Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Inside a $1.5M Pool Service Company Making $450K Profit

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

A long-standing Northeastern Ohio pool service company with ~$1.95M revenue and ~$454k EBITDA is up for sale at ~3x SDE, sparking debate on seasonality, retail real estate, and debt structures in a niche where private equity rarely ventures.Business Listing – https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/pool-service-company-in-northeastern-ohio/2332791/Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.💰 Sponsored by:Main Street SummitJoin 1,000+ business owners, operators, and entrepreneurs for three days of actionable content, intimate peer connections, and specialized tracks led by real-world practitioners. Bill is speaking this year, and he describes it as one of the highlights of his year. Don’t miss it—secure your spot now at https://www.mainstreetsummit.com/Capital Pad – A platform connecting accredited investors with vetted small business acquisition deals. Discover exclusive opportunities at https://capitalpad.comIn this episode, the hosts welcome guest Rand Larsen (Scale Path) to break down a second-generation pool service and maintenance company in Northeastern Ohio. With nearly $2M in revenue, ~$454k EBITDA, and ~$554k SDE, the company is priced at ~$1.5M (about 3x). The deal also includes $80k in inventory, while $750k of real estate is held separately. The business boasts a 13,000 sq. ft. retail/service building, eight employees, and a 60-year history dating back to 1963.Key Highlights:- $1.95M revenue, ~$454k EBITDA, ~$554k SDE; priced at ~$1.5M (~3x).- $750k real estate (not included in price); 13,000 sq. ft. retail + service building.- Eight employees; route-based recurring pool maintenance vs. high-ticket installs.- Seasonal cash flow risk in Ohio; SBA lenders may only close at start of busy season.- Opportunities in retail chemical sales, service expansion, or re-engaging in installs.Subscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and welcome back to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. This is the internet's number one podcast on buying, selling, and operating small businesses. And we have a great one for you here today. It is the quintessential searcher roll up business. It is a pool maintenance company. This is a route-based business taking care of people's pools. But in a somewhat unexpected location, it is in Ohio. So there's some unique dynamics in a seasonal market like that. The business makes half a million bucks a year of SDE, so it's a good one. It says SBA pre-approved.

There's a lot of fun things about this one, and we also have Rand Larson guest hosting with us today from Scale Path. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory. Hey everyone, it's Bill. And I want to tell you about an event that's honestly become one of the highlights in my year. And that's Main Street Summit in Columbia, Missouri.

I've been a speaker and an attendee at Main Street Summit for a couple of years now. And I'm going to tell you firsthand, it's really not your typical conference at all. It's more like a thousand business owners, operators, and entrepreneurs, all gathering in Columbia, Missouri for three days of practical and actionable business content. It totally takes over downtown Columbia. and they have probably 20 different venues. It's very cool. One of the things that really sets Main Street Summit apart for me is their relationships.

I wrote on X after last year's event that it was great talking about business in life with people who really have become a much more than just conference buddies. You know, business really can be a great vehicle towards deep friendship if you're willing to go there with people. And that's exactly what happens at Main Street Summit. You're really not sitting in massive auditoriums. You're in intimate settings, art galleries, small classrooms, et cetera, with world-class business owners and operators who have lived the challenges that are keeping you up at night.

So really no matter what industry you're in, from plumbing to e-commerce, there are specialized tracks designed for real practitioners like you. Main Street Summit is coming up. It is November 4th through 6th, 2025. It is in Columbia, Missouri. Do not miss this chance to connect with people who really get what you're building. You can visit Mainstreet Summit.com to grab a ticket, and I will see you there. I'm speaking again this year. So if you find me, come up and say hi. See you at Main Street Summit. All right, this is one of those days where we said, hit record, hit record. We started talking about the deal before we hit record.

But here we know what I'm thinking, Bill? What we should do, you know how certain podcasts will, like, do like a one hour episode, but then if you're like a paid subscriber, you get like the two hour episode. I think our paid subscriber would just be like we hit record as soon as we're on. It's just everything beforehand. You get to hear those. We just talked about eight other deals and we're like, nah, nah, yeah, okay. Yeah.

