Tree service, HVAC, machine shops, contractors, trucking: businesses that run on crews, trucks, and one person holding it all together. When that person has done the math and it stopped working, 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.
No fees, no consultants. We make money when the business does. Call or text (516) 640-6644.
One group bought a business recently and is drowning in it: SBA 7(a) defaults hit 4.8% in March 2026, the highest since 2013, and loans written in 2022 through 2024 are failing at twice the pre-pandemic rate. The other group built a business over thirty years and is aging out of it, often handing it to someone who is not ready. Very few buyers are set up for owners who are scared. That is 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 is already healthy. We are neither. 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. Here is how each version works, including how we get paid.
You keep ownership. We take operating control and run the turnaround. Our pay is an equity stake that vests as results come in. Hit the targets and we have earned it; miss them and we earn less. Nothing up front.
For when the debt is the problem but the business is not dead. We take a majority stake at today's valuation, do the restructuring work with your lender, and you keep a minority stake plus an earnout tied to the recovery.
For when you are done, or the debt is bigger than the business. We buy it outright at a distressed valuation, take on or restructure the debt, and add an earnout if it recovers. You walk away and the crew keeps working.
Confidential, and run the way we were trained to run things.
No broker needed. We sign an NDA, then talk through the business, what you want out of this, and whether there is a fit.
We get into the numbers and out onto the floor, then tell you what we found, including the parts that cannot be fixed.
Earn-in, hybrid, or buyout, structured around what you need and what the business can carry. Valuation formula and exit terms are fixed before we take over.
The first ninety days look the same in every structure: stabilize cash, tighten the operation, and make sure the crew knows who is in charge and what is changing.
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.
$750K - $3.5M adjusted EBITDA, now or before things slipped
Blue-collar first: skilled trades and field service, manufacturing and fabrication, business services, government contracting
Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and the Carolinas (PA, NJ, NY, DE, MD, VA, DC, New England, NC, SC). Based in Philadelphia; this work happens on-site
Retirement or succession, owner burnout, operational stall-out, or active financial distress
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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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.
