How To Buy A Business With Ace Chapman

Ace Chapman joins us to explain how to buy a business. Something he’s been doing for sixteen years and it’s made him a millionaire.  Ace was on the usual college path when the opportunity to buy a business fell into his lap. He was playing with an online stock simulator that crashed a lot and found the company unresponsive. He reached out with an offer to help, merely hoping for an internship.  Instead, he was offered the chance to buy the business for $70,000. Ace had just $3,000. What he also had was no idea how such transactions usually work so he asked if the sellers would finance half of the deal. They agreed!  Ace got some money from a similarly entrepreneurial minded friend and financed the rest of credit cards.  Ace grew the product from 10,000 members to 250,000. He turned down seven-figure offers to sell but lost it all in the first dot-com bust. But he had a school of hard knocks bestowed MBA and decided to buy businesses was what he wanted to do.  Due Diligence  Ace had a big advantage when he bought that first business; he had been a long time user of the product so he knew it well. He had spoken to many of its other customers to find out what they did and did not like about the product. It’s not a requirement but it will certainly give you a leg up when it comes time to take over running the business.  Why Are They Selling?  If this business is so great, why are the owners looking to get out? It could be one of a million reasons; a divorce, failing health, boredom and the desire to move onto the next thing. As the Boomers start thinking of retirement, there will be a lot of established businesses on the market.  Don’t Start From Scratch  Many people don’t really give much thought to buying an already existing business. Starting your own business is something that is woven into the American Dream and we all think we could be the next Bill Gates.  But the stark truth is that about half of new businesses fail within five years. So why not let someone else do the hard work and pour in the capital that t