Thinking of Selling Your Agency? Cash Out for Max Value (and Avoid the Biggest Mistakes) With Sean Hakes | Ep #827

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Are you growing your agency with the goal of selling it one day? More importantly, are you taking the right steps now to ensure it’s actually worth what you think it is?

Today’s featured guest has built and sold multiple agencies over the years, gaining hard-earned insights into the process. He shares what you need to know to prepare your agency for sale, the potential pitfalls and opportunities with non-competes and earnouts, and whether hiring a broker is really worth it.

If selling your agency is on your horizon, or even just a long-term possibility, this episode is packed with practical advice to help you maximize your valuation and avoid costly mistakes.

Sean Hakes has been building and selling digital marketing agencies since the early 2000’s back when ‘SEO’ wasn’t a household term and websites were still coded in tables.. He’s grown agencies from small side hustles into multi-million-dollar operations, navigated multiple acquisitions, and learned the hard way how to structure a deal and when to walk away.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• Getting savvier for his second agency sale.

• Not taking the highest bid, but picking the right buyer.

• Getting back to the game after a restrictive non-compete.

• Buying back his old agency.

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Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

How a Major Mistake Started His Agency Journey

Most agency owners start by accident, but in Sean’s case, he accidentally broke a website.

While working for another company, he took down their site and had to learn HTML on the fly to fix it. That crash course turned into a curiosity for web design, which turned into a small SEO and design shop in Denver around 2001–2002, back when keyword stuffing and white text on a white background actually worked.

Sean’s first agency wasn’t huge—three or four people, a few hundred grand in revenue—but their search visibility was strong. That alone was enough to attract an out-of-state buyer. The deal wasn’t life-changing money, and looking back he thinks (since he didn’t know anything about valuations) that he probably gave it away, but it was enough to get Sean hooked on the idea of building, growing, and eventually selling agencies.

The “Do It Better” Second Act

After dabbling in landscaping, trucking, and even diamond brokering businesses following the sale of his first agency, Sean realized marketing was still his zone of genius. This time, he teamed up with a sales-savvy partner. Sean handled operations; his partner brought in a big book of business.

That agency scaled to about $3 million in revenue before they decided to sell—but not before learning a hard truth about valuations: top-line revenue doesn’t mean much without profit.

When they first went to a broker, they were shocked to get a $100k valuation. Why so low? No recurring contracts, thin margins, and too much discretionary spending. So they spent the next year tightening up—signing contracts, cutting waste, and boosting profit.

It’s a lesson many agency owners dreaming of selling at some point have to learn. You