This is Maria’s story.
How to sell a childcare business at the right time, to the right buyer, for the right price is the question Maria had been turning over for more than two years before she picked up the phone. When the right time came, she called CGK Business Sales. Maria ran a $6.4M regional early-learning network outside a major Texas metro: four locations (three childcare centers plus a dedicated preschool), roughly 320 enrolled children at any given time, more than 600 active families on the books, and 52 employees including four center directors, 14 lead teachers, 26 assistant teachers and aides, and the 8-person administrative team that handled enrollment, billing, food service, and facilities across all four sites. Two of the four centers were in buildings she owned outright; the other two ran on long-term commercial leases. She was 60. Her business partner of two decades had retired and been bought out two years before, and Maria had been running the network solo since. The state licensing environment, the staff-credentialing requirements, and the teacher-to-child ratios had all grown more demanding every year since 2020. Her grandkids were her motivation now. She came to us in early 2024 because she was thinking about what the next ten years of her life needed to look like and did not know who else to talk to about how to sell a childcare business at this size. This page is what happened next, and what could happen for you. Maria is a composite, not a single real CGK seller, but the patterns and details are pulled from real childcare engagements.
The night before Maria called us.
Most owners who decide to sell a childcare business have been thinking about it quietly for a year or two before they pick up the phone. Maria was no different. She was 60. For 25 years she had been the relationship person on every state inspection, the recruiter and the firer of every center director, the curriculum-decision person across all four locations, and the one parents asked for by name when there was a difficult conversation about a child’s transition between rooms. The business did $6.4 million in annual revenue across four locations, three of which were licensed childcare centers serving infants through pre-K and one of which was a dedicated preschool program serving four-and-five-year-olds. About 320 children were enrolled at any given time, supported by 52 employees that included four center directors, 14 lead teachers with CDA credentials or higher, 26 assistant teachers and aides, and an 8-person administrative team running enrollment, billing, food service, and facilities maintenance.
Why owners decide to sell a childcare business
Her son was a pediatrician in Austin. Her daughter taught middle-school Spanish in San Antonio. Neither was coming home to take over four childcare centers in Texas summer heat. Maria’s business partner of twenty-two years had retired in early 2022 and been bought out at the end of that year, and Maria had been running the four-location network solo for the eighteen months before she called us. The bigger pressures were the regulatory environment and the staffing market: state licensing inspections had grown more thorough every year since 2020, the teacher-credentialing requirements had tightened twice in three years, the teacher-to-child ratios for the infant rooms left almost no margin for absenteeism, and the broader early-childhood-education staffing market had not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Her grandkids in Austin and San Antonio had become her motivation. She had been approached four times in the prior fourteen months: twice by national PE-backed early-learning roll-up platforms, once by a regional Texas-based childcare operator looking to expand from her current footprint, and once by an independent investor who introduced himself as someone who had been quietly building a small family-services holding company for seven years. Maria did not know what her business was actually worth, did not know whether the buyers calling were the right buyers, did not know what she would do with herself if she sold, and did not have a single peer in her life who had ever sold a business at this size.
That is the night she found CGK and submitted the form. We called her back at 8:53 the next morning.
The conversation we had on the first call.
The first call was 47 minutes. We did most of the listening.
Maria talked about the four center directors and the way each one ran her own location with her own personality (one a former Montessori teacher, one a former public-school administrator, one her own former assistant teacher of fifteen years, one a recent hire she had been mentoring intensively), the lead teacher bench and the credentialing pipeline she had built with the local community college, the state licensing inspector relationships that had taken twenty years to develop, and the difference between her two owned buildings and her two leased centers. She talked about the curriculum framework, the parent-communication app, and the waitlist data — currently 70-some children waiting for slots across the four centers — that she suspected was a meaningful value driver but had never tried to quantify. We asked about the business in the way you would ask if you were trying to understand it, not in the way you would ask if you were trying to win the engagement. What we were listening for was not just the financials. We were listening for whether Maria was actually ready to sell, what she was working toward, and whether her expectations on price were grounded in what the market would actually support.
At the end of that call, we set up a working session: an in-person conversation where one of our Managing Directors would walk Maria through our valuation model and tell her honestly what her business was likely to command. We did not promise her a written report. Written valuations involve substantially more work, and we charge for those when a seller actually needs one for estate planning, a partner buyout, a divorce, or another documentary purpose. The walkthrough was free because Maria was clearly thinking seriously about selling, the way someone thinks about it before they actually do it. Whether that ends up being in a year, three years, or longer, we make the same call.
The valuation session was the following Tuesday at 9 a.m. at her flagship center, after morning drop-off and before the toddlers’ outdoor play time.
Maria was not ready to sell a childcare business yet. She went home and waited ten months.
