What Actually Happens After You Decide to Buy a Small Business

I just bought my first small business with absolutely no experience, help, or a clue what I was doing. 😂

I don’t have a family background in entrepreneurship or mentor walking me through acquisitions. I’m honestly just figuring this out as I go.

One thing I realized very quickly is that nobody really talks about what actually happens after you decide to buy a business.

People talk a lot about finding the business. Negotiating the deal. Getting funding. But there’s this whole middle section between “we have a deal” and “you officially own the business now” that I knew nothing about before this process.

So, if you’re a founder, entrepreneur, or someone considering buying a small business someday, here’s a realistic look at what the process actually looked like for us.

First Comes the Negotiation Phase

Once you and the seller agree in principle that you want to move forward, you start negotiating back and forth on the actual terms.

Honestly, if you’ve bought a house before, it feels very similar.

You negotiate pricing, timelines, conditions, expectations, and different details around the transaction itself. In our case, there were multiple offers on the business, so the sellers ultimately had to decide who they wanted to move forward with.

We had a pretty hard line on our budget and what we were willing to do financially. Thankfully, they picked us.

From there, we moved into a Letter of Intent (LOI).

Before this process, I had literally never done a letter of intent before. I didn’t know what language would be included, how detailed it would get or what was standard and what wasn’t.

For our business acquisition, we had to put down a $10,000 deposit on a $150,000 purchase.

That’s where I will say one of the biggest lessons I learned immediately:

Get an attorney you really trust.

Not just someone cheap or available, but someone you actually trust to protect you.

I’m incredibly thankful we had an attorney who walked through every single detail with us because there were so many things I would not have caught on my own.

I didn’t grow up around entrepreneurship or business transactions so a lot of this felt completely foreign to me.

But one thing I’m learning quickly is that being willing to put smarter people around you is one of the best things you can do.

Due Diligence Is Where Things Get Real

Once the LOI is signed, you move into due diligence.

This is basically where you start pulling the business apart piece by piece to fully understand what you’re buying.

Before buying the business, I had already reviewed some of their financials. I had seen their P&Ls, some operational metrics, revenue history, pricing changes, and things like that.

But during due diligence, we went much deeper.

My accountant and I went through their QuickBooks in detail. We reviewed where there was opportunity, where the business was performing well, and where we felt improvements could be made.

But honestly, one of the biggest things due diligence gave me was context.

This is a residential home cleaning company, and they operate through Jobber, which is the software platform they use to manage scheduling, payments, communication, and operations. I had never used Jobber or operated a home services business before.

So part of due diligence wasn’t just looking at numbers. It was learning the operational systems behind the business itself.

• How do they schedule jobs?
• How do they communicate with clients?
• How do they structure pricing?
• How do payments work?
• How are employees managed operationally?

You start learning the machine behind the business.

But I’ll also say that due diligence does not fully prepare you to run the business.

It gives you red flags and green flags and helps you understand whether you should continue moving forward, but it does not magically make you operationally experienced overnight.

I really thought once we closed, we’d immediately jump in and start optimizing and growing everything right away.

The reality has been much slower and demanded I be more patient than I expected.

There Are So Many Details You Never Think About

One thing that surprised me most during this process was how many tiny details matter in a business acquisition.

For example, because this is a service-based business, we had to think through things like:

• Service areas
• Non-compete language
• Employee transitions
• Proprietary information
• Operational responsibilities
• Insurance requirements
• Contract protections

There were so many moments where my attorney or accountant would bring something up and I’d think:

“Oh wow. I never would have thought about that.”

That’s why I think having really strong people around you matters so much during this process.

You do not know what you do not know and honestly, even simple things caught me off guard.

For example, I had only owned remote businesses before this. I’d never had physical service workers operating in homes.

So suddenly I’m learning:

• liability insurance
• contractor protections
• operational risk
• service-based coverage

It’s just one thing after another that you have to figure out.

Transitioning Ownership Is Mostly Organized Chaos

Once closing actually happens, then comes the ownership transition phase.

For us, that mostly meant transferring digital assets.

Because this isn’t a brick-and-mortar business, we weren’t transferring buildings or warehouses. We were transferring:

• software access
• client information
• Google accounts
• financial systems
• operational platforms
• communication systems

One thing I learned during this process is to get every login, password, and operational detail you can before closing.

A lot of sellers are helpful after the sale, but you still want to protect yourself in case communication slows down after closing.

Another thing I had never heard of before was a “true up.” Essentially, because we closed in the middle of the week, there were jobs completed by the previous owners that clients paid for after we officially owned the business. So technically, we received revenue for work they had performed. That had to be reconciled contractually.

Again… another thing I never would have thought about before this process.

You Start Seeing the Business Differently Once You Own It

One thing I’m very glad I did before closing was build out:

• a pre-closing checklist
• a post-closing checklist
• a growth strategy
• a marketing strategy
• operational ideas
• improvement opportunities

That helped tremendously, but a lot of my ideas changed almost immediately once I got inside the business.

There are things I thought would work that won’t and there are things I didn’t think would matter that absolutely do.

One of the most helpful exercises I did was reading through every negative review the business had ever received.

The biggest theme that stood out and was that customers struggled to get ahold of management quickly. The previous manager was also physically cleaning homes while running operations. So if a customer needed something urgently, communication could lag because she was actively working in the field. That immediately showed me a major operational opportunity.

One of the first things I changed was putting an operations-focused manager in place whose role is administrative and communication-centered rather than physically cleaning homes.

That one shift alone immediately improves responsiveness for both clients and the cleaning teams.

Sometimes small operational changes create huge experience improvements.

I’m Still Figuring This Out Too

I want to be very clear that I am not presenting myself as some acquisition expert.

I’m learning this in real time.

I’m fumbling through parts of it, figuring things out, making adjustments constantly.

But honestly, that’s part of why this has been so exciting.

There’s something really fascinating about taking over an existing business and seeing the potential inside of it.

Starting businesses from scratch is exciting too. I’ve done that several times.

But buying something that already exists and then improving it, growing it, and building on top of that foundation is a completely different kind of challenge.

And I’m honestly really enjoying it.

So if you’re someone considering small business acquisition, building a portfolio of businesses, or just curious what this process actually looks like behind the scenes, I hope this helps give you a more realistic picture of it.

Because there’s a whole lot more that happens after you decide to buy than I ever realized.

If you want to learn more about this process and how you could do it too, follow along as I document the whole journey!