BiggerPockets Business Podcast 77: Buying 7-Figure Businesses With Minimal Risk With Elliott Holland

Thinking about buying a business, but worried about getting taken advantage of by the seller?  Not sure how to finance the business and purchase with the least amount of your own cash?  Want some assurances that the seller will stick around to help in the case where you have an issue or problem? If so, this episode is for you! Elliott Holland -- Harvard MBA and founder of Guardian Due Diligence -- spends his life helping entrepreneurs select businesses, underwrite them, and then perform the due diligence process that will keep those entrepreneurs from getting taken advantage of by sellers.  And he is here this week to walk us through how we should be approaching due diligence, how long it really takes, what’s involved, and how it’s different than the DD process we might be accustomed to as real estate investors. In this episode, we also talk about getting seller financing when buying a business, and how we can get a whole lot more seller financing than we might expect.  In fact, combined with bank or SBA financing, seller financing a deal may allow us to put little -- if any -- of our own cash in the purchase. Make sure you listen for Elliott’s explanation of why the typical seller has a 4 times greater incentive to lie about the income being generated by the business than you might think.  At the same time, he also provides an amazing tip on what we can do upfront during the purchase process to ensure that the seller picks up the phone and helps us when we run into a question or issue after the purchase! Check him out, and subscribe to the BiggerPockets Business Podcast so you won’t miss our next show!