Okay. I have a couple of confessions. 1. I chose to go the corporate route after leaving college; 2. I'm over 60 and searching. I grew up in a family where everyone worked in the auto industry. Not as professionals, but as factory workers. Working for the likes of General Motors and Ford for 40 years was the pinnacle of success for my forebears. Thus, my first job out of school was at General Electric. I fronwed on people that changed jobs every two years as I searched, over the years, for people to hire. After about 5 years I took a leap and changed companies, after working for 3 different parts of GE in those 5 years. I then spent almost 15 years at Eaton, working for 5 differentk business units. Then I moved up the corporate ladder, taking a job with my biggest customer, Freightliner, now Daimler AG. In 18 years I went through countless reorganizations, but did, basically, have just 3 jobs of increasing responsibility. I have my MBA from HWU, Hard Work University, paraphrasing the claims of the College of the Ozarks. So, I'm now out of the corporate world, working for 5 years now as a solo consultant. I'm over 60 and searching for a business to buy with my 35-year-old son. The corporate world was stressful, but did allow me to sock away some funds. He's been CEO of a $2-3 Million company currently owned by private equity and has put some good funds away with his professional wife. So, we are searching, but plan to use our own funds. 

We hired a "buy-side-broker" a year ago to help. We started with some very specific criteria, such as a limited location, B2B, minimal size since self-funded with the help of SBA and seller financing. Compared to other searches, we started with a list of about 1300 businesses and whittled it down to about 350 that were sent letters. We got responses from###-###-#### and closely investigated 10-12, including face-to-face meetings with the owners. We came close to making an offer on 2 companies. One was sold to a friend, while the other, we thought, expected too high a value and had made some decisions that created poor projections for success. One other fast growing company wanted 15x EBIDTA, which we choked on.

So, we are still searching. We just talked with the broker and expanded the geographic area, added that we could move the company to where my son lives, an opened up the possibility of a couple of B2C areas we would consider.

Searching for a business to buy is not just for the new MBA.