A Note from EBIT
Athena has been one of the more thoughtful voices in the EBIT community on deal sourcing, broker conversations, and what it actually takes for first-time buyers to close.
After seeing her present at SMBash, we invited her to share those insights with the broader community. Her core point is simple: first-time buyers are not private equity funds, and they need a different playbook.
For a deeper dive, Athena is also hosting a Deal Sourcing 101 webinar for the EBIT community on June 24 at 12pm ET. Register here.
If you're a first-time buyer, you should know that the system was not set up for you to win. And most of you actually won’t. That’s not just my opinion. According to Baton's data, only 2% of people who want to buy a business actually do.
Now that may sound insane, but let's look at it comparatively.
In the US, only 3.7% of the adult population are business owners. And the vast majority of them represent single-employee entities.
Most first-time searchers will never cross the business buying finish line, and here's why.
Buying a business is like completing (and winning!) an Ironman race - it’s one of the most challenging things you can train for nowadays. Yet most first-time buyers who show up to compete have only completed their local 5K walkathon . . .
The hard truth is you haven't set yourself up to win in a market that doesn't support first-time buyers. And it's becoming more competitive than ever before.
1. The advice you've been given isn't wrong. It is just misguided for first-time buyers.
While the advice out there is meant to help you win, it often ends up distracting you from the real work of becoming a business owner through acquisition. Some of the most common ones we hear include:
Use AI for your search.
Go off-market to find “better” deals.
Set up a “ventures” or “holdings” or “capital” website and put your investment thesis on it as if you're an experienced investor group.
You can find and buy a business in 3–6 months with minimal effort.
Buying a business gives you freedom.
Find a business with an operator in place.
Niche, niche, niche.
Look, it's not terrible advice for the right person. But it's also not the right guidance for self-funded first-time buyers who are new to the game. That critical knowledge gap is the entire reason you're not closing.
And it makes perfect sense. The stakes at play in this industry are higher than ever. Which also explains why the industry largely ignores and refuses to work with first-time buyers.
2. You're a person, not an investment fund.
Here's the thing you must consider as a first-time buyer: You're a person, not an investment fund. You’re not playing with private equity money from an LP cookie jar. You’re investing your hard-earned personal money, credit, and goodwill into something real and serious. And your family's future is also on the line.
Pretending to be something you’re not - like a one-person PE fund - is a bad way to approach this process altogether.
So how do you actually win if you’ve never done this before AND you don’t want to pretend like you have?
3. On-market is a knife fight you didn't know you signed up for.
Think about it this way.
Good on-market deals get 200 inquiries within days (and sometimes hours). Two hundred! Which means you're in a crowd of other qualified buyers, many showing up with all-cash offers and prior acquisition experience to back their competitive bid
A broker only gets paid when the deal closes. They can also lose their seller clients by putting unqualified buyers in front of them. It's a high-stakes choice that their livelihood depends on.
So while you’re complaining about bad brokers, they’re complaining about inexperienced tire-kicking buyers who don’t respect their process and time.
All of these factors determine who wins a deal and who loses out. Do you want to win? Or are you okay with losing in a high-stakes situation?
I know you want to win, so ask yourself a serious question: do I actually know what my competitive edge is, and how to win among hundreds of others, without having acquisition experience?
4. Off-market isn't the answer either.
Off-market deals are better though! I hear you say. Well, define better.
My team spent years doing off-market, and one thing is for sure: you put a first-time seller and a first-time buyer together on the biggest deal of their lives without an incentivized intermediary, and it will likely not close. And if it does, it will take double, if not triple, the time of an on-market deal.
Why? Most sellers don't understand how businesses are actually valued - and they immediately want 10x. Before you can even get under offer, you have to teach the seller something you're learning yourself, while playing both broker and buyer. Being a buyer is hard enough, especially your first time doing this. The added pressure of getting all these other elements aligned creates more uncertainty for both parties.
Add to that, sellers are getting emails multiple times a day from people wanting to buy their business. From people with money, experience, and time. There are broker groups spending millions of dollars a year advertising to sellers. There are funds spending hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, to source deals.
Despite what the internet is telling you, your Claude co-work project will not win against millions in ad spend by a team who knows exactly what they’re doing. And whose only option is to win at any cost.
