George Stern's Contrarian Mid-Seven-Figure Bet on a Home Services SEO Agency

The Setup George Stern took a crooked path into ownership. Teacher, elected official, McKinsey consultant, then operator. At McKinsey he advised Fortune 500s but felt stuck doing the talking and none of the doing. He started volunteering with small businesses, then took his first real operating role turning around a hemorrhaging Amazon seller agency for a friend. In 2023 he used proceeds from a home sale to buy two small e-commerce businesses. He pivoted one from dropshipping into manufacturing rooftop tents for overlanding families and exited in early 2025 at a meaningful profit. The lesson he carried forward: he didn't love the product, he loved the customers (families getting outside for the first time). That shaped what came next. The Deal Growth Marketing Media is a Colorado digital agency serving home services operators (restoration, roofing, plumbing, remodeling) with SEO, Google Local Service Ads, Google Business Profile optimization, websites, and paid ads. - Purchase price: mid-seven figures - Revenue: mid-seven figures TTM - EBITDA: low-seven figures - Financing: SBA through First Bank, a regional Colorado lender - LOI to close: 46 days - Valuation: blended 2024 tax returns, TTM, and 2025 run-rate Growth was essentially flat through 2023 and 2024, then ramped hard starting December 2024. That shape is exactly what made the deal hard to finance. Large national SBA lenders called it an airball: no tangible assets, and a hockey-stick that inflated run-rate valuation in a way the credit box hated. First Bank closed SBA approval in under 30 days. The ETA-forum wisdom that only big national lenders handle complex deals efficiently did not hold here. The Contrarian Bet Most searchers are avoiding SEO agencies because ChatGPT. Stern ran the other way. Three pillars: - Service diversification. Local Service Ads and Maps optimization for home services are insulated from AI chat disruption. Homeowners with a flooded basement are not asking ChatGPT who to call. - Incumbent data advantage. Nobody has cracked AI Engine Optimization yet. A shop running tests across hundreds of home services clients every day generates more ranking data than any solo operator or new entrant can. - Slow decline, not a cliff. Even if the SEO thesis genuinely erodes, consumer search behavior shifts over years. That is runway to adapt. Operating Moves Two problems hit immediately: - Churn was higher than underwritten. Home services operators run tight cash, and when they cut, marketing goes first. - Key-man risk on sales. The founder was the salesman. No documented process, no training, no second seat. Stern inherited a revenue engine with one point of failure. What saved the setup: the team was excellent. That gave him permission to address the founder-as-salesman problem without also rebuilding delivery. He is pushing on process documentation, sales redundancy, and turning daily client testing into a shared AEO playbook before anyone else gets there. Operating Lessons - Industry expertise is overrated. Stern has now operated in Amazon agencies, e-commerce, campgrounds, and digital marketing. The constant is execution discipline, not domain fluency. - Love the...