The Trend is your Friend

Taking on the Social Media Charlatans in the SMB Space

Girdley recently came out in his newsletter with the 9 most important things he’s learned after sifting through tons of SMB listings. Let me be clear, I have no bones to pick with Girdley. I enjoy and have learned much through his content on acquisition entrepreneurship. I went with the ‘social media charlatans’ subtitle because 90 percent of you wouldn’t have clicked on this post, if not for a little bait. And because, let’s face it, there’s a ton of charlatans out there on Twitter with millions of followers making acquisition entrepreneurship look ‘easy’. Here’s two of Girdley’s 9 lessons I decided to focus on:

2) A lot of businesses are unsellable

Girdley takes a poke at the “Silver Tsunami”, though he may have a point on the Twitter overhype. However, about 11,000 boomers are retiring every single day. Every. Single. Day. This is an undeniable demographic trend, and probably the most exciting opportunity in a generation.

But I will concede the point, most of these businesses aren’t transferable. The SDE is nothing to sneeze at, yet these SMBs are wholly reliant on the boomer who started it. Those relationships are the business. The key man and customer concentration are two things to seriously consider if you take the acquisition entrepreneur plunge.

Girdley’s solution here is entrepreneurship through apprenticeship. So it can be done, but it’s not easy.