Why You Should Buy a Business (and How to Do It)
Ruback, Richard S., and Royce Yudkoff (interviewed). (2017)
HBR IdeaCast, episode 564, February 16, 2017
Interview with a full transcript on the page. Yudkoff states: "Of all the people we see who march down this path, about 75% succeed in acquiring a small firm of the type we describe. And usually they accomplish that in about a one to two year period." He also states that "these firms sell for about four times their annual pretax profit" and that most buyers use "about 2/3 debt and 1/3 equity". All three are spoken estimates from the authors' experience; no sample, period or definition of the population is given.