You get to heal the story of how Michael stole a street sign from San Antonio. That was a good story. Yep, which we talked about right before we got on, which I will not incriminate him about. But I'm very thankful that he did. But we do have both a guest and a fun deal today. So Rand Larson from Scale Path is here. Thanks for being here, Rand. Yeah, thanks for having me.

You do not look like you're in a van anymore. You're settled back in. You were, how long were you in the van? Like, six months or something? Seven months straight and then give or take another couple months. Tell people what you did in the van. Yeah, yeah. I traveled around the U.S.

Basically everywhere east of Dallas. I mean, everywhere. I was throwing a small business owner, searcher meetups all around the U.S. During that trip, we probably did 15 to 20 cities. And I've done a ton of other meetups around the U.S. And I was like, hey, you know, instead of, getting hotels and Airbnbs everywhere I go,

it would be equally as economical to buy an asset, which is a camper, it's the most ridiculous business asset ever. And it totally works. Like I've saved money by buying a $42,000 ban. And it's like, yeah, I would go around the country and live and sleep in it and like give tours of the band

whenever I popped into St. Louis or wherever, wherever. Bill, did Rand come see you in person? Heather, did he come see you guys? He did. He came to Charlotte. I was out of town and I felt really bad. Yeah. I got a tour of the van in the Aquasiel parking lot.

Oh, you are special and we are not. Well, then Rayne was like, I got to go. I have a more important meeting. So he was there for like 12 minutes. Yeah. I forgot what I was. You stopped. So that was awesome.

Thank you. Absolutely. Well, Rand, well, hang on, just ran, will you give the quick, what the heck is scale path here before you? Yeah. Yeah. I bought a majority of scale path from Michael Gurdley. We're a community with small business owners. We build peer groups.

We do educational sessions, bring in guest experts of variety of topics. We got a private podcast. We got a slack room, a bunch of that stuff. Our goal is to connect entrepreneurs, small business owners, and help them share experience and information so all of us can grow faster and make less mistakes in a nutshell. Cool. So peer group for small businesses.

which you bought most of from Michael Girdley and then promptly replaced him on this episode of the podcast. So you're doing better looking Michael Gurdley. The fish that ate the whale, Rand Larson. Yeah, yeah, one step at a time. Very nice. Well, so Rand has seen a ton of small businesses through the scale path community

and actually brought today's deal, which is a fun one. So I'm going to put it on the screen and let's check it out. Thank you to bring in, thank you to Rand for bringing this. So this is a pool service company in Northeastern Ohio. So a very specific location, northeastern Ohio. It's relocatable. It's relocatable. Okay. We'll see about that. It has $1.95 million of revenue and $454,000 of EBITDA. It says it has $554,000 of SDE.

So there's a $100,000 exactly bridge from eBet. It says it has $750,000 of real estate, which is not included in the asking price. And they want $1.5 million, 1.495 million for it. So almost exactly three times SDE EBITDA, three times the midpoint of SDE and EBITDA has been around since 1963. That is amazing. That is amazing. That is an accurate description to say it is a longstanding, profitable and reputable pool service company, as described by Kim Kurt, the broker of trusted business transaction advisors. Yo, I haven't been to this part of Ohio in a long time, but I don't think this photo, is that northeastern Ohio?

No, it can be. If it is. Yeah. No, seriously, that could be northeastern Ohio. I mean, it's actually way too flat. That's the only thing that throws me off. Ohio is a little bit. hilly, but houses do look that nice and it costs $500,000. It looks like there's a beach. Yeah. If this is Northeastern Ohio, Kelsey Lerick has been really lying to me about what Northeastern Ohio is like because I need to move there. I did not see the beach. So no, this is, unless this is not on the area as well.

