Steel Toe Capital

WE STAKE MANAGEMENT TEAMS
TO BUY THE BUSINESS THEY RUN.

You've built this business. You know every corner of it. The owner collects the check — you do the work. Steel Toe Capital exists to change that equation. We partner with operators like you to buy the business, put real ownership in your hands, grow it together, and deliver the payday your effort has already earned.

How It Works Talk to Us

What We Look For

Steel Toe Capital is not a generalist firm. We have a specific focus, a specific type of business, and a specific type of person we want to partner with. If that's you, there is no better fit.

A Key Man Who Doesn't Own It
Every business we back runs on one person — the GM, the VP, the plant manager, the president who leads the crew, knows the customers, and carries the place. If that person is you, here's what matters: you're paid like an employee for work that's building someone else's wealth. The right person, the wrong incentives. That gap is the first thing we look for — it's the whole reason an MBO exists.
An Owner Who's Stepped Back
Above you is an owner who isn't really in it anymore. Maybe they built the place years ago and were hands-on once. But today they're not running the day-to-day — you are. They're cashing the checks while the business runs without them. That's the opening. An owner ready to step aside is what makes a clean handoff possible, and what lets the person actually running the business finally own it.
A Blue-Collar Business
The kind of place where the work is real and physical — people build something with their hands or go out and do the job on-site. Could be a manufacturer running a shop floor, could be a service company sending crews out in trucks. Either way it's boots, tools, and hard work, not desks and spreadsheets. If your people clock in wearing steel toes, you're the kind of business we're built for.
$5–$25 Million in Revenue
Big enough to be a real, established business — customers, cash flow, a track record — not a startup and not a turnaround. Small enough that it's still personal, still run by the person who knows it best. Revenue's just the easy yardstick — if you're in that range, you're in our wheelhouse.

What Is a Management Buyout

What is it?

A management buyout is exactly what it sounds like — the manager buys the business. In most blue-collar companies there's one person who knows the customers, leads the crew, and keeps the whole thing running. The owner is hands-off. The value is being created by the operator, not the owner. An MBO puts that right: the person who actually runs the place becomes the person who owns it. Instead of selling to a stranger, a competitor, or a PE firm that swoops in and changes everything, the owner sells to you.

Who pays for it?

Here's the question every key man asks first: "How do I pay for it? I could never afford to buy this place." Good — because you're not supposed to write that check. That's the entire point of an MBO. Steel Toe puts up the capital — our own money, committed alongside you — to pay the owner and close the deal. What you put in is the thing you've already been putting in: the operating know-how, the customer relationships, and the work of running and growing the business. That earns you a real, meaningful ownership stake. You're paid in equity for the value you create, not for the cash you can scrape together today.

What do I end up with?

You step into ownership and you run the business, with us backing you up on strategy, capital, and the things that pull an operator away from the floor. A few years on, when the business is bigger and stronger, we sell it together. That sale is your payday. Not a bonus. Not a sliver. The kind of seven-figure-plus exit that changes things for your family. You go from working a job to owning a piece of a company — from under-incentivized to appropriately incentivized for everything you build.

The Simple Truth
TODAY YOU HAVE A JOB. WE WANT YOU TO HAVE A COMPANY.

How We Work

The life of a deal runs in three phases. The work shifts at each one — but the partnership doesn't. You bring the know-how. We bring the capital and the playbook. Nobody's a passenger.

Buy It — The MBO

The deal itself, and it's the heaviest lift — which is exactly why almost all of it sits on us. You keep running the shop. You don't quit, you don't turn into a finance guy, you don't learn M&A on the fly. We structure the transaction, figure out what it will take to get the deal done, run the legal and the diligence, and put up the capital to close. We've sat on your side of this table, so we know what you don't know yet — and we make sure it never becomes your problem.

YouRun the business, know it cold, be straight with us about how it really works.
UsStructure, valuation, negotiation assistance, legal, capital, close.
Build It — Own & Grow

Now you're the owner and the dynamic flips. The day-to-day is entirely yours. We're your partner and your sounding board, not your boss, and you're not reporting to a 28-year-old with a spreadsheet. You run the floor; we help with things in the background to grow the business — systems, reporting, a tuck-in acquisition, a financing decision. We bring the capital to grow and the experience of having taken a business like yours from regional to national. And for the first time, the upside is yours: every bit of growth you drive builds your wealth, not someone else's.

