This Week’s Business Buyer (in 10 Seconds):
Mary Catherine, who goes by MK, has 20 years in marketing and still works full time at a big food company.
She and her husband, Matt, both come from families who own small businesses, and they always wanted a business of their own.
So instead of starting from scratch or buying a franchise, they decided to buy something already running.
They had no idea how to go about it, so they joined SMB Deal Hunter Pro, our business buying accelerator.
They landed a Denver roofing, windows and siding company doing around $2.5M a year.
The owner built it on referrals alone, for over 10 years, with no marketing.
We helped them close it for just over $3M, about a year after they joined us.
Today, her husband runs it full time, MK puts in 10 to 20 hours a week, and it cashflows about $1M/yr.
It's been hard, but she'd still take it over working for someone else. Her words: "it hits different when it's your own."
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 driven past a business in your town that clearly does no marketing at all?
No website worth visiting, no ads, nothing. And you think, I could do something with that.
MK knows that feeling.
She's spent 20 years in marketing, so a business running on word of mouth alone looks like an opportunity to her.
She and Matt had been saying for years that they wanted something of their own, for them and their two kids.
So whatever they ended up buying, she was going to judge it on one thing.
What is it doing for marketing, and how could she use her own skills on it?
But she'd never bought a business before.
A house and some real estate, and that was it.
And when she started calling brokers, most of them never called her back.
The ones who did call often told her a story that wasn't true, and she had no way to know the difference.
She didn't realize you had to prove you were a serious buyer before anyone would even talk to you.
What she needed was someone in her corner who had done this before.
So they 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 a year later, they closed on a roofing, windows and siding company outside Denver for just over $3M.
The seller had built the whole thing on referrals for over 10 years and never did any marketing.
The business does around $2.5M a year in revenue and cashflows about $1M/yr.
Her husband, Matt, runs it full time now, a lot of it spent driving between job sites.
He was a civil engineer in the Air Force, so he knows construction, but he'd still never touched a roof before this.
MK puts in 10-20hrs a week around the corporate job she never left.
She wants to be in the business full time one day.
So how does that actually work?
How does a marketing executive who'd never bought a business end up owning a roofing company?
How did she successfully buy a $3M business when brokers originally wouldn’t even call her back?
And where did we step in?
We put her in front of one of our advisors, Ale, who sells businesses for a living, so MK knew what a broker actually wants to hear.
Then we showed her what belongs in an offer letter and how to structure the deal.
And in her own words, “we wouldn't have known where to start on the lender, the due diligence or the attorneys. Your team made all of it almost turnkey.”
👉 Watch exactly how we helped them buy a $1M/yr business in a trade neither of them had ever worked in
Here's why this week's alumni case study is a must watch:
→ The seller took his foot off the gas in the months before handover, so the pipeline MK and Matt inherited was thinner than they expected, and filling it back up became the first job of ownership. We walk through what they turned on to do it.
→ Neither of them had ever worked in roofing, and part of what sold them on this deal was the seller agreeing to stay a full year and hand over the relationships he built over 20 years in the trade. MK explains how that handover is actually going.
→ They put 2 major operational upgrades in place in the first few months that take most first-time buyers a year to get to. MK explains exactly what they did and why.
→ The whole operation runs on one full-time employee, plus Matt. Every trade is subcontracted to crews the previous owner trained, and MK breaks down how a job gets priced, from a few thousand dollars for a small repair up to $200K for a big one.
Click below and watch me walk through her journey step by step 👇
Why She Bought a $1M/yr Business With Zero Marketing
And when we asked what she valued most about the program...
"The most valuable part was having resources you don't even know you need. Mark and Ale were the two we worked with most, and when we couldn't get on a call, Mark would record a message and walk us through it. Having people who had already done this meant they could see the red flags we couldn't.”
MK leaned on our battle-tested deal team to help her...
Figure out what to say to brokers so they called back
Structure the deal to protect her downside
Get answers from an advisor who’s already been where she’s at
So if you want to buy a $1M+ business in 6-12 months but don't want to spend years figuring it out alone, let's talk.
Talk soon,
Helen
👀 Heads up: With 9 days left in September, 8 Pro members have already closed deals this month, with another 17 under LOI.
We helped them source on and off market opportunities and worked 1:1 with each of them to review deals for red flags and structure a winning offer. For the ones still under LOI, next up we'll help them navigate due diligence, secure financing, and prepare for the transition.
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 this month.
👉 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.