From Square Peg in a Round Hole to Wholly in his Element

Fraser Voll started his career in the traditional, linear way most people do, and he expected that to be his trajectory until retirement. Fraser became an accountant, found a passion for the world of mergers & acquisitions, and worked for some of the most well-recognized firms in the world. 

But something felt off. 

He never considered himself an entrepreneur because even as he learned about acquisitions from behind the scenes, that old limiting belief that being an entrepreneur meant making something new clouded his judgment. It wasn’t until Regional Janitorial Services came across his desk that he started to think of himself as a potential acquisition entrepreneur. 

Traditional Beginnings

Fraser’s first job was working for EY, where he found himself intrigued by business transitions. He especially loved gaining the ability to understand the human elements of business, and the complexities and unpredictability they brought to the equation. 

His next move was to Constellation, the largest software acquisition company in the world. There, he learned specifically about the Software as a Service (SaaS) sector. Again, he dug in and connected with the human aspect of the work. For a time, Fraser was convinced software was his passion, his path.

“How to build relationships with people,” he explained recently. “How to find that common ground with business owners who may or may not want to sell…finding a way for them to open up, share their lives, share personal stories…I really learned the intangibles.”

Next up was Portage, a boutique lower middle market M&A firm, where he was able to satisfy his desire to work with businesses that functioned within a traditional economy (instead of the tech economy). 

Though once he'd thought software was his passion, he began to recognize his true passion was working with the smaller, less sexy businesses — local grocers, home renovation companies, or commercial cleaning businesses like Regional Janitorial Services, the business he'd go on to buy. 

(For other stories of acquiring janitorial and commercial cleaning businesses, see Search Success in a Small City: $500k SDE, 95% Recurring and Acquiring a Business in Florida, Living in California.)

Going from an Accounting Mindset to an Acquiring One Took Time

Throughout his early career, Fraser never saw himself as an entrepreneur. Initially, Fraser thought that people who were entrepreneurs were special in some way that he wasn’t. They were visionaries or inventors with revolutionary ideas. They were, it seemed, born, not made, and Fraser certainly didn’t feel like he’d been born one. 

“I didn't identify with being an entrepreneur…that was for really creative, intelligent individuals who have this brilliant idea they're going to bring to market,” Fraser told me. “I never had any of those ideas. I'd say I just identified as somebody who was trying to think differently and challenge myself differently.” 

What Fraser did have, though, was passion, dwindling fulfillment in his day-to-day life, and a budding desire to do something drastically different, even if he wasn’t quite convinced the unbeaten path was for him yet. 

“The decision to own a business was something that took years for me.” Fraser admits. “Took me about probably three years to get to where I was in that emotional self-discovery journey.” 

“In the last couple of roles, I had always felt like a square peg going into a round hole,” he continued. “I was enjoying the people, there's lots of good things and lots of positivity. But for some reason, and it took me a while to pinpoint what it was, I just didn't feel like I belonged. My spirit and passion lay somewhere else.”

It Was Fate

Luckily, that role at Portage — where he was essentially tasked with helping small businesses market and sell their businesses — exposed him to the inner workings of small local business sales and acquisitions. It let him take long looks under the hood of multiple businesses on the market and see what sellers go through to acquire their businesses, which most searchers never get to truly see. It got the wheels turning. 

“You see the wear and tear of being an entrepreneur-founder, and you start to lose the joy, but you also lose the passion to reinvent the business, or take new risks and new opportunities,” Fraser said.

Serendipitously, one of the first clients he was tasked with helping sell, assigned on his first day at Portage, was Regional Janitorial Systems (or “Regional” as Fraser calls it). That gave him a chance to build a strong relationship with the seller and really learn about the frustrations and stresses that drove him to want to sell. 

Getting Past Self-Doubt and Redefining Success

“I had always learned to define success as one path,” Fraser said. “Being a leader in a large firm, whether it's a partner or corporate director of some sort. Slowly, questions he hadn’t considered before came up. He asked himself things like: 

What is success to you? 

What's your passion? 

What's going to keep you inspired every day?

And he started to do more than just think about a career change. He spent hours after work doing deal modeling, talking to his wife about his desire to buy a business, and having hundreds of conversations with others who were also passionate about small business acquisition. 

Once he started talking to those other searchers and acquirers, some further down the road than he was, he realized that he did have what it took to be an entrepreneur, just not in the way he'd envisioned. 

It helped ease his early self-doubt that he, a 29-year-old who'd only previously viewed his career potential as climbing the corporate ladder and working for others, could buy and run his own business. 

A Big Decision and a Growing Family

Another thing that gave Fraser pause was that his family was about to grow again. He and his wife had a two-year-old daughter and were expecting another child. The timing was less than perfect.

“I was scared, there's no way about it,” Fraser acknowledged. 

Still, his lack of joy and fulfillment in his day-to-day work life over the past few years negatively impacted his family. He knew it would only get worse, which he didn’t want for himself, his wife, or his kids. 

