Tree service, HVAC, machine shops, contractors, trucking. Businesses that run on crews and trucks and one person holding the whole thing together. If that person is you, and you've been doing the math at two in the morning and it stopped working a while ago, we're who you call. We don't send a deck and we don't bill by the hour. We come in, run the operation, and take the problem on ourselves, either by earning our way into the business or by buying it at a price that reflects what it is today.
The short version. Roslyn Ridge Holdings is a Philadelphia firm, run by three veterans, that takes over failing blue-collar businesses in the $750K to $3.5M EBITDA range across the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and Carolinas. Depending on the situation we earn a stake by running the turnaround, buy in at a distressed price, or buy the whole business and work out the loan with the lender. We don't charge fees. We get paid when the business recovers.
No fees, no consultants. We make money when the business does. Call or text (516) 640-6644.
A lot of the owners who call us aren't planning some graceful exit a few years out. They took over a business and it's failing right now. The debt keeps stacking up, a lender has started calling, and payroll is getting close. If that's where you are, we have no interest in lecturing you about how you got there. We'd rather talk about what happens next.
There's no investment committee and no six-month process. A first confidential call can happen this week. Within a couple of weeks after that, we can usually have something concrete on the table, whether that's a sale, a recapitalization, or an orderly wind-down.
Your employees, customers, and lender don't hear a word until you decide they should. We sign an NDA before anything else.
Sometimes the right move is a full sale. Sometimes it's a recapitalization that keeps you in the business. And sometimes the truthful answer is that the business can't be saved, and the job becomes getting you out from under it as cleanly as possible. We'll tell you which of those we see, even when it isn't the one you were hoping for.
One group bought a business recently and is drowning in it. The other built a business over thirty years and is aging out of it, often handing it to someone who isn't ready. Very few buyers are set up for owners who are scared. That's the gap we work in.
Sources: SBA 7(a) portfolio performance analysis, Lumos Data (March 2026); Project Equity / Exit Planning Institute succession data (2024–25).
Between 2021 and 2024, thousands of people bought blue-collar businesses, many for the first time, with 10% down and a variable-rate SBA loan. Then prime went from 3.25% to 8.5%. The seller's numbers turned out to be optimistic. A thin margin for error turned into no margin at all. Those loans are now defaulting at about twice the pre-pandemic rate, and behind each one is an owner with a personal guarantee, a crew that depends on him, and nobody obvious to call.
Baby Boomer owners are leaving the trades businesses they built, frequently with no buyer lined up and no successor ready. About half have no succession plan at all. The business doesn't stop when the founder does. It limps along under a son-in-law, or the longest-tenured foreman, or a buyer who paid too much, until somebody has to make a hard decision. We'd rather be in the room early than late.
Private equity has spent the past decade rolling up HVAC, plumbing, landscaping, and tree care into platforms with call centers, pricing software, and real marketing budgets. The independent shop is competing against that with a whiteboard and whatever the owner remembers. AI widens the gap a little more every year, for the operators who use it. None of that means the trades are dying. It means a well-run independent has more room to win than it used to.
A consultant bills you whether or not it works. A lender wants a business that's already healthy. We're neither of those. Depending on how deep the hole is and what you want on the other side, a deal with us lands somewhere between us earning our way in and us buying the whole thing at a price that reflects what it's worth today. Below is how each version works, including how we get paid, since you're going to wonder about that anyway.
You keep ownership. We take operating control and run the turnaround day to day. Our pay is an equity stake that vests as results come in: margin, cash, debt paid down. If we hit the targets we've earned it. If we miss them we earn less. There's nothing up front.
For when the debt is the problem but the business isn't dead. We take a majority stake at a valuation that reflects where the business is today, usually with little cash changing hands, because most of what we're bringing is the work of restructuring the loan with your lender and getting that weight off you. You keep a minority stake and an earnout tied to the recovery.
For when you're done, or the debt is bigger than the business. We buy it outright, priced the way lenders and courts value a distressed business: on its assets, or at a steep discount to what it earned when it was healthy. Most of the consideration is us taking on or restructuring the debt, plus an earnout if the business recovers. You walk away, and the crew keeps working.
