Watch a deal happen, end to end
A truck carries one deal through nine stops: what the business really earns, what it is worth, the lender's test, closing day, owning it, and what you walk away with when you sell. The math underneath is real, and every assumption is yours to change.
About ten minutes. Runs entirely in your browser, and nothing you touch here is saved or sent. No deal yet? The call is still free, or leave a number and a person calls you back.
Your assumptions
Every number in the walk recomputes when you move one.
The market rolls
Then the seller rolls
Deal Dash: one deal, nine stops
The example: a home-services business doing about $2.6M a year, listed for sale by its founder. You are the buyer. The truck carries the deal along one road, nine stops, from the first listing to the day you sell it yourself, years later. At the stops that carry a number, you guess it before it shows; that is where it sticks.
Each stop shows what happens, who is in the room, and the actual arithmetic, computed live. Answer the one-question check at each stop to build your score, and after the first lap, open the assumptions and make the deal your own.
Nothing here is saved, sent, or gated. It is a walk, not a form.
Name the business, if you like:
The loan amortizes for real, the coverage test is the one lenders actually run, and the final bridge adds up to the dollar. Where the example simplifies, the last stop says so plainly.
The three numbers that decide every deal
Nine stops, but the whole story turns on three figures. If you can find them in a real listing, you are ahead of most first-time buyers.
What it really earns
Not the profit line, and not the seller's adjusted number either. The earnings that survive when every add-back has to defend itself. Every dollar you concede here moves the price by three dollars or more, because the price is a multiple of this number.
Whether it covers the loan
Lenders divide the honest earnings, after a real salary for you, by the annual loan payment. Below about 1.25, the deal does not close, whatever everyone's enthusiasm. This one ratio kills more purchases than every other reason combined.
What you walk away with
Years later, the sale price minus the loan balance minus selling costs. It grows from exactly two things you control: earnings growth while you own it, and the principal the loan payments quietly retired. The walkthrough's final bridge shows both, to the dollar.
Fair questions
What is SDE?
Seller's discretionary earnings: the profit on the books plus what the owner was paying themselves and running through the business personally. It is the number these deals are priced on, and the reason two buyers can look at the same tax return and see two different businesses. The walkthrough lets you accept or reject each adjustment and watch the price move.
Are these my deal's numbers?
No. The walkthrough rides one realistic example so the mechanics stay honest: a services business with about $2.6M of revenue. The math underneath is real, the loan amortizes for real, and the coverage test is the real test, but your deal will have its own numbers. Bring a real listing and we will walk that one with you.
Is this financial or legal advice?
No. It is education: the order things happen in, who does what, and how the arithmetic fits together. A real purchase needs its own diligence, its own lender conversation, and its own counsel. This exists so none of that surprises you.
Now bring us a real one
The walkthrough is the practice lap. When there is an actual listing on your screen, the Deal Teardown reads it the way you just learned to: the honest earnings, the price that survives them, and the lender's test, in writing, before you sign anything.
Keep going, still free
The Add-Back Reality Check
Enter a seller's adjustments and see which ones a lender accepts, cuts in half, or throws out.
Test their number →What Could You Own?
Your savings and salary needs, turned into the size of business you can realistically pursue.
Size yourself →All the free tools
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