It's not it. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. Okay. So questions about the photo aside. It says this is a second generation pool service and maintenance company with an impeccable reputation with customer accounts, full service and support to clients as well as operating from a

well-known retail location. The business has a well-developed customer base and is the leading expert service provider within the market service area. Key personnel are in place for continued successful operation with new ownership. The asking price includes $80,000 of inventory but does not include the real estate which they own, which I assume consists of, as listed here, a 13,000 square foot building, which includes inventory shelving and a service area, offices, conference room, and retail space. It's a well-known location with drive-by traffic and easy access from several local roadways.

It says competition, and there are two smaller competitors, but this is the leading service provider in the market. Has eight employees. The business could be expanded by increasing the service territory and adding additional tax. The business previously installed in-ground concrete pools and has migrated over 50-plus years into a service-based pool maintenance business. Focus on providing specialized service such as pool heater installations to commercial and residential customers. The business could also easily re-engage the market with the installation of the in-ground pool structures.

Heather will be happy to know the deal is already SBA lender pre-qualified. Seller would also continue a small note payable to supplement, as well as provide eight weeks of transverseas. training or maybe even stay on longer with an additional consulting agreement, but they are retiring, it's what it says. So that is everything we know. What do you guys think about this one? I'm going to be worried if they're not SBA pre-qualified at this point, even though we've established it doesn't mean anything.

If they're not saying it, there's a red flag that goes off to me. Right. This is just sort of standard. And at this multiple, I can see, you know, any SBA lender saying, sure we pre-qualified this. It doesn't have any red flags, at least from what they've told us so far. I do find it interesting that they've migrated away a long time ago from installs, from putting in new pool projects. So they're not a construction pool company, which is kind of really where the dividing line is when you start looking at pool services. Are they doing new build project

oriented work? Or is it recurring type, reoccurring type customers where it's just maintenance. It sounds like this is pretty much all maintenance with maybe a little bit of project work with installing heaters, you know, but it's almost all maintenance, which I like. That's something that kind of threw me off is eight employees on almost two million in revenue feels like that's not a lot of employees. I'm not so familiar with revenue count per employee, but that seems like the employee side is a little bit low. I'm not sure, right? I mean, they're doing pretty good revenue per employee. Yeah. I wonder about the crew size for this, too. This might be a one person in a truck, you know, kind of crew. I don't, I don't think it's a two-person crew. So it's a route-based business, which is really nice because then you're just trying to figure out route density, you know, optimization. Heather, your point about you like the service and maintenance side of it versus project. The only counterpoint I have to that is the average order value.

you is probably $40,000 on a Shotcrete or a Gunite concrete pool versus this is probably, I don't know, $100 a month or something like that, you know, but, but is very recurring. So those are the tradeoffs here. And it's very seasonal, I'm sure, because it is in Ohio. You know, obviously in the southern states, it's not too seasonal. People are having the pools maintained and cleaned and and they're full all year long. I would imagine in Ohio there's like two seasons where you kind of close down the pool for the winter and then there's like the open the pool season. So it's probably got a fairly good swing in those months and probably pretty low on cash flow

in the middle of winter. That, okay, as far as the SBA prequalification, this is where I'll argue, where it's maybe not that easy to just say this is prequalified because the more seasonal the cash flows are, the tougher it is for the bank at the end of the day to make the loan. Even if they like everything else about it, if they see too much seasonality in the cash flow, they worry that a new buyer is not going to be able to conserve cash or cut expenses or whatever it is they need to do to get through the slow period. And even if they do get comfortable with that, they will absolutely want to close the loan at the beginning of the busy season, right before the busy season starts,

certainly not in the slow season. So those are some things the lender would think about. for something like this. What do you think about this retail space that they mentioned a couple of times? I see that a lot with pool services companies that I've looked at, where they've got a store, basically, that their customers can come into and purchase, you know, all their supplies and, you know, nets and whatever else they need. A lot of the pool services companies I've looked at also have a retail store. And it may be after you sign the NDA,

you get some clarity there. Like when I read it in the first part of the listing, it says they operate from a well-known retail location, which made me wonder, like, are they cohabitating with, but they own the real estate. So it's not that. But it's just quirky to me.

