Dana Whitfield
Buyer profile · Updated July 2026
I buy
home services
businesses in
Central Texas.
$2M to $5M in revenue. SBA prequalified. I am not an investor group. I will be the one running it.
You spent
thirty years
building it.
The last buyer who called asked about your multiple. He did not ask a single question about the fourteen people who show up every morning.
I am not
buying it
to flip it.
I ran a $12M P&L and led 40 people for someone else for seventeen years. I would like to do it for myself now, and for the crew that comes with it.
What happens to your people.
and hold
Everyone keeps their job and their pay. The name over the door stays. I work in the business for at least the first year, in person, and I am not selling it out from under anyone in three years.
Seventeen years running other people's operations.
I am Dana Whitfield. I spent my career in field operations for regional facilities and home services companies, most recently as VP of Operations for a $12M commercial services business across four Texas markets.
I have hired plumbers, fired a general manager, rebuilt a dispatch board that was losing us eleven calls a week, and sat with a technician's wife in a hospital waiting room. I know what this work is.
In 2024 my company was restructured and half my department was replaced by an outside vendor. I decided I was done building something valuable for people who could delete it in a meeting I was not invited to.
I want to own the thing I am good at.
I am not looking for a project to fix and sell. I am looking for a well-run business with a good crew and an owner who is ready to stop carrying it, in a trade I already understand, close enough to my house that I can be there on a Tuesday morning when something breaks.
My kids are 11 and 14. I intend to still own this when they are out of college. That is the actual plan, not a talking point.
Specific enough to screen in ten seconds.
Forward this to a colleague. If a listing matches four of these, send it.
- Industry
- Residential and light commercial home services. HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, landscape maintenance, pest, restoration.
- Geography
- Central Texas. Waco, Temple, Killeen, Austin metro, Bryan-College Station. Within 90 minutes of Waco.
- Revenue
- $2M to $5M
- EBITDA / SDE
- $450K to $1.2M
- Owner role
- Owner-operated, willing to stay 3 to 6 months for transition
- Team
- 8 to 45 employees. Recurring or contract revenue is a plus, not required.
- Structure
- SBA 7(a) with equity injection. Seller note welcome. Open to a small rollover.
- Timeline
- Ready now. Closing on the right one this year.
So neither of us wastes an afternoon.
- Anything outside Central Texas. I am buying a business I can drive to.
- Turnarounds, distressed operations, or businesses losing money. I am an operator, not a restructuring shop.
- Businesses where the owner is the revenue. A sales-driven shop with no team underneath.
- Franchises with restrictive transfer terms.
- New construction dependent businesses. Too cyclical for how long I plan to hold.
- Anything requiring a license I cannot obtain or hire for within 90 days.
Funded, prequalified, and ready to sign.
How the deal gets paid for
SBA 7(a) acquisition financing, prequalified with a lender who works with self-funded buyers regularly. Equity injection from personal capital, already liquid and set aside. Comfortable structuring a seller note as part of the consideration.
Proof of funds and my prequalification letter go to any broker who asks, same day, before diligence starts.
Already retained. Not "I'll find someone."
Deals fall apart in diligence when the buyer starts interviewing attorneys after the LOI. Mine are engaged.
The first ninety days, written down.
You send an NDA, I sign it and return it. No legal review cycle, no negotiation on a standard NDA.
I read the CIM and come back with a short list of real questions. If it is not a fit, I tell you in writing within 48 hours so you can move on.
Call with you, then the seller. LOI within ten days of a complete CIM.
Diligence. QoE engaged in week one, not week five. Weekly written status to you and the seller.
SBA underwriting and closing. My lender has the file structure before we start.
I am on site. I meet every employee individually in the first week.
If you are not selling, but something is stuck.
Most owners I talk to are not ready to sell. They are tired of one specific thing that is not working, and they cannot justify hiring a $180,000 operations person to fix it.
That is the other half of what I do. I come in and fix the thing, in the business, alongside you. Instead of a standard consulting fee, I take a monthly retainer plus a minority equity stake tied to what actually changes in the business.
If it goes well and you decide later that you want out, you already know exactly who is buying and how they run it. Plenty of these end that way. None of them start that way, and I will not pretend otherwise on the first call.
What I take on, and what I take it for.
Same idea as a buy box. Specific enough that you can rule me out in ten seconds.
- Industry
- Residential and light commercial home services. The same trades I have run for seventeen years.
- Geography
- Central Texas, close enough that I am on site, not on a call.
- Revenue
- $1.5M to $8M. Below that the equity is not worth the hours to either of us.
- The problem
- Operations. Dispatch and scheduling, crew retention, pricing and job costing, service agreement programs, the handoff between sales and the field.
- My fee
- $5,000 a month for twelve to eighteen months, plus the stake below. The retainer covers the days on site. The stake covers whether any of it worked.
- My stake
- Minority, typically single digits to low teens, vesting against agreed milestones rather than granted up front.
- Time
- Two to four days a month, on site, for twelve to eighteen months. Not a monthly call.
- What I need from you
- Authority to change how the work runs, and your backing when a crew lead pushes back.
- What I do not need
- A title, an office, or a say in anything outside the scope we agree on.
Seventeen years of doing this, not a deck about it.
