You can buy a business with existing customers, steady sales, and years of operating history.
Then spend the next year putting money into it instead of taking money out.
That's an important distinction if you're looking at an acquisition as a way to replace a good corporate salary.
I recently sat down with Blake Harber, who helped build sales teams at HireVue, Lucid, and Workstream before moving into consulting and small business ownership.
His family bought businesses in vending and hardware distribution.
The goal was to create income that didn't depend entirely on his consulting work.
But getting those businesses to the point where they could support that goal took a lot more work than he expected.
We've bought five businesses on our side, primarily in accounting and paving. So I wanted to get into what actually happens after you close.
Because the purchase is only the beginning of figuring out what you own.
The money keeps going back in
Blake's first acquisition was a vending business.
For the first four months, he says, he was essentially a full-time vending machine operator.
Machines needed repairs. Inventory expired before it sold. Someone had to drive around and restock the locations.
That someone was him.
Eventually, he hired a driver and added machines so the route could operate more efficiently.
But each improvement needed money:
Repairs and replacement equipment
More inventory
A driver to take over the route
Additional machines at existing locations
He describes the first 18 months as putting capital into getting the operation stabilized.
Later, they invested again. New equipment. Larger locations. Micro markets.
At the time we spoke, Blake said the business was approaching $1M in annualized revenue.
They'd taken their first distribution only four months earlier.
That revenue figure tells you something about the size of the operation. It doesn't tell you how much the family can take home.
I made this point during our conversation: when you're trying to grow a small business, growth and owner distributions often compete for the same dollars.
The company can be making progress while your personal income still has to come from somewhere else.
If you're buying because you want to replace your paycheck, you need to think through what happens between closing and that first distribution.
The customers were in a folder
Blake's hardware acquisition had roughly 40 years of operating history.
One person had been running it. The numbers looked attractive. Blake thought he could put a sales engine behind the business and grow it.
He'd done that in software.
But hardware came with different customers, different sales cycles, and relationships he didn't have.
Then came the handoff.
Blake says they transferred decades of business knowledge in three days, spending a few hours together each day.
The seller brought a stack of paper files and started talking through the customers.
Blake hadn't retained him in an advisory role.
Within the first six months, Blake says the buying contacts at four of their six biggest customers changed. Those contacts had retired, too.
He describes losing contact with a large share of the company's biggest accounts.
Think about what that means for the acquisition.
You might have the customer history. You might have the purchase orders. You might even know what the business sold last year.
But who picks up the phone when you call?
And what happens when the person who knew the seller leaves?
I asked Blake how he structured the deal because those details matter after the money changes hands.
He was direct about what he could have done better: more diligence, more experienced people around him, and more thought about the transition.
We also discussed ways to keep the seller involved and connect part of the deal to performance after closing.
The customer list is something you can hand over. The relationships need their own transition plan.
Leave yourself enough time to learn
Near the end of the conversation, Blake shared a number that puts the personal side of this into perspective.
They put so much of their savings into a down payment that they were left with one month of personal runway.
One month.
He says he would never recommend repeating that decision.
They've since rebuilt their savings. But Blake was candid about how difficult that period was emotionally.
The business took longer to stabilize than he expected. Meanwhile, the family still had bills to pay.
The money you keep outside the deal gives you time to learn things you didn't know to ask about before buying it.
That matters even if you're good at business already.
You may still be new to this industry, these customers, and the problems that start landing on your desk the week after closing.
You don't have to buy it to find out
Blake's assessment of himself is that he's a better builder than buyer.
He believes the capital, time, and energy he spent learning an unfamiliar industry could have created more value building something in a field he already understood.
That's his view of what might have happened. It isn't proof that starting a business always beats buying one.
But it raises a useful question about your own experience.
Do you know how to grow this particular business, or are you assuming your previous success will transfer?
Blake is building a sales agency now. He knows that work. He knows which actions to take and what a functioning sales team needs.
He also described another option for someone thinking about leaving corporate: become a general manager in a business before funding an acquisition yourself.
Run the operation. Learn the industry. Take responsibility for the profit and loss. Explore whether you can earn ownership over time.
I added a version of that idea during our conversation.
Some owners want help running and growing what they've built without selling the whole company. An arrangement that rewards an operator for growth above an agreed baseline can be an interesting starting point.
The terms still have to work for both sides.
But it gives you another way to evaluate ownership before committing your savings to it.
Blake doesn't regret leaving corporate. His vending business now has a team, his wife runs it, and he says it's an asset that can produce cash.
Getting there is the part worth understanding.
If you're considering buying a business, the full conversation goes deeper into the operating work, seller transitions, and personal tradeoffs behind that decision.
Listen to my conversation with Blake below.
- Sam Silverman
Silverman Capital
