Acquiring Minds | Stacking Small Acquisitions to $5m in Revenue
Host: Will Smith
Guests: Kyle Boyden & Jake Forfaro (Co-Owners, Rainier Cleaning Solutions)
Date: August 25, 2025
Overview
In this episode, Will Smith interviews Kyle Boyden and Jake Forfaro, co-owners of Rainier Cleaning Solutions, about their unconventional journey stacking multiple small acquisitions—primarily in the cleaning industry—to build a $5 million revenue platform. They candidly discuss their early foray into property management, their pivot to cleaning businesses, how they funded their buys with low down payments and seller financing, and the operational lessons (and headaches) they encountered along the way. The episode dives into the risks, rewards, and hard realities of choosing micro-acquisitions as a growth strategy, offering a front-row look at the scrappy, sometimes painful, trajectory from tiny deals to real business scale.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Why Buy Businesses Instead of Real Estate?
- The guests originally pitched business acquisition to a room of real estate investors, including past guest Ken Seo.
- Kyle Boyden (07:42): "On business, the risk-reward could be 20 fold, could be a hundredfold."
They felt that creative seller financing strategies that rarely worked in real estate were almost “standard” in small business acquisitions. - Control and upside are greater in business versus real estate. Real estate has hard caps on returns and limited creative deal structures for ordinary investors.
2. Backgrounds & Real Estate to Acquisition Pivot
- Kyle: Born to entrepreneurs, dabbled in business, found real estate too slow to reach his goals.
- Jake: Former ICU nurse, invested in multifamily/mobile home parks. Hit a wall when interest rates rose, making new deals unworkable.
- Jake (11:28): “155 doors, over 13 properties” was their combined peak real estate portfolio.
3. First Business Buy: Property Management (The "Tuition" Deal)
- How it Happened: Seller reached out to Jake out of desperation. Bought a small property management business for under $10K—without meaningful due diligence.
- Kyle (13:56): “He was essentially just bleeding out day by day...we kind of needed to pull the plug and get out of here.”
- Realization that property management was harder than anticipated: 24/7 headaches, thin margins, difficult clients, and constant emergencies.
- They were able to quickly turn it from deep red ($8K/mo losses) to $6K/mo profit by cutting costs and then offloaded it as a 'book of business' to another property manager.
4. First Lessons: The Value of Doing, Not Studying
- Both admit their initial business buy was "negligent" on diligence, but the fast, cheap experience was “worth the tuition.”
- Jake (16:33): “Now the level of due diligence I'm able to do and I do do on a regular basis, it's from this. I call that just is tuition, you know.”
5. Entering Home Cleaning & Stacking Micro-Acquisitions
- After seeing all the money sent to cleaning vendors, they decided to buy into cleaning businesses.
- Initial businesses: Home cleaning, window cleaning, then branching into pressure washing and commercial services.
- Jake (23:11): “We bought a house clean company...around $300,000 of revenue per year...then...a similar size window cleaning company...that’s kind of how we were really trying to maximize the value of that client.”
Home Cleaning Pros and Cons
- Recurring revenue and easily removable owners
- Low margins, tough client/staff dynamics, price competition due to low barriers to entry
- Difficult to scale with high quality because clients want ‘their’ cleaner; hard to substitute staff on residential jobs
Residential vs. Commercial
- Operated both, but gradually focused energy toward commercial cleaning for scalability, cross-selling, and higher margins.
6. How They Funded the Acquisitions
- The first six acquisitions were done without SBA loans, mostly through generous seller financing (often 0% interest) and low down payments.
- Kyle (41:04): “All seller financing. Very small cash out of pocket. Owner carrying the note from anywhere from three years to all the way up to 10 years. Ten years on some of them. We have a number of them at 0% interest.”
- Total equity contributed: $100,000 to acquire $5M in revenue ($1M EBITDA); today, take-home cash stands at $650,000 with 90% ownership.
7. Stacking Small Deals: The Pain & the Payoff
- It took five small acquisitions to reach $2.5M in revenue, then two larger ones to hit $5M.
- Jake (35:07): “The last two [acquisitions] were much larger…What we've learned to get to this point, I don't think we would have been ready to jump into that million dollar EBITDA purchase.”
- Operational pain was high: integrations were hard, no immediate financial reward, all cash reinvested, partners worked other jobs for years.
Would They Repeat This Tactic?
- Jake (43:53): “No, I wouldn’t do it differently…The lessons we learned doing this is, is what led us up to, to the current strategy we’re in.”
- Kyle (45:22): “We had to hit $5 million revenue to actually celebrate anything. And we still felt like we haven't scraped, scratched the surface.”
8. Their Acquisition Strategy & Criteria
- Extremely proactive, outbound search: hired freelancers to build lists of every cleaning business in the region, cold-called hundreds.
- Focused on “retirement-age” operators running businesses with solid client lists (often neglected), often in operation 30+ years.
- Willing to buy any business connected to cleaning—carpet, janitorial, etc.—as long as it cash-flowed and had potential for cross-sell.
- Early on, bought whatever fit their parameters; as skills/confidence grew, tightened buy-box and went for larger, better-run businesses.
9. Leadership Lessons & Integration
- Early on, they lacked elite leadership skills; learned the importance of vision and culture in small business.
- Jake (36:54): “A common factor in the businesses that we purchased, a lot of them lack elite leadership and vision where the company was going.”
