Founded by husband-and-wife duo Nikole and Mike Rose in 2007, Mojo Media Labs is a socially engaged HubSpot Diamond Partner agency on a mission to generate engagement, inspire action, and participate in writing a new future that respects both humankind and nature. Mojo’s team of experts brings together strategy, creativity, and the latest technology to support brands and organizations that are working toward building a world that is more responsible, just, peaceful, and respectful of all living things. As a full-service, Hubspot centric agency focused on B2B account-based marketing, inbound marketing, website design and development, sales enablement, and email marketing, Mojo was one of the original Hubspot partners and has remained a valued partner to their clients ever since.

Looking for a culture-fit buyer to grow Mojo and provide more opportunities for their team

Nikole and Mike were obsessed with the distinctive, thriving agency they’d created a decade and a half ago. But they knew they were close to taking the agency to the height of their skill sets, and wanted to find a culture-fit buyer who could grow the agency beyond their abilities as well as provide their team with additional career advancement opportunities.

Nikole, who focused on managing day-to-day operations, was excited to stay on board long-term with the right buyer to help Mojo continue to grow and thrive. Mike was ready to exit after a standard transition period and was looking forward to moving on to the next phase of his career with peace of mind knowing Mojo was in great hands.

Nikole and Mike partnered with us at Barney to make their acquisition dreams come true. Thanks to our huge pool of qualified buyers, simple and personalized process, industry specialization, and shorter timeline, Nikole and Mike knew they could count on us to find them a perfect-fit buyer to take Mojo into the future.

A HubSpot Diamond Partner agency doing things differently and making a social impact

From the very beginning, Mojo was a creative agency doing things differently and making a social impact. From working exclusively with socially engaged clients to their unique governance model based on a flexible, agile, and participatory working style that prioritizes exchange, collective intelligence, and co-creation with all stakeholders, there’s no agency quite like Mojo. That’s where their name comes from, in fact  – the positive and bright energy they channel into their work to help their clients’ projects shine.

That positive, bright energy shows in their long list of happy B2B clients, including big names like PennEngineering, rewardStyle, Swiftly, Alliance Safety Council, Array, Second to None, and HOYA. Whether it’s creating an unforgettable visual identity, developing an immersive digital experience, or crafting a mass awareness campaign, Mojo’s communications experts were building socially-driven and engaging experiences for happy clients over and over again.

With their high recurring revenue and stable revenue base, strong sales process for inbound leads with an average close rate of 35%, enduring technical partnership with HubSpot that produced consistent commissions and referral flow, strong culture and reputation, and diverse revenue sources, Mojo was a dream buy for a company looking to partner with a profitable, unique agency with a strong foothold in the socially engaged digital marketing space.

We loved the strong foundation Mojo had built, and we were excited to see where they could go from there. They had unlimited opportunities to grow and increase their profitability, such as by enhancing business development resources, expanding HubSpot services, developing other technology partnerships, continuing to acquire smaller agencies that fit the agency’s long-term strategy, and shifting to fully remote work. We were committed to helping Mojo find the right strategy for moving forward. 

Finding a buyer that values the three pillars of Mojo’s culture

Mojo was built on a solid foundation with a strong culture that contributed to the agency becoming what it is today. It was important to Nikole and Mike that Mojo’s buyer value the three pillars of their culture: open book management, results-only work environment, and core values including passion, creativity, ridiculous results, conscious collaboration, curiosity and reliability. 

Their ideal buyer was a culture-fit company who had great clients for cross-selling services as well as the resources and expertise to support Mojo’s growth. Mike and Nikole had spent a decade and a half growing Mojo into a thriving creative agency helping socially-engaged start ups, non-profits, and social enterprises promote their initiatives at the same level as larger organizations and corporations. The last thing they wanted was to let their team (and themselves) down by selling to a buyer who didn’t understand Mojo’s culture, services, or what made them special.

To know Mojo is to love them

We quickly learned that to know Mojo is to love them. Our job at Barney was to make sure potential buyers could get to know Mojo and fall in love with them too. We pulled back the curtain on the agency’s numbers, culture, team, services, and more in order to reach a competitive valuation for their business in today’s market. Number in hand, we crafted amazing marketing materials to showcase the Mojo magic to potential buyers and shared it with our huge pool of pre-vetted strategic and entrepreneurial buyers. We quickly found their perfect fit: Gravity Global.

The world’s most awarded B2B marketing consultancy 

Gravity Global, the world’s most awarded B2B and complex markets growth marketing consultancy, turned out to be the perfect fit for Mojo. This promising partnership could provide Mojo with the resources, B2B expertise, and robust client roster to help Mojo grow at scale, and Gravity Global was excited to establish itself as a leader in HubSpot account-based marketing through Mojo. The acquisition was another step toward Gravity Global’s ambition to be recognized as the global benchmark business for delivering high performance marketing programs.

A Culture Match and a Strategic Fit 

The Brandon Agency and Eight Oh Two were truly a perfect fit. The Brandon Agency was a great culture match and Eight Oh Two was a strategic fit with their ability to enhance e-commerce offerings for retailers for The Brandon Agency. In just two months, everyone walked away with exactly what they wanted – and Ken got the exit he deserved for building his game-changing, industry-disrupting agency.

That’s what we do at Barney: help passionate, trailblazing founders like Ken get the exits they deserve so they can move on to their next great idea or exponential growth through strategic acquisition (with cash in the bank to seed it).