Adam Vandermyde bought Petro West for $4.5M, sold for $14.5M five years later

The Setup Petro West is a 30-year-old fuel infrastructure business in St. George, Utah. It sells, installs, and services gas station equipment across the Intermountain West. When Adam Vandermyde showed up in March 2020, the company was doing $15M in revenue, $1.2-1.3M of EBITDA, with 60 employees and a revenue mix roughly 65-70% construction, 30-35% service. The founders wanted out but wanted the business to land in the right hands. Adam didn't write a check on day one. He negotiated a 6-month CEO employment arrangement, bought 5% ($250K) upfront to signal commitment, and used the runway to stress-test the business from the inside before committing to the full deal. The Deal - Purchase price: $4.5M, or 3x EBITDA - Structure: 50% seller note, 40% SBA, 10% cash equity - Adam's ownership: 80%; CFO/COO partner at 19% (deliberately under 20% to avoid triggering an SBA personal guarantee on the partner) - Seller note: 10-year paper, which gave the founders tax deferral and monthly income Two details worth stealing. First, the CEO-before-close arrangement let Adam diligence the business in real operating conditions, not from a data room. Second, the 19% partner equity threshold is a specific SBA structuring lever: crossing 20% pulls a second guarantor onto the loan. Operating Moves Adam repositioned the business from "a construction company that also does service" to "a service company that also does construction." Service is higher-margin, stickier, and less lumpy than new-build construction revenue. The customer acquisition playbook was blunt: pull every service customer from the last several years who hadn't called in the last 12 months. That became the leads list. No outbound ad spend, just dormant accounts the team already had relationships with. Inside the company: - Broke up a service manager span-of-control problem (one manager, 18-20 direct reports) - Created a customer concierge role to sit on the customer's side of the table - Ran bi-weekly "Petro Talk" video updates to the whole company - Ran engagement surveys every 6 months and claims 80% of operational improvements came from employee suggestions - Professionalized back-office and sales process The Near-Death Moment A California construction job failed regulatory slope testing after a supply-chain-driven pipe substitution. Adam's call: redo the whole installation at company expense. Cost: over $1M in lost EBITDA. The CFO reported two weeks of cash remaining on five separate occasions. What saved it: - Bank relationship inherited from the founders extended the line - Adam and the CFO partner put more capital in - The sellers agreed to cut seller-note payments in half for 6 months - No bond claims, no lawsuits, no reputational hit, because the repair was done right "The scariest, toughest, hardest thing I've ever done, without a doubt." Where They Are Now Five years in, Petro West hit $23M revenue and $2.3M EBITDA. Service revenue grew 50%. The business sold to Nwesco, a PE-backed consolidator building coast-to-coast fuel infrastructure coverage, for $14.5M at 7x EBITDA. Adam's math after the exit: roughly $7.6M net proceeds, after paying off ~$5M...