Abu Lahya received a $250,000 offer for his influencer marketing agency months after launch, but argues IMAs become sellable only after scaling recurring revenue and building a strong team. He cites an IMA that sold for $250 million and a New York agency generating $500 million annually as proof the model works.
Chapters
You've explained to me what IMA is essentially, but you know, in my opinion, I don't see it as a sellable business at the end of, you know, the journey and once you grow it, because the way to make the real money or the way to go clear in a sense is when you resell your business, right? The big exit. That's the only thing I don't see where it can be sellable.
On a funny note, I can just tell you 6 months, 9 months into my agency, I was offered about a quarter million to sell it. 6 months into starting it, just buy whatever clients I had and everything here, so you can't sell it. I'm not saying it's easy or you should. I actually didn't sell it. The reason for that, and the thing I want to clarify, is people take the right conclusions at the wrong time. They say, I'm not gonna start this business because it's not a sellable business, because it's not a business that can help me go gone clear like you said. Of course everybody wants a business that can be gone clear. $10 million exit, $100 million exit, I don't need to work a single day in my life. Of course. But look at every single guy that had an exit. They never, never, ever exited their first business. Never. It's exactly like someone wanting to— I want to use the gym example. It's exactly like someone going day in the gym, he never touched a single weight in his life, and he's like, okay, give me the Arnold Schwarzenegger program and give me all the supplements I need and the protein and the creatine and this, and also add on top of that steroids. It's like, yo, you're just starting out. Start with a normal workout and then I'll give you a harder workout. You handle the harder workout, let me give you the bigger one. You handle the big one, let me give you the Arnold Schwarzenegger one. A sellable business is something where your investors, when they buy your business, they buy future revenue. That's what you buy when you exit your company. So you need to have recurring revenue in your business or a system that gets clients in a consistent way, you need to have a team that is handling everything without you. You never even hire a single— you don't even make money yourself. You want to hire people and make them money for you. So 100% it is. There's an IMA that sold, I think it was a year ago, I posted that in my program with the students, it was for $250 million. So there's huge things, but it wasn't a small IMA with like 2 influencers. They had 100,000 influencers in the rosters. They had crazy stuff. I also know another agency in New York. They started with, the influencer thing on Instagram, doing shoutouts and so forth. They scaled to like billboards and then advertisements, you know, nationwide on Reddit. They make $500 million a year. That's a sellable company.