5. AI is actually making it worse.
AI is not going to help you win. In fact, it will be a huge distraction. It will feel like you're being productive when it's pulling owner lists together and emailing them. But just know that everyone else is doing the same as you. And they aren't very good at it.
In the end, sellers get nothing but noise, and most meaningful outreach goes ignored . And the ones that do respond typically have unrealistic pricing expectations, are unprofitable, or are just reverse-tire-kicking. What a waste of effort and resources (and time) on all sides.
Also, AI is trained by you, and it wants to make you happy. And you've never bought a business before. The discernment to know whether the AI is right isn't built yet. So you can spend months using AI only to realize the foundation you gave it, the context you fed it, was based on your false assumptions about what you should be searching for. It’s a tough pill to swallow in a world that is bowing down to AI to solve everything. But as a first-time buyer, you can avoid this pitfall.
6. The actual math of a real search.
Buying a business is no longer a niche thing. It's mainstream. And everyone wants in.
An unassisted search takes 2 to 4 years, typically. And yet there’s internet “gurus” out there saying you can do this in 3 months, with minimal effort and capital . . .
I want you to win, so here’s some real numbers for you to consider:
You need to submit 3 to 4 LOIs to get one signed.
You need 2 to 3 signed LOIs to close one deal.
Every signed LOI takes about 100 CIMs reviewed and 23 of those will require broker and owner conversations.
To get those 100 CIMS you need to be reviewing 10,000 listings..
And those are the kind of numbers you would expect when you have professional help from a team like ours.
These numbers will likely go far higher if you’re on your own and learning this process from scratch.
Now ask yourself: how bad do you want to be a business owner?
Are you willing to put in 2 to 4 years into your search? Are you prepared to treat this process like training for an Ironman and put in as much work as you can to complete the race? To work so hard you shine compared to the competition and get chosen?
I know this isn't the sexy sound bite you get sold online. But it's the real truth.
7. You might be an owner trapped in employment.
Still with me?
You might very well be an owner trapped in employment. You know this because when you look back in life, you realize you’ve already owned a business before. Perhaps you started a paper route, a lemonade stand, maybe a side hustle, or even started a business or two in the past.
But life called and the bills needed to be paid, so you performed well at your high-paying job for many years. And now it's painful working at a desk all day for a corporate hierarchy towering above you.
But you already know you're not afraid of hard work. You want the challenge of ownership and you know deep down your life won’t feel right until you have it.
So you’re going all in on your search and trying to figure out how to get across the finish line and everywhere you look, people are telling you to focus on a niche despite you feeling you could work in a lot of different industries. They’re telling you to go off-market despite you not caring where the right deal comes from, as long as you find it. They’re telling you to jump on the AI bandwagon and build something from scratch when you just want a road map to follow.
I know this all too well because it happened to me in my search. I followed the (wrong) internet advice. I thought I was failing when I hadn’t closed in 90 days of paying money to join a business buying guru’s community. I wasted time chasing off-market hype. I was pouring my all time into looking at the wrong businesses for me.
Eventually, I switched tactics to on-market and I found the perfect business for me. But I lost that deal when I should have won it. You want to know why I lost it? I didn’t have the right advice when I needed it the most, when it actually mattered, when the stakes were the highest.
I've been on your side of the table. I’ve sat at the seat you hope to sit in one day. And that's why all of this is deeply personal to me. AcquiMatch rose from those ashes to help first-time buyers be successful. It’s why we exist. But as you’ve learned today, first-time buyers need to play a whole different game if they want to win.
On June 24 at 11am CDT/12pm EDT, I'm hosting a Deal Sourcing 101 workshop for first-time buyers. And by the end, you'll know the three questions you need to answer to have a successful search. We'll be getting really tactical and I’ll leave you with tools specifically for first-time buyers, so that you can get your training plan ready to win the proverbial Ironman of first-time business buying.
Ready to get it right? Join me here.
Disclaimer: This guide is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, tax, or investment advice. Business acquisitions involve significant risks, and outcomes can vary widely based on individual circumstances. Always consult with qualified professionals including attorneys, CPAs, and financial advisors before making acquisition decisions. The EBIT Community does not guarantee the accuracy of information provided or the success of any acquisition strategy. Past performance and examples do not guarantee future results.
