Part-Time Self-Funded Search - Baseline Activity

May 07, 2022

by a searcher from Babson College - F.W. Olin Graduate School in Austin, TX, USA

Building on a question by @Pari Natarajan - I wanted to ask how part-time self-funded searchers are allocating their time each day.

I'm assuming many of those who are PT searchers have demanding jobs, so curious to know the following. I'm primarily asking so I can get a baseline to get an idea if I'm tracking well or I need to ramp up.

Note: Right now, I'm focused on brokered search, so my questions are in that context.

- How many deals do you review per day (specifically those that meet your target criteria)?
- How many brokers are you reaching out to/engaging with each day?
- How many deep dives are you doing each week?

In short, my stats within 2-3 weeks are:
- Reviewing on average 2-3 that meet my criteria, following up on average 1 a day with questions
- 2 seller interviews a week
- 3-4 new brokers a day, engaging with 1-2
- Doing 2-3 deep dives a week

If anybody has conducted a PT self-funded search, would love to hear how you managed your time.

Thanks yall!

Reply by a searcher
from University of North Dakota in Loveland, CO, USA

My first, and only so far, acquisition was 5 years ago and I was working 50hrs per week in my normal day-to-day job as I did the search. Here is my breakdown but note it took me about 12 months to find the firm that I eventually purchased. The next acquisition my goal is 6 months maximum from search to close.

- searching online (5 hours per week)
- broker outreach (2 hours per week)
- 4 owner meetings a month (averaged 3 hours per week)
- reviewing CIMs/deeper financials/industry (5 hours per week)
- once I got to LOI's, DD and getting the financing together it added another 5-10 hours per week

Reply by a searcher
from Northwestern University in Chicago, IL, USA

I'm part-time (~20-hours/week) on searching. Here's what I'm doing:

- I'm looking at###-###-#### new deals per week, then trimming down as many as I can who don't meet criteria. I'm doing 2-3 calls with business owners right now, but that will pick up as I move into the next phase of searching.

- Not engaging with buy-side brokers yet.
- I'm doing 1-2 deep dives into financials per week

For context, I'm only a month into this. I was also doing a bunch of setup work at the beginning, so these numbers are really just from the past couple weeks.

+6 more replies.

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