Dixon & Hammond partners with owner-operated businesses doing $250,000 to $5 million a year. We install the sales system at our own cost, take a share of the revenue it creates, and convert that share into ownership.
Dixon & Hammond is a private acquirer of owner-operated American businesses. We are not an agency and not a broker. We buy, we hold, and before we buy anything we spend our own money making the business worth more.
A business at this size is usually offered two bad options. Sell to a stranger at a multiple set by how tired the owner is, or spend on marketing that is billed monthly whether or not it works. We do neither. We install a sales system at our own cost, take an agreed share of the revenue that system produces, and take nothing at all until it produces.
That share is the beginning of a purchase, not a retainer. Milestones are set on day one and measured on earnings. When they are met, the revenue share converts into ownership, on terms agreed before a single dollar of that growth existed. The owner keeps running operations throughout. We run growth.
The parameters of our mandate, not a valuation. Every business is assessed on its own numbers, and we say no quickly when the fit is not there.
Three levers, put in at our cost and run by our people. Most owner-operated businesses are not short of skill. They are short of customers reaching them, and short of anyone answering fast enough when they do.
Ten prospects a day becomes twenty, then fifty, then a hundred. An AI sales agent runs outreach and gets interested people replying. AI-produced video advertising runs on Meta, TikTok and YouTube at a fraction of what a production crew costs. And when somebody asks an AI assistant who to buy from in your category, the answer is you.
Every lead is called immediately by an experienced salesperson who books the appointment or closes on the spot. Our closers are American expatriates with sales careers behind them, living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and South America. Joe from Indiana calling from Brazil sounds like the customer's neighbor and costs a quarter of the domestic equivalent. The team starts part-time and scales with the business: better than a call center, cheaper than a hire.
An AI-run CRM reactivates dormant leads, follows up without being told to, and tells the rep who to call and what to say. AI agents work the pipeline around the clock, and voice agents answer, qualify and book. The effect is simple: the closer only ever speaks to people who are ready to buy.
A revenue share that becomes a buyout as the business hits milestones. Every term is written before the growth exists, which is the only point at which both sides can be honest about what it is worth.
One conversation, usually thirty minutes. What the business sells, where customers come from now, what it can handle if that doubled, and what the owner actually wants out of the next few years. Nothing is listed and nobody is contacted. If we are not right for the business we say so on that call.
No upfront cost to the owner. Their business, our sales system, our capital behind it. We are paid an agreed share of the revenue the system produces, which means we are paid nothing if it produces nothing. The owner continues to run operations exactly as before.
Set on day one, in writing, and measured on earnings rather than on activity or vanity numbers. Both sides know from the outset what has to be true for the arrangement to convert, and neither side can move the line afterwards.
Once the milestones are met, the revenue share converts into ownership on the terms agreed before any of the growth happened. The owner sells a business that is materially larger than the one they would otherwise have sold, at a price set before it grew, and they decide how involved they remain afterwards.
A business acquired conventionally is usually made to work by cutting cost. Fewer hands on the same customers, slower service, and quality that quietly deteriorates until people leave. The buyer wins by paying as little as possible and spending as little as possible afterwards. We take the opposite approach.
We do not need the owner to be desperate. We need the business to be capable.
Everything we install exists to raise the number the business earns, because the price we eventually pay is set against performance we created and can measure.
Sending demand into a business that cannot serve it destroys the asset in both directions. The customers leave, and the reputation that made them come goes with them.
Squeezing the seller by a few points is a rounding error next to doubling what the business takes in. That is why we can be serious about price rather than grinding the owner down on it.
Every agency invoice arrives whether the phone rang or not, and no owner at this size has a reliable way to judge which half worked. The risk sits entirely on the business paying it.
Interest has a shelf life measured in minutes. Most owner-operated businesses are busy doing the work when it lands, and the customer has already booked with whoever answered first.
A business that depends on the owner sells at a discount, if it sells at all. Growing it first, with somebody else's money, is the difference between a modest exit and a real one.
We would rather decline in five minutes than occupy a month of an owner's time. The honest filter:
Some owners are not looking to grow. They are looking to finish.
That is a different conversation and we have it often. Where an owner wants out rather than up, we buy directly, with our own capital: cash at closing, further payments across an agreed period tied to customers being retained and relationships transferring cleanly.
We are the buyer, so there is no listing, no broker fee and no commission taken from either side. Say so at the first conversation. Within one call you will know which of the two arrangements we are discussing, or that we are not the right home for the business at all.
Nothing. There is no setup fee, no monthly retainer and no media budget asked of the owner. We fund the installation ourselves and are paid an agreed share of the revenue the system produces. If it produces none, we are paid none. That is the whole point of the structure: the risk sits with the party making the promises.
The terms of any conversion are agreed in writing before the growth begins, including what has to be true for it to trigger. Nobody signs a blank instrument and nobody discovers the price afterwards. If the milestones are not met, there is nothing to convert.
What we will not do is negotiate the value of the business after we have spent a year increasing it. Agreeing the terms first is what protects the owner from that as much as us.
Earnings, not activity. Not impressions, not leads generated, not calls made. Those are inputs we are responsible for and they are our problem to solve. The number that decides whether the arrangement converts is the number the business actually earns.
The owner does, and that is deliberate. They know the trade, the staff and the standards, and none of that transfers well or quickly. We run growth: the advertising, the outreach, the sales team and the systems behind them. The division holds because neither side wants the other one's job.
Then we do not switch the volume on until you can, and we will say so at the first conversation. Demand a business cannot serve destroys value rather than creating it: the customers leave unhappy and tell people. Capacity, or a credible way to add it, is the first thing we look for and the most common reason we decline.
An agency is paid whether or not the work produces anything, and has no stake in what happens after the lead arrives. We are paid out of revenue, we supply the people who make the calls, and we intend to own the business at the end of it. Nobody buys something they have spent a year quietly damaging.
Experienced American salespeople, employed through us, working your leads to your standards and using your name. They are based abroad, which is what makes an immediate callback affordable at this size of business. AI handles the repetitive middle: the follow-up, the reactivation, the qualifying and the booking. A person handles the conversation that matters.
Yes. Nothing is listed anywhere, and we do not contact customers, staff or suppliers at any point before being asked to. Should the conversation lead nowhere, it did not happen.
Tell us broadly where things stand. Where there is a fit we will respond within one business day to arrange a call. Where there is not, we will tell you that as well.
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