The operating record behind the stake
A $12M P&L, owned outright, for seven of those years. Forty people across dispatch, field crews, and the office. I built the scheduling and job costing systems that ran it, and I rebuilt them twice when they stopped fitting.
I have hired, trained, and lost crew leads. I have priced work wrong and watched the margin disappear on the back end. That is what you are getting equity for. Not advice about the industry, judgment inside it.
What changes, and how we will know.
Written into the agreement before I start, because a stake tied to a feeling is a fight waiting to happen.
I ride along and watch. No changes. I sit in dispatch, go out with crews, read twelve months of job costing. At the end I give you a written diagnosis and you decide whether to proceed.
Fix the one thing costing the most. Usually dispatch density or job costing. We agree the baseline number before I touch anything so the improvement is not arguable later.
Build the layer underneath you. Documented process, a crew lead who can run a day without you, and the reporting that tells you it is working without you standing in the yard.
Recurring revenue. Service agreements, renewals, the part that makes the business worth a multiple instead of a paycheck. This is where most of my stake vests, on purpose.
The honest exclusions.
- Anything I cannot measure. If we cannot agree a baseline number in the first month, I withdraw, and you keep the diagnosis.
- A business losing money. I improve operations, I do not restructure balance sheets.
- An owner who wants the outcome without the changes. If your crew leads are not going to be told this is happening, it will not work and I will say so early.
- Sales and marketing as the primary problem. That is somebody else's expertise and I will tell you who to call.
- A minority stake with no path to actually influencing the work. A stake without authority is a donation.
Two things I will say first.
I am not the one who structures the deal.
What the stake is worth, how it vests, what happens if you sell, and what you are actually signing are questions for your attorney and your CPA. I will tell you what I think the work is worth. I will not tell you what to sign, and you should be suspicious of anyone in my position who does.
The first month is the real test, for both of us.
Four weeks of watching, then a written diagnosis, then you decide. If you read it and want to take it to someone else, take it. It is yours. I would rather lose an engagement at week four than be nine months into one that neither of us believes in.
Which one are you?
I have a listing
Broker, M&A advisor, or intermediary. Two minutes to check fit, then send it and I will respond same day.
Check the fit →I own a business
Thinking about it, or years away. Two minutes, no pressure, and no one calls you unless you ask.
See if we fit →Something is stuck
You are not selling. You have a problem you cannot afford to hire for. I fix it and take equity instead of a fee.
Tell me what is stuck →Two minutes. Straight answer.
I will tell you honestly whether your business is in my box. If it is not, I will take it to my network and see whose box it fits.
Have a deal in hand?
Send your NDA and I will sign it and return it the same day. Once it is executed, send the CIM however you normally send it.
Received.
People who have worked with me.
"Dana was the only buyer in the process who asked about our technicians by name. She had read the org chart."
[Broker] · [Brokerage]
"I have taken a lot of first-time buyers through prequalification. She showed up with her documents organized. That is rarer than it should be."
[Lender] · [Bank]
"She ran the hardest branch we had and turned the retention number around in a year. I would work for her."
[Former Director] · [Company]
Placeholder references shown for this spec concept. Real member sites carry named quotes with permission.
Answered before you have to ask.
Have you bought a business before?
No. This will be my first acquisition, and I would rather say that plainly than let you find out in diligence. What I have done is run one for seventeen years, including a $12M P&L and 40 people. My lender, my attorney, and my CPA have all done this many times.
Is your financing actually in place?
Prequalified, not preapproved. Those are different words and I use the accurate one. The prequalification letter and proof of funds go to you the day you ask.
Will you strip the business to service the debt?
SBA acquisition debt on a business at this size is serviced by the cash flow that already exists. My plan does not require headcount cuts, and I will show you the model.
What if you and the seller do not get along?
Then we find out in week two instead of week ten. I would rather lose a deal early than close one that should not have happened.
The honest version.
A private equity group can pay more than I can. That is true and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
What they cannot do is show up on Monday. They will install a manager, run it against a model, and look for an exit in three to five years. Your crew will find that out after the wire clears.
I am buying one business, and I am going to run it. That is the whole difference, and for some owners it is worth more than the last two hundred thousand dollars. For some it is not, and those owners should take the higher offer with my blessing.
Backed by a peer network of women buying businesses.
I am part of a peer network of women acquiring and scaling small businesses. That means a peer group of active searchers, introductions to advisors and lenders the network works with, and pattern recognition from people who have already closed.
Not in my box?
If your business is a good business and it is not right for me, I will introduce you to my network to see if someone else's box fits the deal. No fee, no catch. A good business should go to the right owner.
Twenty minutes, and I do most of the listening.
No pitch. If you own a business, I want to hear what you built. If you are a broker, tell me what you have and I will tell you straight away whether it is a fit.
Point a phone at this and my buy box goes in your pocket. Built for handing across a table at a conference.
One email a month for owners who are not ready yet.
Most owners I talk to are one to three years out. That is fine. Once a month I write about what I am seeing in Central Texas deals: what businesses are actually trading for, what kills a sale in diligence, and what to fix now so you are not fixing it under pressure later.
No pitch. Unsubscribe whenever. I am playing a long game and so are you.