The valuation session showed Maria that her business was worth meaningfully less than she had been hoping, for two reasons that surprised her. The first was the partner gap. Her co-founder of 22 years had been the financial and administrative backbone of the network, and Maria had been carrying both halves of the operating-and-administrative role solo for the eighteen months since the buyout. To a sophisticated buyer, that looked like real key-person risk on the highest-margin part of the network. The second was the real-estate split: two owned buildings and two leased centers, with the owned buildings held under a separate LLC and the operating company paying market rent to the LLC. This is a common structure but the way Maria had set it up over twenty years had drifted into something a buyer’s diligence team would price for uncertainty (was the operating company being charged fair market rent? would the owned buildings be sold with the operating business or held back? would the lease terms transfer cleanly?).
We told Maria honestly: she could go to market now and accept the discount, or she could spend six to twelve months hiring a Director of Operations to formally absorb the administrative-and-financial role her partner had owned, getting a third-party real-estate appraisal and a clean intercompany lease set up between the operating company and the real-estate LLC, and tightening the financials so they would tell a clean story under buyer scrutiny. We said the second path would likely command a meaningfully better number from a wider range of buyers, including the regional financial buyers and patient-capital strategics that pay premiums for institutionally clean multi-location childcare assets.
This is the part most brokers skip. Most brokers would have signed Maria that day, taken her to market, and made the commission whether or not the deal was the best one for her. We told her to wait, even though it meant we did not get paid for ten months and might never get paid at all if she changed her mind.
Maria went home and waited. She spent the next ten months hiring a Director of Operations who had been a regional director at a national childcare platform earlier in her career, getting a third-party commercial appraisal of the two owned buildings, drafting a clean intercompany lease between the operating company and the real-estate LLC, and tightening the financials so they would tell a clean story under buyer scrutiny. She read up on what active acquirers were paying for regional childcare networks through resources like the National Association for the Education of Young Children. She called us back in late 2024 and said she was ready to sell a childcare business that was finally in the shape it needed to be in.
What we did when Maria came back.
What it takes to sell a childcare business properly
When an owner is ready to sell a childcare business with CGK, the speed surprises them. We took Maria’s business to market in just over three weeks once she got us her updated financials, the cleaned-up intercompany lease structure with the real-estate LLC, state licensing documentation across all four locations, the staff roster with credentials and tenure per location, the curriculum framework summary, the parent-communication-app data showing engagement rates and retention, the waitlist data quantified for the first time, and the enrollment-cycle analysis. The blind teaser went out to 80 buyers we had pre-qualified across five buyer types: PE-backed national early-learning roll-up platforms (KinderCare, Bright Horizons, and similar Spring Education Group adjacencies), regional independent childcare operators looking to expand multi-state, regional financial buyers and family-services holding companies (some with prior childcare operating experience, some without), mission-driven nonprofits and charter networks looking to vertically integrate early-learning, and adjacent education-services platforms looking for early-childhood exposure.
Fifty-seven of those buyers signed NDAs and received the full Confidential Information Memorandum. Thirty-eight entered our structured data room. Twenty-four submitted Indications of Interest. Thirteen advanced to Letters of Intent. We narrowed to eight for management presentations. Four re-submitted refined LOIs after the management meetings.
Maria decided between two of the top LOIs. They were materially different. One was a higher headline price from a PE-backed national early-learning roll-up platform that wanted to absorb Maria’s four locations into a regional Sun Belt portfolio, with a conventional escrow structure, an earnout tied to enrollment growth over three years, a real-estate carve-out (the platform wanted the operating business but not the two owned buildings, which would have to be sold separately), and a fund hold horizon of four to six years before the platform itself would likely be sold. The other was a slightly lower headline price from an independent investor who had been quietly building a small family-services holding company (childcare + after-school + tutoring) over the prior seven years; he was not PE-backed, had patient personal-and-bank capital, and was willing to acquire both the operating business and the two owned buildings as a single integrated transaction. We walked Maria through what each would actually deliver to her under realistic and pessimistic scenarios, including what the cultural continuity would look like for her four center directors and her teaching staff under each owner, and what the real-estate question would actually look like under each structure. The regional financial-buyer deal was the better one for Maria. The cash position day one was meaningfully stronger (no earnout babysitting), the integrated real-estate-plus-operating transaction was structurally cleaner than carving the two pieces apart, and the cultural fit with a buyer who would actually preserve the four-location identity rather than absorb the network into a regional brand mattered to her deeply. She took it.
Through the whole process, the same CGK Managing Director who had taken Maria’s first call ten months earlier was the person walking her through every conversation.
What the deal actually looked like.
