How do people balance researching while still holding down a fulltime job

searcher profile

August 15, 2023

by a searcher from Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT Sloan School of Management in Denver, CO, USA

Would love to hear tips on where people focus before making the jump to fulltime search!

1
18
192
Replies
18
commentor profile
Reply by a searcher
from Southwestern University in Houston, TX, USA
When I first started into this world, I did it and it was hard. Think of it as picking up a second job - you're not going to have time for much else during that phase of your life.

If I were starting again today, I would do it this way:

1) Don't quit my job.

2) Build a website describing who I am, what my expertise is, and all the details of my search. This includes how I plan on funding the deal - especially for self-funded folks.

You know the question will be asked, so answer it ahead of time.

3) In the process of #2, create my own domain / email address for searching activities. The volume of email will be prodigious. It's better to keep it separate for sanity and so nothing falls through the cracks.



4) Provide plenty of contact information on the site, but make the note that most of our conversations are going to be after hours / on weekends because I'm still executing for my current employer.

It turns out this isn't as big a negative as a lot of people think. Most business owners have exactly 0 time to speak during the daylight hours, so this works into their schedule.

5) Set up a free CRM to track all of the people and deals. The number of people that you'll be speaking with is going to get insane. I don't care how big your brain is, eventually there will be more deals than brainspace and then it gets ugly.

HubSpot has a free version as does Odoo and they'll both do the trick. There are a thousand CRMs out there if these don't meet your needs.

6) Set work hours. You're going to be tired and worn out and push this off a lot unless you look at this as another job. This is especially true if you've got a family. Set aside family time and pick up work again after the kids are in bed.

The journey to the first acquisition is a long slog through a lot of companies. Doing the above will help make it as friction-free as possible.
commentor profile
Reply by a searcher
in Portland, OR, USA
I don't have kids. I also don't have an MBA, so I had more time on one level, but I also had a more significant gap to cross to get started. I used my evenings after dinner, which was tough. I took online courses in accounting and finance to learn about financial statements (for some courses, I skipped over topics that were irrelevant and spent a lot of time on to the topics that I needed to learn. For example, understanding what GAAP means is important. Reading GAAP statements and applying them to double-entry inputs on a ledger is not), accrual accounting, bookkeeping, etc... I dug into the Stanford Primer and built my own models using their format. I found some other private equity models online and used those to understand the economics of the investment. On the weekends, I'd arrange calls with searchers or business owners.

I'd say get really familiar with record keeping - how are you going to maintain a list of NDAs you've requested and signed?
How are you going to evaluate deals?
How are you going to arrange deal-flow?
How are you going to sell yourself?
What do you want from business ownership, and what does that mean? (And please don't call it a thesis).
commentor profile
+16 more replies.
Join the discussion