This Week’s Business Buyer (in 10 Seconds):
Amy is an attorney, but she spent most of her career in tech startups.
She practiced securities law early on, the law around raising money, which kept her on planes hunting for clients.
She founded two startups of her own and eventually sold her stake in the second.
Then she stepped away from work entirely for two years, and by the time she was ready to come back, the family was living off savings.
Her husband, a doctor, had just left the hospital to start his own company.
So with young kids at home, she wasn't going to bet the house on a second brand new business.
She looked for one to buy instead, but she had no system and no idea where to start, so she joined SMB Deal Hunter Pro.
She never expected to practice law again, so she chased HVAC and auto repair for a year and lost 5 deals in a row.
When her last deal collapsed, a friend asked why she was running from what she knew best.
Her answer was that most law firms are solo attorneys with no structure. She wanted a company, not a job.
The next day she searched law firms and found the one she had passed a year before.
5 months later, she closed that same deal.
Today she runs an 18-person law firm ten minutes from home, and it clears about $670K/yr in profit.
She is already restructuring the systems that held it back, and a month in, she says the place already feels like family.
And for our audio-only listeners, jump in and listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
But if you want to learn a bit more, let's dive into the story…
Hello SMB Deal Hunters!
How many of you would rather own a profitable business tomorrow than spend years building one from scratch?
Because building usually means…
→ A long search for product market fit
→ Figuring out how to sustainably get new customers
→ And hoping you begin making money before your savings run out
Amy knows that feeling.
She's an attorney in LA who came up through the tech startup world and founded two companies of her own.
But she says every business she's built took time to find its market before it made any money.
And with young kids at home and her husband, a doctor, just starting his own company, she wasn't about to bet the household on a third.
What she needed was someone in her corner who had done this before.
So she joined SMB Deal Hunter Pro.
As a quick reminder, SMB Deal Hunter Pro is 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.
Today, she owns an 18-person law firm in Los Angeles.
She bought it about a year and a half after joining us. And the firm clears about $670K/yr.
She's in the office every day by choice, ten minutes from her house, and she was making money from day one.
So how does that actually work?
Why would an attorney who was sure she'd never practice law again spend a full year chasing HVAC and auto repair before buying a law firm in the end?
And what did she learn about transition management after taking over a firm whose owner had been running it from the other side of the world?
And where did we step in?
We kept her steady through a year of dead deals and gave her the seller rapport approach she says carried this one through.
Then, with a cheaper bank still reopening settled questions at the 11th hour, we helped her find a lender we were confident would close on time.
Here's why this week's alumni case study is a must watch:
→ She put about 11% down on a roughly $1M deal, and the cash she needed at closing didn't all come directly from her bank account. We break down where the rest came from, plus the escrow holdback her bank funded instead of the more common forgivable seller note.
→ The firm came back on the market far more discounted than when she first saw it, and the seller still remembered her. We break down why she passed the first time and what changed.
→ A week before closing she watched a post-acquisition roundtable of our members describe the chaos of month one, and decided her business was too clean for that. Week one proved her wrong. She explains why the mess turned out to be an opportunity.
Click below and watch me walk through her journey step by step 👇
From Tech Startups to a $670K/yr Law Firm
And when we asked what she valued most about the program...
"For me, it was a total emotional roller coaster… I would pop in on DMs and be like, Bill (one of our acquisition strategists), LA is so competitive, what am I gonna do? And he would be like, don't worry, it takes time, the right deal will come for you. Just have patience, be persistent, keep searching… So it's so helpful to just have a neutral third party there that can be like, okay, everything's okay, let's think through this.”
Amy leaned on our battle-tested deal team to help her...
Switch lenders at the 11th hour, when the cheaper bank kept reopening questions everyone thought were settled
Build rapport with the seller from the first call, which she credits with holding the deal together when the two of them stopped seeing eye to eye
Reprice an earlier deal the broker had oversold as semi-absentee, without offending the seller
Talk soon,
Helen
👀 August was supposed to be a “slow month,” but 35 Pro members went under contract on more than $46M of businesses, and 10 more deals closed worth over $14M.
If that's what a slow month looks like, the next one should be interesting now that sellers are back from vacation and deal flow is picking up.
The next 90 days are also the last real window before the holidays, so to get buyers off the sidelines, we're adding a one-time end-of-quarter bonus for anyone who joins Pro in September.
👉 Book a free 1-on-1 strategy call and we'll build your search together: what you can realistically afford, the deals that fit, and your financing options.