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From 10 Years at Microsoft -> $1M Art and Framing Business
Helen Guo
January 26, 2026
Hey - Helen here,
This week's SMB Deal Hunter Pro alumni interview with Sarah is for everyone who's been searching on their own and can’t seem to get a deal closed.
Sarah had the resume. Yale MBA. 10 years at Microsoft. Family full of business owners going back generations.
She left her corporate job in 2023 to buy a business in Seattle. Did everything "right."
Networked the ETA community for over a year. Even organized her own searcher cohort through Search Funder.
And after 18 months of solo searching, she still hadn't closed.
Not because she wasn't smart. Not because she wasn't working hard. But because she didn’t have people she could go to for every nitty gritty question that comes up in the deal search process.
Here’s show she described it…
"What I realized through trying to do a self-funded search on my own is that the tactical questions were really the things that would hang me up.
How do I write this LOI? How do I call the banker and ask them these questions?
It wasn't the conceptual part that was hard for me. I was bought in.
I felt like I could just literally ask all those stupid questions that I'm like trying to research on my own.
And, and I think with other searchers, it's like people don't necessarily always have the time."
So she joined SMB Deal Hunter Pro to get exactly that. 7 months later, she had closed on a 40 year old gallery and custom framing shop in New Mexico cash-flowing ~$150k / year.
Here's a sneak peek at the deal:
🔥 $1M - $1.5M in annual revenue
🔥 50% cash, 50% seller note at 7% over 5 years. No SBA.
🔥 She hit the best December the business has had in 10 years in her first few months.
But the path to close wasn't smooth. In the interview, Sarah breaks down:
→ Why she walked away from Seattle after searching there for nearly two years. (And how she found her deal in New Mexico)
→ The moment she stopped "faking it till you make it." (And how she went from hoping the deal goes through to really driving it forward)
→ How she filtered deals by "her own flavor of boring." (and why she passed on bigger, more lucrative options)
→ What surprised her most about the first 90 days. Including why she couldn't sleep the first month (not because things were going wrong).
Here was her advice to someone thinking of taking the leap:
"Push yourself to execute more than just analysis paralysis. There's a lot of people in ETA, they wanna look at their spreadsheet, figure out the math, and you can just sit in that place forever. Be very shameless. Just ask all the questions. Be a dork and be very awkward and just get it done. I'm way happier operating than I ever was searching."
Sarah leaned on our battle-tested deal team to help her:
Source her deals on and off-market (personalized exactly to her needs)
Navigate every step of the process from the first broker call to closing day (one on one)
And ultimately help her not just buy a business, but one she can grow and succeed with…
So, if you want to buy a $1M+ business in the next 6-12 months, but don’t want to spend years spinning your wheels alone, let’s talk.
Talk soon,
Helen Guo