How to Make Your Agency “Acquirable” Without Selling Your Soul
Interview: Building optionality through deal flow, de-risking, and a portfolio mindset
Behind the Agency Podcast with Peter Kang, Co-founder, Barrel Holdings
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Prefer the highlights? Key takeaways and summary below.
TL;DR – Key Takeaways
Peter’s mindset shift: build your agency like someone else might buy it — even if you never sell. It forces better decisions.
The #1 lesson from launching/spinning off agencies: deal flow is everything. Starting from zero is brutal.
Barrel Holdings is basically an agency venture studio / holding company: they spin out, launch, and acquire agencies.
“Recurring revenue” matters, but Peter’s more focused on reoccurring relationships (clients coming back regularly, even if project-based).
If an agency’s deal flow is near zero, he’s likely to pass on acquisition — too hard to jumpstart, too risky.
Cross-selling across a portfolio is real, but they don’t force it. The relationship owner protects trust first.
Partnerships are underrated, and the big rule is simple: be proactive first. Don’t feel entitled to leads you haven’t earned.
The cleanest definition of being “acquirable”: how de-risked is the business if the founder disappears tomorrow?
Meet the Guest
Peter Kang is the co-founder of Barrel Holdings, a holding company that builds a portfolio of agencies through spin-offs, new launches, and acquisitions.
He’s also known for consistently sharing sharp agency insights on LinkedIn and through his writing, including Agency Habits, where he documents lessons learned building and operating agencies.
Episode Summary
1. The turning point: “I was 23… I just wanted to be in business.”
Peter started Barrel young—fresh out of school, minimal work experience, and basically operating with the goal of:
“As long as the bills are paid and we have autonomy, we’re good.”
For about a decade, that worked fine. The business chugged along, and early wins made it feel like they were doing the right thing.
Then the questions started creeping in:
What does it mean to have a good business?
What’s the life cycle of an agency?
Do you run it forever, sell it, hand it to employees, shut it down?
How do you create optionality?
That kicked off the “build it like it could be sold” mindset. Not because he needed to sell—because it’s a forcing function for building something valuable.
2. Barrel Holdings: spin-offs taught them what “works”
Peter gave a really practical origin story for Barrel Holdings:
Vaulted Oak came first: a web support/maintenance shop (smaller Shopify + WordPress) spun out from Barrel when those clients no longer fit Barrel’s focus.
It worked because it started with a base of clients and a clear “catchment area” for future clients that became “too small for Barrel.”
BX Studio came next: a Webflow agency built around existing Webflow lead sources (directory + enterprise team).
Again: deal flow already existed.
Then they launched Bolster (brand design studio) and it didn’t take off the same way.
That’s where the lesson became painfully clear: starting from scratch without reliable deal flow is way harder than people admit.
Here’s the bar-stool version of that insight:
Starting an agency without deal flow is like opening a restaurant with no street traffic and saying “we’ll just cook better.”
Maybe. But you’re still starving before the reviews show up.
3. The shift to acquisitions (and what Catalog taught them)
Their first acquisition was Catalog (product/web/mobile design studio with a subscription model popular around 2021–2022).
It had:
existing staff
existing clients
operational learnings (deal structure, integration, finance ops)
But it also revealed a red flag:
Tons of churn.
Clients cycling in and out month-to-month created revenue volatility.
That led to a more nuanced view than the usual “you need recurring revenue” talking point.
Peter’s take: recurring is great… but what you really want is reoccurring relationships.
Clients who come back because there’s a real, ongoing need—even if it’s not a locked-in retainer.
4. What Barrel Holdings actually looks for in agencies
When Peter evaluates an acquisition now, he’s looking for:
Existing client base (proof the agency has real relationships)
Quality of revenue
recurring + reoccurring relationships
low volatility / manageable churn
Organic deal flow
inbound content
outbound motion
referrals from past clients
ecosystem relationships (PE/VC, platforms, partners)
Not starting from “near zero”
if deal flow is basically dead, they likely pass
because “what are we actually buying?” if the only thing there is a shaky client list and people who could leave
This is a good gut-check for any agency owner, by the way:
If you removed you from the business… would anything still happen?
That’s basically Peter’s north star.
5. ICP overlap and cross-selling (but don’t get greedy)
Their portfolio has a mix:
Some agencies share ICPs and naturally trade leads (e.g. Amazon agency + Shopify agency in similar verticals).
Others are far apart (e.g. Barrel’s CPG ecomm focus vs a more B2B branding studio).
But Peter’s key point was mature:
Don’t force cross-selling.
Never jeopardize the primary relationship just to “create synergy.”
That’s the kind of line I wish more holding companies would tattoo on their foreheads.
6. Partnerships: the overlooked channel (and the real rule)
Peter’s blunt take:
Most agencies overlook partnerships… period.
But the bigger idea wasn’t “go do partnerships.” It was how.
His rule: be the proactive one.
Bring value first. Don’t expect leads just because you “could be helpful.”
He called out three partnership buckets that show up across their portfolio:
Agency partners (bigger/smaller/complementary)
Platform/software partners (Shopify ecosystem-style relationships)
Investors (PE/VC relationships that create referrals to portfolio companies)
And he made a great point: sometimes with investors, the play is offering value-add across the portfolio, even if that includes preferential pricing, because it creates a repeatable referral engine.
7. Content: writing as thinking (and as leverage)
Peter’s content story is refreshingly unsexy:
He writes because it helps him think.
Years of blogging + weekly newsletter created a habit, then the audience formed naturally—mostly other agency folks.
Then when Barrel Holdings became the focus, he doubled down on that audience instead of trying to pivot to writing “ecomm content for Barrel leads.”
Bonus: content also became a recruiting lever. He posted a role and got dozens of high-quality candidates within hours.
He compared it to a focused conference that runs every day. That’s… honestly accurate.
8. The tension: urgent deal work vs long-term content
Peter was candid: he doesn’t manage it perfectly.
His solution isn’t fancy:
calendar blocks (2–3 hours/week)
protect deep work time (train rides = accidental productivity)
stop the “endless Zoom creep”
No silver bullets. Just discipline.
9. How to know if you should spin off part of your agency
Peter gave two strong triggers:
A) The “build to sell” lens
Talk to M&A advisors/bankers.
Learn what buyers actually value.
Notice what parts of your current service mix lower the value.
Make deliberate decisions: shut down, divest, or spin out.
He gave a clean example:
If the market pays more for “pure play Shopify” and your WordPress chunk drags the story down, either wind it down… or spin it into a cash-flow business and refocus the main agency.
B) You’re already operating like separate agencies
If your internal teams are siloed, don’t collaborate, or have tension… you may already be one agency “in name only.”
In that case, splitting can be a strategic cleanup, not just a financial move.
10. The simplest definition of “acquirable”: de-risking
Peter nailed this:
Your job is to de-risk the agency as much as possible.
If the buyer thinks it’s a house of cards without the founder, the value drops. If it feels stable without you, the value goes up.
Notable Quotes
“Let’s build it in a way that someone else looking at it will find it valuable.”
“The big learning… was: is there existing deal flow?”
“You don’t necessarily need locked-in recurring revenue… you need reoccurring relationships.”
“If you start at near nothing… what are we actually buying at that point?”
“Your job as founder is to de-risk your agency as much as possible.”
Learn More / Get in Touch
Peter on LinkedIn → PeterKang34
Newsletter + site → peterkang.com
Agency Habits → agencyhabits.com
Barrel Holdings → barrel-holdings.com
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