Founded in 2012, Beacons Point is a southern California-based Hubspot Platinum inbound marketing agency that combines visual creativity with a cohesive strategy to help their clients scale revenue and build market awareness. Their services include inbound and content marketing, HubSpot consulting and implementation, and video production. Known as the inbound growth partner that B2B businesses need, Beacons Point’s small, fully remote team of ten, focuses on unlocking growth for their clients through connection, relationships, and trust. 

Three Co-Owners Ready for the Next Phase of Their Careers

Beacons Point co-founders, Ross Nelson, Brian Serocke, and Alex Meade, loved building and managing the business for over a decade, and felt they’d done a good job perfecting processes and delivering valuable work to clients, all while sustaining growth. With growth of their own as an exciting prospect, each of them felt ready to transition away from ownership responsibilities to focus on their individual strengths and talents in senior leadership roles. As owners, the path to see the financial reward they wanted felt long, and they were ready to cash in and move on to the next phase of their careers. Each was open to staying on with the new company or to exit for senior leadership roles in-house at other companies, depending on the buyer and the new company’s needs. 

With no shortage of current rockstar employees, they recognized the professional and personal growth opportunities that an acquisition could offer. They wanted a buyer who could help Beacons Point reach its potential for their awesome team. 

They reached out to Barney to make it happen – a sale to a larger, perfectly aligned agency that could offer plenty of resources and growth pathways for their team and catapult success.

A Small But Mighty Agency with a Strong Culture and Happy Clients

There was a lot to love about Beacons Point. They had a proven, repeatable process that yielded stellar results for their clients, which led to above industry retention rates and five star client reviews.

As a HubSpot Certified Platinum Partner, they constantly delivered high-quality HubSpot administration and advanced technical solutions for clients, emerging as a strategic resource for brands looking to combine visual creativity with cohesive strategy. 

Over the years, Beacons Point had intentionally cultivated a culture of curiosity, embracing the process, welcoming change, striving to go beyond the norm, and letting humility reign supreme so everyone could find new ways to grow. The founders built their culture around the organization’s core values, and it shows in their happy team members and environment of connectivity, where everyone genuinely has a good time at work and collaborates to produce incredible results for clients.

Growth Potential From Within

Beacons Point had opportunities to grow by focusing on maintaining their existing base of retainer clients while pushing for larger expansion with profitable project revenue, building software products to scale work faster, and increasing their work in HubSpot CMS website builds, third-party HubSpot integrations, technical HubSpot projects, video projects, sales hub consulting, and revenue operations consulting. With the current team, the agency had space for more HubSpot work as well as two more retainer clients. Beyond that, a buyer would need to hire some more staff to propel growth.

Once we were clear on the owners’ goals, and with our fingers on the pulse of the current agency market, we calculated Beacons Point’s worth to today’s buyers. From there, we put together amazing marketing materials to help potential buyers understand what made Beacons Point special. We quickly landed on the owners’ dream fit: 120over80, headed by Sonny Sultani. 

An Ideal Match for Shared Growth 

A Chicago-based digital marketing agency focused on data-driven digital marketing solutions, 120over80 helps B2B, professional services, in-home services, and SaaS clients grow their businesses. 120over80 and Beacons Point shared synergies across culture, values, and client industries. Both organizations were committed to having a meaningful impact to their clients, and they were excited about the possibilities of enhancing their ability to serve them in a way neither could do on their own. 

Coming Together to Form a Brand New Agency

Beacons Point’s expertise in inbound marketing, videography, HubSpot implementation, and content creation, paired with 120over80’s mastery of data and analytics, digital paid media management, and SEO, made for a perfect combination to fuel a new agency.

When everyone shook hands and signed on the dotted line, Behind the Work was born, uniquely equipped to serve their current clients and beyond in big ways. Beacons Point’s team members were given the new growth opportunities and resources they needed, and the owners decided to remain at the helm of the new company. Back at Barney HQ, we toasted to their success. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and we can’t wait to see what Behind the Work does next!

“Working with Brian, Alex, and Ross was a rewarding experience. Their open-mindedness to what their next chapters could look like was refreshing, and truly set them up for success to find the perfect buyer who could provide them with greater opportunities, all while remaining at the business they built and loved!”


Ben Engvall, Director at Barney

Ben Engvall at Barney