YouRun and grow the business, day to day.
UsGrowth capital, systems, data capture, strategy, acquisitions — on tap when you need us, out of your way when you don't.
Bank It — The Payday

This is where the years of work finally land in your account. Somewhere down the road, you take real money off the table for what you built — through a sale, a recapitalization, or a handoff to the next operator the same way the business came to you. There's no rush to that day and no predetermined buyer waiting in the wings. Because this is our own money — no outside investors, no fund on a clock — "when the time is right" means right for the business and right for you, not a deadline someone else set. We've stood exactly here before: we built IAFD and sold it to a major private equity firm. When your moment comes, we run that process end to end and drive the number as high as it goes. Then you bank it.

YouKeep running a business that's now built to be worth something.
UsTiming, positioning, the process, and maximizing what you walk away with.
The Partnership
YOU RUN IT. WE'VE GOT THE REST.
Across all three phases, this is a partnership between people who've actually done the job. Ryan lived the operator's life for two decades. Sam structured and exited the same kind of deal. We're not capital looking for a manager — we're operators backing an operator.

We've Sat in Your Seat

Steel Toe didn't start as an investment thesis. It started as a problem we lived.

Ryan spent two decades as the operator. He ran the business, led the crew, made the calls nobody else wanted, and was the guy everyone looked to when something broke. He built real value — and like most key men, he wasn't rewarded for it the way an owner is. A good salary, a bonus, and someone else's name on the building.

So we fixed it. Ryan bought the business he was already running. Sam structured the deal and put the capital behind it. We grew it together and sold it to a major private equity firm. Ryan didn't just earn another paycheck — he got the payday. Generational money, for the work he'd been doing all along.

Then we looked up and realized there are thousands of Ryans out there: running businesses they don't own, building wealth for someone else. That's who we built Steel Toe for.

Why We're the Right Partner

We've been where you are. We know what it's like to carry a business — the weight of it, the calls that land on your desk, the things that happen behind the scenes that nobody ever sees. Most people who want to buy your company have never worn that hat. We have. Ryan lived it for twenty years; Sam spent six years inside the business making the same kind of calls. When we say we get it, it isn't a sales line.

We've Already Done This — With Our Hands.
We're not pitching you a theory we read about. We're asking you to do something we've done ourselves and know how to run: buy the business, grow it, and cash out at the end. Same playbook. Same two guys.
It's Our Money — Nobody Else's.
No outside investors. No fund with a clock ticking. No committee to answer to. That means we move fast, we're straight with you about the timeline, and there's no pressure to sell the business before you're ready. When we say the exit happens when it's right, we mean it — because we answer to no one but ourselves.
The Combination Creates the Value.
An MBO takes two very different skillsets. One is running the business — the customers, the crew, the work — and that's yours; nobody does it better than the person already doing it. The other is doing the deal — structuring it, financing it, growing it, and engineering the exit — and that's ours. Almost no one person has both. That's the whole idea. It's the same combination that made our MBO work: one of us ran it, the other built the deal around him, and together we created something neither of us could have alone. That's what we want to build with you.
Meet the founders — click to read the full background
Ryan Sachetti
Ryan Sachetti
Co-Founder · The Operator
18 years at IAFD — engineer to sole owner to successful exit.
Read Full Bio →

Ryan grew up in a small town in Connecticut and studied mechanical engineering at the University of Connecticut. In 2008, on his third day at Industrial Air Flow Dynamics, he walked into a power plant with no industry experience and was hooked before the day was over.

Over 18 years, he built IAFD from a small regional business into a nationally recognized, 250+ person service company, progressing from Project Engineer to Sales Engineer, then President & COO, and finally CEO and Owner. Along the way, he scaled the company's core product lines from roughly 25 to 200+ power plants nationwide, grew the staff 5X, and increased revenue by roughly 1,000%.

