Exit Ready
Claim This Podcastby Connor McAuley
Podcast Overview
<p>Exit Ready is the podcast for agency owners who want to build a business that's profitable, scalable, and worth something without them in it. Whether that means selling one day or simply stepping back from the day to day, the work to get there is the same.</p><p></p><p>Hosted by Connor McAuley, who built a creative agency from zero to £2.2M annual revenue over 13 years before selling it. He now coaches 50+ agency owners who collectively generate £40M+ in additional annual revenue through the part most people get stuck on: making the commercial side of the business match the quality of the work.</p><p></p><p>Each episode is a real conversation with a real agency owner. No Ted talk answers, no polished advice. Just the decisions they made, the numbers behind them, and what they would do differently.</p><p></p><p>You will hear from founders who have been through pricing shifts, team restructures, sales system builds, and the uncomfortable transition from doing the work to running the business. Every story is truthful. Every number is real.</p><p></p><p>If you run an agency doing £500K to £5M and the profit doesn't reflect the effort, this show was built for you.</p><p></p><p>Free agency valuation (PDF report): <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation" target="_blank">moveatpace.com/agency-valuation</a></p><p>Weekly newsletter: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://moveatpace.com/newsletter" target="_blank">moveatpace.com/newsletter</a></p><p></p><p>Exit Ready is produced by Move at Pace.</p>
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
3/26/2026
1 verified contact email on file for Exit Ready
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Recent Episodes
June 1, 2026
From Agency to Software: Karl O'Brien, Store Hero | Ep:010
<p>FREE AGENCY VALUATION (5-min assessment, PDF report): <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/</a></p><p></p><p>Karl O'Brien spent eight years running a Dublin digital marketing agency before founding Storehero (<a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://storehero.ai/" target="_blank">https://storehero.ai/</a>), the AI growth coach for ecommerce brands and agencies. After watching client after client fly blind on profit (revenue grew, margin disappeared into the Meta and Google tax, attribution wars never ended), he built the dashboard he wished his agency had. That dashboard is now an MCP-powered profit brain plugged into Claude, with billions of dollars of ecommerce revenue passing through it annually and customers across 15 countries.</p><p></p><p>For agency owners, this is the agency-to-SaaS conversation that does not skip the hard parts. Why most SaaS businesses are "venture-backed agencies in the background". Why Meta and Google are coming for the management fee. What productisation actually looks like when AI is compressing your costs faster than your prices.</p><p></p><p>In this episode we talked about:</p><p>- The eight-year Dublin agency that taught Karl what ecom brands actually needed (and couldn't see)</p><p>- Why a SaaS should be the end-degree of automation for work an agency was already doing</p><p>- The future of ecom agencies: either lower-cost specialised at scale, or higher-margin profit-focused</p><p>- Why agencies are 60% of Storehero's customers (and another 10-15% are agency referrals)</p><p>- The Storehero Claude Connector in production: automated Monday morning anomaly detection across a client book</p><p>- The Profit Scaler skill that turns a junior's two-day analysis into a two-minute insight that blows away the client</p><p>- Bezos in the AI era: "your margin is my opportunity" and what it means for agencies in 2026</p><p>- Events as the in-person counterweight to digital fatigue (Shopify partnership, 1,000-member NYC community)</p><p>- Karl's closing advice: solve an expensive problem, the kind people will pay to make go away</p><p></p><p>Karl did not set out to build a sellable business. He set out to build a better one. The result is the same. This episode covers two levers: financial reporting (the profit visibility every ecom client wants and most agencies cannot offer) and repeatable delivery (the productisation curve that ends in software, or somewhere close to it).</p><p></p><p>---</p><p>Want to work with me?</p><p>Take the free Agency Valuation and find out what your agency could be worth:</p><p><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/</a></p><p>Join 200+ agency owners getting weekly frameworks:</p><p><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com/newsletter/" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com/newsletter/</a></p><p></p><p>---</p><p>Connect with me:</p><p>LinkedIn: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/c-mca-0a9b6b160/" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/c-mca-0a9b6b160/</a></p><p>Website: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com</a></p><p>Podcast hub: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com/podcast/" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com/podcast/</a></p><p>Email: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:connor@moveatpace.com" target="_blank">connor@moveatpace.com</a></p><p>#ExitReady #MoveAtPace #AgencyOwner #Ecommerce #SaaS</p><p></p>
May 25, 2026
30 Videos In A Day: Jake Thompson, Outwork | Ep:009
<p>FREE AGENCY VALUATION (5-min assessment, PDF report): <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/</a></p><p></p><p>Jake Thompson runs Outwork from Holywood, County Down. Nine years a freelance videographer, then a return from London with no clients in the door forced him to learn the bits videographers do not usually touch: offer design, sales psychology, paid media. The result is a productised core offer (30 pieces of video creative in a single shoot day) that put Outwork on the map, plus Meta ads delivery and now full back-end management for clients like Henderson's and SPAR.</p><p></p><p>The story of Outwork is the story of an offer evolving in front of the market: video-for-hire to a defined product, projects to ads, ads to wrapping the conversion stack the clients were missing.</p><p></p><p>In this episode we talked about:</p><p>- Coming back from London with no clients and rebuilding by treating the offer as the product, not the camera</p><p>- Why a clear, linear offer (30 videos in a day) was easier to sell than "I do video"</p><p>- Wrapping Meta ads around the creative, then wrapping back-end management around the ads</p><p>- The Christmas the cashflow scare on a one-off-project model made retainers non-negotiable</p><p>- The unicorn hire (Polly the editor, working in Nando's when Jake found him) and what good creative hiring actually looks like</p><p>- The studio move and what unlocks when the agency owns the space</p><p>- The AI stack already inside the agency: Fireflies into Claude for ICP discovery, ChatGPT for market research, Plaud for in-person meeting capture</p><p>- The Hormozi playbook ($100M Offers) that re-shaped the whole business</p><p></p><p>Jake did not set out to build a sellable business. He set out to build a better one. The result is the same. This episode covers two levers: sales engine maturity (productised offer plus paid acquisition wrapped around it) and recurring revenue (the retainer model that lets the founder step out of constant sales mode).