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From 0 To $240,000 Per Year PROFIT In 18 Months (Acquisition Entrepreneurship)

payingkarma

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My ROIs are for a 1-year return. The web marketing business performs SEO services with a team. We currently don't do much advertising to get customers. They come to us through organic traffic and word of mouth.
With SEO business, getting customer is one, but delivering their rankings (and potential leads and $$) to the customer is a whole another thing .

How do you outsource that part? who is doing the most of SEO work for your clients and who is managing the client interaction?
 
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payingkarma

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I don't like real estate because of 1) ROI based on the principal that you invest with, 2) the debt, not that debt is bad, but you incur a lot of it, 3) the lack of financial flexibility due to having more debt, 4) the lack of mobility when having real property.

I like being mobile, so if I moved to Central America, which we are, or some other place for that matter, I would not be local to the property. But that's just me. If you like where you live, then having properties there might be good for you.


You may go to Puerto Rico and become a permanent resident of PR. Then you can run this business from central America and not have to pay any taxes.

Guys, this is a 30% tax break gravy on top of the money you make. Just the money you make 15 - 30% from not paying the taxes beat every single money manager out on wall street.
 

payingkarma

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I don't waste my time with cold calling. But there are forums that people list their businesses. Here's one that I contribute to on occasion. And since I showed interest, I get solicited with offers:


The forum above is specific to web hosting businesses. This is inline with my current web site backup business. I'm sure I'll continue going back to this.

For due diligence, my check list is the following:

1) Matching published sales/revenue with tax returns (if available), bank accounts, and merchant accounts.
2) Go back 2 years at least for financials.
3) Get records of most significant expenses.
4) Get marketing performance numbers life for Google Ads, Facebook, etc.
5) Find out what products/services they use for their day-to-day operations.
6) Get list of employees/contractors that you'll take over. Offer not to discuss when them directly until after closing.
7) Get list of employee/contractor responsibilities.
8) Get breakdown of customer sales. Better yet, get details/invoices for customer individual sales.
9) Try to get their accounting books.
10) Get any future projected revenue like recurring invoices.

I'm sure there are more, but those above are key.

I have to say, it may seem like a lot to do in order to purchase a business, but once you do one, the others become easy. Often times, the sellers are novice at going through the process, so they ask me lots of questions, and I walk them through what to expect. You start doing this, and you'll become well-versed in it as well. It should be exciting! It is for me. It changes the game for me, and I really feel it can change the game for many others on this forum. I see focus is on building new businesses, and I love the passion and drive that some people have for that path, but my process, albeit less sexy, can be much more effective in reaching the fast lane.

There is a recent thread about acquiring multiple Subway restaurants. I'm not a fan of taking on a franchise since it lacks control, BUT the theory is sound. You acquire 5 Subways, and each averages $40,000 in profit, so you're banking $200,000 a year. Not sexy but effective.

Buying a small business is a lucrative investment. I wouldn't go near most franchises. Subway, btw, ranked #2 from the bottom, in other words, it's the second-worst in one of the lists I saw. I'd stay away from restaurants, and subway in particular.
 

doitman

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With SEO business, getting customer is one, but delivering their rankings (and potential leads and $$) to the customer is a whole another thing .

How do you outsource that part? who is doing the most of SEO work for your clients and who is managing the client interaction?

I have a couple contractors who are very good with both SEO and client interaction. I spend my time acquiring business. Our web site gets about 30K page views a month.

I'm not an expert on SEO, nor do I want to be. My model is to have contract staff do that work.
 
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arl

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I don't like real estate because of 1) ROI based on the principal that you invest with, 2) the debt, not that debt is bad, but you incur a lot of it, 3) the lack of financial flexibility due to having more debt, 4) the lack of mobility when having real property.

I like being mobile, so if I moved to Central America, which we are, or some other place for that matter, I would not be local to the property. But that's just me. If you like where you live, then having properties there might be good for you.

I completely agree with your points. Real Estate has worked great for me so far because my dad is a great arquitect, and with his help in the remodelling I has able to get an awesome cashflow. But the market is crazy right now and I wouldn't want to fully rely on real estate on my way to the fast lane. It has just been the easiest way so far.

