What if the best acquisition you'll ever make is the one nobody else bothered to look at?

That's not a rhetorical question. That's exactly how Karl Hughes bought his first agency.

While every other buyer was refreshing broker listings and fighting over the same tired deals, Karl built a spreadsheet, started cold DM-ing podcast production founders on LinkedIn, and had fifty conversations most people would've deleted without a second thought. No broker. No bidding war. No competing offers. Just Karl, a thesis, and the patience to work a room that nobody else had walked into yet.

One of those conversations turned into a sub-million-dollar acquisition at 2.7x SDE -a healthy, cash-flowing business with clients who'd been around for five-plus years. The seller had never seen a competitor's P&L in his life. Karl had seen twenty before he ever made the call.

But here's where it gets interesting.

That deal was just the beginning. Since then, Karl has been quietly building a portfolio of niche marketing agencies -the kind that are too small for private equity, too owner-dependent for most buyers, and too overlooked for anyone to notice the opportunity hiding inside them. Financing deals creatively. Targeting founders who are ready to move on. And figuring out in real time what it actually takes to merge two similar agencies without torching the clients that made them worth buying in the first place. 

In this episode, Jaryd sits down with Karl to unpack why small agencies rarely get a real exit -and why that's the opportunity. How Karl showed a seller the actual debt math before making an offer and closed with trust instead of pressure. And what he'd do completely differently if he had to start the integration process over again from day one.

Most buyers wait for a clean deal to fall into their lap.

Karl just built his own pipeline and went to find it.

🎧 Hit play - this is what a quiet, deliberate acquisition strategy actually looks like in practice.

Episode Highlights

03:30 -Why Small Agencies Never Get a Real Exit -And Why That's Your Opportunity

09:29 -The LinkedIn Cold DM Strategy That Found a Deal Nobody Else Was Looking At

17:00 -The P&L Advantage: How Karl Saw 20 Competitor Financials Before Making a Single Offer

21:20 -Showing the Seller the Debt Math: The Transparency Move That Closed the Deal

33:28 -Karl Flips the Script and Asks Jaryd the Question Every First-Time Buyer Is Afraid To Ask

37:00 -Debt vs Equity: What Structure Actually Makes Sense for Small Agency Deals

39:00 -Never Buy a Distressed Agency First -Unless This One Condition Is Already Met

Key Takeaways

➥ Being an operator is your unfair advantage. Karl didn't walk in as a finance guy with a briefcase. He walked in as someone already running a real agency. That credibility alone got doors open that cold outreach never could.

➥ Off-market deals aren't found -they're built. Karl spent months talking to founders who had no intention of selling. Some came back a year later. Patient relationship-building in one vertical is how you end up as the only offer on the table.

➥ See more P&Ls than anyone else in the room. Karl reviewed 20 competitor financials before making a single offer. The seller had seen zero. That knowledge gap isn't an edge you stumble into -it's one you build deliberately.

➥ Transparency closes deals faster than pressure ever will. Karl showed sellers the actual debt math behind his offer price. Not to impress them -to build enough trust to close without a broker, a bidding war, or months of back and forth.

➥ Shadow the team before you ever think about cutting it. The most valuable things a client-facing employee does are invisible until they're gone. Let both teams learn from each other first. The redundancies will surface on their own.

About Karl Hughes

Karl Hughes is a former CTO turned serial agency acquirer. He founded Draft.dev in 2020 -a technical content marketing agency -and scaled it to $2.5M in revenue before stepping back from day-to-day operations. In 2023, he partnered with a co-buyer to acquire The Podcast Consultant without a broker, sourcing the deal directly via LinkedIn outreach after reviewing 200+ agencies. He now hosts the Retained Trust podcast and is actively building a portfolio of niche digital service businesses in the $1M–$5M revenue range.

Connect with Karl Hughes

➥ https://www.karllhughes.com/  

➥https://www.linkedin.com/in/karllhughes/ 

Resource Links

➥ Connect with Jaryd here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarydkrause

➥ Buying Online Businesses Website - https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com

➥ Download the Due Diligence Framework - https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com/freeresources/

➥ Sell your business to us here - https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com/sell-your-business/

➥ Google Ads Service - https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com/ads-services/

Buy & Sell Online Businesses Here (Top Website Brokers We Use) 🔥

➥ Empire Flippers - https://bit.ly/3RtyMkE

➥ Flippa - https://bit.ly/3wGa8r5

➥ Motion Invest - https://bit.ly/3YmJAmO

➥ Investors Club - https://bit.ly/3ZpgioR

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