📣 Please note, these events are for Agency Hackers’ members only.

If your agency isn’t a member yet, get in touch with Anne or sign up here.

Selling your agency is like stepping into the unknown. It’s not just a transaction, but an emotional and logistical maze to navigate. 

It’s all the more difficult to navigate when the sale doesn’t go to plan.

This is what happened to Jonathan Jacobs, co-founder of LOUDMOUTH. He sold his former agency in 2021 – but when things finally went through, he was faced with a tough, unexpected choice.

He could either buy the agency back, or let it be scrapped completely.

After a phone call with the new interim CMO, he called their bluff. “I don’t want it, right? I sold it to you because I didn’t want to do it anymore.” 

And so the agency was thrown on the bonfire. Employees finished their 30-day notice periods, and they were gone. Poof.

“I always thought leaving would be the close of a chapter, not the end of the book,” he says.

“Would I do it again?” Jonathan ponders, “It took me a little while to get there, but actually, 100% – because of what I learned from it all. It’s about accepting what you can and can’t control in the process.”

In this session with Jonathan, we’ll discuss:

• Preparing early. Even if selling feels far off, think about what the end might look like. “We would have loved to pass it on to our staff, but we didn’t build infrastructure to make that happen. And in retrospect, I wish we could have done that.”
• Overcoming the emotional toll. “All you can control in life is how you react to things. I can’t control what’s going to happen, and I can react to this decision that was made that I have no control over now,” he says. “I can be upset, and I can kick myself, and I can be angry, or I can be thankful for the journey that we had.”
• Accepting the loss of control. “I look back on the deal, and it checked all the boxes of what I needed. If I look at what was the scorecard for what I wanted out of a sale – I got all five of them. And whatever happens after that, I can’t control someone else is in charge now, that’s the whole point of selling”
• Build your scorecard. “Build your scorecard -what do you need out of this deal? It’s not just about the dollar amount. It’s about peace of mind.”

In this session, Jonathan will share his experience in navigating the complications of selling, and dealing with the emotions that come with it.