Austin Recht

Buying recurring-revenue home services companies (pest & water first). Founder, Global Source Advisors ($26M best year). AI deal engine: 4,700+ leads.

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

I’m buying a pest control or water treatment company.
I built Global Source Advisors, a medical distribution company, from zero to $26M in revenue in its
best year. Now I’m building Banyan Grove, a home services acquisition platform.

What I’m looking for:
• Pest control or water treatment first
• Recurring revenue, 70%+ of total
• $1M–$1.5M SDE
• Strong operations, but no modern sales system yet
• Santa Barbara / Ventura first. Also DFW, San Antonio, Austin, Nashville, Tampa, Orlando,
Jacksonville

Structure: open to SBA, seller financing, and earnouts.
How I’ll own it: I back the team that’s already there and add the sales system. I won’t be the one
running the routes.

How I source: an AI deal engine I built. 4,700+ home services leads so far.

I’m documenting the whole search here: sourcing, underwriting, and the AI tools behind it.
Owners, brokers, CPAs, attorneys: DMs open.

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

@ChadMPeterman Simple, yet this feels like the playbook to crushing sales and customer xp

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

So in my state of CA you can buy a monster energy, but need to be 18 and show ID to buy the safest and most studied supplement (Creatine) on the planet?

Got it.

[PrivateEquityGuy (Mikk Markus) @PrivatEquityGuy]

Great lessons from an art dealer with 19 galleries and $1B in revenue.

Also a very clear and actionable toolkit for folks building, acquiring, and running traditional $1-15M of EBITDA businesses... especially those in fragmented markets where relationships, information, and access matter.

1. Make the market; don’t wait for an invitation.

2. Pick up the phone 100 times a day and map the territory until you are the territory.

3. Build a private index of your niche, know who owns what, who’s aging out, who’s hungry, then move.

4. Operate in validated markets, less romance, more cash flow.

5. Price with information, not hope; asymmetry is your profit.

6. Control compounds; dilution is a tax on your future self.

7. Reinvest relentlessly into brand, distribution, and access.

9. Own your distribution so you can name your price.

10. Manufacture scarcity and status so demand chases you.

11. Treat relationships as infrastructure, not decoration.

12. Track heirs and successors because tomorrow’s deal starts years before it closes.

13. Host rooms that concentrate your market: parties are just sales events with better lighting.

14. Think in decades; compounding needs time and uninterrupted control.

15. Keep a 50-asset hit list and call five owners every day, especially the ones who “aren’t selling”.

16. Keep majority control: golden shares, buybacks, terms that protect the mission.

17. Measure speed like a KPI: days from first contact to LOI is a P&L line item.

18. Avoid analysis paralysis; decisions beat perfect plans.

19. Chase leverage, not prestige; the secondary market is where adults get rich.

20. Never trade long-term control for short-term capital.

21. Refuse to be transactional; follow up when there’s nothing to gain yet.

22. Be the index in an opaque market so everyone has to call you first.

23. Start lean, grow on revenue, keep the cap table clean.

24. Roll up fragmented, boring niches and become the default buyer.

25. Play a 40-year game, quiet, relentless, impossible to dislodge.

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

@guessworkinvest @J_M_Vogt @Sam_Rosati @therobertbrooks @Robbie_R23 Love this. Sometimes entrepreneurship can feel extremely lonely and isolating - finding friends in your workspace is a life work/balance hack for sure!

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

@EthanDriskill classic - looks good!

[Kaustubh Deo - Guesswork Investing @guessworkinvest]

I’ll try to say this kindly — every single business being shown at over 30% profit margin is not a good fit for someone with a full-time job (aka all the ones you showed).

Barring something very unusual about the business and some kind of structural advantage, that kind of margin is only possible due to the owner (and/or spouse) being heavily involved and effectively completing multiple unpaid roles.

That is business buying 101…your original post sounds more like someone who just logged into bizbuysell tor the first time, not someone who has any business teaching folks how to buy a business.

I’m doing my best to say this nicely, but the fact that you think a landscaping business could do north of 60% profit margins for an acquirer who already has a full-time job suggests you really don’t know what you’re talking about. Ignorance at best, grift at worst.

My gut is that you do know better, and that you posted it as engagement bait and hope folks enter the top of your funnel and don’t read the comments from experienced acquirers calling it out. If that’s correct, that is unethical.

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

Killing it Ryan. I'm sure as you uncover the broken bits, you are recording your decision-making and "fixes" and turning those into SOP's you can hand off at the proper time. Seems like you have everything you need to start working on vs. in, but possibly a delegation problem. Are you the sole operator?

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

Brokers: what makes a buyer worth a callback?

I'm a self-funded buyer looking at pest control and water treatment, $1M–$1.5M SDE, Santa Barbara/Ventura first. I'd rather hear it from you than guess.

Proof of funds? Fast NDA turnaround and feedback? Fewer, better questions? Something else?

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

@ChadMPeterman Very interested in the water treatment space. California has the hardest water in the country and given how inflated property values are here aside from the obvious health and skin benefits, systems could save home owners $$$$. Looking forward to learning more from you here!

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

@dfarella Hell yeah brother

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

One word: subscription.

Both run on recurring revenue, which opens the door to upsells.

Water: SoCal and Central CA have some of the hardest water in the country. That means ongoing maintenance, salt deliveries, and systems customers buy or rent.

Pest is a need, not a luxury. I want to own both, but pest platform first.

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

I’m buying a pest control or water treatment company.
I built Global Source Advisors, a medical distribution company, from zero to $26M in revenue in its
best year. Now I’m building Banyan Grove, a home services acquisition platform.

What I’m looking for:
• Pest control or water treatment first
• Recurring revenue, 70%+ of total
• $1M–$1.5M SDE
• Strong operations, but no modern sales system yet
• Santa Barbara / Ventura first. Also DFW, San Antonio, Austin, Nashville, Tampa, Orlando,
Jacksonville

Structure: open to SBA, seller financing, and earnouts.
How I’ll own it: I back the team that’s already there and add the sales system. I won’t be the one
running the routes.

How I source: an AI deal engine I built. 4,700+ home services leads so far.

I’m documenting the whole search here: sourcing, underwriting, and the AI tools behind it.
Owners, brokers, CPAs, attorneys: DMs open.

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

@McGonaglePat awesome man - congrats! Would love to hear more about the experience of acquiring and how integrating is going

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

4,748 home services leads. Most of them aren't targets.

My AI deal engine built that CRM across 7 trades: landscaping, plumbing, electrical, water conditioning, HVAC, pest, and septic.

What building it taught me about sourcing:

A lead isn't a target. Building the list is the easy part. Deciding who's worth a call is hard work.

Wide net, narrow buy box. The CRM covers 7 trades. Ideally, I'm buying pest control or water treatment first.

The best owners aren't on the market yet. That's why I score for succession risk, not just size.

Sourcing is a pipeline problem, not a networking problem. Stages, follow-up, and a system.

If you're sourcing deals by hand right now, what eats the most time?

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

@therobertbrooks @SMBootcamp_ @Sam_Rosati LFG Rob

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

@therobertbrooks Crushing it!

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

@WilsonCompanies LFG

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

@AdamMarkleySMB This is great, well said Adam

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

@dieworkwear i agree. lazy

[Austin Recht @AustinRecht]

@dfarella if only