Buying $5M of Home Healthcare Revenue in Massachusetts With $50K of Equity

The Setup Devin Fitzgerald spent a decade in restaurant operations, helping grow a family business from 3 to 14 locations. Two ideas pushed him out of hospitality and into search: revenue is easier to buy than to build, and the aging demographic wave creates a generational window for small-business buyers. He named his holdco RML Service Group after his grandmother Ruth Miriam Lang, a 62-year nurse and WWII Army officer who raised him through an unstable childhood. Home care was not an accident. It was the thesis. The Deal First target: a Massachusetts skilled and unskilled home care agency doing $1.1M in revenue at roughly 23% EBITDA margin (about $310K SDE on a three-year average). - Purchase price: $600K - Equity check: $50K, sourced from a single investor - Financing: SBA loan plus seller note - Owner comp: Devin took zero salary for the first five months - Close: September 2023, three months behind plan The delay came from the sellers, not the buyer. One owner was mid-divorce. Another had $140K of unresolved IRS back taxes. Devin flew in for the closing, brought an avocado as a symbolic gift, and treated the sellers as partners rather than counterparties. His framing: the transaction is the adversary, not the person across the table. An earlier deal had collapsed at term sheet after eight months of work. He found the RML target on BizBuySell within 24 hours of that blow-up. The Bolt-On LOI on a second agency in February 2024. Close in December 2024. Revenue: $3.9M. Same NAICS code as the first acquisition, which qualified the deal for 100% SBA financing under a 2023 SBA program update. Equity required: zero. Combined platform after deal two: - ~$5M revenue - 17-23% EBITDA margins - ~100 employees - ~300 patients served - $2.8M of the $5M SBA cap deployed; $2.2M of dry powder remaining Operating Moves The first business had been declining for three years as a lifestyle operation. Devin arrested the decline and posted 1.5% growth in year one while rebuilding the operating stack. - Surveyed staff on which tasks they actually enjoyed, then rebuilt roles around the answers - Switched the agency software platform at the two-month mark. Painful, but done early on purpose. - Automated back-office work so staff could move toward higher-judgment tasks - Invested in community partnerships and local referral sources for organic intake - Cultural reset: daily office planks, music on during work hours, vision boards tied to each employee's personal goals The cultural moves read as soft, but the intent was hard: convert a coasting team into an operating team without a mass turnover event. Operating Lessons - Same-NAICS bolt-ons unlock 100% SBA financing. If your first deal lines up, the second one can close with no equity. - Treat the deal as the adversary. Sellers with divorce, tax, or partner problems will close if you stay on their side of the table. - Line up a second target before your first one dies. 24 hours between a...