Self-Funded Searcher Buys $775K Appliance Repair Shop Built on Warranty Contracts

The Setup John (@FundOf1 on Twitter) relocated his family to South Carolina and decided to buy a business rather than build one. He spent months just learning what acquisition entrepreneurship meant before opening a search. His filters were deliberately narrow: - Within a 30-minute drive of home - Minimum $250K in owner earnings - Maximum price of $1.8M - No restaurants, healthcare services, or retail footprints He sourced deals through brokers and mined PPP disclosures to find operators who might sell. He looked at 15 businesses, put an LOI on one, got outbid, and kept hunting. The Deal In October 2021 he closed on a residential appliance repair company with $240K in seller's earnings, seven technicians, and three office staff. The prior owner worked roughly 20 hours per week, which told John the business ran on its team and its contracts, not on founder heroics. Structure: - Purchase price: $775,000 - Buyer equity: $116,250 (15%) - Seller note: $38,750 (5%) - SBA loan: $620,000 (80%) The revenue mix was the hidden asset. 75-80% of sales came from manufacturer and extended-warranty contracts, meaning the phone rang because of national agreements, not because the owner was a marketing genius. That removed a skill John knew he did not have. Operating Moves John resisted the urge to rearrange furniture on day one. His first real investment was time with the crew. - Ride-alongs with every technician, watching the job, asking questions, not rewriting the script - Explicit signaling that staff were people first, revenue generators second - Handoff of daily operations to existing leads so he could stay out of the dispatch queue - A year-end exercise to write a mission and vision focused on employees, customers, and community, not a growth slogan He treated the first year as a diagnostic window, not a transformation project. Operating Lessons - Match deal size to your own capacity. John watched peers buy bigger and felt the pull, then reminded himself that job satisfaction compounds when the business fits the operator. - Buy contracted revenue when you lack a sales gene. Warranty and manufacturer contracts are sticky, predictable, and insulated from local marketing competence. - Appliance repair is counter-cyclical. When consumers tighten, repair wins share from replacement. Recession resistance is a feature, not a pitch. - Work on the business by physically removing yourself from the van. The seller had already built a 20-hour-a-week owner role. Preserving that structure was the asset. - Tell technicians, out loud and repeatedly, that you care about them beyond the invoice. Ride-alongs do more than a memo. - Share the hard parts publicly. John posted tech failures, email overload, and contract headaches alongside wins. That discipline forced honest self-assessment. Where They Are Now As of early 2022, John was three months into ownership, running the company without being in the weeds, and documenting the journey on Twitter. He was candid about ongoing friction: tech stack breakage, email volume, and messy contract terms with warranty partners. He coped by deliberately listing...