| Business | Landscape design-build + maintenance/lawn care — Vernon, CT |
| Headcount | 45 (SBA loan record — fact) |
| Ownership | Changed Aug 11, 2025 — SBA 7(a) $2,574,000, First Internet Bank (fact) |
| Est. revenue | ~$5.0M (45 × $110–140k/head, trade norm) |
| Est. EBITDA | ~$750k at 15% · SDE ~$850–900k (est.) |
$2.57M SBA at ~10.5% variable, 10-year amortization → ~$414k/yr of service (~$34.5k/mo). Implied purchase ~$2.8–3.0M (~3.3x SDE, Main Street norm).
Read: healthy coverage, but half the cash flow works for the bank. Today he owns a job with upside; the bank owns the company.
| Today (est.) | At $10M | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $5.0M | $10.0M |
| EBITDA | 15% · $750k | 18–20% · $1.8–2.0M |
| Debt service | $414k | $414k — the note doesn't grow |
| DSCR | 1.8x | ~4.5x |
| Free cash after bank | ~$340k | ~$1.5M/yr |
| Lever | Δ Revenue (est.) | Mechanism |
|---|---|---|
| Leak capture | +$0.4–0.6M | Unanswered calls/leads captured by machines |
| Quote velocity | +$1.0–1.3M | Same-hour estimates → +10–15 pts win rate |
| Maintenance-base mining | +$0.7–0.9M | Existing clients → projects, systematically |
| Radius & reputation | +$0.9–1.2M | Review velocity + local search, +1 town all directions |
| Price / mix | +$0.6–0.9M | Bigger hardscape tickets, design-fee discipline |
| Referral engine | +$0.5–0.8M | Weekly client photo updates → systematized word of mouth |
Timeline honesty: 3-year double = 26% CAGR vs industry ~5%. Aggressive but attainable for the systematized local leader; 4 years is comfortable.
| Today | At $10M | |
|---|---|---|
| EBITDA | $750k | $1.8–2.0M |
| Multiple | ~3.3x SDE | 4.5–5.5x EBITDA (size + documented systems) |
| Enterprise value | ~$2.8M | $8–11M |
| Net debt | ~$2.5M | ~$2.0M |
| Owner equity | ~$0.3M | $6–9M |
At 4.5x coverage he can refinance, extend, or borrow for acquisition #2 — the playbook repeats. Doubling once makes him a platform, not a landscaper. The SOPs and the Monday Brief inside the Works are precisely what lenders and future buyers underwrite.
Reality check: $50M residential design-build = national-champion scale. When PE bought Mariani (Dec 2020) at ~$60M, that was the LARGEST residential design-build firm in America. The $100M+ names (BrightView $2.7B, TruGreen $1.7B) are commercial maintenance — a different business. Nobody grows premium residential to $50M in one town. The road is the roll-up — and Mariani proved it: 26 acquisitions in 5 years, 4,750 employees, 13 states, a $740M credit facility raised to buy firms exactly like this one.
| Phase | Years | Revenue | The move |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · The Fortress | 1–3 | $5M → $12M | Organic, via the machines. Undisputed premium firm of Hartford/Tolland at 18–20% EBITDA (~$2.2M). Mandatory: no roll-up on a broken chassis. |
| 2 · First deals | 3–5 | $12M → $25M | Buy 2–3 neighboring $3–6M firms (aging owners, no succession, ~3–3.5x earnings) via SBA/seller notes/cash flow. Integration = the software. Every acquired firm plugs into the Brain/SOPs/Monday Brief in 90 days — most roll-ups die on integration; his is a machine. |
| 3 · The Platform | 5–8 | $25M → $50M | PE partner or credit facility; branch New England (CT/MA/RI = hundreds of $2–8M targets). He becomes what CI Capital shopped for. |
Endgame: $50M at 12–15% EBITDA = $6–7.5M, platform multiples 7–9x+ → EV $45–65M. Even at 50% ownership post-dilution: $20–30M to the man who put ~$290k down in Vernon.
The mechanic: multiple arbitrage. A $2M firm sells at ~3x its earnings (small, owner-tied). Inside a $12M systematized platform, the same earnings are worth 5–7x. Buy at 3, instantly worth 5+. That's the whole religion.
| Order | Target type | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maintenance / lawn-care books (400–2,000 accounts, owner 55–65, no succession) | Recurring cash services debt through winter; every account = a future patio lead for the goldmine machine |
| 2 | Tree service | High tickets, storm demand, insurance scales better inside a platform; cross-sells both ways |
| 3 | Irrigation + lighting tuck-ins ($500k–1.5M) | Cheap; converts every design-build job into a bigger in-house ticket |
| 4 | Wealth-corridor design-build peer | The Phase-2 capstone — CE one county over, owner aging out |
The town map, in order: 1) Glastonbury / South Windsor / Manchester (adjacent) · 2) Farmington Valley — Avon, Simsbury, West Hartford, Farmington (the crown-jewel second territory) · 3) the shoreline — Guilford, Madison, Old Saybrook · 4) Longmeadow/Wilbraham MA · Fairfield County = Phase 3, not yet.
Financing, with the hard constraint: SBA 7(a) caps at ~$5M per borrower incl. affiliates — he's used $2.57M → ~$2.4M headroom = one or two deals, not a campaign. Deal #1: remaining SBA + 20–30% seller note. Deals #2–3: conventional debt on proven platform cash flow. Phase 3: credit facility or PE. Seller notes are the weapon — retiring owners here care about legacy and crews almost as much as price.
Worked example (deal #1): $2.5M maintenance-heavy target, SDE $450k, price 2.8x = $1.26M ($800k bank + $300k seller note + $160k cash). Synergies +$150k, cross-sell +10% → ~$600k EBITDA added, worth ~$3M at platform 5x. ~$1.7M of equity manufactured in one deal. Three of these = Phase 2 complete.
90-day integration (why this roll-up won't die like most): wk 1 — phones into the machine, book into the Client Brain · mo 1 — same-hour quoting, SOPs, one Monday Brief for both companies · mo 2–3 — cross-sell the acquired base, brand keep-then-fold, seller stays consulting (his note depends on it). Integration isn't a war room — it's plugging into machines that already run.