Today’s Sponsor

Hello SMB Deal Hunters!

I’m excited to share 5 new off-market businesses for sale sourced directly by our team in today's Off The Grid issue.

🔎 Looking for deals in your area? We can source them for you.

This issue is proudly sponsored by SMB Deal Exchange, our new platform for connecting buyers and sellers of off-market businesses.

COMMUNITY WINS

Here’s what one SMB Deal Hunter Pro member shared this past week:

👀 Michael’s LOI is one of many this month.

Our members have already closed 4 deals and put another 20 under LOI in July, and the month isn't even over.

None of them decided last week. They made the call months ago, sitting right where you are now, reading an email a lot like this one. On average, our members go from joining to closing in about 8 months, versus 23 for buyers going at it alone.

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 the name in this email by early next year.

NEW OFF-MARKET DEALS

These deals span the country. For custom-sourced deals in your area, click here.

1/ Hot Tub, Sauna, and Cold Plunge Sales and Service

📍 Location: Texas
💼 EBITDA: $250,000
📊 Revenue: $1,120,000
📅 Established: 2003

💭 My 2 Cents: Everyone who wanted a hot tub bought one in 2021, and dealer sales have been flat ever since. The growth in this category moved to sauna and cold plunge, and most of that demand is commercial (gyms, studios, recovery bars) rather than backyards. This business sells in the Texas Panhandle, the owner runs it absentee, and behind the showroom sit 275 recurring water care accounts, with about $300,000 of inventory on the floor. Spa sales are seasonal while water care isn't, so I'd want the agreements themselves: whether they're weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly plans, how many have been on the books longer than a year, and how many came from customers who bought their spa here. I'd also want to see the revenue split by product line for three years, including what share now comes from plug-and-play plunge units (which ship without an install crew and leave no service work behind). Then I'd split the technicians' hours between warranty callbacks and billable work, because manufacturers reimburse warranty labor at roughly $55 to $75 a job while the same repair bills at closer to $150 an hour out of warranty, and most dealers barely break even on it. Ultimately, a buyer is inheriting a service book whose best margin years are still ahead of it, since coverage from that 2021 boom hasn't finished burning off.

2/ Boat Rental Business

📍 Location: Texas
💼 EBITDA: $300,000
📊 Revenue: $700,000
📅 Established: 2014

💭 My 2 Cents: New powerboat sales fell 8 to 10% last year while the rental market kept growing, because plenty of people who would once have bought a boat now rent one instead. That is a tailwind for an operator like this one, which already has boats in the water on a reservoir north of Houston and a commercial permit from the river authority. Two managers and a full-time detailer run it year round, scaling to 15 or 18 captains and crew through the summer, which is how the seller is down to five or 10 hours a week. The business comes with about $1 million of boats, trucks, trailers, and fueling equipment, so I'd want the fleet listed boat by boat with engine hours and age, since the replacement cycle on hard-used rental hulls is what turns that number into annual capex (freshwater is kinder than saltwater, so useful life should run longer here than a coastal operator would budget). 40% of bookings come through Google Ads against a 40% repeat base, so I'd also want cost per booking from paid search across the last three seasons, because that is the one input a competitor can bid up overnight while the repeat half is the part nobody can outbid. The moat here is capacity: the authority approves every dock and slip on the lake, so there's a hard limit on how many rental businesses can exist on it.

3/ Live Music and Comedy Venue

📍 Location: Florida
💼 EBITDA: $750,000
📊 Revenue: $3,300,000
📅 Established: 2014

💭 My 2 Cents: At a comedy club the ticket money mostly goes to the comedian and the bar is what the venue keeps. This room runs about four times the volume of a typical North American comedy club, which averages roughly $750,000 a year. 70% of its bookings are repeat performers and promoters, which keeps a venue's biggest risk under control: an empty night still costs rent and staff, while an act that sold well last year is a more predictable bet. A general manager and a floor manager run the room with about 15 mostly part-time staff, and $20,000 to $25,000 a month goes to promoting shows. I'd want the talent structure show by show, because in a door deal the act takes 70% to 85% of ticket revenue, so a weak night costs the act too, while a flat fee is owed in full whether the room fills or not, which puts every empty seat on the venue. $3 to $4 million of next season's sales are already guaranteed, but nobody can guarantee what a crowd drinks, so I'd also want average beverage spend per head by month, since the calendar thins from seven nights a week in season to four in late summer. The owner still books the room himself, which matters less than it sounds if those bookings run through agencies and promoters, because those relationships belong to the room rather than to him.

