The school for self-funded searchers
Buy your first business.
Off-market deal flow on demand. AI workflows that compress months of sourcing into days. The discipline to walk away from a bad deal before it costs you. Real systems. No secrets.
770+ searchers inside"We closed yesterday." - Chris Hall
- Ridgeline Mechanical, TXD. Whitfieldowner 31 yrsHOT
- Summit Air Systems, TXR. Alvarezno websiteHOT
- Cardinal Climate, TXM. Okaforfamily-ownedWARM
- Beacon Heating, TXT. McAllisterlic. renewal dueNURTURE
+ 996 more rows, one sourcing runscored · deduped · yours
Illustrative rows. Your tracker holds real companies in your buy box.
60+
buyer post-mortems behind the curriculum
1,000
off-market leads from one sourcing run
$69
a month for the whole tool stack
770+
searchers in the community
The real enemy
The bad deal is the enemy.
The 12 Red Flags, published in full.
- CRITICAL
- 4verified, you walk
- MODERATE
- 5negotiate hard or walk
- LOW
- 3price it in
Read the dossier
Most search content teaches you how to buy. Almost none of it teaches you when not to. One wrong acquisition can take your savings, your credit, and years of your life. So every system here runs both directions: a machine that fills your pipeline, and the checklists that kill bad deals before you sign for them.
Acquisition is not for everyone. The debt is personal, the hours are real, and no one can promise you an outcome. If that gives you pause, good. It should. The buyers who last are the ones who weighed it with open eyes.
Why we teach it this wayThe four jobs
Everything you need. Nothing about us.
Searchers come here to do four jobs. Every course, call, and checklist in the school maps to one of them.
job_01 / sourcing_engine
Get off-market leads.
1,000 in your buy box, enriched and scored, from a $69-a-month stack you own. Not a $1,500-a-month platform subscription.
job_02 / search_process
Master the search process.
Buy box to LOI: targets, cadence, screening scorecards, and the conversion math that keeps a pipeline honest.
job_03 / diligence_bench
Build a diligence bench.
How to pick QoE, legal, and lending partners who work for you, not for the closing, and the checklists to run them hard.
job_04 / red_flags
Never sign a bad deal.
The 12 Red Flags and the walk-away doctrine, built from 60+ buyer post-mortems. Crash reports first. Checklists always.
$ run sourcing --buybox "your spec, your geography, your size" > volume: 1,000 businesses pulled across 4+ sources > confirm: cross-checked against state registries and licensing boards > enrich: owner names, emails, intelligence columns on every row > score: succession signals ranked. hot / warm / nurture > export: buybox_tracker.csv. monthly refresh scheduled
The machine
Your search, running at machine speed.
This is what a sourcing run looks like inside the school. AI does the pulling, confirming, enriching, and ranking. You do the judging. The whole stack costs about $69 a month, and you own every piece of it.
Build yours inside the communityWhere we stand
Strong opinions, earned the hard way.
Against
On-market only
If every buyer can see the listing, you are competing at auction prices for a broker's leftovers.
Instead
Off-market first
You talk to owners before a listing exists.
Against
The 24-month search
Two-year timelines are not a law of nature. They are the output of manual processes.
Instead
Machine speed
AI workflows compress months of sourcing into days, so your runway buys more looks.
Against
Zero-down fantasies
Nobody transfers a real business to a buyer with no skin in the game.
Instead
Real equity
Serious buyers fund their own equity injection, and sellers can tell the difference.
Against
The business that runs itself
No business runs itself. Anyone promising otherwise has never met a payroll.
Instead
Bigger is safer
A larger business has managers, systems, and margin for error. The smallest deals leave you nowhere to hide.
Who this is for
Built for buyers with skin in the game.
The systems assume you are serious. Most members look like some version of this:
- Self-funded and traditional searchers with an active or planned search
- Independent sponsors and first-time fund managers building a thesis
- Operators with direct P&L ownership, and corporate leaders ready to leave the ladder
- Veterans applying a decade of discipline to ownership
- Buyers who can fund their own equity injection
If you are shopping for a side hustle or a shortcut, this is the wrong school.
The ladder
Start with the community. Go as deep as your search demands.
Searcher School Community
Complimentary
The community. 770+ searchers, the How to Search crash course, live events, and every win and post-mortem we publish.
Join the communitySearch Academy
$1,797/mo
or $17,000 a year
Weekly live training and deal reviews on your real pipeline. The goal: an LOI on a real deal. Application only, 5 seats a month.
ApplySearch Advisory
$57,000
Full-service buy-side representation. A principal on your side of the table, thesis to close. Application only.
Request a conversationFrom the community
Outcomes, with names attached.
“We closed yesterday.”
“Jed's off-market search process is AMAZING! The most valuable part was when we walked through the software that Jed uses to do his searches and how they integrate with one another.”
“Hearing how Jed trained a custom AI assistant using past deal data to analyze new opportunities was incredibly motivating. It inspired me to start building a similar AI-driven workflow for deal screening.”
Questions
Straight answers.
What is Searcher School?
Searcher School is an education community for self-funded searchers and first-time business buyers. It teaches an AI-first, off-market search system: sourcing, screening, underwriting, and closing. The community lives on Skool, membership is complimentary, and 770+ searchers are inside.
What does it cost?
Community membership is complimentary. Search Academy is $1,797 a month or $17,000 a year, application only, 5 seats a month. Search Advisory is a $57,000 engagement, application only, with the full fee structure published on the Advisory page.
Who is Searcher School for?
Self-funded and traditional searchers, independent sponsors, first-time fund managers, and operators buying their first business. Most members bring an MBA or direct P&L experience, and many are veterans. The common thread: the ability to fund your own equity injection and the intent to use it.
Will this help me avoid a bad deal?
That is the point of the whole curriculum. The 12 Red Flags, the walk-away doctrine, and the diligence checklists are all built from 60+ buyer post-mortems: documented reasons real acquisitions died. You learn to kill bad deals early, before the sunk costs start arguing with you.
Is this another guru course?
No. There are no promises about your outcome, because nobody honest can make them. There are systems, live reps, and checklists built from documented failures. The community is complimentary, so you can inspect everything before a dollar moves.
Do I need to be technical?
No. If you can write an email, you can run the stack. The live trainings inside the community set every tool up, step by step.
Your first lead is closer than you think.
Join 770+ searchers running the system. Membership is complimentary.