I've been looking at flippa for years, but I was just looking at blogs and ecommerce sites. It was mostly crap in the price range I was looking at. It seems like I have to start looking at a higher price range and maybe look into other kind of sites.

In your previous deals, did you buy full companies or just the assets? I'm curious because I'm from Europe and I don't know how much of a pain in the a$$ would be to buy a company located in another country even if it could be run from anywhere. I'm just not familiar with fiscal obligations and other things like that from other countries.
 

doitman

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I completely agree with your points. Real Estate has worked great for me so far because my dad is a great arquitect, and with his help in the remodelling I has able to get an awesome cashflow. But the market is crazy right now and I wouldn't want to fully rely on real estate on my way to the fast lane. It has just been the easiest way so far.

I've been looking at flippa for years, but I was just looking at blogs and ecommerce sites. It was mostly crap in the price range I was looking at. It seems like I have to start looking at a higher price range and maybe look into other kind of sites.

In your previous deals, did you buy full companies or just the assets? I'm curious because I'm from Europe and I don't know how much of a pain in the a$$ would be to buy a company located in another country even if it could be run from anywhere. I'm just not familiar with fiscal obligations and other things like that from other countries.

I never buy the company. I always buy the assets. If you already have a corporate structure in place, or some business entity, you should consider running the new business under it, unless you want a more complex structure for tax and liability purposes.

For you, real estate investment sounds like a good option to continue doing. You can definitely go my route, which will give you a diversified portfolio.
 
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doitman

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Did you ever raise debt to make a no-money-down deal on an online business ?
Do you plan to do it ?

I have not gone this route. I may consider it in the future if the right opportunity came along. Of course this depends on outside parties like lenders and owners being on board with such a transaction. I'd rather not be dependent on that. Besides having cash available for a purchase is huge leverage when negotiating price. Of course a lot of people don't have the cash. That's where the hustle comes into play. I didn't have any cash 18 months ago. But I was able to raise it quickly by taking on more work than I probably should have. Pain did lead to gain as they say.
 

payingkarma

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I use a simple minimum ROI formula. Sale Price <= 2 x Estimated Annualized Profit. This is based on wanting at least 50% ROI. All 4 businesses that I acquired this year meet or exceed this requirement. In fact, 3 of the 4 are more than 70% ROI.

And yes, I spend maybe 2 hours a day on all 4 of them TOTAL. My contractors do all the day to day work. Note that I don't do any marketing right now, but when I start doing that, my hours will increase considerably.

@richardd, It's super hard for me to find a business with 1.5x to 2x valuation. Especially on bizbuysell and other platforms, I am seeing 3x and above.

In most cases, I see the owner working on the business full time, let alone a 2 hour a day business at that multiple.

How do you source acquisition opportunities?
 

AA1980

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From 0 to $240,000 per year profit in 18 months

I've been a follower of this forum for about a year now, had read the Millionaire Fastlane book, and finally have decided to tell my story. About a year and a half ago, I found myself unemployed and with near zero savings, two house payments, and a second baby on the way. Things were so dire that I was contemplating bankruptcy. I had just lost my slow-lane job with one of the original big three TV network companies. Worked there for about 3 years making the mistake of transitioning away from my career in computer consulting thinking that having a job would bring a certain level of security. It didn't. Man, those were dark days.

I decided to go back to consulting. But this time instead of taking on just one client full-time, I took on a second, and then a third, and then a fourth. A couple of them, I was billing 40 hours a week, working at the client site for 1, while telecommuting for the other. Clients 3 and 4 were part-time, billing 10-20 hours a week for each but at higher rates, also remote. FYI if you haven't heard, businesses more and more are allowing the telecommuting way. So, if you hate going into your job, look for opportunities to work from home. They're out there.

Well I did this for the past year+, and life has been shit busy, but I saved up a ton, about $200,000 in a year. That felt good. I felt secure with a lot of savings, I had multiple income streams, and the second baby now walks and can feed herself. My wife suggested we invest the $200K in money market funds or CDs. Sounds good, right? Earn 2.3% APY resulting in a whopping $383/mo.! I love my wife, but not for us.