- Success increasingly dependent on their hands-on, humble approach to staff—”first in, last out.”
10. Large Acquisition via SBA Loan: Surprises and Diligence
- Their 7th acquisition (first using SBA loan via US Bank) nearly fell apart when forensic accounting revealed the financials were questionable—P&Ls overstated revenue by $300K due to poor, possibly fraudulent bookkeeping.
- They learned that SBA lender diligence is less rigorous than reputed; “never even asked for bank statements”—a warning to would-be buyers not to rely on the lender’s due diligence.
- Eventually renegotiated the price downward and closed the deal with ongoing seller support.
11. Risk, Rewards, and Advice to Future Searchers
- Acquiring small businesses is “low risk” because capital outlay is small, seller financing terms were favorable, and there wasn’t competition to buy these businesses.
- Most sellers didn’t even realize they could sell their businesses (gave them “found money”).
- Jake (47:21): “You would have to be someone with a threshold for pain. But I also think you need to be very, very humble and, and not have any sort of, of ego...If you have capital or access to capital, save yourself some gray hairs and go bigger.”
- Encourages anyone stuck in a low-reward job to consider small business acquisition as a calculated risk.
12. Go-to-Market & Growth Vision
Service Model
- Two separate brands for commercial vs. residential, with cross-utilization of backend/admin, but distinct brand-facing teams.
- Build “total facility care” customized programs for larger commercial clients (not just janitorial bids).
- Central strategy is to land a client and then cross-sell multiple services: floor care, window cleaning, pressure washing, etc.
The Big Goal
- Target: Reach $10M EBITDA for optionality, legacy, and (potentially) a large exit, but now motivated as much by the journey as the payday.
- Kyle (70:39): “The plan from day one was 10 million EBITDA...Whether or not that is true, I guess we'll find out when we get there.”
- Acknowledges they may return to further acquisitions (“never say never”), but want to focus on integrating current businesses and growing organically for now.
Commercial Cleaning Industry: Pros & Cons
- Pros: Recurring, business-to-business revenue; many businesses poorly run by competition; economies of scale for cross-selling services.
- Cons: Still a hard business; tight margins; persistent labor challenges; recurring contracts not as ‘sticky’ as often portrayed.
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
- “The risk-reward could be 20 fold, it could be a hundred fold.” – Kyle Boyden (07:42)
- “We were longing for more...we watched a YouTube video, read a book, watched a podcast, bought a business.” – Kyle (09:35)
- “It was negligent. Looking back on it now, however, I wouldn't change it because of the lessons I learned. I call that just is tuition.” – Jake (16:33)
- “Anybody with a mop and a bucket could offer to clean your house. So the pricing is...it's hard to maintain strong margins in a house cleaning business.” – Kyle (22:51)
- “I think we both lived below our means for a long period of time...Everything needed to be reinvested into marketing and other acquisition opportunities.” – Kyle (25:59)
- “We have a number of [seller notes] at 0% interest.” – Kyle (41:04)
- “I think hard is okay and the fact there was two of us in it together...There was a lot of dark nights..., but the promise to each other was I'm not going to quit today.” – Kyle (45:22)
- “If you have capital or access to capital, save yourself some gray hairs and go bigger.” – Jake (47:21)
- “The owners were willing to sell because they were at retirement age...And because there aren’t other buyers for tiny businesses like this.” – Kyle (51:49)
- On due diligence: “Never even asked for bank statements at any point. So they had P&Ls and tax returns that matched...we went pretty far through this process.” – Kyle (57:36)
- “The plan from day one was 10 million EBITDA.” – Kyle (70:35)
- “You know, we just had our very first celebration dinner three days ago. We had to hit $5 million revenue to actually celebrate anything.” – Kyle (45:22)
Important Timestamps by Topic
- 07:42 – Comparing risk/reward of real estate vs. businesses
- 13:15 – First micro-acquisition: property management
- 16:33 – The “tuition” deal: learning by doing
- 19:08 – Entering and dissecting home cleaning
- 23:11 – Stacking cleaning businesses and cross-sell strategy
- 25:40 – How they funded themselves (working weekend jobs, reinvesting everything)
- 29:58 – Building acquisition muscle, narrowing focus to commercial
- 35:07 – Painful lessons and learning operational leadership
- 41:04 – Seller financing and their typical deal structures
- 43:53 – Would they repeat this approach?
- 47:21 – Who should consider this strategy?
- 51:49 – Unconventional advantages of micro-acquisitions
- 57:36 – 62:19 – Navigating a difficult (SBA) acquisition, discovering financial inconsistencies
- 70:39 – The big vision: $10M EBITDA
- 74:35 – Deal fatigue and the next phase: focusing on organic growth
Final Thoughts
Kyle and Jake’s journey is a rare look at the high-friction, bootstrapped approach to acquisition entrepreneurship. While their strategy required grit, humility, and willingness to work for a delayed payday, their story demonstrates that stacking seemingly unglamorous, small deals can ultimately build a substantial business—with careful integration, diligent learning, and fierce capital discipline. Their openness about the risks, messes, and emotional tolls stands as both inspiration and caution for listeners considering the micro-acquisition route to entrepreneurial success.
Contact:
- Kyle Boyden – [LinkedIn]
- Jake Forfaro – [LinkedIn]
(Links provided in show notes)
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