The Complete Checklist For Buying a Business!

Transcript:

On this episode of the personal finance podcast, the complete checklist to buying a business. What's

up everybody. Welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of mastermind. co and today on the personal finance podcast, We're going to be talking through the complete checklist to buying a business. If you guys have any questions, make sure to hit us up on Instagram, Tik TOK, Twitter at master money co and follow us on Spotify, Apple podcast, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on it.

If you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Thank you guys enough for leaving those five star ratings and reviews. They really, really mean the world to us. So today we're going to be diving into the complete checklist to buying a business.

And this is one of those things that I am very, very bullish on going forward. We've talked about a number of different times on why I like buying businesses, but I think this is something that is going to be a massive. of opportunity for a lot of people. And so we've interviewed a number of people on this podcast, like Cody Sanchez, for example, who came on this show and kind of talked through why she buys businesses.

And we talked through different businesses that she likes, like laundromats and different examples that she has purchased in the past. In addition, we talked to people like Walker Dybel, who wrote the book, buy then And that book by then build was my first glimpse into the power of actually buying businesses.

And so this is something that I have been researching for the last couple of years. I've been bringing experts on the show. And then finally, in 2023, we bought our first business. So I've started a ton of different businesses, but I've never actually purchased a business and we purchased our first business.

This is going to be the episode kind of talking through exactly what I did and the process that I utilize in order to go and buy a business, and this is something that I am going to do over and over again. It's a big. Part of what my portfolio is going to be going forward is buying businesses. So this is something where I really enjoyed the process.

It was something that I'm really, really high on. And why am I high on it? Well, I think I'm very high on it because the majority of business owners right now, over 50 percent of them are baby boomers and most baby boomers are going to retire by the year 2030. And so because of that, there's going to be a bunch of these businesses going for sale.

Now, what am I talking about? When I'd say buying a business, I'm talking about things like you can go out and buy things from a laundromat to a pool route. You can go out and buy electoral companies, plumbing companies, all of these boring businesses. In addition, you can buy different, anything you see out there that is a.

Mom and pop owned business. You can eventually buy one day if they decide to sell, or they just cannot handle the business anymore. And so there's a lot of opportunity out there. There's a lot of businesses that you can go out there and engage. And so what I'm going to do today is give you the checklist on buying businesses.

This is not going to be how to analyze businesses and break that entire thing down. That'll be a separate episode, but I'm going to give you my checklist on the steps that you need to take. When you actually go through the process of buying a business. So we have a bunch of different steps here. I think we have 14 of them total.

So this is going to be an all encompassing detailed list, uh, that you can go through when it comes to buying a business. So really excited for this episode. This is something that I can finally talk through because I actually did it. And so instead of interviewing experts, we can actually start to talk through some of this stuff.

And this is something that if you like this topic, let me know. And we'll talk more about some of this stuff. Uh, because I think this is really, really powerful. Now who should buy a business? A lot of people need to think through this, uh, before they even get started. And if you're someone who is interested in a specific area, you want to be your own boss and you want to run the show.

This may be a great option for you. And we'll talk through financing and how that goes about as well. But this is not someone who's just looking for a side hustle. Typically. This is someone who wants to go. All in, and they want to be able to create their own destiny. And I'm going to talk through how you can create your own destiny when you buy businesses as well.

So this is what we're talking about today. We got a bunch of stuff to cover today. So without further ado, let's get into it. All right. So the first step is if you're interested in buying businesses, you need to figure out why you want to buy a business and you need to figure out what. Type of business and what type of personality you have, that's going to fit that business.

So this is a very important step, and I want you to go through this process and write this down. If you have not already done so, if you're interested in buying businesses. So first I want you to think through what kind of owner. You envision yourself as are you going to be a hands on owner that's going to be working in the day to day employees are going to possibly report to you or management is going to report to you and or are you looking for a more passive role and you want to put management in place because you have more dollars available to put that management in place.

For example, there's a lot of people out there who go out and buy businesses then they put good managers in place to run the businesses for them and they just have a portfolio. Available to them. So you can think of someone putting a CEO in place to run that business. Here's a great example of that. The biggest example of this is Warren Buffett where Berkshire Hathaway really just owns a bunch of different businesses underneath their umbrella.

And so one big example is Geico Berkshire Hathaway owns Geico. And so they have a CEO in place at Geico that runs that business. You can do that on a very small scale by having a portfolio of businesses. If you want to do it that way, or maybe you want to get in the weeds and actually utilize some of the skills that you have and work in that business day to day and become an operator, or maybe you want to buy a business and then you want to franchise out the entire thing.

