Brian Seeling·October 9, 2025

Trades Over Tech Buying an Appliance R Buying an Appliance Repair Business | Brian Seeling Interview

Brian Seeling spent nearly 15 years in IT before building and selling his own MSP to just under $5 million in revenue, then spent time at a SaaS startup before deciding to acquire a business rather than start from scratch again. Relocating his family from Northern Virginia to Tampa, Florida, he found PGM — a commercial kitchen equipment repair and maintenance company (hot-side only) founded in 2008 — on BizBuySell, the very first business he contacted a broker about. He paid $1.64 million (down from $1.8 million after QoE revealed SDE ~20-25% below the SIM) at roughly a 3.1x multiple on just over $500k SDE, financing with an SBA loan, a 10% seller note, and ~$350k in equity split with investor Capital Pad. Brian's thesis was that a technician-founded trade business with 7 techs and a capable GM would have all the technical competency but none of the back-office systems and professional infrastructure needed to scale — exactly the skills he brought from IT. His post-acquisition moves have focused on professionalizing operations (email, phone systems, managed devices), launching a preferred-membership preventive maintenance program to convert break-fix customers to recurring revenue, expanding authorized service agent relationships with manufacturers, and building career pathways to retain and develop technicians. He sees a clear path to doubling the business to $5 million in Tampa on hot-side alone before potentially expanding to cold-side refrigeration or additional geographies.

Deal facts

purchase price: $1.64m
multiple: ~3.1x SDE
sde ebitda: SDE just above $500k
revenue: $2.6m
financing structure: SBA loan (~$1.25m, ~75%) + 10% seller note + ~15% equity from buyer and investor (Capital Pad); ~$350k total equity including $100k working capital
notes: Originally listed at $1.8m on BizBuySell. Deal died once during diligence over ~20-25% SDE discrepancy vs. SIM, then revived. Took 11 months from first contact to close. Investor partner was Capital Pad.

Why this business

Brian wanted a blue-collar business he could professionalize and scale using back-office and technology skills from his IT/MSP background. He believed a technician-founded trade business that had grown to 5-10 techs would lack the systems and processes to scale further, and that was exactly the value he could add. He also wanted to avoid IT-sector multiples and AI disruption risk, and chose a business with existing management in place so he wouldn't need to learn the technical trade from scratch.

What's working

Existing GM ran all back-office operations, giving Brian a soft landing into an unfamiliar industry
Commission-based technician pay (10% below scale base + monthly commission on sales above $30-35k target) keeps techs motivated and hungry — apparently unique among competitors in the commercial kitchen equipment space
Professionalization improvements: standardized email on Office 365, managed mobile devices, IVR phone system with answering service replaced manual call-forwarding
New preferred membership / preventive maintenance program launched to convert break-fix mom-and-pop customers into recurring-revenue accounts with priority service and parts discounts
Growing authorized service agent (ASA) relationships with manufacturers — expanded from 4-5 to ~15 of a potential 150+ manufacturers
Inbound lead from van signage: a contact overseeing a brand with 80 Tampa-area locations called after seeing a PGM van on the highway
4,000-customer database provides a large base to convert to PM contracts
Seller's senior tech role has been successfully filled by an existing technician identified pre-close

What's hard

SBA lender required more equity down due to industry-switch risk (white-collar to blue-collar), no prior industry experience, Florida licensing requirements, and being sole family provider
Deal nearly died when QoE revealed SDE was ~20-25% below what the SIM stated; Brian had to renegotiate price down from $1.8m to $1.64m
11-month close process was longer than expected; Brian recommends having a capital advisor/SBA loan broker and full deal team in place from the start
No formal trade school or certification path for hot-side commercial kitchen equipment — talent must be poached from competitors or trained from scratch over 1-1.5 years
Growth is constrained by technician capacity; can't add new service lines (e.g., cold-side refrigeration) without trained staff in place
Revenue is primarily break-fix / inbound; if phones stop ringing, there is no guaranteed base — a stark contrast to Brian's prior MSP model
GM who ran the business had been doing things the same way for 10-15 years; managing change with a long-tenured employee required careful, incremental steps

Notable quotes

I thought I could provide a lot of value to a blue collar business. You have a technician and typically what happens is a technician leaves a company that he's worked for a long period of time, goes off on his own, starts his own company, does really good work, has to hire a couple other technicians, right? Grows the business to five or six techs, maybe 10. And at that point, they don't know how to scale the business beyond that.

Business 70% of all business is the same. The other 30% is those nuances to that particular industry in that sector. I had the 70%. I just needed to learn the 30%.

I didn't want to come in like a wrecking ball and saying we're changing all this stuff today. Just little wins, you know, as the weeks went on.

We don't like to switch companies because if they get bad service, it affects their bottom line, right? And so it's less likely for someone to switch and not call us once we get in there.