Presumably, your ultimate goal is to make money from buying a company. But there are lots of ways you might do that.

Are you going to buy cheap and flip it? Or buy it, grow it, and sell it in five years?

When you’re buying a business, it’s really easy to get carried away and think: “This is a good business. I think I can grow it.” But what are you actually going to do with it? Are you going to manage it forever? You need to get into the mindset of thinking where you want to go in five or 10 years’ time.

It’s really hard to do that for another person’s business, but you have to because you don’t want to get caught owning it indefinitely.

The same will also apply if you plan on staying in the business for a long time and want to keep it as a legacy business.