CASE STUDY

Imagine buying a $3.1M print and mail shop while working 60-hour weeks as a big law attorney in NYC.

Sounds crazy, but Tatiana did exactly that.

On top of that, she could only give the search 30 minutes a day, and she'd never bought or evaluated a business before in her life.

After joining SMB Deal Hunter Pro, she beat out 11 other buyers, including people who'd bought businesses before, to close on a 35-year-old shop that now cash flows $867K a year.

How?

That's what we break down in this week's case study. We reveal…

→ How Tatiana lost the deal once, and what changed in the six weeks before she won it back.

How the retiring seller ended up financing most of the $3.1M himself, paid out over the next ten years.

What ChatGPT got wrong when she used it to pick her first offer number, and how our team corrected it.

How she runs the business 300 miles away from her desk in Manhattan, and why she says it made her enjoy her legal career more.

4/ Tree Removal and Landscaping Company

📍 Location: Michigan
💼 EBITDA: $1,225,000
📊 Revenue: $3,500,000
📅 Established: 2008

💭 My 2 Cents: A city removal contract is worth more than the same revenue from homeowners, because residential tree work spikes with storms and goes quiet in between while a municipal contract comes out of a budget. This company recently signed a $3 million one, which changes what the operation is: eleven employees working against a schedule the city sets rather than chasing storm calls. I'd want the contract term and the rebid date alongside the split between municipal and residential revenue, because those two together tell you whether this is a municipal business with a retail arm or a retail business that just won one big job. I'd also ask how the payroll splits between climbing work and ground work, because anything performed off the ground falls into one of the most expensive workers' comp classes there is, and the most common mistake in this trade is reporting all of it under the high code when only part of it belongs there. Then I'd want the equipment listed out, since trucks and chippers are expensive and their age turns into a replacement number a buyer has to budget every year. That equipment goes into what a bonding company looks at, and since cities often require a bond on a contract this size, the real limit on a business like this is how much a bonding company will back at one time rather than how much work is out there.

5/ Wholesale Consumer Electronics and Sports Licensed Products

📍 Location: New York
💼 EBITDA: $1,000,000
📊 Revenue: $10,000,000
📅 Established: 2001

💭 My 2 Cents: The hardest thing to get in sports merchandise isn't customers, it's permission. This business holds licenses from four major sports leagues and more than 100 universities, though the college side likely runs through one agency rather than a hundred separate deals. Two owners split the work between sales and finance on one side and logistics and operations on the other, across a team of six. Orders run on 90 to 120 day lead times, so the cash needed to run this business is a separate number from the price of buying it. Permission isn't free, though: royalties run 8% to 15% of the wholesale price, so I'd want the renewal date and guaranteed minimum on each license, because a minimum means that in a slow year you still owe royalties on sales you never made. I'd also want to know which channels each license approves, because that decides where growth can come from: if the big online marketplaces and discount chains are off limits, the obvious expansion isn't available. And I'd want the split between licensed product and unlicensed private label electronics, because those two halves are worth different multiples, one a protected position and the other competing with anyone who can find a factory. Licensors expand with partners they already trust, so 25 years of clean royalty reports is what gets this company offered the next category before anyone outside gets a look.

COMMUNITY PERKS

Ready to buy and operate a $1M+ business? Partner with my team and get expert support at every step.

Want to invest passively in SMB acquisitions? Get access to investment opportunities.

Get a personal introduction to my preferred SBA 7(a) lender, non-SBA lenders, Quality of Earnings providers, or legal counsel

Raising capital for your deal? I’ll connect you with investors from the SMB Deal Hunter Community.

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RECENT PODCAST EPISODE

Kevin spent 10 years climbing to partner at an investment firm, becoming wealthier than he ever imagined. But the view from the top left him unhappy, and he missed building something of his own.

So he walked away, and bought a tiny radon remediation company for $60,000, a business he knew almost nothing about going in. The next two years were brutal. He slept in the office and fought for the business every single day.

Somewhere in that grind, he cracked an approach that turned one struggling shop into a machine. The company grew from 3 employees to more than 700, and he eventually sold it to a private equity firm.

That $60,000 bet turned into an $80 million exit in just ten years. Kevin has used that same approach again and again since, and now owns around ten companies, buying one or two more every year.

And for our audio-only listeners, jump in and listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!

THAT’S A WRAP

See you tomorrow!

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Disclaimer

This publication is a newsletter only and the information provided herein is the opinion of our editors and writers only. Any transaction or opportunity of any kind is provided for information only; SMB Deal Hunter does not verify nor confirm information. SMB Deal Hunter is not making any offer to readers to participate in any transaction or opportunity described herein.

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