Timeline of a Deal: How I Bought Kelly Green

It feels absolutely unreal, but on July 10, 2025 I woke up as the owner of a small business: Kelly Green, a plant installation and maintenance company for commercial spaces.

From finding the business to closing on it, the journey took 107 days. It was a wild ride that I want to reflect on.

If you’re thinking about buying a business, maybe this gives you an idea of what the process can look like from start to finish. Of course, every deal is different, every buyer and seller is different, so take this as just one more data point in your acquisition research.

Here I go.

Note: Names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved in this story.

March 24 — Finding the Business

I officially started my search on February 1st, the same day I joined the bETA accelerator. But truth be told, I had already dipped my toes into the ETA waters six months earlier.

One of the first things I did when I started exploring ETA was to try to meet brokers. Walker Deibel’s words on “going upstream to get good deals” kept ringing in my head. It made sense to try to get into brokers’ good graces, and hopefully see deals before they hit BizBuySell where everyone pounces.

So, I did what anyone would do: I googled “business broker in Seattle.” Most search results were useless. No option to sign up to a buyer’s database or even a newsletter. But one brokerage stood out. They had an actual process to sign up for their buyer database. It required a form with acquisition criteria, a blanket NDA, and a personal financial statement.

I sat down and created my personal financial statement for the first time in my life. I filled out the form, introduced myself to the brokerage, and sent it all in. Soon after, I was in and started receiving emails with CIMs. Between signing up on November 4 and finding Kelly Green, I received only six CIMs. One of them was for Kelly Green.

March 27 — Meeting the Seller

As soon as I read through the CIM for Kelly Green I reached out and got connected with the lead broker. She had a positive, honest energy and set expectations right away:

• This was a very small business.

• There were no employees.

• There was no online presence.

• She would require earnest money from the buyer.

I didn’t mind small — I was looking for small.

I didn’t mind no employees — I wanted to get my hands dirty anyway.

I didn’t mind no online presence — exciting lever to pull.

I did mind the earnest money. Every piece of advice I had read screamed “do not pay earnest money.” But I wasn’t ready to kill the deal over it… yet. So, I asked for a meeting with the seller.

That meeting took place March 27 in the broker’s office. I arrived early and sat in the waiting room. Soon, a lady and her husband came in. We exchanged smiles, then awkwardly held eye contact a little too long until she asked if I was there for Kelly Green. That was how I met Penny and her husband Jack. They immediately struck me as down-to-earth, kind, hardworking people.

During the meeting, Penny shared openly about operations and how they worked three full days, one of which was on the weekend. She and Jack drove around Sunday to Tuesday every week, caring for about 30 clients at 50 locations. No online presence, everything on paper, and all admin work handled by her CPA. She insisted anyone with work ethic could do what she did.

I left excited about the idea of caring for plants. But I also had worries: Could I handle the workload if I had to work in and on the business? Could the business support an employee? And would this lifestyle give me the flexibility I wanted with my kids?

April 1 — The Offer

I revisited the financials. Penny had been paying Jack a W2 salary, which meant the business could carry an employee. That meant I would be able to delegate work to someone else eventually. Discussing it with my husband we agreed that it was going to be a hard start but there was light at the end of the tunnel. He was supportive and also ready to pick up slack at home. It seemed like we had a plan and my gut told me this was it.

I sent my IOI on March 29, offering 10 percent above asking with a simple structure:

• 10 percent capital injection

• 5 percent seller note

• 85 percent SBA loan

A day after I sent the IOI I got an email confirming the seller was interested. I prepared my LOI, consulted my lawyer about the earnest money, and added one key condition: shadowing Penny on client visits to fully understand what the job was about and what I was getting into.

And this time, I also did something different: I recorded a short video for Penny and Jack, telling them I loved their business, would continue their legacy, and wished them well no matter their choice.

Banks were next. I contacted five and quickly secured two term sheets, with others following later. I sent the term sheets to the broker hoping that having financing lined up early would increase my chances of getting the deal.

Then, I waited.

April 7 — The Answer

On that Monday, while cleaning the house, my phone rang. My stomach instantly contracted. It was the broker.

“Penny and Jack have decided to prioritize your offer,” she said. ”I will have the LOI signed and sent to you in the next hours.”

Me inside: “OMG! I did it!!! 😱”

Me outside: “Sounds great. I look forward to working together.”

And that was it. I had a countersigned LOI. The thing I had worked toward for ten weeks had arrived. I took a deep breath and tried to savor this first step toward a new life.

Then came the first challenge: the 5 percent deposit to escrow. Everyone had warned me not to put money into escrow for a small business acquisition. My lawyer agreed and asked to see the escrow agency’s service agreement. Surprise: they didn’t have one. That left us with a giant question mark.

We decided to amend the LOI to ensure the escrow money would be returned if the deal fell apart. Sounds simple enough, but going back to the seller after a countersigned LOI to request changes? Not simple. Sure enough, the broker called right away. She explained that escrow was supposed to protect the seller from flaky buyers, and if I got the money back regardless, escrow wasn’t serving its purpose.