So maybe you want to run a couple of different locations. Then you want to franchise out the rest of the locations. That's another option for you as well. So you need to think through how you want to operate it. Secondly. You need to know how companies can hit goals and how companies are actually going to progress forward.

So a great book on this is called traction. If you've never read traction, it's by Gina Wickman and traction is a book that helps you figure out how to systematize your business, how to set goals for your business, how to put together a bunch of different things that you need in order to make sure that you're on track.

And you also want to think through what kind of team you want in this business. Do you want a massive team in your business or do you want to manage less employees? For most people, they don't want a ton of different. Employees because you're managing different personalities. It is the most difficult part of business when it comes to managing employees.

And so you've got to think through, do you actually want to go through that process and or how you want to think about that? And then lastly, why do you think that you're actually suited to run this business? You need to think through, is this something you want to do? Or do you have more dollars available to actually hire someone who actually is more suited to run that business as well?

And this is something where you can also think about this option is when you buy a business, a lot of times the current operators or the owners may stay on for a certain period of time. So maybe you want them to stay on for a certain period of time and train somebody else. To be able to run that business or you can work out a deal where they stay on and they get a certain percentage of that business going forward.

They get the large lump sum upfront from you and then they get a certain percentage of the profits going forward. There's a lot of creative way to structure this stuff. Uh, so it's really, really important that you as the purchaser kind of thinks through this, you really need to know this stuff upfront and then go from there.

Then also upfront, you also need to make sure that you understand what type of business you want to buy. So this is number two, and this may be something where you don't know right now when you're starting to listen to this podcast, because you're just learning how to buy a business, but you want to figure out what type of business you want to buy, and then you want to look for those businesses and look for good deals on them because you're going to get good at finding these deals as you practice over time.

So what type of businesses would you look for? Well, there's a number of different ones out there. I like boring businesses. I think that's a very interesting place to start. What's a boring business. You could think of like a plumber or an electrical company or a pressure washing company or a lawn care company.

You can think of laundromats. You can think of pool routes. You can, there's so many different boring businesses out there that make a lot of money. And some of these things print cash. If you know how to create more revenue for these companies and you're a good operator. So this is something that definitely is very, very interesting.

Now. You can look for companies who need an injection of technology for example. So you want to think through some of these things like, how can I actually create value for some of these companies so that I can increase the revenue once I purchase that company. And I remember when we had Cody Sanchez on, she talked through the SOS framework, which means you stale, old, weak, and simple framework.

Meaning look for companies that are stale, that are old, That may have weak management in place, or they have specific things where there's a ton of opportunity, but they just have some sort of weakness that's holding them back and companies that are simple, simple to understand, and that you completely understand.

And so these are things that I'd be much more interested in over time than being interested in some high flying Internet company that you really don't have a full understanding of how that works. Now, if you're in the. online space and you understand how it works. That's another thing. But if you don't understand how it works, it's really, really important to make sure you understand how this is going to work first.

Now, number three is you want to choose how you're going to actually finance this business. So there's a bunch of different ways to finance businesses. One, you can go out there and you can use your own cash. You can save up enough cash in order to Go out there and buy a business to you can use seller financing and seller financing is by far My favorite thing about buying businesses because a lot of owners understand business They understand how seller financing works And so it's much easier to convince a seller to do seller financing than it would be in various other situations So that's what we did when we purchased our business Was we did seller financing up front?

So we put a lump sum of cash down and we did seller financing and the owner was the bank You And they were also involved in some of the day to day operations with us, as well as a partner. And so that was a great option for us in that situation. And so this is, I love seller financing because it is a way for you not to have use a ton of your own cash.

And instead you can use that cash to improve the business going forward. And, or you can keep it for emergencies on the side, because if you're a business owner, you're going to need extra cash up front. Front in order to maintain some of those emergencies. I think that's super, super important. Uh, also you can use other people's money so you can raise money from investors.

You can do crowdfunding, that type of thing. And so putting these dollars together up front is going to be really, really important in the business is going to be paying those investors back. So you can raise money. Personal private capital. Uh, if you know, investors in the area who are bullish on that business and, or they're just looking to make more interest.

