My first entrepreneurial venture was acquiring an existing, underperforming Mailboxes Etc. (now The UPS Store) franchise in Marietta, Georgia. Taking over an operating business had clear advantages, but it also came with challenges you don’t face when starting from scratch. ETA (entrepreneurship through acquisition) can be an excellent entry point into business ownership, but only when you have a realistic understanding of what you’re walking into. Today, I often see aspiring buyers with hopes and expectations that don’t match the actual opportunity landscape. This article is designed to help you develop a healthy, productive mindset as you begin your search and evaluation efforts.
Understand the Landscape
The acquisition marketplace has shifted in recent years. Strategic Search Funds and Private Equity continue to expand into smaller deals, creating intense competition and heightened valuations for cash-flowing, turnkey businesses to buy. This means the highly profitable, well-oiled machine you might envision acquiring from a retiring owner with no heir will be challenging to find at a price that makes sense for an individual buyer.
Here’s your opportunity: businesses that need your leadership. These are operating small businesses with some customers, revenue, and perhaps some infrastructure in place—but they’re underperforming their potential. Perhaps they’re breaking even, generating modest profit, but need operational and technological improvements to reach their potential. You’ll invest capital, time, and your executive talent to transform the business. The advantage? You’re starting with a known location, performance history, online reviews, and partnerships rather than building everything from scratch, and you can often acquire these businesses at reasonable valuations. With the right improvements and your strategic involvement, an underperforming business can deliver strong returns and build significant equity value over time.
Identify Low-Hanging Fruit
You’ll want to identify the immediate changes and improvements to be made quickly upon acquiring a business that will positively impact profitability and growth. The seller should be able to address this and provide a reasonable explanation for not already implementing them. There are numerous legitimate reasons a seller is ready to sell their business and not pushing growth; age, losing steam, health, life changes, ready for a new challenge, lack of capital are all common motivations and can present an excellent opportunity for a buyer.
If your acquisition of interest is part of a franchise brand, also talk with the franchise HQ field operations coaches responsible for the region where the selling franchisee is located. They can offer added insights into the immediate changes and improvements to be made to get the franchise you’re acquiring on track. Similarly, conversations with other franchisees (beyond the seller) can provide valuable insights into how a high-performing franchise should operate and how you could achieve this if you acquire the existing outlet.
Active Involvement: Your Competitive Advantage
Be prepared: buying a business requires significant time investment from day one. There’s nothing passive about it. You’re stepping into active operations with customers, employees, and cultural dynamics already in motion. Everyone is watching to see what kind of leader you’ll be.
The good news? Your executive experience is directly transferable. The challenge is real, but so is your capability. With disciplined involvement, strategic investment, and a solid plan, you can turn an underperformer into a cash-flowing asset that eventually requires less of your daily attention. It won’t happen immediately, and the early months will be demanding. But this is where corporate executives who’ve led teams and managed operations have a genuine advantage—you know how to diagnose problems, implement solutions, and drive results. Now you’re doing it for a business you own.
Adopt a Productive Mindset
Too often, buyers start looking for opportunities in specific industries based on their perceptions of those industries. Instead, think about your business skills. Are you talented in sales? Marketing? Project management? Team leadership? Talent development? Use your transferable skills as a primary search criterion and look for businesses that can benefit from the skills you already know you have and enjoy using. This approach opens the door to a broader array of options for you to consider. Most buyers are surprised by the type of business they are ultimately excited about; often, it is not an industry they initially envisioned themselves being drawn to.
Even in the most favorable circumstances, you will kiss many frogs in your business search before finding your right fit. Don’t make it more complicated for yourself by being too particular about the types of businesses you’d be open to owning.
Consider Trends
The best businesses to buy are boring. They sell services/products with known demand to a known customer base that will continue to need them. Be wary of business categories with short histories. An acquisition financing expert gave the example of artisan breweries: “They were hot, now they’re not.” Consumers can be fickle, so consider whether the services provided by the business you are buying represent an enduring want or need.
Think about customer segments on the rise. The Millennial generation (larger than the Baby Boomers) is the largest demographic of home buyers and parents of young children. The need for childcare and youth enrichment/activities is not going anywhere. Same for many varietals of home maintenance, repair, and improvement.
Pet ownership and pet spending are expected to continue to trend upward. Entrepreneurship continues to grow as a viable and attractive career path spanning the multi-generational workforce. An increasing number of people are leaving corporate to start or buy their own business for the same reasons you want to – more schedule flexibility, career control, and to build a family legacy. These businesses and their owners have enduring marketing, talent, and technology needs, presenting an excellent opportunity to acquire a B2B business or franchise.
