Jerod Pierce·September 15, 2025

From SBA Loan to High 8-Figure Exit | Jerod Pierce Interview

Jerod Pierce grew up in foster care in Seattle and Missoula, worked his way to Harvard Business School via investment banking at DA Davidson and private equity at GenX 360, and discovered ETA through Rick and Royce's courses. As a self-funded searcher in Seattle in 2016-2017, he conducted a scrappy proprietary outreach campaign — copying phone numbers from truck sides, cold-emailing with custom templates, and buying coffee with dozens of owners — and bought Mercurios HVAC (Gig Harbor, WA) in November 2017 for $1.75m on an SBA loan with ~$260k equity and a 10% seller note. The business had $3.5m revenue and ~$500k EBITDA. Jerod threw himself into the business 7am-7pm daily, learned HVAC sales from the prior owner, personally managed all digital marketing to eliminate agency fees, and formed co-branded utility partnerships for TV credibility. Revenue grew from $3.5m to $35m through organic growth and three add-on acquisitions; EBITDA reached roughly $6.4-6.8m. He sold the platform in October 2022 — just under five years after buying — for a high-8-figure sum near a $95m offer, at age 38. He then purchased South Tacoma Glass (windows and doors), which has been a difficult turnaround: installer attrition on day one, hidden owner-dependency in large commercial jobs, disconnected tech systems, and Jerod's own reduced presence from Texas all compounded to drop revenue from $6m+ to ~$4m with losses in some months, though the business is now nearing break-even after a full operational overhaul.

Deal facts

purchase price: $1.75m (Mercurios HVAC); ~$3.3m (first add-on HVAC); cash for two smaller add-ons; ~$5m purchase price for South Tacoma Glass / ST Glass (inferred from context)
multiple: ~3.5x SDE at acquisition of Mercurios; sold platform at roughly 11-13x EBITDA (high 8-figures near $95m)
sde ebitda: SDE/EBITDA ~$500k at Mercurios acquisition; ~$6.4-6.8m EBITDA at sale of platform; ~$7m EBITDA just before sale
revenue: $3.5m at Mercurios acquisition; grew to $35m at platform sale; South Tacoma Glass over $6m at purchase, declining to ~$4m run rate
financing structure: SBA 7(a) loan + ~10% seller note + ~15% equity (approx $260k cash) for Mercurios; SBA loan also used on first add-on (~$3.3m); cash for two smaller add-ons; seller left a few hundred thousand in the business for the South Tacoma Glass deal
notes: Highest offer received was $95m; took a slightly lower offer for certainty of close. Rolled 20% equity into purchasing entity. Gave key employees $1m+ bonuses at exit. Total debt at sale ~$5m including building purchase. Exit October 2022, approximately 5 years after Nov 2017 acquisition.

Why this business

Jerod chose Mercurios HVAC because it was all B2C (simpler than the commercial/residential split competitor), the owner was rarely present by noon and had clear signs of a good lifestyle (farm, nice house, visible distributions from bank statements), the business had no single point of failure among employees, and it had been operating since 1993 with stable fundamentals. He picked HVAC not for industry thesis but because it was the deal he could afford and the seller dynamic made sense.

What's working

Aggressive owner-operator marketing: took over all digital marketing himself, using Google, Microsoft, and Facebook reps directly to eliminate agency fees (saving 10-20% of spend) and experiment rapidly with ad formats
Learned HVAC sales from the prior owner over 30-60 days, reducing key-person risk in the sales function and giving Jerod a floor of personal capability if salespeople left
Partnership with local utility companies (Puget Sound Energy, Tacoma Power) for co-branded TV commercials featuring rebates, dramatically boosting credibility and brand recognition
Grow-to-diversify strategy: hired more people and grew fast specifically to reduce single points of failure rather than purely for profit, building organizational resilience
Roll-up of complementary HVAC businesses (one ~$6-7m in sales to the south, one ~$3m to the north) forming a geographic triangle, leveraging PE/IB background to manage acquisitions
COVID tailwind: pre-positioned with inventory knowledge to stock $1m in equipment when supply chains seized, capturing demand for newly conditioned home spaces
Strong culture built around presence and hard work; Jerod led by example (7am-7pm daily, crawl-space line-set runs, weekend visits) earning loyalty and discretionary effort from the team
Deliberate management presentation for sale: coached team to front the conversations, positioning Jerod as less essential and making the business appear self-sufficient to buyers

What's hard

South Tacoma Glass / ST Glass (windows and doors): two top installers quit the day the acquisition was announced; revenue declined from $6m+ to ~$4m run rate within first year
Missed critical owner-dependency at ST Glass: the seller (Guy) was the sole driver of large multifamily jobs (potentially $1m each) that made the business profitable; without those, the underlying business was break-even to losing money
Fragmented, manual tech stack at ST Glass: three disconnected systems (Main Street CRM, Clover payments, QuickBooks) required manual re-entry at every step, causing hours of daily accounting labor and errors
Geographic distance from current business: Jerod is now in Texas while ST Glass is in Tacoma, Washington; admits his balance sheet has made him less urgent and present than he was at Mercurios
Windows and doors lacks recurring maintenance revenue like HVAC (no annual service calls), making it harder to build a true recurring-revenue base and potentially less attractive to PE roll-ups
Diligence gaps: assumed software systems talked to each other; did not probe deeply enough into how owner-critical the revenue was; made too many simultaneous changes (rebrand, new CRM, restructuring) right after acquisition while still learning the business
Soft motivation: Jerod acknowledges that because financial failure of ST Glass would not change his daily life, he has been less driven to fix problems urgently than he was at Mercurios when he had to succeed

Notable quotes

I only saw a business that an owner was willing to sell me at a price that I could afford to buy.

The worst that's going to happen is I'm going to be bankrupt, right? And I've grown up without anything anyways.

If you are going to buy a company you have to be present. Like you have to be there and fully invested and committed to its success more than anybody else.

I'm only here because of the amount of money you guys are offering me. This business is not a problem for me. Everybody at that company knows me. I've got this loyal like army of folks going to bat for me every day — there's nothing for me to run from here.