How the owners paid for it: savings, salaries and one SBA loan

The startup figures in this database get most of the attention: $150 of window gear, a $700 pickup, a $3 million car wash. The question asked less often is where each owner got the money. At least 13 of the 33 owner pages answer it, and the answers are plain. Savings and wages paid for the small starts. One owner was turned down by 25 banks. One deal used an SBA loan. The largest cheques came out of a business the owner had already sold.

Savings, usually all of them

Marcus Gram was earning $17 an hour and living with his mother in Rochester when he moved to Philadelphia and spent $10,000 of savings on a snack machine, a beverage machine, two card readers, product and delivery. Joyner Vending brought in about $5,000 in its first year and $500,000 of sales in 2022. Anna-Marie Ortiz put her last $2,000 of savings into Cool Aunt Cleaners in July 2023 and was bringing in $10,000 a month by late 2024.

The two oldest stories run the same way. Brian Scudamore needed tuition money in 1989 and spent nearly all of what he had on a $700 pickup. Brian Winch was a shipper-receiver in 1981 with a small savings account, and he spent roughly $250 of it on hand tools. In each case the amount was set by what the owner had, not by what the business needed. The startup cost ladder lists every documented figure, and most of the small ones look like this.

A paycheck that covered the rent

For several owners the real financing was a wage, theirs or a spouse's, that let the business keep its cash. Trevor Kokenge moved back in with his parents in 2008, spent $300 on used tools, paid his living costs with part-time jobs and reinvested everything the business earned. Plan-It Vision now does $22,000 to $29,000 a month in Seattle.

Dave Menz kept his phone company job for roughly five years while he and Carla reinvested nearly every dollar, and left only after the third store. Christian Sanya earned $46,000 from laundry gigs in 2022 on top of a $76,000 lab salary, and she and her husband used that income to open a 40-machine store that brings in about $24,000 a month. Our piece on when the owners quit their day jobs has the timing for each.

The banks

Menz is also the clearest case of what a lender thinks of a small, broken business. In 2010 he paid $85,000 for a money-losing laundromat off Craigslist after 25 banks declined to lend to him. His entry does not say where the $85,000 came from, only that it was the one business he could afford.

The only bank financing documented in the database is an acquisition. Nathan Lenahan and his partners paid $400,000 for Bart's Heating & Air, a company turning roughly $1.2 million, using an SBA loan and a $100,000 working capital line, and each partner put in another $70,000 afterward. The difference from Menz's deal is the thing being financed: a company with revenue a lender can underwrite, against a store that was losing money. Our ranking of owners who bought has the purchase prices side by side.

Money from the last business

The largest sums in the database came from a sale. Frank Rolfe sold his Dallas billboard company to Universal Outdoor for $5.8 million in 1996 and, four months later, paid $400,000 for Glenhaven Mobile Home Park. Nick Huber and Dan Hagberg sold Storage Squad to 1-800-PACK-RAT in January 2021, at a price reported between $1.65 and $1.7 million, and rolled the proceeds into Bolt Storage, now 68 facilities. The exit ledger tracks both sales.

John D'Eri, described on his entry as a seasoned entrepreneur, is the one family-money case. The D'Eris put roughly $3 million into a failing Parkland car wash in 2013 so that his son Andrew would have a job. It now reports nearly $6 million a year across three locations.

Prices with no source on record

Three of the buyers have a price on their pages but no word on how they paid it. Adam Hill paid $60,000 for a Tampa Bay vending route in 2014. Ryan McCoy's Scoop Soldiers territory carried a $39,500 franchise fee inside a total investment of $61,000 to $111,000. Dan Spracklin and his wife acquired Gray Brothers from her father in 2013, and the terms are not public. We would rather leave those gaps open than guess at them.

The business as its own lender

After the start, the most common source of money in these entries is the business itself. With his first two stores producing about $7,000 a month in combined profit, Menz bought a third laundromat for $75,000 plus $170,000 for its building, then a fourth for about $35,000. Hill reinvests vending revenue into more machines, which his entry calls the whole scaling mechanism. Daniel Tom pays himself roughly $120,000 against $4.3 million of 2025 income and puts the rest into toilets at about $800 each and vacuum trucks at roughly $160,000.

What to take from it

Outside money is rare here. Across the entries that say, it comes to one SBA loan, one family investment and the proceeds of two earlier sales. Everyone else started with savings, kept a job or a spouse's job to cover living costs, and then let the business pay for its own next step.

That suggests two practical routes. A start small enough to fund from savings avoids the lender question entirely, and Start here filters the models by capital. A purchase of a company with real revenue is the case lenders do finance, and the Deal Kit covers how to price one. Every owner above is in the database. This site is one of SideRoad's weekly builds.

Common questions

How did most boring business owners pay for their start?

With their own money. Marcus Gram used $10,000 of savings, Anna-Marie Ortiz her last $2,000, Brian Scudamore nearly all of his tuition money for a $700 pickup, and Brian Winch about $250 from a small savings account. Several kept a job or relied on a spouse's paycheck while the business reinvested.

Can you get a bank loan to buy a small service business?

The one documented case is an acquisition with revenue behind it: Nathan Lenahan and his partners bought a $1.2 million HVAC company for $400,000 with an SBA loan and a $100,000 working capital line. Dave Menz, buying a money-losing laundromat for $85,000, was turned down by 25 banks.

How do owners pay for growth after the first year?

Mostly from the business's own profit. Dave Menz bought his third laundromat when the first two were producing about $7,000 a month in combined profit, Adam Hill reinvests vending revenue into new machines, and Daniel Tom takes about $120,000 in salary from $4.3 million of income and reinvests the rest.