Adrian Pinto·March 28, 2022

Building a Blue Collar Empire

Adrian Pinto, a former New York investment banker and private equity associate (Credit Suisse, Greenbrier Equity Group, European family office), bought Georgia Escapes, a commercial landscaping business in Atlanta, in July 2021 while still employed part-time at a European family office. Having spent years at a $6B industrial-focused PE fund watching blue-collar roll-ups generate massive value, he set out to replicate the playbook at the SMB level. After a roughly two-year self-funded search limited to Atlanta, he found Georgia Escapes through a buy-side advisor as a pre-market proprietary deal, financing the acquisition via SBA 7(a). At close he paid just under 3x; by month five, rapid business growth had compressed the effective multiple to approximately 2x on a $3–5M revenue business running 15–20% margins. The episode is heavily focused on his roll-up thesis: Adrian sees commercial landscaping as an ideal platform due to extreme fragmentation, sticky reoccurring revenue from homebuilder relationships, and a booming Southeast housing market. His near-term priority is building internal operational 'chassis'—modern payroll systems, telematics-driven labor tracking, and structured goal-setting—before pursuing add-on acquisitions of neighboring mom-and-pop landscaping companies.

Deal facts

multiple: ~2x SDE (initially slightly under 3x at LOI, compressed to ~2x due to rapid growth post-close)
revenue: $3–5m revenue; 15–20% margins
financing structure: SBA 7(a) loan
notes: Deal closed July 2021. Business had ~35% truly contractual maintenance revenue, ~10% one-time install, remainder reoccurring non-contractual. Multiple compressed significantly post-close due to strong growth.

Why this business

Adrian initially targeted HVAC, plumbing, and electrical businesses after watching blue-collar roll-ups generate massive value during his time in private equity at Greenbrier. He was blocked from those trades in Georgia due to licensing requirements. When Georgia Escapes came up as a proprietary pre-market opportunity from his buy-side advisor, he dug into commercial landscaping and found it checked all the same boxes: a multi-billion dollar fragmented industry with the number-one player holding only about one percent market share, four percent annual growth, low cyclicality, sticky recurring revenue, and abundant M&A opportunity. He also saw it as the foundation for a roll-up platform—applying the PE playbook of aggressive M&A to the SMB level.

What's working

Multiple compression: deal effectively paid at ~2x after post-close growth accelerated revenue and margins, despite acquiring at just under 3x
Reoccurring non-contractual revenue from homebuilder relationships: working multiple neighborhoods simultaneously provides near-daily consistent volume with predictable margins
Geographic tailwind: explosive housing growth in the southeast generates a natural pipeline of new builder customers
Large fragmented market creates abundant acquisition targets; Adrian maintains a running list of local landscaping companies he sees while driving around Atlanta
Sticky existing maintenance contracts with property managers create a durable revenue base
Operational tech improvements (Samsara telematics, digital time clocks, modern payroll via ADP) streamlining processes and building a scalable 'chassis' for future acquisitions
Deliberate 5-month observation period before pushing changes built team trust and led to a more productive group planning session

What's hard

Winning new commercial maintenance business is difficult: property managers are locked into long-term contracts and rarely switch unless dissatisfied, making cold outreach nearly fruitless
Limited pricing power as a new-business lever: margins are not large enough to compete aggressively on price, and quality is somewhat binary in landscaping
Licensing requirements blocked his original target industries (HVAC, plumbing, electrical) in Georgia, forcing a pivot
Early eagerness to suggest changes spooked employees; had to consciously slow down and learn before proposing improvements
Buy-side advisor relationship created tension when he continued sourcing deals independently that the advisor had also found on public marketplaces
Payroll and internal processes were archaic and not built to scale, requiring investment before M&A integration becomes feasible
Business had some customer concentration on the maintenance side that he is working to broaden

Notable quotes

I just want to go out and buy my own blue collar business. As opposed to you know doing all this grinding work in the PE space, I was kind of sick of doing some of that and I just wanted to try to do this myself.

I literally have like a notes pad on my phone that when I'm driving I'm gonna buy him, gonna buy him. I mean I'll just type their names down.

Your goal needs to be 100 focused on building a chassis that you can then take other businesses and put on top of.

To now be basically have effectively paid a 2x for a three or four million dollar business doing 20 margins — congratulations.