What Should an Agency Owner Delegate First? Karl Sakas on Stepping Back, Selling and Getting Paid What Your Agency Is Worth
Agency owners should delegate in a set order, says Karl Sakas: specialist work first, then delivery leadership, then account leadership, and only then decide whether to keep doing strategy. Karl advises agency owners who want to sell, step back or shift their role, and in this episode he walks Macgill Davis through how he helps them get there. He covers the questions he asks before touching any process, his "firefighter to fire marshal" model for an owner's role, how acquirers actually value agencies, and the margin benchmarks he uses to spot a business leaking money.
Guest
Karl Sakas
Founder, Sakas & Company
Karl Sakas runs Sakas & Company, an advisory firm for agency owners who want to sell, step back or shift their role in the business. Before advising, he worked inside an agency as director of client services and then director of operations, and later helped that agency's owner sell the business. He's based in North Carolina and says he has worked with hundreds of agencies across 36 countries. He also publishes hundreds of articles on agency management.
Key Takeaways
- 1.Start with the owner's values, goals and resources, not the org chart.
- 2.Move from firefighter to fire chief to fire marshal as the owner's role changes.
- 3.Delegate specialist work first, then delivery leadership, then account leadership; only then decide whether to keep doing strategy.
- 4.AI adds output and review work, so owners should delegate, not abdicate.
- 5.Acquirers buy on numbers, niche or special capabilities; financial buyers pay a multiple of EBITDA.
- 6.Aim for healthy ranges: 50–60% of agency gross income on labor and 20–30% retained as net profit.
Full Transcript
I run Sakas & Company, an advisory firm for ambitious agencies with ambitious goals. Typically I'm working with agency owners who want to smoothly sell, step back, or shift their role in the agency.
The discovery process starts by understanding each client's values, goals and resources. For some clients, they know they want an exit, so we narrow in on what their ideal exit is.
Ideally you move from firefighter, the one putting out the fires, to fire chief. You're still there directing the team, but you're usually not the one running into the burning house.
The third role is the fire marshal. The fire marshal's job is to prevent future fires: thinking about where resources need to go months and years in advance to prevent problems and create new opportunities.
That's my recommended order. Delegate the specialist work first, then delivery leader, then account leader. At that point, decide: do you want to keep doing strategy or not?
If you can suddenly get a whole deliverable in a matter of minutes, is it any good? Humans in the loop still have to confirm.
Even if you delegate most of it, you need to delegate, not abdicate.
An acquirer is going to adjust for an owner salary below market and deduct the difference from your profit margin. So pay yourself a market-rate salary.
Where to lay the asphalt depends on your values, goals and resources. There's no one-size-fits-all playbook.