I understood, but the same logic applied to me. I was going into this in good faith, willing to go through with the deal unless something in diligence proved false. But I could not risk losing my very limited funds. She listened but held her ground.

Would the deal die so early? I sat there with my coffee, phone on my ear, a knot in my stomach. I only had enough capital to try acquiring a business once. No room for failure. But I decided to take a leap of faith. Penny and Jack felt like genuinely good people, just as nervous as I was, trying to protect themselves. So I caved. “If this is so important to Penny and Jack, I will leave the LOI as is.”

The broker was pleased. She had won the battle. I hung up, still queasy, wondering if I had made a mistake.

And then...the phone rang again. It was the broker.“I just talked to Penny and Jack. They said they want you to feel comfortable with this process, so they’ll sign the amended LOI.”

A weight fell off my shoulders. My instincts had been right about them. At that moment I knew this deal had a real chance of making it to close.

April 10 — Starting Due Diligence

Fresh off my bETA accelerator graduation, I returned home ready to dig in. I created a due diligence checklist on the flight from DC to Seattle, then met with Penny to align on expectations and timelines.

I focused my time on three items:

1. Analyzing the tax returns and comparing them to the financials

2. Doing a proof of cash, i.e. checking that the bank statements add up to the P&L

3. Checking if the business had all appropriate licenses

   
   

It was time-consuming, especially as Penny sent me all documents as scans of the originals (I discovered ChatGPT cannot read scanned documents, so I had to go through every page manually. No copy-paste for me.)

After almost going blind from looking at so many numbers I concluded that everything checked out. Plus, Penny and the broker were responsive and open. Weekly meetings were fun and productive. I could see this moving forward beautifully.

April 29 — Time to Bring in the Professionals

To control costs, I staged diligence. The first step was to complete my own diligence and try to kill the deal early. I had successfully completed that step.

Next, I planned on engaging a QofE provider and an insurance broker to analyze the financials and risks around insurance. Once I knew the results of the QofE I could decide whether to engage my lawyer. That way I reduced the risk of pouring money into a dead deal.

Knowing that the deal was alive and well and all financials checked out as far as I could tell, I called my QofE provider and an insurance risk assessment company to get started looking at the deal.

At the same time I reached out to the bank I had enjoyed working with the most so far and made sure to get the laundry list of documents they required so I could start working on that.

May 16 — Receiving the QofE

When I finally got the QofE report and sat down to read through it, I let out a big sigh of relief. I hadn’t wasted my money or my time so far. The business was what it seemed to be — at least as much as we could tell with the data at hand. And to be clear, the data had plenty of holes since the former owner hadn’t been tracking much formally.

Still, the bank statements supported the financials, and the CPA even flagged a few expenses I could reduce. That was encouraging. The insurance risk assessment had also come back clean. Everything looked solid enough for me to give the green light to my lawyer to start legal due diligence and begin drafting the purchase agreement.

So far, so good. But it wasn’t perfect. Far from it.The business had no formal documentation of customer data. No CRM. Not even a central location with all the names and addresses. The financials weren’t really financials either. When I asked for P&Ls or a Balance Sheet for the quarter, I was told they didn’t exist. Instead, I was handed a sheet from Quicken — yes, the personal budgeting tool — showing income and expenses. That was it. The only financials that truly existed were the ones prepared for taxes, and that was all.

That’s when I realized I was stepping into a business that was even more informal than I had thought. I was going to have to build the infrastructure from scratch, from setting up the books to creating customer systems. In other words, I was basically buying a startup with a customer list.

But at about a 2x multiple, with recurring revenue in a field I thought I could genuinely enjoy, I decided it was still worth moving forward. The journey continued.

May 30 — Commitment Letter

After two weeks of gathering documents and filling out forms, I finally made it to the next milestone: the bank’s commitment letter.

I remember printing it out, signing it, rescanning it, and sending it back. The old-fashioned way appears to be the “official” way. Then I wired $3,500 to the bank to show my own commitment. Not long after, a bank representative called to help me open a new account where I would deposit my down payment, access my line of credit, and eventually pay my debt. I was ready!

About the same time, my lawyer sent over the first draft of the purchase agreement. I read it carefully, made comments, and when it aligned with my expectations, we sent it to the seller. That’s when the hardest part of the entire transaction began.

The seller’s lawyer came back with aggressive revisions — and I mean aggressive. For example, Penny and I had agreed that she was retiring, so I had included a broad non-compete. The lawyer revised it into something completely different: limited geographically, and only applying to customers acquired in the last 12 months. That meant everything else was fair game. My trust wavered. If Penny said one thing and then mandated her lawyer to push for another, could I trust her?

It got worse when I saw that the revisions excluded the business email and phone from the transaction. Without direct access to customers, I’d be dependent on Penny to pass along messages. And if I didn’t trust her, how could that possibly work?

I was frustrated. I had expected the purchase agreement to be the easy part. I had kept my word and stayed close to the LOI. But with these revisions, it suddenly looked like we had a very long and expensive road ahead.

