing to work for pure commission is a unicorn hunt, Gavin struck gold. It created low risk for the business, high incentive for the salesperson. The results were better than when Gavin did the calls himself, and the handoff stuck.
With sales covered, Gavin could spend his time generating leads and improving delivery instead of living inside every deal.
Step three was getting off the tools. He hired an account manager, then did something most owner’s rush: he staged the transition. Clients didn’t wake up one day to a new face. Gavin eased the team member in, cc’ing emails, having him run calls when Gavin was away, and gradually shifting ownership over six months until clients trusted the new relationship.
Step four was the glue: productising the service. Gavin didn’t want to feel like an agency. He wanted to feel like a product company. So, he named the client journey and made each phase predictable: Audit, Foundations, Research, Creation, then Management and Reporting. Each stage had timelines, checklists, and “here’s what to expect next.” What used to be a friction point “why aren’t the ads live yet?” became part of the process customers could understand and trust.
The result wasn’t just a smoother delivery. It was a company that could run without him.
When it came time to sell, buyers weren’t buying Gavin’s talent. They were buying a team, recurring retainers, and a system that made outcomes predictable. Gavin had grown the business to £1 million in revenue and successfully exited for around five times EBITDA. His system also allowed him to negotiate an earn-out measured in months, not years.