Investing in low-yield financial instruments, and working for someone whether consulting or full time. These are strong characteristics of the slow lane. I've always had an entrepreneur’s mindset. I wanted financial freedom from the daily 9-5 grind, or for me this past year, the 5am-1am grind, including weekends. Even though I had the high-paying clients, if you think about it, it's never good to have all your nuts in very few baskets. And you definitely don't want your schedule dictated to you as consulting can often times do. Besides, money was still tied to my time, and this current work schedule was unsustainable. So having a business seemed like the way to go.

How did I start a business that gives me the financial freedom and time freedom that I so desired? Funny thing. I didn't. I didn't start a new business. Oh, I created a new corporate entity initially for my consulting. But I'm just not creative enough, nor risk averse with family and kids to take a chance there. And besides, burning a year of my life working my a$$ off to roll the dice on a new venture. Nah. So did this mean that I just wasn't going to pursue financial freedom, and maybe instead continue the 100 hours a week work load? No.

About 6 months ago, I started looking at buying software/internet businesses. Why reinvent the wheel? The number of businesses sold on the internet is growing rapidly. Sure there's a ton of scams, get-rich-quick opportunities offered by fake sellers. There are a lot of businesses that the seller just wants out because of failing operations. There are businesses that are a dying breed tied to the old world, pre-internet. For example, consider commercial printing companies which as a side note I was an owner of one about 10 years ago. I'll get back to this in a moment. There are businesses that run in a saturated space like many ecommerce, dropship/Amazon businesses that may have once been profitable, but have lost their edge due to the marketplace. Oh, and blogs, need I say more. Lots of bad opportunities!

So let me quickly detour farther into the past. 10 years ago, I was the owner of a print shop. We had lots of B2B customers looking for printed material on paper. They were all local customers, who often times paid late since we invoiced at NET 30. We had employees running the machines to print and cut and collate and staple. We had leased printers and other equipment. We had leased store-front space. We had a lot of COGS (Cost of Goods Sold), namely the paper itself. Ultimately we failed, and went out of business. Simply put, sales decreased over time, the business didn't scale, the cash flow was shit due to late payers, the overhead was horrendous, and having full-time employees was expensive and such a burden.

Years later, I tried blogging. Tech centric since I'm a programmer. That was a waste of time. AdSense brought in a few hundred bucks a month. But since I don't like writing (even this posting is painful to me), it turned out not to be worth it. I tried ecommerce, AliExpress/Shopify drop shipping of apparel. Did OK for a few months, but then the sales dried up, and I had difficulty coming up with new products to sell. Hated that as well. Definitely not sustainable. So ultimately I failed.

Which bring us back to now. I say I failed, which I'm sure many of you reading this have done so as well. But I say that to make a point. Failure is not truly failure when considering what it really is. As humans, we all fail, probably every day in one form or another. Most of our failures are inconsequential. We break something. We say the wrong thing at the wrong time. We buy some product that doesn't live up to our expectations. But guess what? We adjust our behaviors to mitigate risk so that next time, we do better. Business should be treated the same. Choices that you make in business can be driven by experiences, good and bad. I have a ton of that, especially the bad.

So based on my past failures, I came up with criteria for what my next business acquisition would require. Here they are:

1) No full-time employees. Didn't want the headache.
2) Profitable. Of course.
3) Years of proven profitability.
4) Digital/software products or services. No inventory. No drop shipping.
5) Scalable.
6) No physical location. Allowing work from home without need for leasing office/store.
7) Flexible business. Caters to expanding product and service line beyond current offerings to customers.
8) Low weekly hours necessary for owner operation.
9) Instant credit card sales, vs NET30 or other delayed payment processing.
10) Minimal marketing.
11) Full control. No partnerships. Limit dependencies with external entities.

So, I'm sitting on my $200,000 nest egg from all that hard work. I'm researching businesses for sale. And I find one that is a software company that sells proprietary accounting software. Promising! I'm a programmer with tons of experience in accounting. The business has been operational for 30 years, with recurring clients going back 10+ years, and has been run by this one couple who are well into their retirement years but hadn't pulled the trigger. And guess what? This software business satisfies all 11 of my requirements above. Well, I send their broker an offer of about $200K with half of it owner-financed for 5 years. They accept. Done deal. The profit annualized is $70,000 with an initial investment of $100,000. ROI = 70%. Nice! Since taking over, I'm happy with the performance, and I only spend maybe a couple hours a week on it. I outsource the programming.

