Let's return now to the plot. The business, it Total care you told us about. The size, the structure here is also interesting.
Acquiring Minds
Buying Small to Build for the Long Term ($300k SDE)
Deal story
Brendan Duebner, an army vet and self-funded searcher, bought IT Total Care, a tiny Bay Area MSP with ~$1.15M revenue and ~$300K SDE, via a creative seller-financed stock deal. His vision is deliberately modest—building a 20-40 person 'tribe' he'll run for decades—and the business grew 25% in revenue and ~40% EBITDA in his first nine months.
Deal facts
Industry
IT / Managed Service Provider (MSP)
Business
Managed service provider serving local SMBs
Location
Foster City, California (Bay Area)
Revenue
~$1.15M (down from peak ~$1.4-1.5M)
SDE / EBITDA
~$150K EBITDA / ~$300K SDE
Multiple
~2x SDE / ~4x adjusted EBITDA
Deal size
~$615K (incl. ~$100K assumed lease liabilities; ~$175K cash left in business)
Acquisition model
Self-Funded
Outcome
Closed March 2025; first ~9 months revenue up 25%, EBITDA up ~40%; targeting 25% growth in 2026
People
Will Smithhost
Host of Acquiring Minds podcast
Brendan Duebnerguest
Army vet, self-funded searcher, owner of IT Total Care MSP
Tony Morarosother
Founder/seller of IT Total Care, built it over 20 years
Josh Medowother
Self-funded searcher and former army officer; Brendan interned for him
Topics
Excerpts · 332 segments · ~1:23:40 long
Short excerpts only — hear the full conversation on the publisher's site.
03:42 Background, army, and discovering ETA12:29 Cold calling as a sourcing strategy17:14 Finding and analyzing IT Total Care23:55 Long-termism and tribe philosophy38:37 Working in the business pre-close48:52 Deal structure and seller note55:51 First-year results and EOS1:12:21 MSP strategy: local vs offshore
And actually before even we get to that, the fact that you worked in the business before buying it. So let's. Let's get into the weeds here, please.
Yeah, so. So when I talked to Tony and. And we started going down the path a little bit, you know, it became obvious to me that one, this was a small business, two, this was a shrinking business, and three, that it was not going to really be a financeable business because it was just too small. And so because of all of these factors and the fact that a really small business also has a lot of…
And so my pitch to Tony was kind of like, hey, I know you really care about this business and the people in it, and you really want it to succeed, and so do I. Why don't we, once we get through a certain level of diligence, why don't I come work in the business until we close the deal so I can meet the people, I can understand the systems, they can get a feel for if I'm right for them.
I can get a feel for if this makes sense for me, all that kind of stuff. And he thought, he was like, I think that makes a ton of sense. I think that's a great idea.
So once we got past kind of the financial due diligence, I started working in the business and met everybody and did all those things and got more and more comfortable of, okay, this is what's actually going on here. These are the things this business actually needs. And Tony and his team got more comfortable.
Like, this is who this guy. Initially, I know everybody's reaction was, okay, wait, so you're telling me there's this like late 20s, early 30s, guy with no background in it who's going to run this IT business? Like, how does this make any sense?
And through that time before close, I was able to kind of, you know, build some rapport, build relationships, and just communicate the general vision. Like, look, like, I'm not an IT engineer. I have no desire to be an IT engineer.
You know, my job here is to empower you to be able to do, you know, what you guys need to do. Like, my job is to handle the business side of things. So it was.
And that did that resonate, I think,.
At first, like, people don't get. They're like, but you. So you don't know anything about it.
We kept coming back to the state park, but I think between, you know, my being the first person there every day and being the last person to leave my just consistency and, you know, Tony's back backing of saying, like, hey, guys, like, I think this is the right thing. The reason this business has never been able to grow past a certain level is because of my inability to do the business side.
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