Hiring the First Key Role: People Manager

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Most agency owners talk about selling someday, but very few actually build with that outcome in mind. They stay deeply embedded in delivery, sales, and decision-making, hoping an exit will magically appear later. In this episode, that myth gets dismantled. Today's featured guest, former owner of Dot & Company, shares how she intentionally designed a productized agency that could run without her long before an acquisition was even on the table.

After successfully selling Dot & Co to E2M, she reflects on building with exit thinking from day one, how she connected with the right buyers, how she knew it was the right deal, and what genuinely surprised her about the process.

Taylor McMaster is the former owner of Dot & Company. She built and sold a productized agency specializing in fractional account management for agencies and successfully exited to E2M after designing the business to operate without her long before the deal was on the table. If you've ever wondered what it actually takes to build an agency you can step away from, and one someone would want to buy, this conversation sets the stage.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• Making the decision to build a sellable business early on

• The role that uncloked scale

• The sales trap

• Why her exit felt easy

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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 to Build an Agency You Can Sell

Many agency owners say they want to sell one day, but are building a business that tells a very different story.

• They're still on every client call.

• Still approving every deliverable.

• Still the only one who can close deals.

• Still the glue holding everything together.

That's not an agency. That's a very stressful job.

For her part, Taylor decided early on that she didn't wait until she was exhausted to think about an exit.

She designed the business for it.

Exit Thinking Changes Everything

About a year into building Dot & Co, Taylor made a quiet but powerful decision:

"If I want an exit someday, I can't build this like a lifestyle business."

That one thought changed how she hired, delegated, and structured the company.

Instead of asking, "How do I do this better?" She asked, "How do I make myself unnecessary?"

That meant systematically removing herself from every critical lane:

• Fulfillment

• People management

• Operations

• Admin

• Finance

Not overnight. Not perfectly. But intentionally.

The First Hire That Most Agency Owners Avoid

Most agency owners start by hiring delivery help. However, there are multiple ways to go about this, especially if you understand where your expertise lies and where someone else could be doing a better job.

Taylor hired a people manager early because she knew managing humans was her weakest skill and her biggest future bottleneck.

That one hire unlocked scale.

Why? Because resource-heavy agencies don't break because of strategy.

They break because of people chaos.

The Agency Sales Trap and Lesson Learned

Like most founders, Taylor stayed in sales for a while. Eventually, she tried to step out and hit friction.

Sales slowed. Messaging got inconsistent. Results dipped.

For her, the lesson was that founder-led sales works because you know the stories, the nuance, the pain.

Her hindsight advice is gold for any agency owner:

Get really good at sales first, then teach it or bring in a true closer once the system exists.

Too many owners abdicate sales before they've productized it. That's how pipelines dry up and panic hiring begins.

Creating an Easy Exit… Because the Work Was Done Early

By the time E2M acquired Dot & Co, Taylor had already: taken a 6-month maternity leave, removed herself from day-to-day operations and watched the business continue to grow without her

So when the deal closed, there was no scramble. No identity meltdown. No team revolt.

Her team was excited. Clients were curious but optimistic. And Taylor was ready.

Finding Identity Without Being Trapped By Your Agency

Taylor realized something most agency owners avoid: You can love your business without owning it.

When your identity isn't trapped inside your agency, you make better decisions. You stop hoarding control. You stop being the bottleneck. You build something that actually has value with or without you.

If you're stuck in fulfillment…

If your team can't move without you…

If you're scared to step back because everything might break…

That's not a failure.

It's just a sign you've built around you instead of systems.

And that's fixable.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

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