Most first-time buyers spend months finding the right business. They agonize over the financials, the industry, the location. Then they get an offer accepted -- and that's when the real education begins. Suddenly there's a term sheet, an SBA application, a business valuation, a quality of earnings review, and a lender asking for documents you've never heard of. The timeline feels compressed. The stakes feel real. And the process feels nothing like what you read about online. The buyers who navigate this well aren't necessarily the most sophisticated. They're usually just the ones who knew what was coming before it arrived. Things like: how the equity injection gets documented, why the lender's appraiser might value the business differently than the asking price, what happens if the seller wants to carry a note, and how long each phase of the process actually takes. None of this is impossible to figure out. But it's a lot easier when you have someone walking alongside you who has seen it before. That's what we do at Pioneer Capital Advisory -- help buyers get through their first (or fifth) acquisition without the surprises that derail deals. What's the part of the SBA process that caught you most off guard?