Why stop there? I know MJ preaches monogamy. But I feel you can scale your company multiple ways. 1) expanding your sales in your current product/service line, and 2) buying existing businesses to generate more revenue. The only limiting factor of the second is that you will hit a limiting threshold in time when managing and marketing your multiple business holdings. Hopefully by then, you have gotten to a point where you can hire managers to offload that work. In any case, I next took over... a blog. I laugh when I write that because as mentioned before, I hated blogging. But I'll give you a little secret. You can hire writers, which I have a whole staff of them.

The blog is more than just a blog with hundreds of thousands of viewers per month. It has an online Facebook page with a quarter million followers, and a Facebook group with tens of thousands of passionate people whose lives revolve around my niche. And I am one of them, also passionate towards the content that we generate. So, I placed an offer, and got it, trademark included. $80K. We make money working with an advertising agency that deals with handling ad fill. Profit after paying our writing staff has been about $3500/mo. So annualized is $42,000 profit/year. ROI = 52.5%.

Next acquisition. I bought a web site backup service. We have hundreds of customers that we perform nightly backups of their sites as well as make sure their sites are operational 24x7. I outsource that work to offshore for cheap, but excellent labor. I love the guys who keep this business going strong day to day. I barely do anything but accounting for this. Maybe spend half an hour a day. I got it for $35,000. And annualized we make $30K in profit. ROI = 85%.

And most recently I've assumed a web marketing business. This too has a team of contractors that do the heavy lifting. Premium one-word, business-specific, domain name that garners 30K organic traffic a month. Very little ad spend. We generate about $8000/mo. in profit, again annualized to $96K profit for an ROI = 240%. I haven't figured out why the previous owner sold this other than he didn't want to do it anymore, and wanted to concentrate on his other business. He's got rep. I did my research.

So here's the grand total annualized profit:

Accounting Software Business: $70,000
Blog and Online Community: $42,000
Web Site Backup Business: $30,000
Web Marketing Business: $96,000

Total Annualized Profit: $238,000

Mind you, since these ventures take up maybe a total of a couple hours a day for me to run, I am free to focus on marketing for growth, while keeping a couple of my consulting clients. I quit the one client where I had to go into the office, and the other remote client, I just quit because I didn't have time for them. So I work from home now. The consulting dollars gets me to $400K a year, but I will most likely stop consulting next year to completely focus on my businesses. And my family and I are planning on moving to Central America this winter, because we love it there, and hell, I can work from anywhere that has internet.

One last note on being a serial entrepreneur. I look for synergies between my businesses and any future acquisitions. Each of the four ventures that I now have complement one or more of the other businesses, so I can leverage/cross-sell amongst the lot of them. This specific business model is starting to gain traction. But one challenge for me is branding when cross-selling. I haven't figured out how to consolidate the brands most efficiently. Each has their own distinct brand that current customers trust. And future customers may gravitate to the current branding. So not sure yet, but it's a good problem to have.
Incredible story. Thanks for sharing!
 
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doitman

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@richardd, It's super hard for me to find a business with 1.5x to 2x valuation. Especially on bizbuysell and other platforms, I am seeing 3x and above.

In most cases, I see the owner working on the business full time, let alone a 2 hour a day business at that multiple.

How do you source acquisition opportunities?

I'll give you another secret/tip. Many of those businesses that are more than 2x my ROI valuations are actually closer to 2x than you see. For example, earnings that sellers publish to buyers are based on the P&L statements. You have to drill down into them to see that they are listing expenses that you may not incur. I'll give you some examples.

1) Telephone/internet services. You probably already have that. You're not going to buy more internet service or a separate phone and plan.
2) Accounting: even if you utilize accounting services, you shouldn't incur the costs that they have for their bookkeeping. You're costs will increase a little due to more record keeping though.
3) Server costs: if they are running web servers, you can either consolidate them onto yours if you have other businesses, or you can move to cheaper servers. I can't believe some businesses where their servers cost hundreds of dollars a month. I spend $30/mo on hefty servers that have unlimited bandwidth.
4) Owner wages: most include owner wages when reporting monthly earnings.
5) Other internet services: many businesses including myself play around with a ton of SaaS services for automating their business processes. I do this for fun and some efficiency. But I definitely don't need a lot of it.
6) Office supplies
7) Travel expenses
8) Legal expenses
9) Postage!

