Yeah.
Acquiring Minds
How Business-Buyer Fit Led to 2.2x and No PG
Deal story
Former medical device sales rep Joe Wynn bought an operating-room equipment sales/service distributorship in Georgia for $1.35M, leveraging supplier veto power and business-buyer fit to negotiate a 90%+ seller note at 7% over 10 years with no personal guarantee. The business does $2M revenue with ~45% margins; Joe underwrote it at a stabilized ~$600K SDE and is forecasting $3M+ revenue in his first full year.
Deal facts
Industry
Medical / operating-room equipment (surgical lights, tables, booms)
Business
Sales & service distributorship
Location
Atlanta / Georgia
Revenue
$2M (2025)
SDE / EBITDA
$889K reported SDE; ~$600K stabilized (underwritten)
Multiple
~2.25x on stabilized ~$600K SDE
Deal size
$1.35M purchase price
Acquisition model
Partnered
Outcome
Closed Jan 21; $120K down, ~90% seller note at 7% over 10 years, no PG, 3-month standby; received $150K working capital; forecasting $3-3.5M revenue for the year
People
Will Smithhost
Host of Acquiring Minds podcast
Joe Wynnguest
Former medical device sales rep, now owner of Surgical Specialties, an OR equipment sales/service business
Topics
Excerpts · 410 segments · ~1:33:42 long
Short excerpts only — hear the full conversation on the publisher's site.
05:03 Joe's medical sales background13:40 Finding the equipment business18:15 Revenue and SDE breakdown21:14 High margins and pricing power26:04 Lumpy project revenue history37:13 Purchase price negotiation57:52 Deal structure and seller note1:11:53 Bank froze account post-close
So this is a nice segue into the actual purchase price multiple and how you structure the whole deal. Yeah, let's get into it. What Actually maybe the, the story piece here, you'd seen it listed for X, you offered Y. Walk us through that.
Yeah, so. So like I said, a little bit earlier, connected with the owner previously early in the year, last year. And it was listed at 1.5 million early last year. And then when we connected again later in the year, once I went through the acquisition lab and had all the resources to make me a adequate buyer, it really set me up to really dissect the business as to what the true evaluation of the…
So he was asking 1.5 million, got all the information evaluated with all the advisors throughout acquisition lab. And initially because the, the numbers weren't aligning, my initial offer was actually close to a million dollars in the purchase price. And then we kind of got more into the weeds and they provided, um, but the actual purchase Price ended up being 1.35 million as the actual purchase…
1.35. So it was listed at 1.5 million on biz Buy Sell. You can imagine, you know, the broker or whomever, the, the, the copy on the Biz Buy Sell page saying, you. Know, less than 2x for 900,000 of SDE.
Yeah.
And pretty misleading as we've already covered. In your own mind, you ultimately underwrote this as sort of a $600,000. Yeah. And you got it for 1.35.
You offered a million, he pushed back, you got 1.35. Still a great multiple.
Yeah.
And why do you think you were able to or why did you have the confidence to be so aggressive in your multiple?
Well, I knew that the owner, because it's a distributorship business, ultimately it's the supplier that signed off on who purchases the business because you're a exclusive distributor of that supplier. So I knew in conversations with them, and this is one of the things I learned in Acquisition lab is if you just get an owner talking, they'll tell you anything. And.
I didn't know that. I thought they were always cagey around the buyers. But good, good to know.
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