And he realized that timing and situations would never align perfectly and that he had something worth going for with Regional.  

“I ultimately said, ‘If I don't try, I will never know. And maybe this isn't the best time with young kids and a career change. But if I don't do it now, I probably never will.’”

True to his relationships-and-people-first ethos, Fraser chose to be transparent with his boss Jim, the owner of Portage. Fraser told Jim about his interest in buying Regional himself and moving on from Portage, which had only hired and trained him a few months before. To Fraser’s happy surprise, Jim offered his support and kept the lines of communication open around the next steps with no malice or ill will. 

Another thing that helped Fraser feel more comfortable with the decision was learning as much as he could about Regional and taking over the business's operations. Fraser and the seller talked multiple times a week at various points of working together on behalf of Portage and built a strong connection. Fraser was developing a marketing strategy to help Regional sell while also working on an investment memo and business strategy for himself as a potential buyer.  

The Business & The Deal

Regional Janitorial Systems is a 50-employee commercial cleaning business in Niagara, Ontario. It was founded by the seller’s father — an Italian immigrant — in 1971 and had never been run by anyone other than the founder and his son. 

Regional does $2 million CAD in annual revenue, with EBITDA between $600,000 and $800,000. Its pre-COVID year-over-year growth rate of 8-10% had been organic, achieved through word of mouth and building strong customer relationships and satisfaction, with no website or marketing to speak of. 

A big part of the acquisition process for Fraser, and what made him sure about Regional, was, in his words: 

“Understanding how passionate they were about their clients and their people and how they took care of them and what they would do for them. And going above and beyond what a typical employer does in this space. I became very passionate about it. And people are what I'm most passionate about.”

There were risks, though — two big ones, in fact: 

• Downside risk - With the future of work still in limbo, and Regional having grown so much because of COVID, it was possible that the business could stall out. For example: What if many of Regional’s existing or potential clients decided to move to a fully remote work model, removing the need for a cleaning service? 
• Customer concentration - Two of Regional’s clients accounted for half the company’s revenue. If either of them didn’t renew their contracts, the company would be in an untenable spot. (Luckily, both of those businesses seemed stable, were many decades old, and one had just renewed their contract.)

Frasier forged ahead, structuring a deal where he paid about 3x EBITDA — 2x up front and the rest through a seller earnout tied to gross profit over the coming two years. 

“I had to raise about $500,000,” Fraser said. He funded it, in part, through personal savings and a home equity line of credit. He took the rest as a loan from a Tier 1 bank in Canada.  

That means that while on paper, Fraser appears to be making more money than at his previous job, in reality, his take-home is about the same as it was once his debt service is factored in.

Early Improvements, Renewed Purpose, and Future Plans

A few months into his ownership of Regional, Fraser said he felt great. 

“I feel proud of my day-to-day. I feel much more joy. I feel lively and passionate about what I'm doing. Financially, the business is performing well, we're taking on more work.” 

Fraser didn’t miss a beat when he started at Regional, getting right to work improving things. He invested in new vacuums – essential equipment that’s more complex than it seems. He also began creating processes and systems to unlock some of his talented employees, freeing up their time so they could find new opportunities for Regional. 

One of Fraser’s early steps was promoting two employees to supervisor roles so that Regional’s general manager — all-around MVP, beloved by clients and coworkers alike, the backbone of Regional — could focus more on business-building and other big-picture things. 

Another of Fraser’s missions is building a true team culture — his deepest passion — and cohesion. He wants to make sure that all his employees feel seen and appreciated. That’s something he admits can be hard when half the employees work at night and don’t get to meet or know anyone other than the general manager. 

Fraser is also creating structured incentives and opportunities for everyone on the team to benefit from Regional’s success. 

“It's not just me as this owner in the ivory tower,” Fraser said. “We're all going to play a part and benefit emotionally, intrinsically, and financially.”

Looking ahead, Fraser intends to diversify Regional beyond cleaning services to include maintenance and exterior services like painting, landscaping, and snow removal.

“The long-term vision is to be this one-stop relationship for clients,” Fraser said, elaborating that he wants clients to eventually “know they can contact Regional, and we have these different service lines, and will take care of it.”

He’s also hired a marketing agency and is working on building a website and implementing a CRM to further leverage those strong customer relationships.

Relationships and Caring Yield the Best Rewards

One of the biggest takeaways from Fraser’s acquisition story is his commitment to connecting with people and building genuine relationships beyond transactions or other temporary arrangements. He genuinely wants to make a difference and impact the lives of those around him and the world at large. 

He recognized that the best way for him to do that was to focus on bringing his skills and knowledge to an industry that’s not as sexy as software, because he could make a much bigger difference for folks who don’t have the white-collar education and opportunities available to those in tech. 

By getting in touch with himself and growing in the directions that felt most aligned with his spirit, he’s poised to make a lasting positive impact not just on his own family and career trajectory but on everyone who works for Regional today and all those he’ll bring into the fold as the company expands going forward.