I do, I agree. Like, you got to go buy, you know, your, you know, chlorine tablets and you got to buy your shock and you got to buy salt and all that kind of stuff. And I think you go down a rabbit hole really quickly with pools where you realize like Lowe's and Home Depot don't have what you need.

The local, one of the local pool stores here, they also sell like patio furniture and expensive grills and things like that because the people who are coming in there are probably also, you know, consumers of those things. One of our members in ScalePath has bought a number of pool service companies in the San Francisco Bay area. And something I learned recently is, it's kind of hard or there's not a really good reason to move a location once you're in pool

service because of how route-based it is. There's no, you know, you can't integrate everyone into a large location if you grow because then your technicians are driving now 45 minutes and not 15 or 20. And so I wonder when they say, you know, this is a well-known location. I mean, they've been there since 1963. Like everyone does know that they're there and there's no real reason to move. So I guess it would depend a lot on whether the retail store really drives business or if this is like, is it centrally located to your point, Rand. You know, there's a lot of questions before I can merely make a judge on this. The one thing I do know is if they own the building, you need a negative ad back to EBITDA here for market rent if you're going to value

the business. Yeah. They're probably not paying themselves market rent in the P&L, so you've got to adjust that, whether you're buying it or not. If you're buying it, if you're going to buy the real estate, you need to make sure your loan sort of, you know, gets factored in there. You add back their historical rent. You take out the loan. But if you're not buying it, you still have to adjust historically to what market rent is going to be for you. And a lot of times that eats up a big chunk of our stated ebidah in these kinds of deals. So I have seen a very interesting dynamic happen once or twice where sellers kind of or buyers rather kind of cut off their net. despite their face. Like if you put, if you undercharge the business for for rent, right, real estate is going to be valued on a cap rate, right? And typically at a much higher multiple than

the business, right? Like a 10 cap is a 10x. Like a, I don't know, an eight cap is what, like a 12.5x or something, right? So every dollar of business valuation, you get back at 3x, you sacrifice on valuation for the real estate at 12x or whatever. And if you put your own business in this building at a, you know, on a 20-year below-market lease, you've really impaired the value of the real estate. On the flip side, though, if the seller doesn't really understand that, you, the buyer can get the business and the real estate, rather, valued based on the below market rent, and then immediately break your own lease, move out, right, release the building at market rate,

and make a ton of money, basically flip the real estate out of this transaction. if the seller has got his own business in there a below market rate, and then that lease is what is used to calculate the cap rate. There's also, I mean, maybe a role for a sale lease back here. You know, if you kind of could fine tune the numbers. There's a business in Columbia right now. We've roofed part of it. It's a pharmaceutical business. They have a 64-acre campus, and it's 700,000 square feet of buildings. They're doing a 20-year triple-year triple-year triple-year net lease, sale lease back, $340 million, which is just a staggering, it's got to be, it'll be the largest real estate transaction in South Carolina history if they pull it off. But sale leasebacks are a really, really interesting mechanism that almost never make it to like mainstream businesses.

But private equity firms use them all the time because they can package the deal and go, okay, purchase price allocation between working capital between the operating business, between employment agreements, and they can kind of fine-tune some things, and then recoup a lot of cash outlay almost immediately right after the purchase. Hey, everyone, it's Bill, and I want to tell you about maybe the most exciting sponsor we've had in a long time on the pod. It's called CapitalPad, and it is the thing that I wish existed when I started my journey of operating and investing in small businesses. So CapitalPad is a marketplace place for acquisition entrepreneurs. That is, people who want to buy a business and need capital to list their deals and solicit capital from other people who want to invest in acquisition

