Directive Consulting is a bootstrapped, ~130-person B2B marketing agency headquartered in Southern California (Orange County area) with staff distributed nationally. Rather than pursuing organic expansion into new markets, Directive is executing an inorganic growth strategy: acquiring agencies and operating them as standalone entities within a holding company structure.
This approach was articulated by Josh Springer (Directive) during an exploratory acquisition call with [1] in early 2026.
Directive's core competency is building and scaling agencies. The acquisition strategy applies that competency to external organizations rather than building new practices from scratch.
Key reasoning:
- Speed: Entering new markets organically requires significant time, capital, and trial-and-error. Acquisition compresses that timeline.
- Risk reduction: Buying an established agency with existing clients, culture, and expertise is lower-risk than greenfield expansion.
- Market expansion: Directive is primarily B2B tech-focused and is actively seeking exposure to B2C markets and adjacent service offerings it does not currently provide.
"We realized that if we were to look at this and build it out organically, it would take a lot of trial, error, time, and capital."
— Josh Springer
Acquired agencies are not rolled into the Directive brand. Instead, they operate as:
Directive's value-add post-acquisition is primarily sales and marketing investment — injecting lead generation capacity into agencies that have strong delivery but limited growth infrastructure.
"We don't operate the business... it's just about finding ways that we can scale it up because that's what we do."
— Josh Springer
Because Directive is fully bootstrapped (not PE-backed), it has flexibility that strategic or financial acquirers typically lack:
"Everyone's ambition looks a little different. If we can tailor a transaction around what someone's looking for, it just makes the whole thing a lot more pleasant, successful, strategically aligned."
— Josh Springer
Based on the AAG conversation, Directive's acquisition targets appear to share some or all of these characteristics:
| Attribute | Notes |
|---|---|
| Market | New to Directive — B2C, or underserved verticals |
| Size | Small-to-mid agencies (AAG: ~$1M revenue, 14 staff) |
| Differentiation | Proprietary methodology, tooling, or niche expertise |
| Growth bottleneck | Strong delivery + close rates, weak sales/lead gen |
| Ownership | Founder-owned; open to exit or partnership |
The AAG case is illustrative: a strategy-first agency with a proprietary AI tool (X-Ray) and a 75–80% close rate on qualified calls, but only 1–2 inbound leads per month due to zero active sales effort. Directive's pitch is essentially: we solve exactly that problem.
From the AAG exploratory call, Directive's early-stage M&A process appears to follow this sequence: