It depends on how you buy the business. There are 2 fundamental ways to buy a business. A Stock Sale or An Asset Sale. You will probably want to do an asset sale. An asset sale means that their entity (LLC, Corp, etc.) sells its assets to you or your new entity. This is the best way to keep their liability with them and not have it transfer to you in the purchase of the business. It also literally means that you need to set up new accounts for everything because nothing will technically transfer to you. Prior to the closing, you and your advisor and the sellers should meet to discuss the policies that need to be in force as well as any licenses that you need to apply for. Things like a new EIN number, payroll company, bank accounts, lease deposit, insurance policies, liquor license, food handling certs, etc. You should be able to call their current policy holders and ask for the same policy but under your new EIN number. or you can take their current policies and shop them around to other insurance companies or brokerages to try and find better rates. More on reddit.com

I have started several businesses, sold one, closed a couple down, and bought one. The business I purchased was a competitor who was retiring and was already in the stages of "shutting down" and selling off inventory. I made him a pretty sweet offer to take all the remaining inventory and purchase the customer list, trademark, domain, and other intellectual property. Flew a few hours to his location, rented a big truck, and drove back with the inventory. We changed up the website and now it's in the same niche but a slightly different type of inventory than we sell on our main site, so it's just another revenue stream to our main site like Ebay and Amazon. Anyway, I digress... To buy a business that's cash flowing enough to make it worth your while and get a business that is somewhat systemized so you aren't essentially buying a job, you'll need to plan on spending a few hundred thousand dollars. Small businesses generally go for around 3x SDE or owner cash flow (unless they're steadily declining in revenue/profit) and no business owner is going to pay a bunch of employees to only bring home $30-50k a year, so the average SDE is probably going to be in the $100-200k mark a year, which puts a good purchase price at $300-600k plus RE/FF&E/Inventory. With $100k down you could get an SBA 7a loan to purchase a $500k business that was cash flowing around $175k a year. Debt service would be around $4k - $4500 per month, or $55k a year leaving $120k a year of free cash flow. People love to knock business brokers, but a lot of times they are the best way to find these kinds of businesses that are well established, have processes in place, and have their stuff together (financials, bank accounts, taxes, etc) to actually make it through due diligence. You can also just search out on your own, I have a few friends that have just "happened" upon businesses that were interested in selling and it worked out really well for them. Most of my friends have gone through brokers to both buy and sell. More on reddit.com

That is what in theory private equity is. More on reddit.com

The best time to sell your business is when it's doing well. The answer is money, it's always money. And revenue means very little. The owner might work 80 hours a week, have a staff of six and have all manner of service fees in the mix and be making 0 profit. You can be losing money on any level of revenue. More on reddit.com