Charles Barr Bought a $1.8M West Palm Beach Plumber at 3x SDE with Cash

The Setup Charles Barr is not the stereotypical trades buyer. MIT undergrad in economics and political science, MBA, tech startup operator who writes Python and SQL. He concluded that venture-scale company building requires elite fundraising chops he did not have, and he took Buffett and Munger seriously about buying boring businesses in fragmented markets at sane multiples. That thesis led him from software to South Florida plumbing. His self-education was a podcast MBA. Industry podcasts, operator Twitter, broker conversations. He scanned HVAC and electrical first because they are the darlings of the search-fund trades playbook, but HVAC in South Florida was picked over; good listings went under LOI before he could move. Plumbing had better entry economics and less buyer competition for the same quality of cash flow. The Deal - Target: DiMartino Plumbing, residential-focused, West Palm Beach, Florida. - Revenue: ~$1.5M to $2M annually. - SDE: ~$300K. - Purchase price: ~$900K, a 3x SDE multiple. - Structure: all cash from personal savings, not SBA, not search fund equity. - Mix: roughly 50% service, 50% construction, with service the growth lane Barr wanted. - Closed: July 2021. Barr considered the traditional search fund model (raise ~$250K to fund a two-year search) and rejected it for three reasons: investor pressure to close any deal rather than the right one, lack of investor appetite for a geographically constrained South Florida search, and the math of slicing a sub-$2M business across a full cap table. Proprietary cold outreach also failed his ROI test; too many conversations with owners who were never going to sell. He ran the search through brokers and listing sites and let sellers self-identify as motivated. Screening discipline mattered. He walked away from multiple deals where PPP loan proceeds were quietly inflating the trailing-twelve revenue and SDE. That single filter killed several otherwise tempting listings during 2020-2021 search conditions. First 100 Days At the time of the episode Barr was barely 45 days in, so the book on operations was still being written. The honest admission: this is a sweaty startup, not a passive holdco position. He was in trucks, in customers' homes, in the office learning the dispatch rhythm and the techs' habits. The single biggest regret he named was not hiring before close. He wanted a right-hand operations manager already onboarded on day one so that the founder-dependency risk transferred to a hired leader rather than to him personally. Every hour he spent answering phones was an hour not spent on growth or systems. Operating Lessons - Pick the lane that matches your edge. Barr's edge is growth strategy and customer experience, not wrenching. Buying an established book of customers and a trained crew bought him a decade of brand and relationships he could not have built from scratch. - Residential over commercial. Commercial plumbing means property managers whose incentives are to grind price. Residential homeowners pay for trust, speed, and a clean truck. - Service over new construction. Service jobs are smaller, faster, more repeatable, and easier...