Businesses for sale

Back in my college days at the University of California at Berzerkeley, my roommate started a wee little business: typing papers for the hunt-and-peck fraternity crowd. He bootstrapped the entire operation: borrowing my technologically advanced electric typewriter with built-in correction ribbon and “borrowing” clean sheets of paper by the ream from the campus office of his part-time job. Business was just picking up to nearly $5 a day (5 typed pages) as word-of-mouth advertising spread when he decided to take a full course load the next semester, which meant no time for typing. He asked if I wanted to take over and, since I had a light course load and could type 80 words a minute in my sleep, I decided to give it at try.

I had completed my first acquisition, a service business.

Some of his customers continued to come by and learned that the business was “now under new management.” The new management decided to make customer satisfaction a priority and offered extended hours which meant that after a night of heavy partying, I would get 7am knocks at my door for papers that needed to be in the professor’s box by 10am. Word of this increased service quality spread throughout the Greek fraternity system like a marathoner.

I was soon running a heavy backlog of orders even as I dramatically increased my pricing structure to ward off this vicious onslaught of people wanting to give me money, while even more new and repeat customers arrived with chicken-scratch handwritten pages and imported beer six-packs humbly seeking to get bumped up the production list. I landed some large accounts (series of multiple drafts of seniors’ final papers of 50 pages each) that paid my room rent for several semesters.

The business was cutting into my sleep time, but fortunately for me, I could type 80 words a minute in my sleep.

Not knowing anybody who wanted to take over the business, not yet having heirs who could continue this thriving business, and not knowing any business brokers who could find a buyer for me, I decided to essentially destroy the value of the business (it’s growing account base) by closing up shop.

Don’t trash the value you build in your business. Either list your business for sale yourself or hire a business broker to sell your business