What if the most valuable part of a small business acquisition is not the profit but the demand already baked into it?
Most buyers are trained to fixate on EBITDA, SDE, and historical margins. They treat financials as the thing being purchased. But when Nathan Lindley talks about how he actually buys HVAC companies, he makes a very different claim.
In small deals, profit is optional. Phone calls are not.
Nathan learned this the hard way. His first HVAC acquisition was his worst deal by far. He knew it would be. He openly told his wife it would be bad because he did not yet know what he was doing. The goal was not to buy perfectly. It was to learn fast enough to grow out of the mistake.
That experience shaped how he evaluates every deal that followed.
Buy Demand, Not EBITDA
Nathan does not underwrite small HVAC companies based on EBITDA or SDE.
In his words, those numbers are the output of decisions he plans to change anyway. Pricing changes. Sales process changes. Vendor relationships change. Cost structure changes.
The one thing he cannot create overnight is demand.
When he looks at a business, he wants to know how often the phone rings, how many customers are in the database, and how many of them can be reactivated. To him, everything that happens after the phone call is controllable. Training can improve close rates. Pricing can improve margins. Systems can improve efficiency.
The phone ringing is the asset.
Why Small Deals Break Traditional Valuation Rules
Nathan is clear that this logic applies to small businesses, not institutional-scale platforms. Once companies reach higher revenue levels, valuation changes. But under roughly two million in revenue, many HVAC businesses are little more than a brand name, a phone number, and a neglected customer list.
That is why he treats acquisitions like a replacement for marketing spend.
If it costs hundreds of dollars to acquire a customer through paid ads, but he can buy a business where customers effectively cost half that, the deal makes sense even if the historical financials are mediocre. From his perspective, he is buying customers cheaper than his CAC and then running them through a better system.
In that framing, profit today matters far less than opportunity tomorrow.
The Hidden Value in Neglected Customer Bases
One of the most overlooked assets in small HVAC companies is the dormant customer list. Nathan does not assume inactive customers are worthless. He assumes they are underworked.
After acquisition, his team outbound calls customers who have not booked service in the last year. They use structured follow-up, multiple attempts, and simple offers like free tune-ups or maintenance plans. Over time, this converts a meaningful percentage of cold customers back into active ones.
He shared a real example. On the day of the recording, outbound calls to dormant customers generated thirty thousand dollars in system sales. That single effort covered months of acquisition debt payments.
That upside rarely shows up in seller financials, but it shows up quickly post-close.
Why This Changes How You Should Think About Acquisitions
Nathan’s approach reframes what it means to “buy a business.” He is not buying polished operations. He is buying demand that previous owners failed to fully monetize.
That is why he prefers small, local operators with loyal customers and minimal systems. Those businesses are often ignored by larger buyers. They trade at lower multiples. They look unsophisticated on paper. But they hold something much harder to replace than clean financials.
They have people calling them when something breaks.
The Takeaway
In small business acquisitions, profit is often a lagging indicator. Demand is the leading one. Nathan’s strategy shows that buying the right phone calls at the right price can outperform chasing clean EBITDA in businesses that have already been optimized.
If you have strong systems, sales discipline, and follow-up, the real opportunity is not fixing broken businesses. It is unlocking demand that was already there but never fully worked.
In small deals, you are not buying the past. You are buying leverage on the future.