In 2020, Ryan executed a management buyout of IAFD's other shareholders with Sam's help and became sole owner. He grew the business aggressively, professionalized operations, and completed an acquisition — then partnered with Incline Equity Partners in a successful exit in 2022. He transitioned from CEO to Executive Chairman in 2025, and now serves as a Board Member and Investor. He has lived the exact path he now offers to you.

18 years at Industrial Air Flow Dynamics — Engineer → Sales Engineer → President & COO → CEO → Sole Owner
Executed MBO in 2020, became sole owner of IAFD
Grew company to 250+ employees, 200+ power plants nationwide
Staff grew 5X, revenue grew roughly 1,000%
Completed an acquisition; successful exit — partnered with Incline Equity Partners, 2022
CEO → Executive Chairman (2025) → Board Member, Investor (2026)
UConn — Mechanical Engineering
Sam Brewer
Sam Brewer
Co-Founder · The Strategist
16 years of small business investing and lending.
Read Full Bio →

Sam Brewer is a co-founder of Steel Toe Capital, where he partners with key-man operators to acquire and grow lower middle market blue collar businesses through management buyouts.

Sam brings more than two decades of lower middle market experience as both an investor and an operator, giving him a unique perspective from both sides of the table. He spent 16 years as a Partner at Merion Investment Partners, where he sourced, underwrote, and managed debt and equity investments including leveraged buyouts, management buyouts, and generational ownership transfers across specialty manufacturing, business services, aerospace and defense, and government contracting.

He then crossed from capital to operations as Chief Strategy Officer of IAFD, where he co-led a management buyout — sourcing the senior debt that financed the transaction — built the sales, data, and reporting infrastructure that turned an ad-hoc operation into a scalable, data-driven business, and ran the sell-side process that took the company to market, ultimately sold to a private equity firm. IAFD is the proof of concept behind Steel Toe's model.

Sam began his career in investment banking at Merrill Lynch and holds an MBA from The Wharton School and a BA from Brown University.

Chief Strategy Officer at IAFD, 2020–2026; continuing as Advisor
Co-led the IAFD MBO and sourced the senior debt financing
Ran the sell-side process — sold to a private equity firm
16 years as Partner at Merion Investment Partners — lower middle market debt & equity
Merrill Lynch — investment banking
Brown University · Wharton MBA

From Employee to Owner

Here's our track record in one sentence: Ryan started as an employee and finished as an owner with a life-changing exit. That's not a case study we read about — it's the exact road we're offering to walk with you.

That deal is the reason Steel Toe exists — and it's proof we've done every part of what we're asking you to do.

Our MBO Timeline
Industrial Air Flow Dynamics
2008
It starts on the floor. Ryan joins IAFD, a small regional company doing power-plant maintenance and engineered parts. Classic blue-collar work. He's an operator from day one.
2015
He becomes the key man. Promoted to President & COO, Ryan leads the business from a regional New England provider to a nationally recognized service group. He's running the place — but he doesn't own it.
2020
Buy It. The MBO. Ryan buys the business he's been running. Sam structures the deal and puts the capital behind it, then joins to help drive it forward. Ryan goes from employee to owner.
2020–22
Build It. Together they grow IAFD — to 350+ people, a national footprint, and a strategic acquisition. The operator, now an owner, building real value that's finally his.
2022
Bank It. The payday. Ryan sells the business he built to a leading private equity fund. Employee, to owner, to a life-changing exit — for the work he'd been doing all along.
The Result
THE OPERATOR BECAME THE OWNER, AND THE OWNER CAPTURED THE VALUE.
Same two people. Same playbook. Now available to you.
Get In Touch

Ready to Have a Real Conversation?

Whether you're a key man wondering if this is possible, or an owner who wants a clean exit to the right person — we want to hear from you. No pressure. Just a straight conversation.

For the Key Man
You Run the Place
You've built real value for someone else's business. Let's talk about what it would look like to own it.
For the Owner
You Want Out
You want a fair exit to someone who will take care of your people and your legacy. We can make that happen.

Ryan and Sam review every message personally. You will hear back from one of them directly — not an assistant, not a form letter.