I am taking this path. My advice is to be sure to take extra care of yourself (diet, exercise, meditation, etc.) as you will essentially have two full-time jobs.

I've been searching this way for the past ~6 months & have just left my day job to focus full time on search. All I can say is it's been very difficult to manage both; Joel is right you will have at least 2 full time jobs. I found that it gets really tough once you get a company under LOI & are trying to do due diligence & secure financing, while also handling a day job & trying to keep your deal flow going in case the LOI falls through.

I should not have left my day job until after the equipment appraisal!

I’ve been searching with a full time job for 13 months and currently have a deal under LOI. Not easy, but certainly manageable. Don’t waste time with admin work - just search and focus on that. Happy to chat [redacted]

Check out Song Pettus' post on here. He had a great story of finding a business while working full time.

Several of our members are actively searching while working full time. I think Daniel has a point about making sure that you're not wasting your time with administrative work and instead leveraging external resources - I also think that doing whatever you can to streamline your search will be extremely helpful. Full time searchers are definitely able to close quicker; however, many of our members are actively engaged in LOIs and the subsequent due diligence while working. Like James and Joel mentioned above - make sure not to lose sight of your own health. Searching can be disheartening so making sure you have external goals to focus on so that you can still feel like you're succeeding at something is important. Good luck in your search!

If you are searching while working FT, I'm assuming you are doing a self-funded search. Your time horizon can be longer which can allow you to be more targeted in businesses and allow you to build longer relationships with owners.

Basically just use your difference from a traditional search to your advantage.

I'm sure you can be successful this way but as a traditional search fund investor, I see up close the full time efforts of a traditional searcher. It's a full time exercise. If you are going to keep your job full-time, I think you need a unique angle to source a compelling acquisition.

Agree with ^[redacted]‌. I have a FT job which does not require much and will not allow me to work more than 40 hrs per week (government). So I am trying to use the fact I am not on a "clock" to my advantage as well as looking for maybe higher cost options like CapTarget to outsource my pipeline rather than doing it myself. Though I will say its hard to stay motivated and focused on it when your time is divided. You need a group of others to talk to each week to keep pushing you forward and holding you accountable!

Agree with you Daniel. I'm in the same page

I'm in a similar situation. Good advice so far in this thread!

In addition to the comments here, please see this prior post: Searchub with a full time job: https://www.searchfunder.com/post/searching-with-a-fulltime-job

Time management and if you can afford to, outsource some of the admin, lead gen tasks pre LOI to make the most of your time.

I am actively following this post. I am in the early stages and weighing self-funded vs. the traditional model.