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Investment Banker → $600K Dryer Vent Cleaning Business in 4 Months

Author

Helen Guo
February 02, 2026

Hey - Helen here,

Mikhail had every advantage you'd want going into a search.

4-5 years in investment banking. He started at PwC and moved into M&A. He knew how to read financials, structure deals, and run due diligence on transactions worth hundreds of millions.

So when he decided he wanted to buy a small business, he figured he'd just... do it. He already had a stellar background for it, right? 

He took courses. He learned the SMB acquisition model. He started reaching out to brokers on BizBuySell.

And then reality hit.

"I would jump on a call with brokers and would take time, and then out of five businesses I would discuss, none of them would be financeable."

He started realizing a lot of the issues in finding a business aren’t knowledge problems. They’re tactical problems.

How do I negotiate with the seller? How do I figure out red flags in industries I don’t even know? How do I know if this business will even be financeable before I waste weeks on it?

He was burning 20+ hours a week on top of his demanding banking job. He was looking at deals that were never going to close.

A few months in, he hit a crossroads:

Option 1: Abandon the search and commit to another 10 years of corporate.

Option 2: Find a way to actually make this work.

So, he joined SMB Deal Hunter Pro, our business buying accelerator.

30 days later, he was under LOI.

4 months later, he closed on a $600K business at a 2.6x multiple.

The business? Dryer vent cleaning. A niche he didn't even know existed when he started searching.

And he did it all without quitting his banking job. His wife now operates the business while he plans acquisition number two.

Here's a sneak peek at the deal:

🔥 $230K SDE

🔥 30% EBITDA margins

🔥 20-year operating history with established HOA relationships

🔥 Recession-tested (business recovered to pre-COVID levels by end of 2020)

But the path to close wasn't smooth. In the interview, Mikhail breaks down:

→ How we made it possible for him to keep searching while keeping his job (because he couldn’t keep wasting 20 hours / week on it)

→ How he convinced an 18-year employee who owned 10% of the business to stay (this guy was positioned to buy the business himself and chose not to)

→ How we helped him structure the deal with a seller who was retiring to Greece and needed liquidity, not a long seller note

→ Why he negotiated $50K in working capital at closing and how that one move carried them through the slow season

And when we asked him what advice he'd give to someone just starting out, here's what he said:

"Figure out the most efficient way to spend your time. Most of the time it will be actually thinking through the business acquisition, thinking through the commercial diligence rather than sifting through thousands of BizBuySell businesses that are just not really financeable, sellable, not good quality businesses."

- Mikhail

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

  • Stop wasting time on unfinanceable deals (our curated deal flow meant he only looked at opportunities that could actually close)

  • Get a second opinion from M&A advisors who've seen thousands of small deals and know exactly what to pressure-test during diligence

  • Structure a deal with a retiring seller that worked for both sides

  • And close on a business his wife now runs while he stays in his banking job and plans the next acquisition

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.