Evan Delianardi bought a $500K SDE commercial cleaner in rural Ohio, then pivoted to 20% stakes

The Setup Evan Delianardi left strategic consulting in his mid-20s looking for a faster path to operator ownership. He had already bought one Chicago Airbnb and learned how to run it remotely through iteration. He joined a searcher community in fall 2023, and his buy box was simple: any industry, any geography, recurring revenue, remote-runnable, no retail, no food, no e-commerce. He wanted a business that would replace his W-2 income but not anchor him to a single city. He was, and still is, a digital nomad. The target: Quality Cleaning Service of Northwest Ohio. About $2M in revenue, roughly $500K SDE, 25% margins, which is high for janitorial. The rural location kept competition thin, and about 10% of revenue was higher-margin project work (floor stripping, carpet extraction, waxing). The Deal Purchase price: $1.6M, a touch over 3x SDE. Structure: 90% SBA 7(a), 5% seller note on two-year standby with an 8-year term (this closed before the 2024 rule change requiring full 10-year standby for seller notes to count as equity), and 5% buyer equity. Evan opted for a line of credit instead of permanent working capital baked into the loan. His reasoning: pay interest only when drawn, ease the 10-year debt load. It worked mathematically but made year one brutally tight on cash. Closing slipped six months because of a tax issue on the seller's returns. During that delay, Evan kept searching and started advising other buyers, which quietly seeded his next business. First 100 Days The seller had warned Evan, two weeks after close, that if he wanted to fire the seller's family members working in the business, he should feel free. Five relatives were on payroll: the step-grandfather was GM, the grandmother was a cleaner, a sister, her husband, and another relative rounded it out. They were inflating hours, underperforming, and the GM was hiding customer complaints to protect them. Evan mapped every account's margin in his first weeks. The biggest customer was unprofitable. The GM deflected. Evan waited until he understood operations well enough to survive a blow-up, then moved. He fired the GM. One relative quit. Another stopped showing up. The fired GM sued for age discrimination, tried to delete files, kept vehicle keys until police got involved. Simultaneously, Evan had two other deals in flight, caught the flu, and was bedridden in Mexico while the business was collapsing. Operating Moves He promoted a lead supervisor to GM. She and two operations managers worked 10-14 hour days cleaning, hiring, bidding, and answering phones. Evan ran recruiting from Mexico, calling candidates, onboarding them into the payroll and clock-in systems himself. He rebuilt SOPs from scratch because the seller had left almost no documented systems. He negotiated with the largest account, apologized directly for service lapses, and they not only stayed, they more than doubled their scope, covering revenue lost from churned accounts. By September 2025, a strong operations manager joined. An office manager hire finally pulled Evan out of daily recruiting. New software gave him remote...