HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business

Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company

By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff

Narrated by: Brian Holsopple

Think big, buy small.

Are you looking for an alternative to a career path at a big firm? Does founding your own start-up seem too risky? There is a radical third path open to you: You can buy a small business and run it as CEO. Purchasing a small company offers significant financial rewards—as well as personal and professional fulfillment. Leading a firm means you can be your own boss, put your executive skills to work, fashion a company environment that meets your own needs, and profit directly from your success.

But finding the right business to buy and closing the deal isn't always easy. In the HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business, Harvard Business School professors Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff help you determine if this path is right for you; raise capital for your acquisition; find and evaluate the right prospects; avoid the pitfalls that could derail your search; understand why a "dull" business might be the best investment; negotiate a potential deal with the seller; and avoid deals that fall through at the last minute.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2017 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation (P)2024 Ascent Audio

Very efficient written book about entrepreneurship through acquisition

The book has many of the details to consider good stories and sense of completeness that I
appreciate

Practical, straightforward and thorough

This book is super practical and doesn’t go around in circles or tangents. Hits right in the head about how to search for, prospect and buy a small business. It doesn’t try to sell the opportunity as a get rich quick scheme, but it’s rather very transparent about the possible rewards and possible risks. Great to listen to when sitting down, driving or even working out!

Excellent work

Great book. Almost checklist for MATT. Interesting to see something so logical and well laid out released as late as 2017. You would think it would’ve been a much older book.

Great read, high level overview of larger acquisitions.

This book focuses on the “textbook” search and acquisition. This examples in this book are more fitting for business acquisitions that are $2M+. This doesn’t fit my target purchase price/ budget of sub $1M. However, this book is very extensive and i would recommend to anyone looking to purchase a business of any size.

Strong material

Strong material that can be used as a reference if one were to engage in any of these small business acquisitions. I want to become an expert on this so it was nice to contrast vs Main Street millionaire. It was also nice to look under the hood and understand why these acquisitions deals can become very complex. This book has stronger material when it comes to gathering funds. It also had more breadth when it comes to analyzing the economics of a deal. I still think Main Street millionaire is better because Codie Sanchez is a much stronger writer than these guys.