deals. So if you want to back somebody buying a small business, CapitalPad is a place to do it. And if you want to buy a business and need capital, you can go on CapitalPad to be introduced to investors. So the really great thing, too, from the investor side is that CapitalPad takes care of all of the details that can get hairy with small business acquisitions. They handle standardized terms, standardized governance, standardized distributions all up front in black and white. Basically, CapitalPad professionalizes investing in small businesses. And the returns can be really, really good. I'm so stoked they exist. It's founded by my friend Travis, who is a phenomenal entrepreneur in his own right. So if this sounds like something that is appealing to you,

if you want to buy a small business and need capital, or if you want to invest in small businesses, go check out Capitalpad.com and tell them that Acquisitions Anonymous sent you. We do see them sometimes in Main Street businesses. I mean, I've seen them. If you try to do it with an SBA loan, you can't take the net proceeds from the sale lease back and have that be your equity.

You have to still put the equity in, and then maybe you'll get some back from the sale lease back proceeds. That's one way to do it. But if you, let's just say you try to do what, Bill was talking about on this one and get an SBA loan, the SBA lender's going to have a bad, not probably going to let you because it's a retail location. Then they're going to say retail is location dependent. We don't want to see you moving. Even though the retail little storefront is probably not really driving that much revenue, lenders will get hung up on that and say, we don't want you to

lose your retail location and have to move to another one. So that would become a little sticky if you tried to do that with SBA debt. But otherwise, you know, if you just kind of went down the middle and bought the real estate and just stayed in it or you don't buy the real estate and you just enter into a market rent

and as long as that doesn't take away too much of your cash flow, a 3x multiple, it sounds pretty good for a business like this, to be honest. I think the only negative I see so far is seasonality. So, I mean, location-wise,

you think about your total addressable market it on something like this. It's in Ohio. The pool companies that I've worked with more closely in the past were in like Scottsdale, where everybody had a pool and you kind of had to have a pool in order to survive. This is a really peculiar location. And is there a way to grow this business? It seems difficult.

There's not a lot of pools in Ohio because you can't use them six months out of the year. It's too cold. I don't see that, you know, the density, like you can't go, okay, now I'm going to service this home, go next door. There's probably not a pool next door. There's probably not a pool in the next 10 houses you're going to visit. Well, they did say you could get back into installing pools again, which they supposedly did for a long time. I would be really interested in why they got out of that and when they got out of that. If they got out of that two years ago, you have a problem because then your SBA lender is probably going to freak out.

So hopefully there's not a big decline in the recent history. as they backed out of installing. But this business has been around since 1963. So hopefully that was a long time ago. They've probably iterated a bunch of different times, like in a bunch of different ways. My guess is they got out of the pool construction business because it's really freaking hard. And it's a totally different business than what they're doing right now. The only thing that's similar is the pool, right?

But everything else, staffing, equipment, maintenance, you know. Working capital. Working capital. Like, your marketing and your business development is totally different. The, like, it's just, it's a night and day different business. And all the pool builder folks I know are like, oh, like, I don't even want to handle the service. Like, I'll give those leads away. I don't even want them.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because different business, right? Different businesses. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. But, I mean, so there has been a lot of private equity interests in this space.

A lot of roll-ups done. Rand, you said you have someone in Scale Path that's doing it. Is it pool service that they're doing? Yeah, it's pool service. It's commercial plus residential, but 100% pool service. And this is why, like,

this weird Ohio pool service company, that's why it's a bit more interesting. There's probably more pools in the Bay Area in San Francisco. But this guy in our community, I'm pretty sure he said that he has the number one largest pool service company

in the area. because within two years he bought four of them. They're all like two, two and a half million in revenue. And he now has the number one pool service company in the area. His private equity doesn't go to seasonal places like this. So my thought here is like, you know, is Ohio a good market to buy more of these? I'm not sure because it's probably much even more different than San Francisco. But private equity hasn't looked very as far north as, I mean, definitely Florida.

