GasBizPlanet – Tips, Ideas and Existing Businesses for Sale
Great Tips, Ideas & Gas Stations, Car Washes & Auto Related Businesses for Sale
How to find the perfect business for you.
Open your mind. Do your research. Start with the best.
Ready to be your own boss? Want to make money immediately? Some startup businesses and new franchises take years to generate a profit. Some never make a profit.
One of the best ways to become your own boss and start making money right away is to acquire an existing business. If you look on the Internet you’ll see thousands of businesses for sale. Of these, only a select few have really good records including tax returns and the type of financials that allow banks to loan towards. Only a small fraction of the businesses for sale are good enough to get SBA loans. But those businesses are a great place to start even if you don want to finance with a bank.
Start with an open mind.
You have incredible skills and talents that will help you be successful at all kinds of businesses. Whether are leaving the corporate world, exiting the military (Thank You, Veteran’s!) or coming from another country seeking a business that can help you get a visa, you have to find the right business for you to run.
Often people think that they should try to get into an industry they are familiar with such as restaurants, sports bars, or gas stations. We tend to gravitate towards these types of businesses because they’re the most familiar to us and we convince ourselves that they would be easy to run if we could just figure out the basic mechanics.
Having designed a restaurant for a franchise prototype that never came to fruition, and having worked with hundreds of business owners while working on the corporate side of Texaco and Shell, I know firsthand that restaurants and gas stations are not particularly easy to run. But neither are they more complicated than a lot of other businesses. We tend perceive the industries that are most familiar to us as being particularly easy to operate. And too often we imagine that businesses that are less familiar to us as being very difficult, or nearly impossible to operate. We have see very talented people work a lot harder running gas stations and restaurants than the imagined they would prior to getting into business. And we have seen inexperienced people take over businesses such as plumbing companies or automotive repair companies who end up do extremely well with a very high level of personal satisfaction.
With your transferable skills, and a passion for working for yourself, open your mind to different kinds of business industries.
Feed Your Passion
Some of the best businesses are ones that have been prequalified for SBA loans. They tend to have good tax returns and verifiable financial records. All businesses have an element of risk so you still have to conduct your own due diligence and research, but in general, SBA pre-qualified business tend to be some of the very best businesses available.
If you can find something that you think you’d be excited about, even if you don’t have experience in the industry, you can do quite well. Some of our most interesting clients have taken over businesses like plumbing and air conditioning companies, industrial cleaning businesses, family entertainment centers, car washes, lube centers, printing businesses, pet kennels and much more with no prior experience in the industries. The Sellers had to hold licenses for some of the business for a couple of years to allow the Buyers to get the appropriate license. And Sellers almost always have to provide a familiarization time period and support. But the people who acquired the better of these businesses became very successful. In many cases, they turned those businesses into even greater successes.
Deeply consider why you want to own your own business? Think about what you would enjoy most about owning your own business six months after year after taking over – when the initial excitement wears off. Consider how you would be if there were a period of time when the business was not doing financially well. Could you still be passionate and inspired about your business? It just might be that embracing you passion and inspiration helps you turn your business acquisition into a very highly satisfying success.
What do you want to be doing day-to-day while leading your business? Do you want to be creative? Do you want to be talking with customers on a regular basis? Are you comfortable with managing people? Do you want to be working with numbers or computers or machinery? Think about some of the very basics. Address your current passions, desires and interests.
Open your mind to what you can do. Not every business is going to be a perfect fit but in general the businesses that have good records, good systems in place, and the ones with bank financing are some of the best ones to start looking at. If you look on the Internet typically only about 10% of the businesses for sale are good enough to get SBA lender prequalification. It doesn’t mean that those are the only ones to take a look at. But again it’s a great start.
Other Great Resources
www.nacsonline.com/nacsshow – National Association of Convenience Stores
www.pmaa.org – Petroleum Marketers Association of America
https://www.fpma.org – Florida Petroleum Marketers Association