Now the interest rates are gonna be a little higher when you go to personal investors, they may be somewhere in the seven, eight, nine, 10 percent range. And so you gotta make sure that you understand that going into it upfront. And then also there's business loans, things like SBA loans, for example. Small business administration, where you can put as little as 10 percent down and they will finance 90 percent of the business.

Now I want you to think about this for a second, so you can buy a million dollar business for a hundred thousand dollars down with an SBA loan. And so that's amazing way to utilize leverage when it comes to some of this stuff. Now, one thing I want you to note on SBA loans is one. There's a lot of hoops to jump through, uh, when you go get an SBA loan.

So there's a lot of paperwork you have to work through. So I prefer seller financing that over SBA loans, but it is a great option for a lot of people, especially if you have a business that's very easy to understand. And what you do is if you want to get an SBA loan, you go down to your local bank or your local credit union.

And And you talk to a loan officer there who is specialized in SBA, and they'll be able to help you through that process and get you that government loan. But overall, my personal favorite is seller financing. That would be my number one way to go. Number two would probably be getting money from private investors if you can get the interest rate low enough.

Um, that'd be another great way to go. Three would be SBA and then four be utilizing your own cash because I'd rather you keep your own cash and use it to grow the business instead. So these are some of the options that you have when it comes to financing businesses and one should be aware of each and every single one of those because it is really important.

We'll do another episode in the future, just diving deeper on how that stuff works. But I think this is going to be a great option for a lot of people. Now, number four is how do you find businesses that are on sale? This is a big one that a lot of people ask up front and you're probably thinking if you've never even thought of this concept before and going out and buying businesses, how do you actually find them on sale?

Well, there's a number of different places. The biggest one is biz by sell. If you're looking for physical businesses and biz by sell is kind of a place where I like to start to see what's out there, to see what's in my area and see what's available. And it's a great place to start. It's basically like the Zillow of businesses.

And so you can go on there, you can search for specific businesses that you're looking for. You can just do a really broad search to see what's available and then go from there. Another one, if you're looking for online businesses is something like Flippa and Flippa is a place where you can buy online businesses or blogs.

There's some other ones out there, um, that you can look for as well, but that's one option you really got to know what you're doing though, when you're on Flippa and do your due diligence, um, You can also find businesses now on loop net, which used to just be for commercial real estate, but now they have businesses for sale on loop net.

And that's another great option. Another one is biz scout. So biz scout actually helps you find businesses that may not have hit the market yet, but they can scout out businesses for you that may be opportunities that just aren't out there for sale yet. And then really the best way is to find off market deals.

If you can find businesses that have not hit the market yet, they don't have a broker there, and you can start to call specific business owners and say, Hey, do you want to sell? Or are you interested in selling and see, just have a conversation with different owners and start to network with some of them.

That's the best way to go. Just like real estate. This is a volume game. This is talking to a lot of people and trying to find the right people in your area who Who are going to want to sell to you. So it's a very interesting way to do this. And I think there's a lot of options for it. And so making sure, um, that you can find some off market deals is also another great option.

So I would start to just start calling specific locations. So for example, here's a great example of this. When we started our business search, one of the businesses we were looking at is looking for laundromats and I'm still interested in laundromats. So if anybody has a laundromat, holler at your boy.

Um, but. What we did was we made a list of different laundromats in the area. And we just started cold emailing and cold calling some of the owners and saying, Hey, would you be interested in selling your business? And a couple of them said, yes. And so we had conversations to see if we can get a deal to work.

Uh, one of the deals was very, very close. But we never closed on any of the deals because we had this business that we have now come up, um, as we were doing our search, and it was a much better opportunity than some of those laundromats. But that's just an example of off market businesses that we were just cold calling on, and we got like three or four yeses out of 100 calls, and so that's something where definitely worth at least emailing or calling to see if they're willing to, or at least interested in having a conversation now.

After you've gone out and you start to search for businesses and you have one that you want to make an offer on, what you do is you send what is called a letter of intent to the business owner. And a letter of intent or an LOI just is a little one page document. Typically, sometimes it's three or four pages that just says, Hey, I'm interested in buying the business.

Here are the terms, yada, yada, yada. And you go through some legal information. You can find them online, or you can actually have a lawyer draft one up for you. for you, and then you sign it and then you send it off to the seller for them to sign as well. This is like the preliminary commitment to do business and to buy this business, um, with another party.

And it may or may not be binding. So it depends on how you write it, but this is something where you can give yourself a bunch of exclusions where you can back out if you need to. And that way you're not obligated to buy the company. So if they want you to be obligated to buy the company based on the letter of intent, then that's a big red flag.