You've gone down to Florida trying to buy this type of company. Unless you want to buy something that is a one-man shop, it's going to be extremely difficult to buy it. Because private equity is invested everywhere. But even in San Francisco, like, there's not a great market for it. And you'd also probably, being that it's seasonal, you can't use a lot of debt on this thing, right? Because you're not going to be able to service it half of the year.

So this is probably more equitized, and you just got to know what you're getting into. Yeah. And you need some working capital. You know, you need some extra cash to make sure you can get through the slow period and pay your debt. And so that does make the cost of running the business a little bit higher. You'd have to really see the 12-month monthly breakdown for a couple of years to see how seasonal it is. I mean, that's one thing I've noticed a lot in looking at seasonal businesses.

We asked the question and we'll get the first answer. We'll come back, yeah, it's a little seasonal, you know. And we go, okay, well, let's find out how seasonal it is. And we need to know that pretty soon. And it can be, you know, it can be a deal breaker sometimes. We look at some businesses where they're just way too seasonal for any debt. So it's always a really important question to get into the details on as early as you can. And I'm just, I'm in Ohio.

That's where I'm based. I don't think I would want to go into, like, it's not going to be hot enough in September all the way through easily April. It is never going to be hot enough to want to be in a pool unless it's indoors and you're at like a commercial facility or something like that, all outdoor pools are shutting down for seven months. One thing I really like about this, though, is it not just the service part of the business, but the actual goods that they're dealing with, I wouldn't say it's Amazon proof, but you're talking about like 50 pound bags of chemicals. So from an e-commerce perspective, I think everybody buys this local. It's like, it'd be like buying.

cinderbox, right? Nobody goes on Amazon to buy cinderbox or bags of mulch because it's so cheap and the freight is so, you know, dilutive to the gross margins. And so you kind of, you kind of have to have like a local distributor like this, even if you aren't doing the pool maintenance. But what almost always happens is the people who are doing the maintenance, they will self-perform the maintenance for you. Like, you know, full service, turnkey, will come test your water. I don't know if you guys have ever done this. But like, if you have, you know, if you have a pool, it's always changing. And so you got to go take like a little test tube and they tell you, hey, you need this many bags of this and like, you know, a couple cups of this. And then like, let's see. And it's like a science experiment. So you can come in and DIY it or they'll come and do it for you. But either way, they're still getting some revenue from it, even if they're not sending a truck to your house. I like that about this. And, you know, there was a there was a chlorine shortage of. few years ago. I remember looking at pool deals around that time. I believe there was a manufacturing plant that went down for a while. That may be what caused it, but it was a pretty big deal. Like,

no one could get chlorine for a while. And so, you know, this industry had to kind of scramble. And, of course, those that had stockpiled a little bit of it were selling it expensive. And it was kind of an interesting period of time. So yeah, you're right. Being the supplier, the local supplier of the chemicals is a good a good spot to be in as long as you're able to always get your supplies. So, I mean, yeah, okay, so there's some hard things about this. It's seasonal, et cetera. But the business is over 50 years old. So clearly they find a way to make it work, right?

I mean, they probably got reliable people that work there. It's that they got eight employees that key personnel are in place. But those same eight people probably haven't worked there for 50 years. So there's some model where they figured out the seasonal staffing, they figured out the routes. I mean, I don't think that's a reason to write it off on its face because this business makes half a million dollars a year and has for 50 years. And it's 25% net margins. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, this is a good business. Like I don't want to come across that we're pooping on this thing because it's recurring or was it between recurring and reoccurring. I can't ever keep contracts, I think. Yeah. Reoccurring is like, if they have your credit card automatically. To me, if they have your credit card automatically, and they're billing you, it's recurring. Reoccurring is you're like you keep calling and maybe I come every quarter,

but I don't automatically have your card and bill you indefinitely. Reoccurring would be you de-winterize and winterize my pool every year, but there's six months in between and maybe you call, maybe you don't. Yeah. But reoccur or recurring is bill you every month. I'll see you every week to check your chemicals and all that stuff. So if this is primarily recurring revenue, and I bet there is winter eyes and de winter eyes, I bet they have a busy season on both ends of the season.