My lawyer Hal helped me keep perspective. When I told him about my growing distrust, he reminded me that it was probably her lawyer pushing this, not Penny herself. That was a grounding thought, especially as more rounds of revisions came back, each one ignoring most of our comments.

By the third round of revisions, I had had enough. They came back again ignoring my points and even added new unacceptable changes — like excluding the books, business email address, and business phone number from the transaction. I called the broker and let her know how frustrated I was. I told her it felt like I was just burning money on legal fees and getting nowhere. I had accepted everything I reasonably could, but now it was time for my must-haves to be honored. Otherwise, I had to consider if this was even the right deal for me.

The broker understood and seemed just as confused as I was about why things had gotten so stuck. She brought Penny into the conversation directly. Finally.

That was the breakthrough we needed. When I explained my reasoning, Penny didn’t object to most of it. The only sticking point was her phone number and email address, which she explained were also her and Jack’s personal contacts, tied to all their accounts. That I could understand. And in that conversation, I saw what Hal had been saying all along: Penny wasn’t even aware of the fight her lawyer had been waging on her behalf.

That conversation changed everything. Trust was restored. Penny told her lawyer to accept the changes, and on June 18 we signed the purchase agreement.

That was the last big document I needed. I immediately sent it to the bank and wired my 10 percent down payment to the account they had set up for me. It looked like we were finally on track to close on June 30, just as I had hoped. I couldn’t believe it.

But of course, life is never that easy.

June 18 — The SBA Curveball

I was happily planning for my closing day, when the bank informed me they had missed an important document that was required to move to close: the Legal Permanent Resident Status Verification. This was a requirement under the new SBA rules and the bank had forgotten about it.

Let me tell you, it was very disappointing to learn that the green card I waited two years for was insufficient to prove I was in fact a legal resident. So I found myself depending on the government — that was laying off employees left and right — to get the last piece of the puzzle to close on my deal. You get my anxiety.

Luckily, it came through within two weeks, and we reset closing to July 9.

July 9 — Closing Day

July 9 finally arrived. I was scheduled to sign the documents at 10:30 in the morning. At 10:20, the notary called: he hadn’t received the documents yet and wouldn’t make it by 10:30am.

I called the bank to make sure the documents were sent. Another hour passed. I checked in with the notary again. Still nothing. I called the bank again and they insisted they had already sent everything to their notary contact. I called the notary again and asked him to check with his supervisor. Another hour ticked by. Finally, the notary said he had received the documents but now had other appointments. He could come at 7 pm 😑.

That afternoon I distracted myself with a Department of Revenue training on how to file state taxes (because of course, why not learn about taxes on closing day). Then I met with the local ETA community, all while watching the clock and willing it to be 7 already.

At 6:50pm I was home, ready. At 7:00… no notary. I called. He was still across town and — wait for it — still had to print the documents. He said he would come around 8.

And he did. Right at bedtime... In my house, bedtime is a sacred ritual: two little girls who will not go to sleep without cuddles and songs from mama, which just so happen to occur exactly at 8 pm. So there I was, with two overtired kids climbing on me, trying to focus on the notary’s instructions and sign my closing documents with a somewhat steady hand.

After about 30 minutes, the notary smiled and said, “Well, that’s everything.”“Great,” I said, “just let me check quickly against the list my lawyer sent me.”

Good that I did, because, of course, two critical documents were missing: the Assignment of Assumption and the Bill of Sale.

The notary looked at me. “Do you have a printer?”

My face must have gone pale. No, I did not have a printer. I had given up on them years ago after paying $50 for ink cartridges that dried up after one page. Staples at 20 cents a copy felt like a better deal for my money and my sanity. But it was 8:30pm. Staples was closed. Every copy place was closed.

My mind started racing. I was not going to let a missing printer stop me from closing this deal. I slipped on my sandals and bolted to the first neighbor in my community, my kids crying behind me because I had left the room. I knocked frantically. Bless her heart, my neighbor was home. And she had a printer. I emailed her the documents, she printed them, and I grabbed them like they were gold. I promised myself I’d bring her a gift later (I still owe her one). I ran back, handed them to the notary, and signed.

Finally, the notary left. I took a long breath, tucked my kids into bed, and collapsed. There was no champagne, no celebratory dinner, not even a moment to process.

But I had done it. I was officially a business owner.

Reflection

I’ve done my best to capture the story of this acquisition, though even now I know there are countless details that slipped through the cracks. For most of my career I’ve managed projects, and in many ways this process felt familiar. But never before had I carried this much skin in the game. No other project had the power to change the course of my life and my family’s future. That weight made every step feel bigger, heavier, more permanent.

What made it even harder was the fear. The constant hum of anxiety that maybe I was making the wrong call, maybe I was buying the wrong business. At $432K, some people would call this a tiny deal. For me, it was everything: my savings, the future of my kids. To me, that makes it a gigantic deal.

So here I am, on the other side of the closing table, hopeful that in the months to come I’ll have good news to report from the operator’s seat.

Stay tuned! There will be more posts, hopefully more frequent than this one. But I can’t promise anything. Life as an entrepreneur has its own sense of timing, and apparently, it likes chaos.