How Adam’s acquisition instantly replaced his salary from day one

Happy Monday!

Today's case study is about Adam who spent the first six years of his career closing over a billion dollars in commercial real estate loans.

When he decided to add a business acquisition to his portfolio, he brought all of that to the table, and the deal he closed looks unlike almost anything we’ve seen inside Acquisition Ace.

Before getting to Adam’s story, I’ve got a cool success story from the Acquisition Ace community.

Aisha left her corporate job at Amazon and bought a $2.4M CPA firm with her husband Mark while he kept his full-time W2 job.

They went from looking at big cities where brokers wouldn’t even return their calls to finding a small-town Indiana firm in an Amish community with sticky clients and clean books.

They closed on New Year’s Eve and are projected to make $500K+ annually by year two after transition costs.

They’re not CPAs, but brought Mark’s dad (who is a CPA) on board to help the seller feel comfortable, and it worked.

👉 Want to buy your first business and learn everything you need to have a successful acquisition? Book a call with our team here.

Before the deal

Adam had been investing in commercial real estate as both a limited and general partner when he decided to expand into service-based businesses.

He joined Acquisition Ace a year ago and started searching in earnest, focusing on the Midwest, targeting roughly $2M in revenue and $500K in SDE, and looking for businesses with stable teams and recession-resistant fundamentals.

He got close on landscaping firms, accounting firms, and a property management company before the right deal surfaced, five months into his search.

Finding the deal

Adam found the seller on a buyer-seller matching platform and reached out cold.

The seller was a former Rocket Mortgage director who had left to start his own residential mortgage brokerage in 2019, and by the time Adam found him, the business was operating in eight states, generating roughly $2M in revenue and $600K in SDE.

He needed someone who understood the industry, could handle backend compliance and administration, and free up his capacity to focus on sales and growth, and Adam fit that description exactly.

(Inside Acquisition Ace, members learn how to identify what sellers actually want, and how to position yourself as the right partner. To learn more about the Acquisition Ace community and how it can help with your first business acquisition, book a call with our team here.)

The deal breakdown

This deal went through several structural iterations before landing on what worked. SBA financing was ruled out, so Adam and the seller built an alternative structure entirely.

Entity purchased: 50% stake in the new technology entity

Purchase price for 50%: ~$200K effective out of pocket

Equity stake: $125K

Working capital for marketing and lead generation: $50K

Seller financing: 75% of the purchase price on full 10-year standby (no payments for a decade)

Adam’s out-of-pocket: ~$200K (25% of total deal value)

Current income from deal: $5K/month guaranteed, plus 50% of future distributions

The seller put 75% of the deal on full standby for 10 years because he genuinely believes in the upside, and because he wanted a capable partner with skin in the game.

What he’s doing now

Adam still works his W2, and the $5K monthly guarantee covers his salary in the meantime.

His focus now is learning the ins and outs of the residential mortgage business - an industry that operates very differently from commercial real estate.

The working capital is being deployed toward marketing the AI pre-approval tool, with the goal of building a scalable pipeline that feeds the brokerage with qualified leads.

On the side, he’s still watching commercial real estate deals and looking for his next service-based business acquisition.

The key lesson

“I knew this was different and special. The rapport was immediate, our backgrounds were aligned, and he wasn’t motivated by price - he was motivated by finding the right person.”

Adam won this deal because he understood what the seller actually wanted, positioned himself as the right partner, and built genuine trust from the first conversation.

That’s a skill you can build that works in any industry, on any deal - and something I can help you learn.

Ready to find and close your first acquisition?

Join the Acquisition Ace community with 2,000+ members who are learning to find, finance, and close deals just like Adam.

👉 Book a call with our team here to see if it's a good fit.