UK Startup & Scaleup Week

In this interview, Gavin Bell, the former Founder & CEO of Yatter, one of the UK’s leading Pay Per Click & Paid Social agencies, shares the blueprint he used to build & successfully sell his business in just 3 years (between 2021-2024)!

1. The Entrepreneurial Pivot: From Failure to Foundations

Gavin’s journey began with early entrepreneurial signs (buying fake Armani belts on holiday & selling them on eBay at 14) but his first attempt – a corporate well-being company at age 18 – was a “total failure.” This failure, however, provided crucial connections to the health & fitness space (which he is still benefiting from now).

• The Problem: He noticed health professionals (personal trainers, nutritionists) were generally poor at marketing.
• The Pivot: He started a social media management business, focusing on helping personal trainers grow their audience, which eventually evolved into a paid advertising agency for a wider range of businesses after a client asked for help with Facebook ads.

2. The Paid Ads Reality Check

A key insight from the interview is why many businesses fail with paid advertising:

• Most Businesses Are Not Ready: The biggest issue is a lack of systems to properly track ad spend all the way through to leads & revenue.
• Targeting Has Evolved: The old way of hyper-specific interest targeting is outdated. Platforms like Facebook & Instagram now prefer broader audiences, with the creative content doing the specific targeting.
• Rule for Success: Brands must create a mass of diverse, high-volume creative content (including varied actors & messaging) to resonate with different audience segments within the broader target.

3. Building a Business to Sell (Yatter)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gavin made the intentional decision to build his business with the sole goal of selling it, leading to the creation of Yatter in 2021.

• Core Philosophy: He applied concepts from the books Built to Sell by John Warrillow & The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber to productise the service – treating the agency like a repeatable, scalable SaaS product.
• Innovative Service Model: Yatter moved away from the traditional agency pitch & time-tracking model, focusing instead on set prices & client outcomes (growth & profit).

4. Scaling with Predictable Systems & Culture

Gavin’s approach to scaling was highly methodical & system-driven.

• The First Hire: He first hired a salesperson to handle outreach, freeing up his time to focus on client delivery. Hiring then became predictable, based on the capacity of clients each account manager could handle.
• The ADS Framework for Solo Entrepreneurs: For those currently running a business alone, he recommends:
  • A: Audit – Do a time audit to track every daily task.
  • D: Delegate or Delete – Decide what to do, what to hand off (tasks you don’t enjoy or aren’t good at) & what to eliminate (tasks that don’t move the needle).
  • S: Systems – Create systems to “download” your knowledge so others can follow a consistent process.
• Identify & Fix ‘Bugs’ in the System: Like a SaaS product, he treated his business process like software, creating a detailed checklist for every client touchpoint. Any challenge, mistake, or customer complaint was treated as a ‘bug’ that required a permanent fix to be added to the system. (e.g., pre-empting “no leads yet” emails from clients with a proactive check-in email 2-3 days after a new client had been onboarded).
• Hiring Tool: Acknowledging the challenges of finding top tier Pay Per Click & Paid Social talent in Scotland, Yatter successfully used TikTok videos of behind-the-scenes office life & culture as a highly-effective recruiting tool.

5. The Sale & Next Steps

• Finding a Buyer: Gavin hired a Mergers & Acquisitions consultancy (Cactus/Blue Halo) to package the business into a one-pager & connect with interested agencies.
• The Acquisition: Yatter was sold to Velstar Group in Liverpool. Gavin emphasised that cultural fit was paramount & the company’s close proximity to Scotland (in the North of England) was also a positive factor.
• The New Venture: He is currently working in ‘stealth mode’ on a B2C healthcare company, applying his experience to disrupt what he sees as an “antiquated” space.
• Reflecting Through Content: Now without anything to sell, he is enjoying content creation again on LinkedIn (at www.linkedin.com/in/mrgavinbell) & Instagram (@MrGavinBell) to reflect on the last decade & distil his principles & ideas. He calls the initial discomfort of video creation “the tax that you’ve got to pay” to get good at it.

ps You can also listen to this interview (& more) on Paul’s ‘SuperConnector Show’ podcast which is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible or Spreaker via our ‘Podcasts‘ page.