I am highly inspired by forum participants who successfully sold their business to retire. So it gave me courage to be open to discuss my situation and get guidance from experienced people.
I am in mid+ 50s, lost my job recently. I worked in the private sector with very limited safety net. My job situation has been unstable since last 7 years. Got laid-off three times already, 2 times restructuring, 1 time performance issue
I strongly believe it is them, but nowadays feel that maybe I am not able to compete with younger work-force anymore?I have ~2 years of cash stashed in a bank for such rainy days + have some cash to start a biz.
While I am looking for jobs, (last time it took 6 months), I want to start a business, invest around $100K to start and then grow it over next 10-15 years, and finally, sell it to retire. The primary purpose is to supplement my income. Wife is a homemaker. Willing to help if I set up the business. If the business grows well, I might do it full time.
I have read up a few books on setting basics of business like forming LLC etc. But more confused than be able to find answers on what business to actually start. I did an MBA in 1995, so have some financial academic knowledge- but never worked in the business side of things. Getting an MBA was $ waste for me back then but may come in handy knowledge now. I don't like sales (as much), but will do for growing my biz.
I also called a couple of business brokers randomly, but not impressed so far. Where do I find reliable business brokers? I don't have a big friend circle to ask locally.
How to pick which biz to buy? I went through creating a list of criteria - such as location, income target, growth targets etc.
I started with what I may like to do (I am very flexible at this point in my career to work for money again and acquire skills as needed).
I looked into franchising, but I have a friend who bought a franchise but had a really bad experience, as he got sued by an employee and lost a bunch of money settling that issue. He further says that employee management is the biggest headache for him. The franchise fee was bad. So he ended up closing down for a complete loss. His experience has discouraged me to explore franchises or business that need lots of hourly low skilled workers.
I also have experience in managing rentals for others, long time back, but it was a pain as being small vendor, I was always called upon to manage trouble tenants or properties instead of a mix of easy and hard tenants. I could do rental management again, but the income was not enough, and it was a very low startup cost.
One area that I'd like to explore is mortgages, insurance, or something related to real estate if possible. I can't start from scratch, as I need to supplement my income - so want to buy something with ~$100K down. I want to look into some manufacturing related business too.
Where do i start? Any recommended books to read?