Your red flag should be going off left and right, if that is the case. So make sure when you draft that letter of intent, uh, it's got a bunch of outs for you, you're not obligated to buy the company. This is just kind of you two agreeing. This is what I agreed on. So we don't have some sort of verbal agreement going on here.

We have an LOI actually in place. Um, and then going from there. So the LOI is basically the piece of paper that once both parties signed, now it's time to go to phase two. And so phase one is doing all the work. All the search and actually getting the seller to agree. So there's a lot upfront, a lot of your time is going to be spent up front here, doing the search and getting the seller to agree.

Once you get the seller to agree, now you move on to phase two, which is due diligence and due diligence is the most important part of this process because you want to make sure that the numbers that they are stating that the business is doing is. Actually happening. And this is how you fail is if you don't go through due diligence period and make sure that you were doing it correctly.

So it's really, really important that you understand the due diligence process. And we'll talk about that next. All right. So the next part is, this is the important part is to review the finances, and this is going to be something where you're going to go through financial records. You're going to go through balance sheets.

You're going to go through cashflow statements. You're going to go through their credit card statements. I want you to go through literally every bank statement that they have in order to make sure that everything is lining up. You know, if they use QuickBooks or whatever else they use, you want to make sure that you get all of that information, get access to their QuickBooks as just a person who can view the information and see if you can get in there.

So that's really, really important to do as we go through the finances. Now, here's a few questions that I think that you need to ask. Number one, is the business making money? Meaning is the business actually profitable? Is it making money? Is it not just high revenue, but is there actually profit within this business?

Number two, are there concerning seasonal or cyclical issues with income? So some businesses, for example, you can think of lawn care companies up North, or you can think of some of these seasonal businesses out there, uh, that may not have business in the off season. That's going to be something where maybe you need to understand why that is.

And can you weather those storms if there are some downtimes and. Are there any, you know, concerning issues with recessions as well? You want to make sure a lot of these businesses are recession proof, or at least as much as you possibly can. Are the expenses way out of whack with the earnings? Meaning are the expenses really, really high?

And do you need to make sure that these, uh, come back down? Do tax returns actually match the actual financial statements? Are they filing their taxes properly? Because you do not want to have that issue with the IRS going forward. You You need to make sure that you are lining those up. Are there any liens on the company?

So you need to do a search and make sure there's no liens on this company that, you know, they have pending taxes that need to be filed or anything like that. If you're buying something like a construction company or a company with equipment, is there aging equipment that you might need to replace or completely overhaul?

Really important one there, making sure that you understand how that works. Does the company have debt? How much debt does it carry? How much debt does it carry in comparison? Two, the actual revenue that it produces and the actual profit it produces. So that's another big one that you need to know. What are the profit margins?

What are the actual margins it's producing? And then what business assets does the company own? How many assets are there? You know, what is the book value? What is the total value? What does the balance sheet say? And so you're going to go through the balance sheet and see what kind of business assets they actually have.

And then match that up. And then does the company own any intellectual property or what do they actually own? Outside of some of those assets and some of that equipment there. So these are all some of the quick questions that I would ask myself. And then you really need to dive deep in these financials and make sure you line these up.

I know it's a lot of work, but it's very, very important to ensure that you have success going forward. Now we're going to go to another part. Which is, this is a really big part. Number seven is evaluating operations. So operations is something that you really need to make sure that you understand what is going on.

So first thing is you want to see, does the owner have a business plan? You want to review that business plan and make sure that it is available. And does it have an org chart that shows. You know, who's in charge, what is the organizational chart? How is this actually operating? Then I want you to look for any red flags that you can't live with inside of this business.

Because if there are red flags that you really cannot live with, then you need to write that down and address this with the owner immediately. Um, so that you can have this conversation and kind of talk through some of that stuff and see if this is something that's fixable. If it's not, uh, then it may be something where you need to walk.

Here's one example of this is if the business has a massive team, meaning a ton of different employees, maybe it has dozens and dozens of employees, and it has a ton of processes that you have to manage, but you don't love being a manager, that's probably not the best option for you. And this can really, really happen.

And you may say to yourself, well, it won't be as much work as maybe I'm thinking it is. No, it'll be twice as much. to maybe three times as much work as you think it is. Every time you buy a business, it is way more work than you think it is. I want you to hear that up front. It is always way more work than you actually think it is.

