They paid $470,000 for a ‘boring’ business. Within days, almost everything went wrong

Andrea Palacio and her husband thought they were playing it safe. In a search for a passive income business, they paid $470,000 for a South Florida landscaping company a few years ago. It was, in their words, a “boring business,” which was hands-off and had good cash flow. Within days of the deal closing, though, the seller vanished, 10 of the 12 employees quit, and revenue took a sudden dive from $70,000 per month to $40,000. Making matters worse, they had pledged personal assets as collateral on their Small Business Administration loan. Palacio, pregnant while raising a 7-month-old, was thrust into a role handling booking, marketing, admin work, and customer service. “We got into this business thinking that we’re going to be these investors, that we’re going to acquire the companies and just eventually exit for millions of dollars,” Palacio said on The Side Hustle Show podcast. “And I end up just driving a landscaping truck that’s old without air conditioning. . . . Quitting was never an option because we would lose our home. I can tell you that it was the hardest moment of our lives, and that the pressure was—it got a few tears, a lot of tears out of us.” Over the course of the…