When Taylor talks about building Dot & Company, she doesn't talk about chasing an exit. She talks about finding the part of agency life that actually gave her energy and going all in on that.

I sat down with Taylor to trace the arc of what she built: a fractional account management firm started in 2019 with $300 worth of conviction and a very specific problem to solve, scaled to a 40-person team, sold to E2M Solutions in a deal that closed on January 1st, 2026 and a founder who stayed on anyway, not because she had to, but because she wanted to.

It's a story about knowing what you're good at, building systems around it, and refusing to confuse "exit-ready" with "done."

The Business Born Out of Joy (and a Very Real Gap)

Taylor didn't start Dot & Company because she saw a market opportunity on a spreadsheet. She started it because she was already running an agency and the one part she actually loved, client-facing account management, was something almost no one else was doing well.

She went fractional. The idea was simple: agency owners needed exceptional account managers, but didn't know how to hire, train, or retain them. Taylor did. So she built a business around that knowledge, offering premium client-facing account managers embedded inside marketing agencies on a fractional basis.

By 2025, she had a team of 40 people, a proprietary training curriculum, and a reputation in the agency world as the go-to solution for anyone who needed to get out of their own client seats.

Systematizing the Irreplaceable

The most common mistake Taylor sees in account management hiring: assuming personality can be trained. It can't.

Her framework is built on three things. First, personality: warmth, genuine care, the ability to light up in a client call. You either have it or you don't. Second, industry experience. Junior hires take too long to get up to speed, and the role is too important for a slow ramp. Third, specific account management training: upselling, retention, client communication under pressure.

To make this scalable, she built CAM School: a seven-module internal training program that codified everything she was doing instinctively. The curriculum covered onboarding to offboarding, every touchpoint in between, and the specific behaviors that separate a good account manager from one who actually grows accounts.

"I wanted to make sure that everyone who worked for me was showing up as if it were me," she said.

That school became the backbone of the whole business. It's what allowed her to hire A-players and make them better, rather than hunting for unicorns. And it's what made the company sellable, because the value wasn't locked inside Taylor's head anymore.

Building to Exit From Day One

Taylor told me she first talked about an exit in 2021. Two years into the business. Before she had 40 people, before CAM School was fully built, before she had any serious buyers circling.

"Every decision, every hire, every system put in place was because I knew I wanted to exit," she said.

That mindset shaped everything. She focused early on removing herself from every function in the business. Not gradually, not reluctantly—systematically, as an intentional goal. When she went on maternity leave in 2025, the business ran without her for six months. That wasn't an accident. That was the plan proving itself.

The clearest proof point for any buyer: while Taylor was on leave, her husband Jamie had already moved on to running a separate acquisition in the construction space. Two founders, neither of them running Dot & Company day-to-day and the business didn't miss a beat.

"You don't need me," she told buyers. "You're buying a system, not a person."

The Friendly Competitor Who Became the Right Buyer

Taylor didn't hire a banker. She didn't run a process. She made friends.

Manish, the owner of E2M Solutions, sent her a cold LinkedIn message in 2023. They ended up on a Zoom, found immediate alignment on values, and became genuine friends before the business conversation ever started.

The acquisition idea came up almost by accident at an industry event in October 2024. A mutual friend connected the dots in a room. Taylor and Manish looked at each other. Neither had planned it.

"We didn't even think about it," Taylor told me. "And then we kind of opened the conversation there."

From that point, the courtship was careful and unhurried. There were two previous conversations, November 2024, then February 2025, that didn't proceed to close because the timing wasn't right on either side. No pressure. No competing bids. Just two parties who respected each other enough to wait until it made sense.

By November 2025, the conditions aligned. Brent was in as E2M's new CEO. Taylor was back from leave. The numbers were updated. An LOI followed shortly after.

Due Diligence in Three Days

Most founders dread due diligence. Taylor treated it like a data export.

When E2M sent over the diligence checklist the day after the LOI was signed, Taylor handed it to her assistant Audrey and her husband Jamie. Three days later, it was done. Every document, every report, every piece of data the buyer could possibly want—already organized, already accessible.

"We look at data so often and so regularly that it was just all there," she said.

Twelve days after the LOI, the principals flew in: Manish and Ronik from India, Brent from Denver, Taylor from Halifax, for three days of in-person diligence in Toronto. Strategy sessions, forward planning, integration conversations. Not adversarial. Not performative. Just alignment.

Two weeks after that, they closed.

The entire process, from signed LOI to close, took five weeks.

Telling the Team (and Why She Wasn't Nervous)

Taylor kept the circle tight during the process: herself, Jamie, her director of operations, and her chief of staff. Four people total.

When the deal closed on January 1st, she called each leader individually. Then announced to the full team that same day. Then told all clients the following day. And launched publicly the day after that.

"It didn't feel like a secret," she told me. "It felt more like protecting them until I was sure."

Two weeks later, her leadership team had a pre-planned in-person event in Toronto. Brent and the E2M team flew in. The acquisition's vision got built alongside the people who would execute it. The timing was almost too good.

Why She Stayed (When She Didn't Have To)

Here's the thing about Taylor's deal: there was no earn-out requiring her to stay. No equity clawback. No obligation. The business had already proven it could operate without her.

She stayed anyway.

The reason was honest and a little unexpected. She had spent years building toward a clean exit, ascending through the organizational chart until she was running a business that no longer looked anything like the work she started it to do. The CEO seat had drained her. The parts that filled her back up: working in marketing, building relationships, showing up in community, had slowly disappeared.

The sale gave her a path back in without the weight of ownership.

"In what world could I go get a job where I don't need to prove myself, can work whatever hours I want, and still be super fulfilled?" she said.

Her current role is podcasting, content, events, and brand. The thing she's best at, with the financial pressure gone. She called it "having the time of my life."

For Sellers: What Made This Possible

The deal worked because Taylor treated sellability as an operating principle, not an exit preparation exercise. She built leadership below herself. She created systems that didn't depend on her presence. She kept her books clean and her data accessible.

She also told the truth during diligence. Not to be virtuous, because she wanted to keep working with these people, and she didn't want them to arrive and find something she hadn't disclosed.

"I never wanted to go down a road where he didn't know everything within the business," she said.

When you sell to someone you've spent two years building a genuine friendship with, due diligence isn't adversarial. It's just thorough. That's a different experience entirely.

What's Next

Taylor is still at Dot & Company, now part of E2M Solutions, doing the part of the job she loves: podcasting, creating content, going to events, staying inside the ecosystem she helped build.

She's not planning the next startup. She's not chasing another exit. She's filling her cup back up.

As she put it: the business gets to keep running. She gets to show up as herself. And someone else is signing the paychecks.

That's not a consolation prize. That's a well-designed outcome.

Listen to the full conversation with Taylor.

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