How She Bought a Locksmith Business Doing $1.3M in Total Revenue

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That was a year ago. Now she owns her own locksmith business.

Meet Mary.

She read Rich Dad Poor Dad in college, and it flipped a switch.

She went all way down the rabbit hole.

By 23, she owned her first rental property in San Diego, a mix of long-term and medium-term tenants.

She held it about a year, sold it, and made her money back plus a little extra. A fine result.

But one thing nagged at her.

The returns on a long-term rental weren't much better than just parking the cash in the stock market. She'd taken on a second job as a landlord for basically the same number.

Around that time, she found Codie on social media, read her book, and watched a webinar.

And the idea of owning a real business (one with cash flow and customers) got its hooks in.

She joined Contrarian Academy in June of last year.

Then, and this is key, she actually used it.

After a 4-month search and a deal that nearly died twice, Mary closed on an established San Diego locksmith business this March.

Since closing, Mary has:

Here’s how she did it.

Mary didn't just casually browse businesses. She hunted.

For the first stretch after joining, she spent 1 to 2 hours going through listings every day, until the patterns started to click and she knew exactly what she'd bend on and what she wouldn't.

And like a lot of people in the Academy, she didn’t start off looking for the business she bought…

In fact, she started with SaaS, even getting one software deal to escrow before she pulled out, because the revenue was sliding year over year and the seller’s story didn't hold up.

After seeing what can happen when you’re too general, she got specific.

Really specific.

She realized that even with a blue-collar business, she'd be running it from an office, not climbing through windows herself.

So why not buy something local?

Here's the Contrarian move: Mary had spent years inside San Diego's real estate scene, so she knew property managers and owners. People who needed locks changed, doors opened, and keys cut on a regular basis.

So she went looking for a business that served the people she already knew.

One with built-in customers, ready to rock on day one.

Locksmiths. HVAC. Plumbing.

Businesses that served areas adjacent to her area of expertise.

The locksmith came through a broker she'd signed NDAs with months earlier on deals that didn't fit, but he remembered her.

So when the locksmith hit his desk, he sent it to her before it went public.

Meaning she was one of the first people in the room.

Remember the best deals don't come from refreshing listings. They come from being the person a broker remembers.

It really is about WHO you know.

Okay, pay attention here.

Mary started her search staring at software, but he finished it buying blue-collar.

Why?

Because a locksmith is recession resistant — people get locked out of homes and cars in every economy, good or bad. And it's not the kind of work she sees a robot taking over "in the near future."

While the rest of the internet panics about what AI is going to automate next, Mary went looking for the opposite. A business with a physical job, a local customer, and a problem that needs a human to show up and solve it.

The leads were a healthy mix, too: residential, commercial, and vehicle.

Not one fragile revenue stream — three.

Software gets disrupted all the time, but there’s really only way way to fix a broken lock.

In the first week after closing, Bethany and the contractor sat down with the previous owner for 3-4 days of recorded conversations, working through 16 pages of prepared questions.

Every answer went straight into AI, which helped them build a quote generator and turned the recordings into SOPs automatically.

A signed LOI is not a closed deal, and Mary learned that the hard way.

Her attorney drafted an addendum to the purchase agreement that ran about as long as the agreement itself.

Smart lawyering.

But sometimes being smart isn’t enough.

The seller was Israeli, English isn't his first language, and he hadn't planned on hiring an attorney at all.

Now he's staring at a stack of buyer-favorable terms he can't fully parse, wondering if Mary is even serious about closing.

It nearly torpedoed his confidence in the whole thing.

So Mary adjusted. She worked with her attorney on what to push for and what to let go. She gave a little on seller liability and got it capped at the purchase price instead of leaving it wide open.

Turns out the seller was doing a lot of the labor himself, and that’s not something Mary could bring to the table.

So while the SDE was about $250K a year, that included his service contribution.

With that in mind, Mary was able to negotiate the purchase price from $650K down to $550K.

Eventually, when the seller brought in his own attorney the logjam broke, and the deal finally closed the last week of March.

1. Get working capital and a line of credit before you need them.

One of Mary's coaches told her to line up working capital and a credit line going into the deal.

She did.

It gave her runway and, just as important, peace of mind. She had savings she could have leaned on, but having something dedicated to the business was far more practical.

"I don't think I would have known to ask for that if I wasn't in the community."

2. Don't anchor to the asking price.

Mary got her business meaningfully under ask, then she heard about other buyers landing even bigger gaps between the sticker and the close.

Her takeaway: don't let the asking price set the anchor in your head.

Analyze the business on its own numbers first. Then decide what it's worth to you.

Now Mary’s moving on to the boring, basic stuff that actually moves a small business forward:

Cutting canceled tickets. A big chunk of incoming jobs were falling through before they ever got served. Tighten that up and the whole machine runs better.

Strengthening commercial relationships. Repeat commercial clients are steadier than one-off calls. That's where she's spending her relationship time.

Optimizing the ads. Google Ads are the main lead source, so she's working with a specialist to make sure every dollar buys a qualified lead instead of a dead end.

There’s still plenty of work to be done while Mary creates efficiencies and scales the business.

Her top line revenue is about $850K once the contractors take their cut, and she’s still dialing in her operations to get the SDE up a bit more.

But overall this is a massive success.

A year ago, Mary didn't even know you could buy a business, but today she owns one.

And you could easily be next. Because the difference isn’t a secret: it’s reps, a buy box, and the nerve to close.

Want to join our groups of thousands of smart business builders and buyers?

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Small businesses employ 46% of the workforce and create 64% of new jobs. If you care about where the real economy is headed, the 2026 State of Main Street is required reading.

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