This Week’s Business Buyer (in 10 Seconds):
Reid spent 15 years in offshore oil and gas, where constant travel came with the job.
But with two little kids at home, he wanted off the road for good.
So instead of quitting to search full time, he hunted for a business on nights and weekends.
After 3 months of sifting through listings on his own, he still couldn't tell a good deal from a bad one.
That's when he joined SMB Deal Hunter Pro.
Almost exactly a year later, he closed on an $895k manufacturer in Hawaii, a place he didn't mind visiting for work.
The business throws off about $380k/yr in cash flow.
Today, he runs it remotely from Las Vegas, plans to fly out quarterly, and did all of it without quitting his job.
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 have found a business you actually liked, then skipped right past it because of where it was?
Maybe it was a few states away, or somewhere you'd never pictured yourself spending a working Tuesday.
So you closed the tab and went looking for something closer to home.
Reid almost made that exact mistake.
He'd spent 15 years in offshore oil and gas, running projects with a lot of moving parts and a lot of people to keep in line.
He'd gotten in young, back when the travel was the best part. Then the kids came, and being gone stopped feeling like an adventure.
On his own, he was looking at everything from $75k businesses up to $5 million ones, and he didn't have much confidence he could pull any of it off.
What he needed was someone in his corner who had done this before.
So he 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.
About 8 months in, our team put a small Hawaiian manufacturer in the roofing trade on his daily deal list.
(That list gets built around what each Pro member is actually looking for, not just what's on the market that week.)
But Reid almost let it go.
The whole point of buying a business was to travel less.
Then his wife pointed out that the current owner was already running it from out of state, so why couldn't he?
About 4 months later, he closed.
Today he owns a 13-year-old manufacturer selling to contractors and homeowners who keep coming back.
Margins are over 50%, revenue has climbed every year, and single jobs run from a couple hundred dollars up to $70k.
And the part we love about Reid's story: he runs the whole thing from home in Las Vegas, without quitting his 9 to 5.
So how does that actually work?
How does a guy who'd never owned a business end up buying one in a state he'd never set foot in?
And how does he run a business doing $380k/yr in cash flow from 6 hours away by plane, while still working his day job?
And where did we step in?
We cleared the junk out of his deal flow and put this one in front of him. Then every time he hit a speed bump, he got a straight answer the same day from one of our strategists.
Here's why this week's alumni case study is a must watch:
→ His first deal collapsed over customer concentration, after he'd already flown out to meet the seller and lined up the banks. We break down what killed it.
→ His bank wouldn't release the money until he'd registered a new company in Hawaii, a routine filing the state then told him would take 10 weeks. He had no way to speed it up, and he was afraid the seller would get cold feet. We walk through how the deal survived it.
→ He'd never worked in the industry, and even so, the roofing side never worried him. What scared him was QuickBooks and never having owned a business. He shares how he's getting comfortable with it.
→ He spends 40 hours a week on the business, on top of a job he hasn't quit, and he's doing it on purpose. We break down his plan for cutting that time in half and why he’s investing so much up front.
Click below and watch me walk through his journey step by step 👇
How He Runs a $380K/yr Business in Hawaii (Without Quitting His Job)
And when we asked what he valued most about the program...
“First off was just the amount of deals you get and how they're organized. It's a lot easier to parse through than having multiple accounts with BizBuySell and all the other listing agencies. Just having that Google Sheet with everything laid out, you can sort, you can keep notes on it and track your progress with each one. Number two would be talking to Bill and Mark (our acquisition strategists) and the team and just having those guys in your back pocket, and they shoot it to you straight.”
Reid leaned on our battle-tested deal team to help him...
Put every listing worth seeing in one place, so he stopped juggling accounts across BizBuySell and half a dozen other sites.
Ran the numbers with him on the deals he got serious about, so he wasn't guessing at what a good one looked like.
Gave him straight answers the same day, every time the LOI or the closing, hit a speed bump.
Stayed with him for a full year and one dead deal, right up to the day he closed.
Talk soon,
Helen
👀 Heads up: August isn't even over yet, and 7 Pro members have already closed deals, with another 25 under LOI.
Reid spent 3 months hunting on his own before he joined, and still couldn't tell a good deal from a bad one. Our members don't do that part alone.
Those 25 under LOI are working through the same stretch he did, except with our advisors on the other end of a Slack message or 1:1 call.
And there's a reason there are that many right now.
Deal activity always picks up as summer ends and everyone's back at their desk. At this pace, August is tracking to be one of our best months inside Pro.
So if you want to work with us to find, finance, and acquire a million-dollar cash-flowing business in the next 6-12 months, start now and you could be under contract before the holidays.