How the deal looks when you sell a childcare business with CGK
Maria’s deal closed roughly six months after we restarted the engagement. The buyer was an independent investor who had been quietly building a regional family-services holding company over the prior seven years (childcare networks plus after-school programming plus tutoring services), funded with patient personal capital plus relationships with two regional banks and a longstanding family advisor. He was not PE-backed and had no fund-timer pressure to flip the business in three to five years. He bought both the operating business and the two owned-building real-estate parcels as a single integrated transaction, with the operating company keeping the existing leases on the two leased centers in place. The deal was structured as a stock sale for the operating company plus separate real-estate purchase agreements for the two owned buildings, all closing simultaneously.
The headline price was meaningful but not the highest LOI she received. About 88 percent of it came as cash at closing, funded by the buyer’s personal capital plus the bank financing across both the operating-company piece and the real-estate piece. About 7 percent was held back in escrow for 15 months to cover indemnification claims, a working capital adjustment, and a small carve-out for any state-licensing or facility-compliance issues that could surface during the transition window. About 5 percent was a small rollover equity stake into the buyer’s family-services holding company, which gave Maria continued upside if the broader holding-company portfolio grew the way the buyer had been telling her it would over the prior several years and gave the buyer reassurance that Maria would stay engaged through the integration. Wire hit on a Monday morning in April.
Maria stayed on as a paid Director of Network Strategy for the buyer’s family-services holding company for ten months after closing, which let her personally introduce her four center directors and her newly hired Director of Operations to the new ownership, walk through the curriculum framework and the licensing-inspector relationships at each location, and shape the playbook for how the broader holding company would integrate childcare with its existing after-school and tutoring offerings. After ten months, Maria stepped back to a quarterly board-advisor role that suited her grandkid-time priorities.
What happened to Maria’s people.
Maria cared most about her four center directors, the lead teachers across the four locations (some of whom had been with her since she opened her second center in 2007), the assistant teachers and aides she had been mentoring through the CDA credentialing program with the local community college, and the families on the waitlist who had been waiting more than a year for slots in her infant rooms. The regional financial buyer was a single operator who would actually run the holding company himself rather than parachute in a regional manager from a corporate playbook. That made the people part substantially cleaner than it would have been under a PE-backed national roll-up that would have consolidated Maria’s four directors into shared-services regional positions and standardized the curriculum across her network and theirs.
The buyer Maria chose kept all 52 employees, honored the existing pay structure across all four locations, and committed to keeping the four center directors in their roles with expanded autonomy under the broader holding-company governance. Maria’s newly hired Director of Operations stepped into a holding-company-level role overseeing operating standards across childcare, after-school, and tutoring divisions. The lead teacher credentialing pipeline with the community college was preserved as a foundational retention program. The waitlist of more than 70 families was held intact through the transition, and the buyer committed capital in the first year post-close to expanding the infant-room capacity at two of the centers (the highest-margin segment with the deepest waitlist demand).
Maria’s son, the pediatrician in Austin, came up for closing weekend with his two children, who got to spend a morning at one of the centers helping the toddlers paint Easter eggs. Her daughter and her two kids drove up from San Antonio for the closing dinner. Maria took the rest of the spring off for the first time since opening her first center in 1999, used the time to set up regular grandkid weekends in both Austin and San Antonio, and started planning a summer trip to visit family in Mexico for the first time in a decade.
What Maria told us afterward.
Why owners who sell a childcare business with CGK keep coming back
About four months after closing, Maria called the Managing Director who had run her deal. She said two things that the Managing Director still tells new sellers about.
The first was about the ten-month wait. She said: “I had three childcare brokers tell me they would take me to market in three weeks. The reason I sold with you is that you told me the truth about the partner gap I had been carrying solo for a year and a half, the truth about what twenty years of an informal real-estate-LLC structure would look like to a buyer’s diligence team, and the truth about what the waitlist data was actually worth that I had never tried to quantify. You told me what would happen to the price if I went out without fixing those things. I would have left a real number on the table.”
The second was about who she sold to. She said: “I almost signed with the PE-backed national platform because the headline price was bigger and they had a slick presentation. The fact that you walked me through what each buyer would actually do with my four center directors, who would still be at their locations in three years, and how an integrated real-estate-plus-operating transaction with a regional financial buyer was structurally different from a fund-timer roll-up that wanted to carve the buildings out, is a conversation I never even thought to have until you raised it. I sold to a buyer who is going to grow this network with the team I built it with.”
This is what we mean when we say we sit with you in the decision, not just the transaction. Maria is one composite story, but the pattern is real. The owners we work with who decide to sell a childcare business usually find their way to us through versions of Maria’s situation, and the relationships start with a long listening session and a free walkthrough, not a pitch.
Ready to sell a childcare business? Where are you in Maria’s story?
