The Intentional Owner

Yes, if you go small and go direct. Link Moser grew Windhill Design, his web development company, through 12 acquisitions and never borrowed a dollar. Eleven of them were books of business: a competitor's customers, moved over to his company. He found the sellers with one-page letters on company letterhead, hand-signed, mailed to every shop like his in New Hampshire and then New England. The first deal came a year after the letter landed, from a seller who had kept it in a drawer.

The structure is the whole trick: 50% of whatever those customers pay for the next 12 months, off the top line, then it's yours. No cash down, no bank, and if the customers leave in month three, nothing lost but time. Sam and Kaustubh test the playbook against fence rental and tree care, where the customer books are bigger and messier, and agree on the conditions: source direct, stay small, and expect it to take two or three years of planted seeds before one sprouts.