Jack Mencini and Adam Sonnhalter cohosts of Dirty Secrets of Small Business and business coaches with Maximum Value Partners discuss the details on how they advise their clients on how do you find a company to buy? Where do you find or look for a company?
Jack has found and bought 5 companies and the first place is to look at the business opportunities section in the newspaper (printed) or the online version of the bus ops section digitally. Every week, there are new opportunities of businesses looking to sell. Pick up the Sunday newspaper and look through the list of them and make a point to identify several and call up every one of those even if it is a bar or restaurant. Call or ask about it.
If you visit the business and hate it don’t be too hurried to walk away. What if they offered it to you because the owner needed it to get it out of it fast. That happens often.Usually in these cases the price for the business is very attractive and you just might find yourself not hating that business anymore.
Another place to look is to talk to an IRS agent to see what businesses are being foreclosed. One of the push backs they get from folks is that they don’t want to call the local IRS office. Jack and Adam say: “do it and if there are companies looking to be foreclosed, this could be a golden opportunity to get a business at a great price.” You have to be persistent to do this.
Also go to your local banks…it is a dirty little secret that banks make bad loans and there are companies who can’t meet the payments. This might be the company that is right for you to buy! Ask the bank rep if he or she has any troubled loans or operating issues with these companies. These companies can be bought low and often without guarantees and there could be a good opportunity there for buying a business.
Go online to see if there are listings for companies looking to be bought.
Business brokers are another resource like a real estate broker who can be a resource for you. The Ohio Business Brokers Association is an example and there are others in every state.
To learn more about how to go about buying a company, finding companies to buy and more insights on small businesses access the February 27th podcast and all the Dirty Secrets of Small Business podcasts on iTunes or here.
Do you have any How Questions of your own to email to Jack and Adam? Do it by sending your questions to radio@maximumvp.com or submit a question on their web site by following this link.
If you have a success story or a question you would like to share, email or call (radio@maximumvp.com or 877-849-0670). You can also call in during the show each week at noon (EST) – 1:00 pm on WINT 1330 AM, call 440-946-9468 to ask your question to the Maximum Value Partners’ coaches.