Why we kept the founder after acquiring his 40-year-old business

Before removing a founder after an acquisition, ask what will leave with them. Agree the founder’s remit at the start. Test your assumptions earlier and start transferring knowledge before changing systems.

When Champions Speakers acquired SpeakOut in September 2025, I wanted its founder, Kenny Donaldson, to stay. 

He had spent nearly 40 years building one of the UK’s oldest speaker bureaus. 

SpeakOut had its own name in the market, particularly in Scotland, and long-standing relationships across the events industry. Kenny knew how those relationships had been built and maintained. Had he left, much of that knowledge would have gone with him. We would have owned the company and weakened part of what we had bought. 

Champions Speakers had grown strongly through its own brands. SpeakOut gave us an established Scottish operation and more experience in the entertainment market. It would’ve taken us years to build that.  

After completion, we had to decide what to integrate, what to leave alone and what Kenny’s responsibilities would be inside a business he no longer owned. 

Some of our assumptions were wrong 

SpeakOut and Champions handled talent relationships, contracts and enquiries differently.  We expected more of that work to follow one common process. Once we saw how SpeakOut operated day to day, we realised we had got some of it wrong. 

A process might appear inefficient from the outside but if you look more closely it could be tied to how a long-standing client worked with the agency. If we replaced that with our own system, that would’ve damaged the relationship.  

We slowed down, asked why things were done differently and changed parts of our plan. The integration became more selective than we had expected. 

Champions Speakers was the larger company. That didn’t make every process of Champions better. SpeakOut had survived for nearly four decades, so its way of working deserved proper scrutiny before we replaced anything. 

We decided to keep the SpeakOut name and its Scottish identity. Existing clients already knew the agency and trusted its people. Our infrastructure could support its growth without erasing what clients recognised. That choice gave us a practical line for the integration.  

We could review back-office systems centrally. Anything affecting how clients booked talent or dealt with the agency needed more caution. The client-facing decisions took longer. Before making a change, I began asking what would be lost. Client and speaker relationships set the pace. 

Kenny needed a defined role 

We appointed Kenny Donaldson as head of entertainment. His experience remained available to SpeakOut and the wider Champs group. 

A vague advisory position could have left staff taking difficult decisions back to the person who used to own the company, with nobody entirely sure whose answer was final. We had to give Kenny enough authority for his judgement to count, with clear boundaries around the decisions held elsewhere in the group. 

His involvement meant we could question a proposed change before it affected a relationship we did not fully understand. He could explain the history behind a client, speaker or working practice that looked minor to us. 

His knowledge needed to spread beyond him. A handover document could never capture 40 years of context. Retaining Kenny gave us time to share it across the group. We passed it on through live work rather than trying to record everything in writing. If all that knowledge stayed with Kenny, we would face the same problem when he eventually left. 

What I would do earlier next time 

On another acquisition, I would trace an enquiry through to a completed booking before setting the integration timetable. I would establish who really owns each client relationship and where personal judgement changes the outcome.

We knew SpeakOut’s relationships mattered. We did not grasp how many everyday decisions rested on them.

I would test our assumptions earlier and start transferring knowledge before changing systems. 

I would agree the founder’s remit at the start. People should know which decisions remain with the founder and how disagreements will be handled. That cannot wait until both teams are working under the new ownership.

Due diligence gave us the contracts, revenue and liabilities. It did not explain why a client called one person first, or why an old process still earned trust. We only saw that once the business was doing real work. 

Enquiries have risen by 87 per cent against the equivalent period before the acquisition. SpeakOut has also handled more than 350 briefs through the wider Champions network. Of the clients active before the deal, 72 per cent have since made another enquiry or booking. Existing clients have continued to return as enquiries have grown. 

The deal is less than a year old. Its proper test will take several years. SpeakOut must retain the clients and knowledge that made it attractive as its work through the Champions network grows. 

Before removing a founder after an acquisition, ask what will leave with them. When trust, market knowledge and years of judgement sit with that person, their departure carries a cost that will never appear in the sale agreement. 

Jack Hayes is director of Champions Speakers Agency. 

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