I often hear from business buyers that they are looking for any type of good business. That approach is very much like finding a trophy wife and saying any lady will do as long as she is exciting. An exciting woman for one man can be a disaster for another. You really need a good fit for your personality. This is the same in a business.
You are getting married to your business, and spending more time with it than with your wife. I am not mechanically inclined so I would never own an automotive shop. I am however a numbers person so selling a product or service where I can use my accounting and sales background would be a good fit for me.
I had an out of work mechanical engineer type person doing pool retrofitting sales for me as a temporary job until he found a new job with corporate America, making very big bucks. He would figure out how to solve the problems the installation crews came up against and automated the quotation process so the price popped up. He was good at both sales and production. He was not however good at pricing the product so that we made enough profit.
Everyone has their strong and weak points.
Find out what type of work gets you up in the morning. A salesman can take any type of wholesale or service type business and turn it into a moneymaker, regardless of how well the prior owner has done. A trained retailer is good at working with fixed retail locations while anyone not a retailer will die running a retail storefront. Five percent of the owners of most types of business make a very big profit. Thirty percent do very well, while over fifty percent are starving. The issue is not what type of business is a good business to buy but what type of business will be a good business for you to turn around and create with.
Creative Commons Attribution: Permission is granted to repost this article in its entirety with credit to Business Buying Services and a clickable link back to this page.
Image credit:FogStock/Vico Images/Erik Palmer FogStock