All this adds up to impact the seller's bottom line, and thus their reported monthly profit. You have to dig deeper into their finances to see where they are spending needlessly.

As for owners working lots of hours on their businesses, either don't consider them, or look to outsource the stuff that they do.
 

payingkarma

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I'll give you another secret/tip. Many of those businesses that are more than 2x my ROI valuations are actually closer to 2x than you see. For example, earnings that sellers publish to buyers are based on the P&L statements. You have to drill down into them to see that they are listing expenses that you may not incur. I'll give you some examples.

1) Telephone/internet services. You probably already have that. You're not going to buy more internet service or a separate phone and plan.
2) Accounting: even if you utilize accounting services, you shouldn't incur the costs that they have for their bookkeeping. You're costs will increase a little due to more record keeping though.
3) Server costs: if they are running web servers, you can either consolidate them onto yours if you have other businesses, or you can move to cheaper servers. I can't believe some businesses where their servers cost hundreds of dollars a month. I spend $30/mo on hefty servers that have unlimited bandwidth.
4) Owner wages: most include owner wages when reporting monthly earnings.
5) Other internet services: many businesses including myself play around with a ton of SaaS services for automating their business processes. I do this for fun and some efficiency. But I definitely don't need a lot of it.
6) Office supplies
7) Travel expenses
8) Legal expenses
9) Postage!

All this adds up to impact the seller's bottom line, and thus their reported monthly profit. You have to dig deeper into their finances to see where they are spending needlessly.

As for owners working lots of hours on their businesses, either don't consider them or look to outsource the stuff that they do.

I do all those as addbacks. I look for a strict operating expense vs non-operating and add anything that is discretionary. If it comes via a broker then the deal has a lot more addbacks. especially owners hours when they work 60 hours every week.

I agree with you a few these items are usually not required and I can trim them down to increase the net income. Still < 2 x is hard to find - I mean the ones with your 11 criteria in.

But I will try to look them more closely going fwd. Thanks for ya reply!
 

Jeff Noel

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I have nothing to add or no question to ask right now. I'm just baffled by the amount of value you are sharing with us. Thank you. I've been browsing Flippa for a couple of weeks, trying to find low-profit, low-priced businesses where I could hire a contractor to do the main job while keeping a small profit in the end. Your pointers in your various posts are really helpful in this sense.
 
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doitman

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I have nothing to add or no question to ask right now. I'm just baffled by the amount of value you are sharing with us. Thank you. I've been browsing Flippa for a couple of weeks, trying to find low-profit, low-priced businesses where I could hire a contractor to do the main job while keeping a small profit in the end. Your pointers in your various posts are really helpful in this sense.

Thank you, Jeff, for the feedback. I've read this forum for quite a while, and I find the most inspiring threads are the ones that deal with real experience born from theoretical process. It makes the information more tangible.

People ask how can one build a business from scratch. There is no magic to it. I don't even believe there is a secret. My process is standard investment that we all learn in the slow lane. People know all about putting money into the stock market and retirement funds. All we are doing is investing in existing businesses that have ROI. Earnings compound yearly, albeit at low ROIs.

I just apply this same process, but instead I acquire businesses not stock or shares. I of course have to save money to make the investments which means get a second job. I also have to run the businesses. But there should be no secret to this.

I am not arrogant enough to say that I am doing anything special. Nor am I doing anything special performing the analytics in deciding which businesses to invest in. I hope my progress thread makes that clear to everyone.

I'm not building some amazing product or SaaS solution to reach the masses. I'm letting others build that for me, whether it was the previous business owners, or whether it is the contracting staff that I hire to make all these businesses work on a day to day basis.
 

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I do all those as addbacks. I look for a strict operating expense vs non-operating and add anything that is discretionary. If it comes via a broker then the deal has a lot more addbacks. especially owners hours when they work 60 hours every week.

I agree with you a few these items are usually not required and I can trim them down to increase the net income. Still < 2 x is hard to find - I mean the ones with your 11 criteria in.

