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There is No Perfect Deal

There is No Perfect Deal

Only manageable flaws

Jack Carr
February 02, 2026

Welcome to the JackQuisitions newsletter,

I’ve said it a million times (and counting). There is no perfect deal, only manageable flaws.

Every sub-$5M business has some problems. The goal is to choose problems you can live with, not waiting for perfection.

Below, I explain what to look for in a deal and how to manage expectations and risk.

Ready For Your Next Acquisition?

Check out these acquisition opportunities that caught my eye this week:

Express car wash with a three-bay oil change operation, fully equipped and operating, situated on ±1.75 acres with a ±5,625 SF building in fast-growing Powell, Ohio, offered at $2,799,000 with 20+ years of operating history.
Family-owned residential plumbing company established in 1999, serving the Upstate region for 25+ years with strong customer satisfaction, $489,768 in gross revenue, and $75,000 in cash flow, offered as a turn-key opportunity at an asking price of $299,000.
Florida Treasure Coast HVAC business founded in 2007, generating $815,000 in annual gross revenue and $447,000 in SDE, with 18+ years of recurring-revenue operations, offered at $550,000 (no SBA, cash buyers only).

Ready For Your Next Acquisition?

If you are buying a business or commercial real estate in 2026, financing is either your biggest advantage or your biggest bottleneck. Alan Peterson helps make it the former.

Alan has spent over a decade structuring and closing SBA and commercial real estate loans nationwide, earning Coleman Report’s Emerging Lender of the Year in 2022. He is known for taking on complex deals other lenders avoid and getting them across the finish line, including:

Navigating challenging SBA and acquisition structures
Working deals from first conversation through closing
Balancing speed, certainty, and flexibility for buyers and sellers
Solving lender-side issues before they derail transactions

Backed by First Internet Bank, one of the country’s top SBA lenders since 2018, Alan offers a faster, more flexible lending process as a Preferred Lender. If you want a financing partner who actually understands acquisitions and knows how to solve problems instead of creating them, Alan is the call to make.

The Myth of the Perfect Acquisition

First-time buyers often believe that the hard part of an acquisition is finding the right business.

Clean numbers. Strong margins. Perfect systems. No risk.

That expectation is what breaks searches.

Below $5M in revenue or EBITDA, every business has flaws. There are no exceptions. Owner dependence, messy financials, customer concentration, deferred maintenance, or uneven growth always show up somewhere. The goal is not to eliminate problems. The goal is to choose problems you can survive and fix.

Why Searches Take Longer Than Expected

The average timeline to close a first deal is not six months. It is closer to 18 months. That is not a failure. That is normal.

People who try to force a faster outcome usually disappear. They rush underwriting. They compromise on risk. They tie personally guaranteed debt to a business they do not fully understand. That is how bankruptcies happen.

What actually works is slow compression, not speed for speed’s sake.

What a “Good” First Deal Actually Looks Like

Your first deal is almost always your worst deal. That does not mean it should be bad enough to ruin you.

A survivable first deal usually looks like this:

Sub-$5M business with visible flaws
Earnings based on historical results, not projections
Problems you can clearly explain and model
Downside that does not threaten personal solvency
Upside driven by execution, not hope

If a deal only works because 2026 projections say it will, kill it. Basing earnings on future assumptions two weeks into the year is a red flag, not a strategy.

Kill Deals Faster, Not Slower

One of the biggest advantages experienced searchers have is speed of rejection.

Reviewing and killing 30+ deals in a year is not wasted effort. It is how pattern recognition is built. What took weeks early on should eventually take minutes.

Common reasons deals get killed quickly:

Earnings propped up by aggressive projections
Declining revenue without a defensible narrative
Extreme owner dependence with no infrastructure
Pricing that assumes zero risk
“Hope and growth” used as justification for valuation

The faster you kill bad deals, the more capacity you have for the few that matter.

Why Local Relationships Beat Perfect Numbers

In small and mid-sized markets, the best deals are rarely sourced by automation.

They come from people.

Chambers of Commerce. Rotary Clubs. Local charities. Lenders. CPAs. Operators. These are the connectors who hear about businesses before they ever hit a broker’s inbox.

Sellers care about more than price. Especially at the $1–2M level.

A 3–5% haircut on a $1–2M deal is often acceptable if the buyer is local, trusted, and committed to taking care of employees and customers. That same haircut on a $10M deal is material. At smaller deal sizes, relationships matter more.

If a seller knows you, you get a look. If they trust you, you get a shot.

Tip: surrounding yourself with the right people, before and after an acquisition, is a cheat code.

Perfection Is the Wrong Target

Perfection feels safe. It is also paralyzing.

The real objective is progress with discipline.

A good deal is not flawless. A good deal is one where:

The risks are visible
The downside will not break you
The problems are operational, not existential
The upside comes from work, not miracles

If you are waiting for a business with no flaws, you are not being cautious. You are avoiding the real work of ownership.

There is no perfect deal.

There are only deals with problems you are equipped to solve.

Tell Me What You’re Thinking

You can search high and low, far and wide, but one thing will never change: there’s no such thing as the perfect deal. Your goal is to simply get as close to perfect as possible.

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Disclosure: Some of the content and links in this newsletter are sponsored or affiliate links, which means we may receive payment or earn a commission if you click through or purchase. However, all opinions expressed are entirely my own.