From Commercial Banker to $2M+ 'Boring' Business Owner

Hey - Helen here,

How many of you have spent years watching your clients or former coworkers build the businesses you actually want?

You learn how they did it, and you start thinking you could do that too. But the years go by and you're still working for someone else.

Nielson spent 15 years in commercial banking watching every kind of business owner up close, and decided he wanted to be one.

He saw enough to know he didn't want startup risk. He wanted to buy something that already worked, and last November he finally did.

Today, he owns a $2M+ commercial landscaping business making $700K/yr.

He found the deal through a friend of a friend and started negotiating it himself, but he knew he needed help structuring something that big.

So a few months in, he joined SMB Deal Hunter Pro, our business buying accelerator where we help you find, finance, and acquire a business in 6-12 months, or work with you for free until you do.

With our team behind him, he ended up structuring something most first-time buyers would not have attempted.

He financed 60% of the deal with a seller note and never touched an SBA loan.

• He put 20% down at close

• Another 20% at 90 days

• The seller carried the rest on a 3-year payment schedule (with two balloon payments mixed in)

That meant no bank, no SBA paperwork, and a lot more skin in the game from the seller.

He quit banking, his wife quit healthcare, and they are both all in on this one.

She was a behavior specialist before they bought the business. Now she runs the admin and certifications side while he runs operations. None of it happened quickly, though.

It took 12 months of negotiation and they walked away from each other twice.

The deal he ended up with is a commercial landscaping business in LA County with 17 employees, mostly government contracts that run four to six years.

Five months in, he is at the yard by 6am and learning the business inside out before he ever considers stepping back.

Here's why this week's alumni interview is a must watch:

→ Nielson and the seller walked away from each other twice during the negotiation. We break down how he got the deal back both times and what he did differently to finally close it.

→ He talked the seller into financing 60% of the deal himself. We unpack the contrarian negotiation tactic that earned that level of trust.

→ He spent over 100 hours sitting in the truck with the seller before close. We talk about why off-market buyers can build that kind of relationship and on-market buyers usually cannot.

→ Nielson had 15 years in commercial banking and was still only 80% confident going into negotiations. We discuss what the program's deal team helped him see that his own background did not.

Click below and watch me walk through his journey step by step 👇

And when we asked what he valued most about the program...

Nielson leaned on our battle-tested deal team to help him...

• Decide whether to buy the business as a stock deal or an asset deal

• Pressure-test every assumption in the financials before he signed

• Negotiate the price and have the confidence to walk away twice and still close

• Get on a 60% seller note structure he had never done before

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.

👉 Learn more and book a call to see if you'd be a good fit

Talk soon,
Helen Guo

P.S. When we asked Nielson why he loves this industry, he said: "Whether the economy is doing well, whether we're in a war or not, grass and trees still grow and they still need to be maintained." That is recession-proof, low-tech, and contracted years out. Which is exactly the point. 👉 book a call here.

P.P.S. If you liked Nielson's story, you'll love Taabish's. He spent 10 years at Amazon, then bought a $2.9M industrial equipment business making $75K a month, in an industry he'd never worked in. Now he works fewer hours than he did at Amazon and his weekends are off. 👉 watch his interview here.