Brittney Orellano's First Year Running a $350K SDE Garage Door Shop

The Setup Brittney Orellano and her husband spent ten years building a property management and real estate brokerage to roughly $1M in revenue and north of $300K per year in owner earnings. They had done the hard thing once already: hired a team, systematized operations, and extracted themselves from day-to-day work. Then she heard Codie Sanchez on a podcast talking about buying boring businesses. The frame clicked. Building from zero had taken a decade. Buying cash flow that already existed could compress that timeline dramatically. Within roughly six months of that podcast episode, Brittney was under contract on Radio Controlled Garage Door & Gate, a residential garage door and gate service business generating about $350K in seller's discretionary earnings. The Deal The business was a classic home services target. Recurring demand from break-fix work, install revenue from new construction and remodels, route-based technicians, and a loyal repeat customer base. At $350K SDE, it sat in the sweet spot for a self-funded searcher: small enough to be financeable with SBA plus personal equity, large enough to pay a real salary and still reinvest. Brittney did not come in as an industry expert. She came in as an operator who had already built and run a services business with field technicians, scheduling, and customer relationships. The transferable skill was the operating muscle, not the garage door knowledge. First 100 Days The honeymoon was short. Two problems surfaced fast and kept surfacing: - Working capital. Residential garage door work has a punishing cash cycle if you are not careful. Parts and doors are bought on short terms. Labor is paid weekly. Customers, especially commercial and property management accounts, pay on their own schedule. A business humming at $350K SDE can still starve for cash if receivables stretch and inventory has to grow to cover job backlog. - Employee turnover. Technicians in the trades are mobile. They leave for a dollar more an hour, a closer territory, or a better truck. Losing one tech on a four or five person crew is not a small problem; it is 20 to 25 percent of installed capacity gone in a week. Operating Lessons - Working capital is the silent killer in sub-$1M home services deals. Model the cash conversion cycle (days to order parts, days on the truck, days to invoice, days to collect) before you close. If the number is over 45 days, build a credit line into the deal, not after. - SDE is not free cash flow. Out of $350K SDE, the new owner has to service debt, fund growth in receivables and inventory, replace trucks, and pay themselves. Stress test what is actually left for the household in year one. Assume it is less than the spreadsheet says. - Hire the second-in-command before you think you need them. A field service business with one owner and one lead tech has two single points of failure. Turnover exposes that instantly. - Pay to retain the core crew before the deal closes. A small...