But I will try to look them more closely going fwd. Thanks for ya reply!
Or just start sending out lowball offers. There's a theory (especially in flipping real estate) that if 99 out of 100 people aren't insulted by your offer, you're doing it wrong. However, for that 1 out of 100, they just want out. And if you can make the selling process easy for them, they'll take whatever they can get (don't do it in a predatory way, but some people are just tired of dealing with their business and want to move on).
 

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@richardd thanks so much for the thread. It came recommended by @MJ DeMarco via my intro post to the INSIDERS forum.

I currently have $10,000 USD to invest. Would you recommend saving up more capital first or invest in a business on a smaller scale to what you did. An ROI greater than 50% on a smaller scale business acquisition is still a workable deal. Also in terms of the industry for the acquired business. Did you have prior experience in each industry you entered? Being 25 years old I don't have a lot of industry experience in any industry. I graduated, got a job, changed industry, travelled in South America (can see why you want to move and hit me up for spanish tips or resources to learn) teaching English, and I still teach English. So, not much industry experience to apply to an acquired business.

Thanks again for this great thread and all of your thoughtful responses!
 
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steelandchrome

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Thanks! I found my 4 businesses on Flippa and BizBuySell. Usually it takes about a month or two from start to finish. If I weren't so busy, I could have closed in 2 weeks, where half the time was putting together a sales agreement, and the other half performing due diligence. For me, there is no need to rush it like that.
Thanks for the thread! I am in the initial stages of launching an ecom setup from scratch or buying something I believe can scale faster if it's worth the money. Most of the listings seem a bit scammy for the ecom sites for sale.
 

payingkarma

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Or just start sending out lowball offers. There's a theory (especially in flipping real estate) that if 99 out of 100 people aren't insulted by your offer, you're doing it wrong. However, for that 1 out of 100, they just want out. And if you can make the selling process easy for them, they'll take whatever they can get (don't do it in a predatory way, but some people are just tired of dealing with their business and want to move on).
Good point, I think I should start writing LOI with what I think is the right offer to me and see what sticks. Thanks!
 

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@richardd thanks so much for the thread. It came recommended by @MJ DeMarco via my intro post to the INSIDERS forum.

I currently have $10,000 USD to invest. Would you recommend saving up more capital first or invest in a business on a smaller scale to what you did. An ROI greater than 50% on a smaller scale business acquisition is still a workable deal. Also in terms of the industry for the acquired business. Did you have prior experience in each industry you entered? Being 25 years old I don't have a lot of industry experience in any industry. I graduated, got a job, changed industry, travelled in South America (can see why you want to move and hit me up for spanish tips or resources to learn) teaching English, and I still teach English. So, not much industry experience to apply to an acquired business.

Thanks again for this great thread and all of your thoughtful responses!

Ryan,

Welcome to the forum. My answer is a question. How quickly can you save up another $10,000? I do find a few businesses that are about $20,000 that give the 50% return. They are more mature businesses that have been around at least two years. This is key. The ones priced at $10,000 or less are either very new, or are failing businesses. I'd wait and save a little more. But with that plan, you can take action right away, and find other income streams that may be tied to your time like a second job or some other side hustle. I think many people can save another $10,000 in say 6 months. Then you can take that time to analyze the market by browsing business listings.

My industry background is in information technology. I'm a programmer, so I know how to make technology work and run better. This applies to all of my businesses.

I have accounting experience, entertainment experience, and web hosting experience. All three directly apply to my businesses. So I always recommend to go for opportunities that you have some experience with. That's not to say that you can't go into something unrelated. But you want the odds of success to be skewed way in your favor.

What job experience do you have?
 
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How quickly can you save up another $10,000?
I'm in a position where I would need a second job/ side hustle as I currently teach english online and make $1,500 a month. I don't have many outgoings though so would just need another side hustle and then I would be confident to save $1,000 per month.

What job experience do you have?
I have worked as a financial analyst (1 year), an auditor (2 month internship), an english teacher (not much relevance to business), and a waiter (again not very relevant). Odd jobs while studying but I graduated 3 years ago. Since graduation I worked as a financial analyst in NYC for 1 year, 2 months as an auditor, 5 months working for my friends young and very profitable gambling consultancy, 1 year as an english teacher in South America.

