Devin Fitzgerald·May 19, 2025

Buying $5m of Revenue with $50k of Equity | Devin Fitzgerald Interview

Devin Fitzgerald, 38, grew up in a chaotic household marked by substance abuse and domestic violence, crediting his grandmother Ruth Miriam Lang — a World War II Army nurse and nursing pioneer — as the anchor who kept him on track. He spent ten years in operations for a family restaurant group that expanded from 3 to 14 locations, then self-taught his way into ETA through YouTube and cold-calling. Naming his holding company RML Service Group after his grandmother, he targeted home healthcare specifically to honor her legacy. His first acquisition — a declining, minimum-viable skilled home care agency in Massachusetts doing ~$1m revenue and ~$310k SDE — closed in September 2023 for $600k after a chaotic closing process involving IRS back taxes and a seller divorce that pushed close by three months; he took no salary for five months and brought in outside capital for the equity injection. He immediately began searching for a second agency while stabilizing the first through culture transformation, staff engagement, and a strong clinical manager hire. The second acquisition — a larger agency in a different part of Massachusetts — closed December 2024 using the SBA same-NAICS provision that required no additional equity, bringing combined revenue to ~$5m across ~100 employees and ~300 patients. The central lesson of the episode is that purpose-driven clarity, high-volume seller outreach, and deep personal relationship-building with sellers can unlock deals that pure financial operators would walk away from.

Deal facts

purchase price: $600k (first acquisition); second acquisition price not stated
multiple: ~2x SDE implied on first deal (ask $600k on ~$310k SDE)
sde ebitda: First business: SDE ~$310k (3-year average); combined EBITDA margin 17-23% on ~$5m revenue
revenue: $5m combined (first business ~$1m at acquisition; second business larger)
financing structure: First deal: SBA loan + equity injection from one board investor + friends and family capital for closing costs; Second deal: SBA loan, no equity required (same NAICS code / same-industry SBA provision)
notes: Guest describes second acquisition requiring ~$50k equity total across both deals (implied by episode title). SBA cap remaining: $2.2m. First business closed September 2023; second business LOI February 2024, closed December 23, 2024. Three sellers on first deal; one experienced a divorce proceeding and one owed $140k in IRS back taxes, causing close to slip from June to September 2023. Holding company: RML Service Group, Inc. (named for grandmother Ruth Miriam Lang).

Why this business

Devin chose home healthcare to honor his grandmother, Ruth Miriam Lang, a lifelong nurse and founding member of the American Nurses Association in Massachusetts, who was his anchor through a chaotic childhood. He was also drawn to the industry's fragmented structure and demographic tailwinds, and saw an untapped opportunity to build strong culture in agencies that were otherwise leadership-starved.

What's working

Culture transformation: engaging staff with direct questions about tasks they enjoy, implementing vision boards, daily planks, and team-building rituals to shift morale in agencies where employees had previously wanted to quit
Hiring a strong clinical/operations manager (Ralph St. Fard) before or at acquisition, providing the licensed clinical leadership Devin lacked as an industry outsider
SBA same-NAICS provision allowed second acquisition with effectively no new equity, adding $3.9m in revenue for zero dilution
Cross-pollination of operational learnings between the two agencies in different parts of Massachusetts
Seller relationship management: personal touches (avocado gesture, in-person visits, hugs) that kept deals alive through turbulent diligence and closing processes
Proprietary outreach plus BizBuySell combination, treating search as a high-volume numbers game with hundreds to thousands of cold calls

What's hard

First deal died at the term sheet stage after eight months of work due to a personal family issue on the seller's side
First business closed was a declining, low-morale lifestyle business — revenue had declined over prior three years, staff were drafting resignation letters
Technology platform change two months post-acquisition was painful for staff
Second deal took a full year from LOI to close (February to December 2024) partly because the same-NAICS SBA product was new and bank personnel didn't know how to process it
IRS back taxes owed by one seller and an undisclosed divorce proceeding among the three sellers on the first deal nearly killed the transaction
No salary taken for the first five months of ownership; minimal personal savings required outside capital for equity injection
Running two simultaneous tracks — stabilizing a turnaround business while searching for and closing a second acquisition — was extremely stressful

Notable quotes

It's either now or never. So, I chose now and really glad I did.

My first ultimate goal in life was to make it to the age of 30 without being arrested or institutionalized or getting a bunch of girls pregnant. Full disclosure, when I woke up on my 30th birthday, my hands went up. I screamed yes. Like I knew I'd made it.

The person on the other side of the table is not the adversary, right? The transaction, the situation is the adversary. It's the situation is preventing both parties from getting where they want to go.

Going from nothing to something to something more has been incredible. I'm excited to keep growing. And every minute of the day, I find this work fun. I find this work fulfilling and I am absolutely willing to fight for it.