I used an SBA loan to buy my business and kept my day job. My plan was to work about 40 hours in the W-2, andredactedhours on the business. A few quick lessons learned: 1. I took a week of PTO for closing & transition. Transition is a full time job for at least a few weeks. If you have vacation available, use as much as you can. 2. Even if the seller is mostly absentee, you as a new owner will require more time to achieve the same outcomeredactedhours a week from the old owner becameredactedhours per week from me in the business just to maintain it. 3. The team in place will have organizational inertia. If the company hasn't been growing for the last few years, the management will not suddenly start growing the company just because you set a growth goal. You have to figure out the right changes and work to implement them. 5. You won't know how to work on the business until you understand the business. The easiest way to do that is to work in it. The result was many moreredactedhour weeks than planned. If I had chance to do it again, I would have changed many of the details. The overall plan worked though.

@redacted‌ thank you sir. This is one I do not have a lot of experience with. I did have a new franchise owner in an adjacent industry asking if I could give him leads - he sounded like a genuine guy and I wanted to learn more about him and his business - then he told me still works his W2 full time and all his business’s inbound call leads go to a call center - and I told him I absolutely could not refer customers of mine over after finding that out - not knowing who was behind the phones in the call center and what they were saying to customers. If you buy a business or a franchise - I strongly suggest you take your own inbound calls - do not rely on a call center unless you want a shortcut to failure