The levers in a trades or field-service business aren't in a spreadsheet. They're in how jobs get estimated, whether the crews are busy, how far the trucks drive between stops, who's chasing receivables, what the equipment and insurance cost, and a sales pipeline that mostly lives in the owner's head. We've been inside one of these businesses when it was losing half a million dollars a year and brought it back. We know where the money leaks out, and we know what a crew needs to hear on the first morning.
A word about AI, since people tend to get this backwards. It can't climb a tree, sweat a pipe, or run a lathe. It can quote, dispatch, collect, and market, which is the back office most owners never had time to build. The trades are some of the last work software can't do. That's part of why we buy them, and the back-office side is how we run them better than a founder working eighty hours a week ever had the chance to.
A private equity group owned a large outdoor services business that was losing roughly $500,000 a year and heading toward a million. The customers were real and so were the crews. The operation underneath them had gotten away from everybody involved.
We structured a non-cash deal to take it over. No check was written, and our upside depended entirely on fixing it. Then we did the work this page describes. We got into the crews, the schedule, the estimating, and the receivables, and rebuilt the operation from the ground up.
Twelve months later the business was profitable, margins were in the range a well-run outdoor services company should have, and revenue had gone from $3 million to $7 million.
That deal is the reason the earn-in is on this page at all. We're not proposing to experiment on your business. We've run this model once already, on a company bigger than most of the ones we describe here.
We'll share details and references with serious counterparties under NDA.
Roslyn Ridge Holdings is run by three managing partners who served as Marine and Army officers before going into operations, M&A, and private equity. The military habits stuck, mostly because they work. And we've taken a business through a turnaround ourselves rather than advising on one from a conference room.
The questions owners ask us late at night, answered the way an operator would answer them: what happens, what it costs, and where the exits are. All guides →
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You don't need a broker. We sign an NDA early, then talk through the business, what you want out of this, and whether there's a fit, before anything else happens.
We get into the numbers and out onto the floor: the trucks, the schedule, the receivables, the crew. Then we tell you what we found, including the parts that can't be fixed. Most owners never get that read from anyone.
A buyout, a partial sale, or an equity-for-turnaround partnership, structured around what you need and what the business can carry. Where financing is needed, it comes through SBA and independent-sponsor channels we already work with.
Whether we own it outright or we're earning our stake, the first ninety days look the same. Stabilize cash, tighten up the operation, and make sure the crew knows who's in charge and what's changing.
Roslyn Ridge Holdings is a Philadelphia firm that acquires and turns around blue-collar and skilled-trades businesses (tree service, HVAC, contractors, machine shops, trucking, and similar), typically with $750,000 to $3.5 million in adjusted EBITDA, across the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and the Carolinas. It either buys the business outright or comes in as an operating partner in exchange for equity.
It means we come in and run the turnaround ourselves, covering operations, cash, crew, and customers, and instead of charging a fee we're paid in an ownership stake. There's no retainer and no consulting invoice. If the business doesn't recover, we don't get paid. It exists for owners who can't afford to hire help but have a business worth saving.
No. Some owners want a clean exit, and for them we buy the business outright. Others want to stay in. Those owners keep their stake while we run operations and earn ours. Once the business is healthy again you can sell to us, sell to someone else, or keep running it with a working operation underneath you.
Because that's what we know how to fix. Trades and field-service businesses fail in fairly predictable ways: estimates that don't cover costs, crews standing around, receivables nobody chases, equipment financed badly, and a sales pipeline that only exists in the owner's head. We've run one of these businesses through a turnaround, and we know where the money leaks out.
No. We work with businesses at a turning point. Usually that means a retiring or burned-out owner, a company that has plateaued, or an operation that hasn't kept up with the rest of the industry. Plenty of these businesses are basically sound and just need hands-on ownership to get to the next stage.
