School of Self-Funded Search
Self-Funded Search
The majority vehicle: one buyer, an SBA 7(a) loan for most of the price, a seller note, a small equity injection, and an unlimited personal guarantee. It is the way most small businesses actually change hands and the one with the least published outcome data. This is the school the founder built from his own failure.
Who studies here
This school is for
- Operators and veterans buying one company with their own capital and an SBA loan, usually below the 7(a) ceiling.
- First-time buyers who need the mechanics in order: readiness, the buy box, sourcing, the fifteen-minute screen, the scrubbed earnings, the walk-away price, the close.
- Anyone who has been told the acquisition loan default rate is low and wants to know why that is not the number that should worry them.
The economics
The stack and the guarantee
The teaching baseline is a capital stack of roughly 65% SBA debt, 15% seller note, 15% investor equity and 5% of the buyer's own capital. The house rule is that leverage above 90% will kill you: debt sized for maximum returns is debt sized for maximum default risk.
The guarantee is the asymmetry that defines the game. Every professional in the deal is paid on activity: the broker at close, the lender at origination, the quality-of-earnings shop per report. The buyer alone is paid on a decade of outcomes and personally absorbs the downside.
The rules move. SOP 50 10 8.1 took effect on October 1, 2026 and tightened underwriting, including a debt-service coverage floor of 1.25x computed on historical earnings. The curriculum dates every rule it relies on, because the rules have been changing faster than the courses that teach them.
What ends it
The decisive risks of this vehicle.
Seller misrepresentation
In the founder's interview corpus of 60+ failed and struggling buyers, roughly two thirds of failures involved material seller misrepresentation. That is a corpus finding, not an industry rate, and it is why the default posture the school teaches is proof, not trust.
Deal fatigue
The tired buyer says yes. The walk-away doctrine exists to keep the month-fourteen version of you from outvoting the month-four version.
Working capital
Payroll is a clock that does not care. The ownership lessons are told straight through the founder's own company, which ran out of cash before it ran out of customers.
The order of study
Read the curriculum in this order.
106 lessons across 10 parts belong to this school. The parts are listed in the order a self-funded search student meets them; every lesson is marked for the schools it serves.
- 01Part 0OrientationWhere the curriculum starts: the three careers that get lumped together as search, the record of the person teaching, and the rules every number on this site has to follow before it is stated.3 lessons
- 02Part IThe Real Map: Folklore and Market StructureThe opening argument. The market you were shown is not the market that exists. This part grades the industry's recruiting claims against primary sources and maps who in your deal is paid on what.12 lessons
- 03Part IIFailure Literacy: The Case RecordThe failure record before flight hours. Nine detailed cases of acquisitions that failed, what the interview corpus of failed buyers says in aggregate, and the patterns that become the first checklist.14 lessons
- 04Part IIIThe Machine: The Searcher OSBuild the machine once. A one-person deal team runs four jobs alone; this part fills the seats with an AI-first operating system that lives in files you own, governed by conversation rather than configuration.8 lessons
- 05Part IVPrepareThe readiness gate comes before the machine. Personal runway and family alignment, the credible buyer profile a seller actually picks, the thesis and buy box at the data layer, capital pre-work, and the deal team you hire knowing their incentives.12 lessons
- 06Part VSourceMost businesses that change hands were never listed. This part teaches sourcing as an outreach process you own: the three layers where deals live, the find-enrich-reach loop, public data first, and how the broker channel actually works.10 lessons
- 07Part VIScreenTen minutes with a CIM is a decision, not a reading assignment. The quick screen, the canonical red flag library, rubric scoring, screening a target with no financials at all, and reading a sell-side document for what it is.6 lessons
- 08Part VIIUnderwriteFind the real earnings, then price them. Reading the statements as a buyer, add-back tiers, the do-it-yourself quality of earnings, the three valuation lenses, the plain-English LBO, the walk-away price, and a full worked deal.12 lessons
- 09Part VIIIThe DealFrom letter of intent to funds flow. Exclusivity, reading the seller, diligence beyond the numbers, structure under the current SBA rules, the capital stack and the guarantee, the paper that can kill you, the close, and what to do when a deal dies.20 lessons
- 10Part IXOwnEvery advisor's revenue stops at close. Yours starts. The first ninety days, the cash reality, what an operating cadence looks like when it works, what to do when it does not, and the exit you should be building toward from day one.9 lessons
Read first
From the library.
The shelves that matter most for this vehicle, with the number of verified records on each.
Tools
Run the frameworks on a real deal.
Questions
Asked often.
Does the school teach the SBA process?
Yes, as a process the buyer runs rather than a thing that happens to them: the borrower's file, the lender conversations before there is a deal, the underwriting calendar and its late-stage deal killers. Where a rule is cited it carries the SOP version and date.
What is the AI-first part?
Part III of the curriculum builds the one-person deal team: sourcing, enrichment, screening, analysis and outreach run by the searcher with a model instead of a hired analyst. It is taught as conversation, never configuration.
Is this the same material as the Academy?
The curriculum is the same body of work the Academy teaches from. The Academy adds weekly live deal reviews on your real pipeline and is application only. The published curriculum is open to everyone.
The community
Study with people on the same path.
Membership is complimentary. The live sessions and deal reviews are where the curriculum meets a real pipeline.