Customer Reviews

How to Buy a Great Business With No Cash Down

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A key fault of this book is its vague suggestion that most of its strategies have universal applicability. Often, particular financing methods work only for specific sectors in specific regions. These limitations are rarely addressed.

On balance, however, it is worth reading if you buy small businesses. The key theme -- that buyers and sellers should look at a deal from all angles -- is important. The market for small businesses is oddly homogeneous; business brokers would have you believe the only way to buy/sell is with a down payment, and seller paper. Nothing could be further from the truth. Deals can be assembled in countless ways, often on far more advantageous terms, both for sellers and buyers.

This book suggest in the Preface that you must develop a "no cash down mentality"! Great advice and Great Book! I bought this book studied it and others for about a year. This was by far the best and most comprehensive. I bought this book and just closed on my first business purchase with no money down on December 26, using several of the techniques from the book. If you are serious but a little apprehensive, I highly recommend this book.

As someone who has been a huge advocate of creatively approaching the small business financing "issue", I absolutely loved this book. The author, Arnold Goldstein, strongly encourages the reader to focus on looking at the business from all angles in order to identify financing or cash generation opportunities. Instead of automatically moving to the generic, oft-repeated, downpayment + bank loan approach, this book provides numerous resources to tap to reduce the amount of cash you would personally need to contribute to the deal. Have you ever heard of a "leveraged buyout (LBO)"? Well, in simple terms, that occurs when one entity buys another with little or no of their own money or any equity for that matter, instead using the target company's assets and cash flow to access debt financing from a number of different sources. Small businesses are too small to attract the attention of LBO financing entities but this book shows you how to do basically the same thing using different sources.

"How to Buy a Great Business with No Cash Down" talks about how to find the cash to buy a business so it's focused on acquisition financing. However, many of the suggestions contained within the book are applicable to businesses who wish to expand. Why? A number of the recommendations have to do with approaching entities who will benefit from the expansion that will occur upon your purchase of the company. Therefore, if you wish to expand, those same arguments prevail.

Sources of financing covered in the book include: supplier and vendor financing, customer pre-pays, accounts receivables financing, inventory financing, and seller financing, among many others. Arnold Goldstein provides numerous examples and case studies from actual experience (his and his clients) to help drive home what seems to be his primary point: capital exists everywhere, you just have to take the same creative approach in finding it that you do in finding other types of resources in other areas of your business.

If you are buying a business, this book will help you not only identify additional financing sources for your acquisition, but also get you to view the business you are purchasing more strategically and wholistically. And that will put you in very good stead indeed once the deal closes and the real work begins.