</p><p></p><p>---</p><p>Want to work with me?</p><p>Take the free Agency Valuation and find out what your agency could be worth:</p><p><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/</a></p><p>Join 200+ agency owners getting weekly frameworks:</p><p><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com/newsletter/" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com/newsletter/</a></p><p></p><p>---</p><p>Connect with me:</p><p>LinkedIn: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/c-mca-0a9b6b160/" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/c-mca-0a9b6b160/</a></p><p>Website: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com</a></p><p>Podcast hub: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com/podcast/" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com/podcast/</a></p><p>Email: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:connor@moveatpace.com" target="_blank">connor@moveatpace.com</a></p><p>#ExitReady #MoveAtPace #AgencyOwner #VideoAgency #PerformanceMarketing</p><p></p>
May 18, 2026
Rip up the playbook: Kathryn Byberg, Little Leaf | Ep:008
<p>FREE AGENCY VALUATION (5-min assessment, PDF report): <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/</a></p><p></p><p>Kathryn Byberg founded Little Leaf Agency (<a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://littleleafagency.com/" target="_blank">https://littleleafagency.com/</a>) in 2021 after 10+ years inside the sexual wellness industry, including a Shanghai posting as Global PR Manager at LELO. Five years later, Little Leaf is a 14-person fully remote team across the UK, Europe, the US and Canada, the only specialist PR agency in the world for its category. Kathryn won XBIZ Marketing Executive of the Year in January 2026.</p><p></p><p>Every marketing channel most agencies rely on is either restricted, censored, or closed off entirely. Google Ads shut off overnight. Instagram accounts with 700,000 followers disappear without warning. Times Square billboards refuse the campaign. The standard playbook does not apply, so Kathryn built a different one.</p><p></p><p>In this episode we talked about:</p><ul><li>The career path from science to journalism to sports PR to Shanghai to founding the agency</li><li>Why the marketing funnel isn't a funnel anymore, it's a web, and how AI summaries forced the shift</li><li>Winning the two or three product slots inside an LLM answer (and why Reddit, Substack and YouTube are suddenly load-bearing)</li><li>The Bolesa Instagram account that vanished overnight with 700,000 followers, and what platform risk really looks like</li><li>Building a 14-person remote team by cherry-picking former colleagues and category peers, not posting jobs</li><li>Serving competing clients inside a small niche using siloed pods and clean Chinese walls</li><li>Guerrilla PR wins the paid channels could never deliver (a sex toy on ITV's This Morning on Valentine's Day)</li><li>Why the recognition (Cannes Lion, Executive of the Year) opens doors the category usually keeps shut</li><li>The Spain expansion this year and Germany next</li></ul><p></p><p>Kathryn did not set out to build a sellable business. She set out to build a better one. The result is the same. This episode covers what that looks like for two levers: client concentration (how a niche specialist serves competing clients without losing either) and repeatable delivery (productising a playbook for an industry where the old playbook is banned).</p><p></p><hr /><p>Want to work with me?</p><p>Take the free Agency Valuation and find out what your agency could be worth: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation/</a></p><p>Join 200+ agency owners getting weekly frameworks: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com/newsletter/" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com/newsletter/</a></p><hr /><p>Connect with me: </p><p>LinkedIn: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/c-mca-0a9b6b160/" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/c-mca-0a9b6b160/</a> </p><p>Website: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com</a> </p><p>Podcast hub: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://moveatpace.com/podcast/" target="_blank">https://moveatpace.com/podcast/</a> </p><p>Email: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:connor@moveatpace.com" target="_blank">connor@moveatpace.com</a></p>
10 total episodes available
Deep-dive analytics for Exit Ready
Frequently asked questions
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- What is Exit Ready?
<p>Exit Ready is the podcast for agency owners who want to build a business that's profitable, scalable, and worth something without them in it. Whether that means selling one day or simply stepping back from the day to day, the work to get there is the same.</p><p></p><p>Hosted by Connor McAuley, who built a creative agency from zero to £2.2M annual revenue over 13 years before selling it. He now coaches 50+ agency owners who collectively generate £40M+ in additional annual revenue through the part most people get stuck on: making the commercial side of the business match the quality of the work.</p><p></p><p>Each episode is a real conversation with a real agency owner. No Ted talk answers, no polished advice. Just the decisions they made, the numbers behind them, and what they would do differently.</p><p></p><p>You will hear from founders who have been through pricing shifts, team restructures, sales system builds, and the uncomfortable transition from doing the work to running the business. Every story is truthful. Every number is real.</p><p></p><p>If you run an agency doing £500K to £5M and the profit doesn't reflect the effort, this show was built for you.</p><p></p><p>Free agency valuation (PDF report): <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://moveatpace.com/agency-valuation" target="_blank">moveatpace.com/agency-valuation</a></p><p>Weekly newsletter: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://moveatpace.com/newsletter" target="_blank">moveatpace.com/newsletter</a></p><p></p><p>Exit Ready is produced by Move at Pace.</p> - How often does this podcast release new episodes?
This podcast updates daily.
- Where can I listen to this podcast?
This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
- Does this podcast accept guests?
Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.
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