How Two First-Time CEOs Bought a $5M EBITDA Business | Greg Geronemus Interview

Greg Geronemus bought a ~$5M EBITDA business with no operating experience, financed half the purchase price with a seller note, and spent his first year doing something most new owners struggle to do: almost nothing.

Four years later, the business was larger, professionally managed, dramatically delevered, and sold at roughly 9x EBITDA—producing just under a 5x net return and ~50% net IRR for investors.

Greg breaks down the entire journey: finding the deal, negotiating the structure, taking over from a deeply embedded founder, deciding what not to change, discovering the growth channels that actually worked, and ultimately selling the company.

Above all, this is an episode about buying well.

Because you can change your team, strategy, marketing, systems, and operations after closing. You cannot change the price you paid or the structure you agreed to.

For anyone searching for, buying, financing, or operating a business, this is a case study worth studying.

Timestamps:
0:00 From Private Equity to Buying a Business
5:12 The High-Volume Strategy for Finding Deals
7:42 The Unlikely Chain of Introductions That Found smarTours
10:01 The Deal: ~5x EBITDA and 50% Seller Financing
13:50 From First Meeting to a $29M Acquisition
17:18 What Made This Business So Attractive
23:14 How the $29M Acquisition Was Financed
25:21 The First 100 Days: Don’t Screw It Up
31:35 Why Great Buyers Go Slow Before They Go Fast
35:23 Modernizing the Business—and What Didn’t Work
39:39 The Growth Breakthrough Nobody Expected
44:12 Selling the Business, ~5x Returns

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.