Is the owner putting in 80 hour work weeks right now? And you don't want to work 80 hours a week. And that might be a red flag. Are there operational issues that you just can't fix? Like for example, do they have marketing issues and you have no idea how to push marketing? Well, that's another issue there.

And so you really need to think through all this stuff as you go through this and make sure that you understand. How these roles are going to fit in what you need to be doing. Otherwise, if you have more dollars to commit to this, then maybe you start to talk to different operations folks and or have them operate the business instead.

But really, I want you involved, especially up front for the first three to six months so that you know everything that's going on. Um, it's really, really important to be able to do that. So that is another big piece that I think a lot of people need to look at as they go through this. Now, the next thing you need to do is run a competitive analysis.

And when you do this, a competitive analysis is something where it's going to help you feel confident on the entire landscape of your business and its future going forward. So do you have a unique moat that your other competitors don't? Meaning, do you have something that is a unique proposition that That your competitors do not offer.

You know, that is one unique mode that you can be able to have where you can differentiate you from some of the competitors. The second one is where are other companies just falling short? Where are they really not coming through and really delivering for their customers where you can actually do that?

How can you actually add value there that other companies are falling short? Number three is what does the business I want to buy have an edge, meaning do you have a specific edge that you can use and that you can leverage and really, really help differentiate yourself from the competitors because you really want to be a differentiator when it comes to some of this stuff and You know, use your strategic insight to be able to move this company forward.

So I think that's really, really important to kind of go through this competitive analysis, see what the competition is doing so that you can move this company forward and really add value because you can add millions of dollars to your bottom line. If you know how to do this, right? Number nine, if you're buying a company with a bunch of equipment, the one we bought didn't have a ton of equipment or anything like that.

But if you're buying a ton of equipment, Then I want you to go in there and maybe get somebody like a professional to actually do an appraisal on all that equipment. Cause you need to understand what that equipment is actually worth. The balance sheet may say one thing you need to verify with a professional, what this is actually worth for each piece of equipment.

For example, my in laws run a big construction company that does like big industrial construction. So they have a bunch of different. Massive pieces of equipment. If I bought that business, I would have no idea what some of these things are worth. And so you need to understand what some of that stuff is worth before you dive into this business and then get a really good idea of what that equipment goes for.

If you need to replace it. Also, that appraisal could also tell you what pieces of equipment might need to be repaired. And so at the same time, maybe you have a mechanic running through there. I'm looking at the equipment to make sure that you understand all this stuff is actually running smoothly.

Number 10. And this is a big one that a lot of people skip is I want you to look into the business's reputation. And one way to do this is you can go through Google reviews, for example, and start reading through those reviews. Make sure they look legit, make sure they're actually real reviews. And you can read through all of those and look at the customers concerns and maybe there's ways that you can fix those and then also look at how they respond to some of those reviews as well.

When businesses have negative reviews, most of them should be responding to those negative reviews, especially on Google and just Google. Really reaching out and saying, you know, how can I help? Especially if it's a customer service based person, if they're just firing back every single time, maybe they're damaging the reputation of one customer at a time, then make sure you just look at that and understand, you know, what's going on.

Also look at customer sentiments, look at their social medias. If they have them. Look through the comments, see what's going on. Ask if you can look at their social medias and their messages to see what kind of messages are coming in from customers. That's another great way to look at that. And then what kind of relationships should they have with vendors, suppliers, and other partners?

Ask for a list of their vendors and suppliers. Call up those vendors as a supplier. Say, are they paying you on time? You know, what kind of relationship do you have? How do you feel about this customer? Um, and then really, really try to get as much details as possible. Some of them may not give you all the information, but it's really, really good to kind of go there.

And then look at their marketing efforts. Can you market better? How can you change the marketing of that business? Um, so that you can really, really see a massive difference going forward. Um, I think that's another great one that you can do, uh, going forward. Let's take a break and then we're going to get into the legal due diligence that you need to do.

All right. So the next one is the one that I always want to skip because it's really a pain. And there's a lot of extra things that you have to do that I don't enjoy whatsoever, but it is conducting that legal due diligence. And this is something that I absolutely hate doing. I hate dealing with attorneys because they tell me all the things that I cannot do.

And entrepreneurs and attorneys usually have opposite mindsets when it comes to some of these specific things, but they're there to help protect you. So it's one of those things that you really don't want to skip this in the due diligence process, because it could really, really, uh, screw up your new business.

