Founded by Trevor Yager in 1995, TrendyMinds is an organically-grown, audience-focused, full service marketing agency providing creative solutions across film, marketing, and web. Focused on the healthcare, pharmaceutical, and tech industries, they built strong, long-term relationships with clients like Salesforce, IU Health, Lilly, Salesforce, and Humana who wanted to create meaningful experiences for the people they served. With their industry specialization, robust service offerings creating holistic marketing solutions for clients, amazing client base of large global brands in resilient industries, efficient operating processes, and seasoned management team, TrendyMinds had high revenue, low turnover, and huge growth potential.

From Bootstrapping to Supercharging 

Trevor bootstrapped the agency himself from the ground-up and grew it 100% on his own with no outside funding. He wanted a buyer to provide additional resources and support to continue to scale the business and especially to help them expand outside of Indiana in a faster, more strategic way. After spending 25 years dedicated to TrendyMinds, Trevor was excited to supercharge the agency’s growth with a new partner. Confident in the future of the agency, he was looking for a sizable cash consideration at close as well as equity in the purchasing entity to participate in future upside. He partnered with Barney to find a buyer that could meet his financial, cultural, and strategic goals.

Evolving and Growing Along With Their Large Enterprise Clients 

Most of TrendyMinds’ competitors worked solely in the healthcare, pharmaceutical, or health insurance companies, giving them a myopic view of these complex industries and the people they serve. With TrendyMinds’ mix of clients across industries, they were able to see a unique, complete view of the patient experience, feeding their ability to create life-changing work that improved people’s lives. With a nimble approach focused on their five-step LOGIQ (Learn, Organize, Generate, Implement, Question), they were able to meet the evolving needs of their clients and the changing industries they operated in.

We loved TrendyMinds’ robust service offerings in creative, strategy, design, film, marketing and web that allowed them to be a one-stop-shop for their clients’ needs. They kept evolving along with their clients, and it showed in their solid, long-term relationships and new high-quality clients from niche referrals. Their large clients had been working with them for an average of ten years, and smaller clients ranged from two to five years on average.

What Trevor had built was amazing, and the sky was the limit for TrendyMinds’ future. They had opportunities to grow through expanding into the Tampa Bay region of Florida (an area with the third largest population in the US and six times the capital investments of Indiana), applying technology like SaaS tools and machine learning to improve services, filling clients’ needs by offering quicker-turn and lower-priced services, expanding work with existing clients like Lilly and Humana, and productizing and scaling service offerings. With a growth plan driven by listening to the complex needs of their large, enterprise customers, TrendyMinds was ready to scale – they just needed a partner to support them.

A Specific Vision for Their Ideal Buyer 

Like most founders, Trevor didn’t want to sell to just any buyer. His ideal buyer would bring ideas, experience, and resources to supercharge TrendyMinds’ growth. They would have robust connections and experience in the industry, allowing the agency to continue to improve lives through their current work at a more global scale.

Trevor had a specific vision for the buyer he wanted. He didn’t want to be acquired by a group barely larger than TrendyMinds, he wanted them to become part of something much larger. They had done so much on their own, but a buyer with more connections and experiences who could bring out the best in the TrendyMinds team and share the “we” mindset at the crux of the agency’s culture was exactly what they needed to grow at scale. He set his sights on a larger $100M+ agency or a private equity group with a significant amount of healthcare, pharmaceutical and tech companies in their portfolio.

Finding a Buyer To Check All of Trevor’s Boxes 

With our industry specialization, simple and personalized process, shorter timeline, higher success rate, and huge database of qualified buyers unlike anything else in the marketplace, we were uniquely equipped to make Trevor’s dream a reality. With an approach to M&A as unique as the founders we work with, we set out to find TrendyMinds a buyer to check all of their boxes.

We started by looking under the hood at the agency to learn everything there was to know about their finances, offerings, team, clients, and future opportunities. We calculated their worth in today’s market, factoring in their big growth potential, and created awesome marketing materials to convey what made them so special to potential buyers. We shared them with the highly strategic buyers in our huge network and quickly found the perfect fit: Contour Ridge.

A Culture-Fit Organization Specializing in Helping Founders Scale  

A diverse private equity manager led by passionate innovators, Contour Ridge specializes in providing founder-led businesses with the financial and operating leverage they needed to take their businesses to the next level. Their valuable network had the expertise to support management while catalyzing TrendyMinds’ growth through its next phase, and their culture aligned perfectly with TrendyMinds.

They were just what Trevor was looking for: a culture-fit organization able to guide strategic initiatives and accelerate growth by providing liquidity, growth capital, and operational resources. Excited by the opportunity to work side by side to create a fruitful partnership for the next chapter of TrendyMinds, everyone signed on the dotted line.

Another Happy Ending for Another Passionate Founder

Trevor stayed on at the helm of TrendyMinds to guide the agency through its next chapter and back at Barney, we celebrated another happy ending for another passionate founder. TrendyMinds had the partner they needed to accelerate their growth for years to come, and Contour Ridge acquired a profitable company with a proven track record of success that was hungry for more growth.

Ever since we tore up the old rule book for M&A and created the best acquisition experience in the world, we’ve helped over 150 media, marketing, and tech companies like TrendyMinds find their perfect-fit buyers. Whatever your goals for selling your agency are, we’re here to help you find the buyer that meets them. Learn more at our blog!