Hi, I am in the very early stages of exploring the acquisition of a small business in Texas. To my surprise, I have met resistance from business brokers on 2-3 occasions to even share basic financials due to my personal balance sheet.

My stats:
- 26 years old, married to a teacher
- currently a strategy consultant (still employed, so not FT searcher yet)
- 335k net worth: 185k retirement, 30k brokerage, 60k cash, 60k home equity

I just bought a house which is why my non cash/brokerage accounts are lower but I thought this would be sufficient to at least explore deals with a lender. Given my lower cash position, I’d definitely want to lean on the higher end of DSCR (who wouldn’t though?). My initial plan has been to finance a deal through 80% SBA, 3-5% personal cash, and the rest from investors and/or seller financing depending on seller appetite. Based on this info, and, to my disappointment, a couple brokers have made it seem like it would be impossible for me to get SBA funding for 600k-1m deals they were working on.

Based on this, I appreciate y’all’s perspective on a few questions:

Do I have reasonable expectations?

Should I just wait to really kick off this process after a couple more years of earning and saving?

For former ETAers(?), what was your personal balance sheet like at the time of acquisition? What size of business did you buy? How did you finance it?

Thank you very much!