You say you have accounting experience. I studied accounting at university and started working with one of the firms in my city as an intern. I since turned away from accounting as I found it pretty soul sucking work (especially at any of the bigger firms). Also not a great job at the bigger companies as they work you to the bone so not much free time for business. However, would you recommend that I stick to what I know? I have the most experience in finance (although I don't like the work) and if there were genuine benefits I could gain from that experience then it could change my perspective on the work and I would entertain that option. Also could work as a much better saving vehicle than the job I currently have.

Always been reluctant to get back into accounting. But I graduated in the subject and I am good at it too. Could be a good 9-5 job as a saving vehicle.
 

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I'm in a position where I would need a second job/ side hustle as I currently teach english online and make $1,500 a month. I don't have many outgoings though so would just need another side hustle and then I would be confident to save $1,000 per month.


I have worked as a financial analyst (1 year), an auditor (2 month internship), an english teacher (not much relevance to business), and a waiter (again not very relevant). Odd jobs while studying but I graduated 3 years ago. Since graduation I worked as a financial analyst in NYC for 1 year, 2 months as an auditor, 5 months working for my friends young and very profitable gambling consultancy, 1 year as an english teacher in South America.

You say you have accounting experience. I studied accounting at university and started working with one of the firms in my city as an intern. I since turned away from accounting as I found it pretty soul sucking work (especially at any of the bigger firms). Also not a great job at the bigger companies as they work you to the bone so not much free time for business. However, would you recommend that I stick to what I know? I have the most experience in finance (although I don't like the work) and if there were genuine benefits I could gain from that experience then it could change my perspective on the work and I would entertain that option. Also could work as a much better saving vehicle than the job I currently have.

Always been reluctant to get back into accounting. But I graduated in the subject and I am good at it too. Could be a good 9-5 job as a saving vehicle.

Ok, so you should try to find another job probably in finance and accounting. That will probably raise your saving rate considerably.

There are of course businesses available in those industries, but as mentioned, you don't need to limit yourself to them. With your training and understanding of those fields, just keep an eye out for businesses in those genres.

In your current situation, it will take you 10 months to save up. So that's good. If you can visualize taking on a business for say $20,000 and it makes you an extra grand a month, it should be easy to see that your savings rate will increase 2x. This acceleration in raising capital will allow you to invest in more businesses over shorter amounts of time. Acceleration is the important point that I'm making.
 

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Ok, so you should try to find another job probably in finance and accounting. That will probably raise your saving rate considerably.

There are of course businesses available in those industries, but as mentioned, you don't need to limit yourself to them. With your training and understanding of those fields, just keep an eye out for businesses in those genres.

In your current situation, it will take you 10 months to save up. So that's good. If you can visualize taking on a business for say $20,000 and it makes you an extra grand a month, it should be easy to see that your savings rate will increase 2x. This acceleration in raising capital will allow you to invest in more businesses over shorter amounts of time. Acceleration is the important point that I'm making.
Awesome! Thanks. I really appreciate the time you have taken to answer my questions! I think it is actually important for me to get a job at this point. Both to save and for my mental health and social life. I don't like being stuck in the house all day teaching. Plus this line of work (teaching english) is not sustainable and only worked when I was living in South America and cost of living is a lot less. Teaching in Ireland forces me to live with my parents. Thanks again!
 
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Awesome! Thanks. I really appreciate the time you have taken to answer my questions! I think it is actually important for me to get a job at this point. Both to save and for my mental health and social life. I don't like being stuck in the house all day teaching. Plus this line of work (teaching english) is not sustainable and only worked when I was living in South America and cost of living is a lot less. Teaching in Ireland forces me to live with my parents. Thanks again!

No problem. Why not move to South America? We're moving the Central America. I don't see an issue with running a business from there.
 

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The ones priced at $10,000 or less are either very new, or are failing businesses.
Hi @Richards amazing thread! Thank you!

I was reading earlier in the thread where you spoke about sniffing out frauds, but I may have missed how you check for businesses that are failing or on the back 9. Any tips?

Edit: Other than ones where the industry they serve is in decline, that is.