If you are starting to think about how to sell a childcare business, we should talk. There is no commitment and no pressure. The first conversation is free. The valuation walkthrough that follows is free when you are seriously thinking about selling, whether that is in a year, five years, or longer. We only charge for formal written valuations, and only when you actually need one for estate planning, a partner buyout, or another documentary purpose. Submit the form and a senior CGK Managing Director will reach out within one business day.
If you are Maria at month 1: just exploring
You are not sure if you want to sell yet. State licensing requirements keep tightening, teacher-credentialing rules have moved, the staffing market is structurally tight, your kids have built careers in other fields, you are curious about what your network and your real estate might be worth, or maybe a national early-learning platform has been calling you. Most of our best engagements start here. Submit the form and we will schedule a working session. You walk away with a real number and a clear sense of what to do next, with no obligation to do anything.
If you are Maria at month 10: ready to go
You have done the work to clean up the business. The financials are tight. Your director bench is solid across every location. Your real-estate structure is clean and documented. Your licensing files and inspection records are organized. Your waitlist data is quantified for the first time. Maybe a buyer is already in the conversation. You want to run a real process. Submit the form and we will be in touch within a business day to talk about timing, scope, and what your first 30 days as a CGK seller would look like.
If you are not sure where you are
Most owners are not sure. Submit the form and start with the conversation. We will figure out together where you are. We are equally happy to tell you to wait twelve months as we are to take you to market in three weeks.
Or call us directly at (888) 858-7191.
Start your own story
A senior CGK Managing Director will respond within one business day. Strictly confidential. For owners of childcare businesses doing $1.5M+ in annual revenue. The first conversation and the valuation walkthrough that follows are free for any seller seriously thinking about selling, on any horizon.
Confidential. No obligation. Direct routing to a named CGK business broker, not a junior screener.
One of these eight people would lead your engagement.
When you decide to sell a childcare business with CGK, one named senior Managing Director stays with you from the first call through the wire transfer, just like Maria’s Managing Director stayed with her for ten months and then for the engagement that followed. Our Managing Directors come from Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds, Fortune 500 corporate finance, and operating-business leadership. Cornell MBA. U Chicago Booth MBA. CFA. CMT. Naval Academy. Goldman Sachs. Merrill Lynch. Deutsche Bank. AIG. T. Rowe Price.
What sellers say after they sell a childcare business (and other businesses) with CGK
I could not be happier with the experience I had selling my business with CGK. Greg did a detailed analysis of my business and helped me price and position it right for the market. After receiving multiple offers at full asking price, the rest of the process went very smoothly, and we closed in less than two months.
Hanna M.Selling my business was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m incredibly grateful to have had Wes by my side throughout the process. He brought perspective, pushed when necessary, and always had my best interests in mind. His experience and strategic approach allowed me to maximize the sale price while minimizing long-term risk and obligations. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose him as my broker.
Adam NevilleDerik located multiple interested strategic buyers that produced more than one serious offer. The negotiations were tough but Greg and Derik’s experience helped us overcome. We got a great result for our employees and for the owners. We would recommend them without reservation.
Bob TaylorWe sold a business that was 47 years old and being run by second generation within a year of working with Wes. CGK has a system that attracts serious prospects to review opportunities. Wes was able to make the overwhelming feeling of selling easy and to a certain extent enjoyable. I never felt alone or in the dark throughout the entire process.
Jennifer WilliamsWe decided to sell our company in 2025. Talked to another M&A company in the Houston area. We felt very comfortable with Greg and Matthew at CGK. Could not have made a better choice. From day 1 till final closing and even after 30+ days, they have been here helping us with documents and support during the transition. Thanks can not be said enough.
Rickey ThomasInside the Blueprint, on Bloomberg TV and Fox Business News.
Maria’s son, the pediatrician in Austin, is the one who first sent her a clip of CGK on Bloomberg. He had been watching the segment one Saturday morning while his kids were watching cartoons in the next room and recognized the firm name from an early-childhood-education association article about how to sell a childcare business he had forwarded to his mom three months earlier. He sent her the link with a note that read “Mom, this is the firm.” CGK Business Sales is featured on Inside the Blueprint, the syndicated business television series. Our episode aired on Bloomberg TV and Fox Business News. Watch the segment, then start a confidential conversation.
The CGK office Maria called was in her local Texas market. Yours might be one of these.
When you sell a childcare business with CGK, whichever office you reach, you get the entire firm. Maria worked with a CGK Managing Director based out of her local Texas market, but her deal benefited from a buyer pool we sourced firm-wide, including the regional financial buyer who ultimately won the integrated operating-plus-real-estate transaction. Click any city to learn about our local presence and the named Managing Director leading that market.
Other Questions Maria and Other Childcare Sellers Ask Us
Practical answers to what comes up before, during, and after the kind of engagement Maria went through, when you sell a childcare business with CGK.