oday's story has an eye-watering outcome.

And it shows the potential of buying a business.

Jerod Pierce used the equity from a townhome that he'd house-hacked with some buddies to buy an HVAC business doing $3.5m in revenue, half a million of SDE.

He was able to buy the business himself, without investors.

Five years later, he sold it for upper 8 figures. Jerod doesn't tell us the exact figure, but he does say that he turned down $95 million, so it had to be in range of that.

Jerod is humble about this staggering success. He acknowledges that timing was crucial here; he bought and grew Mercurios just as HVAC was becoming a white-hot target for private equity.

But really there is so much Jerod should take credit for. He did 10x the revenue of the business over those 5 years from $3.5m to $35m, and 12x'd that $500k SDE to over $6m of EBITDA.

So yes, there is luck here in that he could command a higher multiple than he might have gotten in cooler times. But at $6m of EBITDA, he would have had a big 8-figure exit whatever the multiples had been.

Jerod's posture going into the exit process also helped. He didn't need or want to sell, which is of course the best negotiating position from which to sell.

And so, how did Jerod build the business over those 5 years? Listen for some of the key ingredients:

• How he devoted himself to mastering digital marketing.
• How he devoted himself to learning sales, including going into the field to do it.
• How he was present and 110% involved. He was there 7 to 7 every day, and on many Saturdays. You'll hear him say that some Saturdays when he didn't need to go to the office, he'd go just to go, just to find something to work on or improve.

That last piece — presence — is huge, according to Jerod.

He's subsequently acquired another small home services business, this time through his family office rather than as a scrappy self-funded searcher with an SBA loan. But it has not gone well, and Jerod believes that his lack of presence is a big reason why.

There is much to take from this epic business-buying journey with Jerod Pierce, owner of Olympic Holdings Investments. Enjoy.