How This Music Teacher Bought a Locksmithing School After His First Deal Fell Apart

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“I started picking locks at home, and just fell in love with the business of locksmithing.”

Meet Austin Kebely

Austin spent 8 years teaching music.

Bachelor’s degree, credentials, and 2 years of subbing just to land a permanent classroom right as Covid turned it into a Zoom window.

He loved teaching, but the system around it? Not so much.

No amount of effort inside the classroom could fix what was broken outside.

Then his wife found Codie on YouTube.

For a year, they watched ordinary people buy the small, unglamorous businesses that run Main Street.

So Austin stopped watching and joined Contrarian Academy.

“Because I’m a teacher, I love to learn. That whole process was fun for me. It ignited the light.”

The search took over a year, included a dead deal, and a bank that moved like molasses.

Finally, on April 7, he closed on a locksmithing school.

Let’s dive in…

Austin searched his lane first: daycares, tutoring centers, music stores, and dog training.

But then a locksmithing school crossed his desk.

“I don’t know locksmithing. But I’m an educator. I know how I learn. I know how I like to teach.”

So before he bought the school, he enrolled in it.

He took the courses as a student, studied how the lessons got built, and started picking locks at home for fun.

And he saw what the listing couldn’t tell him: this isn’t a locksmithing business. It’s an education business that happens to teach locksmithing.

Here’s the lesson: your transferable skill matters more than industry experience. Ask what the business actually does all day, not just what it sells.

Austin’s first deal looked great on paper.

It was a dog training franchise with strong numbers and a seller ready to gtfo.

Then the banks looked at how the seller did his taxes…

(Let’s just say this particular seller was quite, shall we say, creative.)

No lender would back a full SBA loan.

After all that work, the deal died. Something that often happens right in the middle of the business buying curve.

But just because it’s expected, doesn’t make it less painful.

“That was the first slap in the face. I have to look for a business that shows these numbers in a certain way so that the bank is happy.”

Most buyers learn this one the hard way: you’re not the only buyer at the table. The bank is buying too, and it only reads the tax returns.

Ask how the seller files before you fall in love.

Clean books get funded, creative books get passed on.

Austin and his wife drew a hard line early: they wanted a down payment they could make without touching savings or investments.

Sacred money stays sacred.

Then, months into the locksmith deal, the bank came back: we need double the deposit.

Most buyers panic here. Not Austin.

He stayed calm and restructured.

Based on what he’d learned in the community, he proposed a seller note. He’d gotten pushback on them in earlier deals, so this time he made it painless and sat down with the owner to find a number both sides could live with.

Keep in mind, SBA rules now subordinate seller notes to the end of the 10-year term.

Most sellers hate that.

This one said yes, because the structure worked for him too.

And the bank approved.

Here’s the takeaway: set your walk-away number before the deal starts. When the bank moves the goalposts, you negotiate the structure — not your safety net.

Seller notes, SBA quirks, and deal structure are all things Austin learned inside Contrarian Academy.

And if you want to learn how to buy a profitable business like Austin, check out our FREE webinar to jumpstart your journey.

On July 18th, you’ll learn:

For anyone who wants a taste of what we do in the Academy, this is your crash course.

Sign up HERE to claim your free seat.

The final boss wasn’t the bank though, it was the purchase agreement.

The seller works in forensics and prides himself on his legal language fluency. He wanted the agreement structured his way, while Austin’s attorney wanted it structured to protect Austin.

Cut to a Rocky-style montage: rounds of back-and-forth, plus a full rewrite every time something new surfaced.

Each redo cost a week and a half, and each week and a half pushed the close date further out.

“Don’t make corrections until you know everything.”

Add an out-of-state bank that re-requested the same documents at every approval step, and you get the brutal truth every buyer eventually learns: everything takes longer than you think.

Collect all the objections BEFORE you edit. Piecemeal revisions can easily turn a 2-week close into a 2-month grudge match.

Now the school is Austin’s.

And his day-1 playbook comes straight from his master teacher:

“Never take over a classroom and change everything at once. Run the system the students know. Earn your place in it. Then make it yours.”

So the cogs keep turning exactly as they did.

But Austin sees the runway the last owner left behind:

That’s not a business with problems. That’s a business with untouched levers.

The best acquisition targets aren’t broken, they’re just stale. Buy the business stuck in the past and bring it into 2026.

The school runs on a small team: 2 instructors (1099) and 1 office employee.

It did roughly $350K in annual revenue with around $280K in net profit.

Austin’s first question before buying: could he keep that up?

He’d need 1 more specialty instructor on a 1099, but nothing that rocks the boat too much.

His plan?

And the TLDR is this:

Austin spent 8 years teaching students to find their way, before a locksmithing school showed him his.

After buying his first business, Austin’s got the keys to open any door he wants.

- Team Contrarian

FROM THE COMMUNITY

Buying businesses is hard. 

Which is why we’re dang proud of what we do in the Contrarian Academy.

And while we could go on forever about it, we’d rather let you see what our members are saying:

Want to join thousands of smart business builders and buyers and start your own journey?

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