Ana Lia Barragan·April 13, 2026

Buying a Business to Balance Ambition and Kids | Ana Lia Barragan Interview

Ana Lia Barragan is a Bolivian-born immigrant who moved from Germany to Seattle when her husband joined Blue Origin. After five years in tech (including Amazon), having two children in rapid succession, and feeling professionally stagnant and personally depleted, she quit her job in early 2025 and enrolled in New Majority Capital's 10-week Beta Accelerator. Through the IBA brokerage she found Kelly Green, a 28-year-old Seattle indoor commercial plant installation and maintenance company run by one owner and her husband, with $385k revenue, $185k SDE, ~48% margins, and 30 clients across 61 locations. She acquired it in July 2025 for $436k (roughly 2.4x SDE) using an SBA 7(a) loan, 10% personal equity, and a structured 5% seller note she added on top of the asking price as a sweetener to secure a reluctant seller's preference. Key post-close surprises included a recurring revenue gap (70% not 90%), a months-long working capital crunch from the asset-purchase entity switchover, a customer-concentration loss (20% of revenue walked in January 2026 due to a client CEO change), and unbudgeted service-quality investments. Nine months in she has rebuilt revenue 6% above prior year, completed a cash-financed bolt-on of 10 more clients, and is close to stepping out of field operations via a custom AI-built operations app she and her software-engineer husband developed. A March 2026 SBA SOP change barring permanent residents from SBA loans now forces her to self-finance future roll-up acquisitions from retained cash and seller notes.

Deal facts

purchase price: $436k
multiple: ~2.4x SDE
sde ebitda: SDE $185k
revenue: $385k (2024)
financing structure: SBA 7(a) ~$387k (~85%) + 5% seller note (~$21.8k) + 10% equity (~$43.6k)
notes: Asset purchase. Business: Kelly Green, indoor commercial plant installation and maintenance, Seattle area. Founded 1997; ~30 customers, 61 locations. ~48% SDE margin. Second bolt-on acquisition closed March 2026: 10 customers, 12 locations, ~$2,500/month recurring revenue added; paid cash + small seller note at 2.1x recurring-revenue multiple. Guest is a permanent resident (green card holder); SBA SOP change effective March 2026 now bars permanent residents from SBA loans, making further SBA-financed acquisitions impossible for her.

Why this business

Ana Lia wanted flexibility to be present for her two young children while still pushing hard professionally — she felt corporate tech jobs were uncapped on her time but capped on her upside. She was drawn to a small, high-margin recurring-revenue business she could afford to buy without outside investors so she could make her own mistakes freely. The indoor plant business appealed because of its near-30-year track record, high recurring revenue, strong referral-based customer relationships, and fragmented market ripe for roll-up.

What's working

High operating margins (~48%) mean every dollar of revenue growth yields roughly $0.50 in earnings
Strong referral network: 90% of new business still comes from existing customers even after ownership transition
Recurring revenue model (now ~85% recurring, up from 70% at acquisition) provides predictable cash flow
Seller transition was smooth — prior owner came on routes for two months, is now a mentor and provided a trusted reference to the bolt-on seller
Custom AI-assisted operations software built with husband (product manager + software engineer) tracks route stops, plant tags, replacement costs, and margin per customer; expected to enable stepping out of operations soon
Revenue is now 6% above prior-year baseline despite losing the 20%-concentration customer in January
Completed first bolt-on acquisition (March 2026, cash + seller note) adding 10 customers / 12 locations at 2.1x recurring revenue; fragmented market offers more targets

What's hard

Revenue mix trap: seller represented 90% recurring revenue but actual recurring was ~70%; asset-purchase invoicing revealed the gap only a week before closing — lesson: always ask for and analyze monthly invoices
Asset purchase created a 2-3 month working capital crunch: each of 30 customers had to update W-9s and vendor records to a new entity before they would pay; one customer took 6 months to switch over
Newness effect: new ownership triggered dormant grievances — customers who had silently tolerated quality issues for years suddenly raised complaints, demanded higher insurance levels, or changed access terms
Customer concentration: a single client representing 20% of revenue cancelled in December (new CEO slashed costs); Ana Lia had diligenced this risk but could not avoid it
Seller had no CRM — contact information existed only in emails and her memory; Ana Lia reconstructed it on her phone during route shadowing
SBA SOP change (March 2026) bars permanent residents from SBA loans, removing her primary acquisition financing tool and slowing her roll-up plan significantly
Business is still owner-operator / buying-a-job at this stage; route days run 4 a.m. to 6-7 p.m.; physically demanding with heavy traffic
Service quality at acquisition was lower than represented; significant unplanned investment in plant replacements and upgrades required to meet customer expectations

Notable quotes

To be a good mother for I need to have multiple spaces of my life filled. Just to be a mother is not enough for me to be fully fulfilled, and therefore does not allow me to be the best self for my kids.

I did not have time to sit down 3 hours to research and analyze a deal that I wasn't even sure I wanted. So, I looked at deals like a numbers game. I just checked deals and it's like, 'Okay, this looks okay. I'm going to contact the broker.'

I had less quality revenue than I thought when I was buying the business. So, to anyone listening, ask for invoices. It did not occur to me to ask for invoices.

Since January I lost 20% of my revenue, but I've been growing enough that I still am 6% above revenue that I was last year.