And then maybe you just go to, I don't know, you go to Florida for the winter and don't worry about it. Maybe it's really nice. Maybe it's a great lifestyle business. Rand, why aren't you buying this? Full sound like a hassle. I know people who run pool companies. They could be difficult in a bunch of other unpredictable ways. The people who own them or the company?

the people who No, no, no, the company's being difficult. Why don't I buy this? I looked it up today. I'll send an L-O-I later after I compete with your guys' audience.

It'll be a pain in the ass. I'm focused on scale path. That's honestly the reason. That's a great answer, Rian. Yeah. That's a great answer. I would do it. It's super compelling,

but scale path is going so well and I'm so busy. I don't have any more time. Yeah, that's what I should have said. Yeah. But I mean, this is a good business. Like, if I was searching actively for pool service companies, this would be a good business. I think it just has to be well capitalized.

And to Heather's credit, you know, that soft point on, what did you say, Heather, on the on the. Working capital. Working capital. I say that all the time, so it's just. You're like, it could be one of three days. I just say it. I think this is a perfect business, though, for somebody who's already in this area and looking for something. We don't really know how obscure of a location it is, but I'm just thinking it can't be, like, completely rural.

Like, it has to have some suburban element to it. But, like, if you're already in this area and you're looking, even if you can, you know, take your blinders off of, you know, I want all these things and you, like, give the checklist of a perfect business. This may not check every box, but if it's in your backyard already and it's doing it's doing. half a million dollars of SDE, it's definitely worth freaking looking at. I'd also, if I had to throw a dart on the map, I, I feel like it's not in Cleveland, but this could be in Columbus, Cincinnati, or even Toledo. If it's in Toledo, I mean, Toledo is a little bit of a, not like a vacation destination, but it's a little bit more of like a party town.

And I could see more pools being there, but this could be the number one pool service company in Toledo, which would not, not great growth aspects, but, you know, on the white sand beaches of Toledo, Rand? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. God damn it, Phil. Okay.

It looks beautiful. Yeah. Do you have to live there? Can you own this? It says it's relocatable. Do you think you can buy this remote? No, I don't, I definitely don't think it's relocatable. The eight employees, in plumbing in HVAC, like, 8 to 10 is where you start to max out on

you're on having one manager, like one in-person manager who can deal with all these issues. And like the owner I'd assume is a bit day-to-day. Like someone has to manage the retail space and get people like the materials on their trucks. I think, you know, this is a business that's run by a manager who's owned it for, you know, 20, 40 years. So I don't know that you could live remotely, except during the slow season where you could have a scale. to include one person during the slow season. You just go down before them. Maybe, so maybe you got to live there nine months a year or six months a year.

Yeah. You could snowboard it from the white sand beaches of Toledo to the white sand beaches of Miami if you want. Yeah. Or you could drive a van down either way. That's right. There you go. Rand, this is perfect for you. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. All right. Let's not publish this episode. I'm going on a real life. All right. Let's wrap it up. Quick rapid fire.

Heather, thumbs up, thumbs down. Thumbs up. I like it. Thumbs up. Mills, thumbs up, thumbs down. I mean, I'm a thumbs up on everything but the location. I don't want to live in Ohio. Sorry, Rand.

Who does, really? Who does? That's why I bought a van. You can get out easily. Yeah. I'm going out of Florida again. I'm going down to Florida again like this winter. I'm not going to say here during the winter.

Yeah. I know if this thumbs up, just well capitalized business, deal with the season alley. I think I thumbs up too. You got a structure it the right way. Don't put too much debt on it. Make sure your seasonality and your coverage ratio of pencils. Monthly. You got to look at your debt coverage monthly, not annually.

That's right. That's right. You got enough working capital. I think it's a great business. Thumbs up. All right. Well, cool. Rand, thank you for being here.

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