Yes. We took over a large outdoor services business from a private equity group in a non-cash deal. It was losing roughly $500,000 a year and headed toward a million. Twelve months later it was profitable with healthy margins, and revenue had grown from $3 million to $7 million. We'll share details and references with serious counterparties under NDA.
Three managing partners: Hunter Harrison (Marine Infantry Officer, former McKinsey, private equity), Kris Peck (Army Combat Engineer; sales, business development, and M&A), and Patrick Zagarino (Marine Officer, former M&A consultant at Parthenon-EY). All three are veterans and operators. The firm is based in Philadelphia.
Almost never. If you took over a business, whether through an acquisition, an SBA-financed deal, or an inheritance, and it's underwater now, that's the call we want. The earlier you reach out, the more options stay open, including a full sale, a partial recapitalization, or a structured transition that protects you, your employees, and your personal guarantee. Waiting rarely helps anyone.
Call anyway. We'd rather have that conversation with you now, confidentially, than have you go it alone until there's nothing left to work with. There's no obligation, and nothing happens without your say-so.
It's the name people use for the wave of Baby Boomer business owners reaching retirement age without a clear succession plan. Roughly 2.9 million U.S. businesses are owned by someone 55 or older, and about half of the owners approaching that transition have no detailed plan for what happens next. That's one of the two situations Roslyn Ridge Holdings was set up for.
From the recovery rather than the closing. In an earn-in we're paid only in equity that vests as results come in. In a hybrid or a distressed buyout we own more of the business, but we've bought it at a distressed price, so we only come out ahead if we fix it. In every structure we set the valuation formula and your exit terms before we take operating control, so you never have to wonder whether the people running your business would rather it looked worse.
The same way lenders and courts do: by what the assets would bring, or by a steep discount to what the business earned when it was healthy, whichever fits the situation. It's a hard number to hear if you've been anchored on what you paid. It is usually higher than a liquidation would produce, though, because we're paying for the crew and the customers and not just the trucks. Where the debt is bigger than that value, the consideration is mostly us taking on or restructuring the loan.
It's earned rather than granted. We agree on targets up front (margin, cash, debt paid down) and our stake vests as they're hit. If we miss them, we earn less. The valuation formula and your buyout and sale terms are fixed on day one, so nothing about the stake depends on how the business looks once we've been running it for a while.
Then an earn-in doesn't work. A stake in an underwater business is worth nothing to either of us, and we'll say so. The conversation turns into a hybrid or a distressed buyout, and the first person who needs to be in the room is your lender. Lenders generally prefer a credible operator and a restructured loan to a default and a liquidation. The realistic goal is getting you out from under the personal guarantee with the business and the crew still standing.
Not to the work itself. AI can't climb a tree, sweat a pipe, or run a lathe, and the trades are some of the last work software can't replace. The pressure is competitive. PE-backed platforms are using modern quoting, dispatch, marketing, and collections against independents still running on a whiteboard, and that's the gap we close when we take over operations. It's an advantage for whoever uses it, not a reason the business is doomed.
We're not a consultant; we don't bill hours or leave you a binder. We're not a lender; we don't add debt to a business already carrying too much. We're not a bankruptcy firm; if that's what you need we'll say so and point you to a good one. And we're not a roll-up. We aren't buying your business to fold it into a platform. We take businesses on in order to run them.
Most private equity firms compete for businesses that are already performing well, and most won't touch one that can't be financed with a clean SBA loan. That rules out nearly every business in serious trouble. We built Roslyn Ridge Holdings to go there anyway, where the opportunity is in the turnaround rather than the multiple, and to earn our way in operationally when a straight purchase doesn't work yet.
Call or text Patrick directly at (516) 640-6644, or email patrick@roslynridgeholdings.com. We can sign an NDA before you share any details, and there's no obligation. Brokers and business owners are both welcome.
Yes. We work with brokers and intermediaries representing sellers in our criteria, and we respond quickly to teasers and CIMs that fit.
Every conversation starts confidentially. If your business fits our criteria, or you aren't sure and want a candid read, reach out directly. No broker needed, no obligation.