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Most of a deal is decided before anyone negotiates.

What determines whether an acquisition works is usually settled before the letter of intent: what the buyer is actually buying, what the seller has already spent or left undone, what a lender will require, and who is sitting on the other side of the table. These articles take those questions one at a time and name their sources, because in this field the confident number in a blog post is usually somebody’s marketing.

A conference room table holding two mirrored stacks of transaction documents with a single pen resting between them, photographed from directly overhead.
Sourcing & Target Identification

Does a business broker work for the buyer or the seller?

A business broker's title tells a buyer almost nothing about who the broker actually owes a duty to, who pays the fee, or whether the person needs any license at all — three questions with three different answers, and all three vary by state in ways that surprise most first-time buyers.
September 15, 2026 · 13 min read
 A closing table set with a neat stack of loan documents, a calculator, and a pen, photographed from directly overhead with no people visible.
Deal Structure & Financing

What does an SBA 7(a) loan require from a buyer?

An SBA 7(a) loan financing the purchase of a company comes with four specific requirements on the buyer's side, an equity injection, a rule for how much of it a seller note can cover, a personal guaranty, and an independent valuation of the business. An application made today runs under SOP 50 10 8; two of the four requirements change for loans that receive an SBA loan number on or after October 1, 2026, when SOP 50 10 8.1 takes effect.
September 15, 2026 · 13 min read
 A single sheet of typed criteria held down by a brass paperweight on a plain wooden desk, beside a closed folder and a fountain pen, lit from a window on the left
Acquisition Strategy & Readiness

What is an acquisition thesis, and why do buyers without one overpay?

An acquisition thesis is a written specification of what a buyer will and will not buy, and the part that does the most work is the list of characteristics that rule a company out regardless of price. Buyers without one evaluate each company on that company’s own terms, which is the condition under which price discipline quietly disappears.
September 15, 2026 · 13 min read
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Integration & Value Creation

What breaks in the first hundred days after an acquisition?

The failures owners are warned about are usually described with a statistic that has no study behind it, while the things that actually break in the opening weeks are dull, specific and largely knowable in advance: the payroll and tax reporting cutover, the departure of people whose knowledge was never written down, a seller whose transition is shorter than the business needs, and consents that were assumed to travel with the deal and did not.
September 15, 2026 · 12 min read
 A thick stack of bank statements and a spiral-bound financial report lying open on a wooden table beside a calculator, photographed from directly above in daylight
Valuation & Due Diligence

What does a quality of earnings report actually test?

A quality of earnings review asks whether reported profit is recurring, transferable and actually collected in cash, which is a different question from the one an audit answers. It sits under a different body of professional standards, carries no opinion and no assurance, and its scope is fixed by the engagement letter rather than by any rule — with one exception that arrives on 1 October 2026 for buyers borrowing under the SBA 7(a) program.
September 15, 2026 · 14 min read
 A wall calendar and a closed manila folder on a workshop office desk beside a coffee cup, late afternoon light across the pages
Preparing to Sell

How long does it take to sell a small business?

Most published timelines for selling a small company come from surveys of the brokers who sold them, not from an independent measurement, and the honest answer is a range rather than a number. For the second quarter of 2026, the most recent quarter the International Business Brokers Association and M&A Source have published, those advisors reported Main Street deals averaging six to ten months from engagement to close and lower middle market deals averaging eleven to twelve.
September 15, 2026 · 13 min read
Acquisition Conciergeorientation · not legal, tax or valuation advice
Happy to. Tell me which side you are on, roughly what the business does, and what stage you have reached. Those three answers decide which questions actually matter next.