They will probably completely disregard your business credit score. You are correct that you will be personally guarantee/personally co-signing the loan. If you want to build up your business credit, get a business credit card, earn some cashback and pay it off every month.

Why not just be a lp on individual deals? This protects you from ‘buying’ into the company and going through the lumpy times and still allows him to access to your cash on specific deals.

the concept of seller financing is straightforward but don’t just approach a seller and tell them that you expect them to finance the entire transaction. It is a bad look and most sellers will stop the conversation right there.

I would take the additional 10 year term on the loan but make sure that you can still pay it off early (they like the 5-3-1 prepayment penalty model). Give yourself the breathing room to increase your cash flow in the short term and you can always pay more principal. It doesn’t change your interest rate problem, but if they are offering better terms, I would take them but still have the goal of paying it off as quickly as possible.

This is very normal. The employees should not know that the business ownership has changed hands until after the transaction. The caveat here is if there is a key employee that you absolutely need in order to continue operating the business. This would be someone like a long-term general manager that knows all of the clients, employees and could really hurt the business if they were to leave.