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Welcome to The Main Street Minute, your shortcut to small business ownership.
👋 Shout-out to the new readers who joined the newsletter last week.
Today’s story: A first-time buyer goes after a $700k hydroseeding company growing fast, maybe too fast.
Now onto today’s deal…
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NUMBERS
Every week, we take a real small business deal straight from inside the Contrarian Community and dive into it here: numbers, story, red flags, and all.
This week’s target: a hydroseeding company generating about $900K in revenue and ~$330K in SDE.
The seller’s a long-time owner who’s shifting focus to his other businesses. He’s keeping the land where the company’s trucks and equipment are stored, but will lease it back for $1,500/month.
The business runs semi-absentee, with 6 full-time employees (one operations manager and five laborers) plus a virtual assistant who handles billing and admin.
And here’s what caught the buyer’s eye:
The buyer — we’ll call her Maya — comes from medical device sales and business development, a career spent leading teams and winning contracts. After a year of studying landscaping deals, she’s ready to make a move on her first acquisition.
Her plan? Lock down contract stability, lean on her BD chops to grow private work, and keep the operator in place to run day-to-day.
Now the question is:
Is this a hidden gem in an overlooked niche, or a business whose recent growth is tied to risky, non-transferable contracts and aging trucks?
KEY IDEAS
When Maya brought this hydroseeding deal to the community, the deal experts dove straight into what really determines whether this business could continue to stand up.
Revenue climbed from ~$300K in 2021 to ~$900K in 2024, while SDE jumped from ~$50K to ~$300K. Impressive on paper, but also a trend to unpack.
As one expert put it:
Maya found that the surge came after local hurricane recovery work and the hiring of a highly capable virtual assistant who helped the owner tighten operations. That explains the lift, but it also means the current numbers depend on factors that may not repeat.
Roughly 60% of 2024 revenue now comes from state and local government projects, including a ~$700K contract. These deals can create predictable income, but they also carry risk.
One expert reminded her:
Maya plans a stock purchase to preserve existing contracts, but she’ll still need to verify that each one allows a transfer of ownership and that she meets all licensing and insurance requirements to stay compliant.
The company’s equipment is valued at around $300K, but 7 of the 8 trucks are older units. With annual repair costs near $50K, deal consultants advised budgeting several hundred thousand over the next few years for replacements.
Another deal consultant warned:
Because the seller owns the property where the trucks and equipment are stored, Maya will lease it for $1,500 per month. Lenders will require a minimum 5-year lease with a 5-year renewal option to match the SBA loan term.
Locking in a long, stable lease with minimal rent increases will protect margins and financing approval.
The current owner travels for months at a time, relying on an operations manager, five field employees, and a virtual assistant who has effectively become the backbone of the business. Maya will need to meet them early, build trust, and secure their commitment post-close to keep the business stable.
Maya’s background in medical device sales gives her a clear advantage in relationship-driven contracting.
As one deal consultant told her, “It’ll be a little bit of a learning curve from selling that device to selling to governments. But once you get the hang of RFPs — and with AI these days, it’s so much easier — you could potentially grow this business pretty quickly.”
INDUSTRY
Hydroseeding sits in a small but steady corner of the $100B+ U.S. landscaping industry. There are hundreds of thousands of landscaping businesses across the country estimated to be employing over 1M people. It’s a highly fragmented market with plenty of small contractors.
Companies in this category — commercial landscaping, erosion control, seeding, and others — can sell between 2 and 3 times SDE, depending on their contracts, performance, size, equipment, and seasonality.
On paper, Maya’s deal checks out. Her offer of ~$600K on $330K in SDE works out to roughly 1.8x. Maya’s deal is under a signed LOI, but that doesn’t mean it’s hers.
Until the purchase agreement is signed, the seller can back out, accept another offer, or change terms entirely. The next step is to secure a binding agreement that moves her from interested buyer to controlling party.
The deal consultants advised her to move quickly to a signed agreement and make sure it covers the right ground:
Just as important is what not to include: buyer-specific performance language that would trap her into completing the deal even if something material changes.
One consultant put it simply: the goal isn’t to rush the deal, it’s to “quickly create a binding framework that protects you while you verify the rest.”
THE BOTTOM LINE
Maya decided to move forward toward the thick of due diligence, with the aim of working line by line through contracts, licenses, and fleet inspections to make sure the numbers hold.
This isn’t a passive play. Before reaching this point, Maya spent nearly a year inside the community analyzing deals, learning SBA financing, and narrowing her focus to landscaping. She’s shown up consistently, asked sharp questions, and applied every lesson she’s learned.
As one deal consultant told her during the review:
That line stuck.
She’s moved from “hoping to own something” to operating like an owner already, a shift that, for most buyers, is where the real momentum begins.
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The information contained here is educational, may not be typical, and does not guarantee returns. Background, education, effort, and application will affect your experience and the profitability of any business. Individual results may vary.
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