“I knew this was different and special from day one”

Happy Friday!

Earlier this week, I told you about Adam, a commercial real estate banker who:

• Bought 50% of a residential mortgage brokerage and AI pre-approval tool for ~$200K out of pocket

• With 75% of the purchase price seller-financed on full 10-year standby

• And an instant $5K monthly payment that replaced his W2 salary from day one

Today, you’ll see how he pulled it off and get access to our full conversation. 👇

Before sharing Adam’s biggest takeaways, here’s another Acquisition Ace community success spotlight.

Evan closed on a $1.6M janitorial company after joining Acquisition Ace.

He went from scattered and uncertain to structured and focused, then closed his first deal.

👉 Want the structure and guidance that took Evan from confused to closing? Book a call with our team here.

“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.”

That’s what Adam told me after closing one of the most creatively structured deals we’ve seen inside Acquisition Ace, with a seller who believed in his partner enough to put 75% of the deal on standby for a decade.

3 key takeaways from our conversation

1. Figure out what the seller actually wants, then be that

The seller had higher offers, but he didn’t take them.

He wanted a partner who understood his industry, could free up his capacity, and had genuine skin in the game.

Adam figured that out on the first call and positioned himself accordingly.

Price was never the deciding factor.

2. When SBA says no, there’s still a way

Every lender Adam approached flagged a conflict of interest with residential mortgage brokerage.

Rather than treating that as a dealbreaker, he and the seller built an entirely different structure - seller financing 75% on full standby with a guaranteed monthly payment to Adam in the meantime.

(Adam’s commercial real estate background gave him the underwriting skills and lender relationships to navigate a deal structure that would have stopped most buyers cold. Inside Acquisition Ace, members learn how to leverage their existing background to structure deals others can’t. If that’s something you’d like to learn more about, book a call with our team here.)

3. Aligned incentives close deals

The seller put 75% of the purchase price on a 10-year full standby note, meaning no payments for a decade.

That speaks volumes.

This week’s action item

Before your next seller conversation, write down three things that the seller might want beyond price:

• Legacy

• Partnership

• Continued growth

• Taking care of their team

• Freeing up their time

Then, think about whether you can genuinely offer any of those things.

Sellers who aren’t purely motivated by money are often the easiest to close, if you figure out what they actually care about first.

To hear the full story of how Adam structured this unconventional deal from start to finish…

Watch our full interview here.

P.S. Adam joined Acquisition Ace a year before closing this deal, and spent that time building the judgment to recognize a great opportunity when it appeared, and the skills to structure it correctly.

That’s what our community is built to help you develop, so if you also want to build a strong foundation to set you up for success in acquisitions…

👉 Book a call with our team here.