Zac Smith walked away from a mechanical engineering career to buy a CertaPro Painters franchise with three employees and under $1 million in revenue. He signed a personal guarantee on an SBA loan and put about 10% of the purchase price down in cash.
Three years later, the company was on track for $3 million in revenue and $600,000 in profit, and Smith sold it for $1.5 million, all cash at closing. Compare the cash he put in with what he got out, and he roughly 10X’d his money. In this episode, you discover how to:
- Raise your prices and keep winning the work, the lever that took Smith’s gross margin from 42% to 50%
- Stop fighting the cheapest option in your market on price and win on trust instead
- Walk away from price-only customers before they make you busy and broke
- Build revenue from customers who send you work again and again without new marketing spend
- See your business as a sales and marketing company, whatever it is you actually deliver
- Get paid all cash at closing, with no seller note and no earn-out
- Tell a buyer bad news during due diligence before they find it themselves
Watch the full episode below.
Quote of the Week
We are a sales and marketing company. Painting is what we happen to do.
Zac Smith, describing how he explained the business to his employees.
Curious what an acquirer might think of your business? Let’s take a look.
Deals
Cottage Door Press, the largest independent children’s publisher in the U.S., known for interactive board books and novelty formats for young kids, was acquired by Scholastic (NASDAQ: SCHL), the global children’s publishing and education company, for $71M. Cottage Door generated $45M in revenue in the twelve months ended May 2026, implying a valuation of 1.6x revenue.