Double edit: Could there also be some great values hidden there, a fixer-upper/ refurbish so to speak?
 

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No problem. Why not move to South America? We're moving the Central America. I don't see an issue with running a business from there.
I have been considering it also. It's an option. My girlfriend is Peruvian so always a thought to go back. However, I've only been back a month at home since south america. Always keep it in the back of my min to go back though
 
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I have been considering it also. It's an option. My girlfriend is Peruvian so always a thought to go back. However, I've only been back a month at home since south america. Always keep it in the back of my min to go back though

There're a lot of things you can do at this point to make extra $$.

Since you are an English teacher and I am assuming you can write well. Go and look for writing gigs in upwork or one of those sites. Or you could go to fiverr.com and post writing gigs - especially packaged scripts and such.

You can easily leverage your language abilities to make $1000 part time... and save those for 10 months.

There are a whole bunch of things you can do including
1) writing news articles
2) writing blog posts
3) editing content
4) writing scripts
5) copywriting for ads

Just #2 is going to pay you so well, you will quit your English teaching job.

try to post a few ads ( all cost free) with these online writing gigs sites.

Or go and start bidding on jobs in upwork. 2 cents a word is easy to score. Everyone needs a top notch writer at 2 to 3 cents a word.

And if you can write a good 2000 word article a day that is going to make you between $40 to $60 a day - or between $1200 - $1800 extra easily. If you hustle you can make 3k easily...

At that rate you are looking at < 6 months to hit the 10k savings.

Good luck!
 

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Hi @Richards amazing thread! Thank you!

I was reading earlier in the thread where you spoke about sniffing out frauds, but I may have missed how you check for businesses that are failing or on the back 9. Any tips?

Edit: Other than ones where the industry they serve is in decline, that is.

Double edit: Could there also be some great values hidden there, a fixer-upper/ refurbish so to speak?

I focus mainly on digital/online businesses. There are some basic trackers that give me a broad picture of the businesses health. Google Analytics shows traffic growth/decline, super valuable. Facebook pages/groups have Insights to see traffic patterns. Monthly/yearly revenue numbers of course show growth or decline as well. Don't be afraid of decline though. This could be to your benefit in negotiating price. Reasons are a plenty why sales might be dropping, often times because the seller is no longer as engaged in the business as before. Fixer-upper is a good term to use in these instances.

For my accounting software business, I've improved the business by changing the licensing model, and automating it. This leads to faster sales. The retired couple was less computer savvy. I also implemented help desk software to improve customer server. And of course, I created a new web site.

For my blog, there wasn't much to improve since it was growing when I bought it, and it was run by a younger techno-savvy person. My management of it these past few months is driving the business to the best revenue month historically for the business though. I'm really proud of that.

The web site backup business didn't need refurbishing. The previous owner is super smart, a web developer.

But I always look for opportunities where marked improvements can be made to improve the bottom line.
 

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I focus mainly on digital/online businesses. There are some basic trackers that give me a broad picture of the businesses health. Google Analytics shows traffic growth/decline, super valuable. Facebook pages/groups have Insights to see traffic patterns. Monthly/yearly revenue numbers of course show growth or decline as well. Don't be afraid of decline though. This could be to your benefit in negotiating price. Reasons are a plenty why sales might be dropping, often times because the seller is no longer as engaged in the business as before. Fixer-upper is a good term to use in these instances.

For my accounting software business, I've improved the business by changing the licensing model, and automating it. This leads to faster sales. The retired couple was less computer savvy. I also implemented help desk software to improve customer server. And of course, I created a new web site.

For my blog, there wasn't much to improve since it was growing when I bought it, and it was run by a younger techno-savvy person. My management of it these past few months is driving the business to the best revenue month historically for the business though. I'm really proud of that.

The web site backup business didn't need refurbishing. The previous owner is super smart, a web developer.

But I always look for opportunities where marked improvements can be made to improve the bottom line.
Awesome info! Thank you so much @richardd
 
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Question to OP,
I looked at a biz that went from $200 revenue to $3400 in 6 months. Website is 2 yrs old. The current owner bought wrote 100 articles and improved.

Now he wants 30x $3400. I said that's crazy and I can do a 24x last 6 months average.

What would you do in this situation.
 

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