Serial entrepreneur here… Buying a business is a bit of an interesting process because you need to find a place where your skill set can match with a company in a way that enables growth.

IMO business brokers can help you evaluate things but realistically what matters is your own knowledge of the market and what it takes to grow

Beyond that you need to know the difference between buying a job and buying a business. For example let’s say someone has a pressure washing company and the owners do 90% of the work. That would be buying a job because you need to step in and provide the value.

Let’s say that the pressure washing business has 5 full time salary employees, lots of re occuring contracts and systems for marketing and scheduling. That’s a business… Something that can actually stand on its own and give would let you focus on growth.

But as mentioned above you also need to consider your skills… Ie of you bought the business how could you grow it and fast, what could you do better then the existing management…etc

Because generally speaking unless the business has some type of unique position in the market, a heavily established brand or some other type of unique asset it will usually be better to start your own.

For example I own a hot tub maintenance and repair company, I looked at buying another similar business to expand my own. I’ve been a growth expert in tech for years so I thought of I bought another company cheaply I could quickly expand my business.

In short after running the numbers I figured I’d be better off spending 1/20th the price on marking my existing business… So I did and we grew fast as hell… No baggage, no debt, no drama.