The traditional agency model is undergoing a huge, systemic failure. While recent data suggests the market is the healthiest it’s been in four years, with gross profits and fee income at a high, the sentiment on the ground remains at a decadal low.
The reason? The widening gap between agencies selling “hours” and those selling “outcomes.” Statistics show that less than 4% of agencies ever achieve a successful exit; those that do are often sold in distress by founders who have traded their health for thin margins.
Enter Unusual Group, a founder-first collective designed to disrupt the M&A landscape. By helping independent agencies scale through AI-native systems and “Service-as-Software” models, they are coaching founders to scale, presenting the best opportunity to build for a sale that reflects their true value.
We sat down with Luke Tobin, a three-time exited founder who scaled his last agency from a £100 investment into an eight-figure exit, to discuss the shifting tides of the industry and how Unusual Group is engineering the agencies of the future.
You’ve recently transitioned from scaling and exiting your own firm to leading a collective. What was the catalyst for starting Unusual Group?
It came from seeing a massive gap in the market. I built Digital Ethos into a 100-person business across the UK, Canada, and Germany before selling to Cadastra, South America’s largest independent agency group. During my three years as co-CEO of that 1200-person group, we completed seven acquisitions. Every single one of those agencies grew by over 40% the following year.
It was so successful because the agencies finally had access to group-level infrastructure, growth capital, and a peer-to-peer founder network. After I left, I looked at the landscape and saw plenty of PE firms, coaches, and fragmented service providers, but nobody was providing that “Big Group” infrastructure to independent agencies in a way that protected their identity.
Unusual Group takes minority stakes in agencies, typically £1m–£10m revenue, and gives them the framework they need to become saleable assets rather than just lifestyle businesses.
You’ve mentioned that the “human-heavy” model is dead. That’s a bold claim. How is AI specifically changing the outcomes for your partner agencies?
The data tells the story. In 2025, 54% of agencies grew, but there is a performance gap appearing: AI-native agencies are operating 12–15% more profitably than traditional ones. We are entering an era where the next tech titan won’t be a pure SaaS company, but a software company blended with a service business.
Today, more tasks are started by agents than by humans. If you are still renting out labour by the hour, you are a vendor, and vendors are replaceable. If you deploy a data layer and own the system, you are a partner.
We are seeing this play out in real-time. One of our portfolio agencies moved from a standard retainer to a revenue-share model; their net margin jumped from 12% to 22% in just 12 months. When AI makes delivery cheaper, only outcome-based pricing allows the agency to keep the upside.
You’ve expanded rapidly, 14 new partners in just six months, including firms like Woya Digital, Altitude Marketing, Friday Solved, and Trinity Hawk.
What are you doing differently to drive that growth?
We use a proprietary 86-point Scale-to-Sale methodology. We analysed over 150 successful agency exits to find the repeatable patterns. It’s more than just typical consultancy style advice; we provide the infrastructure. By utilising our shared frameworks, we’ve already saved our members an average of £6k in software overheads alone.
But the big wins are in the positioning. Most agencies lead with capability, such as SEO, Paid, or Creative, which is increasingly replicable by tools. The agencies winning now lead with a point of view on a specific commercial problem. For example, one of our partners changed their narrative from “generalist demand gen” to “revenue generation specialists.” Their sales conversion rate went from 10% to 40%. Narrowing the niche doesn’t limit you; it makes you essential.
To orchestrate this, you’ve assembled a heavy-hitting board. How do their specific backgrounds support this “Service-as-Software” thesis?
You can’t build a high-value collective without specialists who have lived the journey.
Ali Newton-Temperley (COO): An absolute powerhouse operator and our strategic sounding board. She specialises in unifying sales and ops into a single engine. She’s the one who ensures that when we scale, we don’t break.
Paul Allen (CFO): With 20 years in creative industry finance, and over 80 agency deals, Paul navigates the weeds of valuations and deal structuring. He ensures our founders aren’t just growing, but growing valuation.
Dan Rose (CLO): Our legal expert who ensures every partner is “transaction-ready” years before an exit. He handles the iron-clad contracts that protect the IP we’re helping these agencies build.
Charlie Eyeington (CMGO): Our expert marketer who speaks the language of both brand and balance sheet; her ability to bridge high-impact storytelling with rigorous commercial outcomes makes her a vital asset.
It sounds like you are turning agencies into infrastructure. What is the ultimate goal for a founder joining the Unusual Group?
To decouple revenue from headcount. The goal is to move from a business where the founder is the centre of everything to one that runs on a productised, recurring engine. We focus on IP generation, documenting unique ways of working so they become defensible assets.
The market is the best it’s been in four years, but the window to pivot is small. We believe there is an 18-month window for service-sellers to switch from hourly billing to value-based billing. So we’re scaling our cohort to stay ahead of that clock.
I always tell founders to ask themselves one question: “If your agency disappeared tomorrow, what would your top three clients actually struggle to replace?”
If the answer is your people, you have a people business. If the answer is your systems and thinking, you have a differentiated, saleable asset. Most agencies I meet are the first, but they’re trying to charge like the second. We’re here to bridge that gap.
Stop Building a Job. Start Building an Asset.
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About Unusual Group
Unusual Group is a collective of specialist agencies helping ambitious brands achieve sustainable, exit-ready growth. The group brings together creative, strategic and digital expertise under one ecosystem, providing investment, shared infrastructure and strategic support to agency founders. Founded by Luke Tobin, Unusual Group continues to expand across the UK and Europe, building a network of high-growth agencies that combine human-led innovation with commercial discipline.