And so you really want to make sure that you do the due diligence on this part and make sure they have. business licenses and permits. Make sure there aren't any pending litigation going on. Make sure you check on insurance policies and whether these fully cover risks and liabilities and all that kind of stuff.

Make sure they're fully covered on all these different areas. And it's probably good to just have some sort of counsel on board, an attorney on board that's going to help you through some of this stuff and really, really help you get to that next step. So I think that's really, really important when you do this.

Now, once you get past all this stuff, you've gone through the due diligence, you've got the appraisals, you've checked on the business reputation, you've run that competitive analysis, you've looked at the operations and you reviewed the finances. Once you've done all those different things, now it's time to negotiate, baby.

So negotiation can be We're really, really big challenge. If you find some things that you really need to negotiate on. Now, one great book I love is called never split the difference. This can help you in negotiation situations when it becomes really hot and heavy on some of this stuff, but you may have to just go through a few different rounds with the seller on negotiation and you got to get creative here because sometimes they may be saying no to specific things, but when you get creative and actually present it in a creative way.

They may say yes, and so you got to make sure that you are creative when it comes to business deals and you can get as creative as you possibly want. Your attorney may say, well, that's not possible, but it's possible if you get creative enough. And so just making sure that you can work out a deal that works for both of you.

I know a lot of this process can be emotional. You want that business. Once you start to get to this negotiation part, you want that business. You've been telling some people, you know, in your life that you're looking at this business and that you may be interested. Did. And so you're really, really talking through some of this stuff and you really want this to close.

But don't let your emotions get in the way of a good deal. Don't be afraid to walk away. You can absolutely walk away if it just doesn't work for you. And so I think this is something that a lot of people just need to try to remove their emotions as much as possible. But if you have not read Never Split the Difference, I would definitely, definitely recommend it for negotiation.

Getting to Yes is also another good book on the sales side. But I think this is going to be something where you can use a couple of different pieces here and there. To really, really help you on the negotiation process, then it's time to close the deal. So when you close a deal, um, and you go to the agreement and you both sign the agreement, you can secure your funding.

You can transfer the licenses. Uh, this is actually just a lot of paperwork that you have to go through and a lot of mundane steps that you really have to take in order to make the business yours and close that deal. Uh, but you got to transfer all that stuff to your name, the LLC, everything else, and so it's really, really important that you actually go through that process.

And then number 14 is figuring out. How to add value. Now, this is where you're going to make a big difference. When you buy a business, you want to make sure that that business is missing things that your skill set can really help accelerate. And so there's a bunch of different things that you can do.

For example, the business that we bought, they weren't doing a ton of social media video and your boy does a lot of social media videos. So we added some of that in. In addition, they didn't have an email list that they were actually emailing to. So we started to email to an email list. And increase some of the marketing in that sense.

There were other things that we added, like adding different retail things that we could start to sell more. We added different scheduling procedures, and then we added standard operating procedures for the employees. Um, and there's a lot of different things that we did in order to try to improve the process.

And so when you do this, you can start to level up some of the, the systems and the marketing. Um, you can look for growth opportunities and use your skills to actually go after those growth opportunities. You can also improve customer service. And the business we bought had really good customer service.

And so that was one thing that we just wanted to make sure that we continued moving forward. Uh, is that having that great customer service and then providing more training to employees is another one where you can really help employees be successful within this business. And moving forward, you can really help each other out.

So I think that's another really important one. And I think it's gonna be really, really helpful. Now, another big one is a lot of times technology can be outdated in some of these mom and pop shops. And so adding technology to a lot of these businesses can be really, really helpful. That might be the key tool to really accelerate your revenue.

So that's another big one that you can think through. Um, can you add technology? Are they using a CRM or are they using like a, just a notepad with all their, their customers in there? Um, that's just, you know, another example of how you can really help accelerate your business to the next level. So these are the 14 steps, the checklist that I would utilize in order to look at and go out and buy a business.

If you guys want to copy this checklist, make sure you're subscribed to the master money newsletter. We're going to be sending it out next week on the master money newsletter Everyone who's in the newsletter. So, uh, if you want to copy that checklist, make sure you check that out and you'll be able to get it there and truly appreciate each and every single one of you listening to this podcast, because what you are doing is you're investing in yourself.

And so thank you so much for investing in yourself. If you have value out of this episode, share this episode with a friend, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and we'll see you on the next episode.