#2 | Searching for the Right Business to Buy

Last week I officially started searching for a business to buy. I built a little spreadsheet to track my leads and I just spent some time reaching out to business owners. I figured I would start my search looking at businesses that are closely related to what we are already doing at ProjectionHub so I contacted:

• A couple of spreadsheet template marketplace businesses where creators of templates can post their own spreadsheets for sale and the marketplace will keep a percentage of each template sold.
• A small blog focused on helping people secure SBA loans.
• Two real estate financial modeling and course businesses. We do have some real estate financial projection templates already, but we aren’t the experts in the industry.
• A couple of bookkeeping spreadsheet template businesses. We only sell projection templates, but we have often thought about selling bookkeeping templates.

So far I have either heard “not interested in selling” or I just haven’t heard anything back yet.

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Start vs Buy

After the first couple of “not interested” responses my mind immediately went to “maybe I should just start this business myself.”

Old habits die hard.

I have started 5 or 6 businesses over the last 15 years, so I am realizing that starting something from scratch is my default.

I still think there are many situations where buying an existing business is going to be better than starting something new, so I just need to stick with the search.

Am I looking for a fixer upper?

Another thing I am wrestling with is whether to look for businesses that already look like they have it all together, or to try to find businesses that don’t look to be operating at peak performance that I would need to “fix.”

Am I trying to find something that needs fixing, or trying to find something that has already proven it can be a great business? I am not really sure, I would love your insights. What would you prefer? A fixer upper business that you might get for a lower price, or a business that has a history of strong performance that you will have to pay a premium to acquire?

Until next week,

Adam