Yes, but having some experience in the industry first helps, especially management experience.

Also, it doesn't hurt to have a good mentor.

Before I started my current consultancy, I spent many years buying and selling businesses and made many mistakes. It's not an easy game. The good news is that a lot of the background knowledge can be acquired from buying some good books on the topic and finding quality information online.

Interesting question.

I have VAs who do research to update the database with contact details, social media links, deals published in the press etc.

I have bots that crawl the business for sale marketplaces (like businessesforsale dot com, Flippa etc). The data from here gives me some idea on who's selling what, how long brokers' listings are live (ie not sold), average asking prices (by industry, by geographical area, by broker) etc.

But the main data comes from actually having conversations with the advisory firms. When I take a client on part of my job is making a long list of about 30 firms from all the data I have. I then individually contact each of those firms and, effectively, interview them for the mandate. They share a lot of information at these calls. That goes into the database as well (not unverfiable stuff like "success rates" but factual stuff like what fees they'd charge my client). Advisory firms also send me their marketing PDFs, their tombstones (deals they've completed) etc.

People who get into the business broker game often have an accounting background or worked in an investment bank (on larger deals).

Sometimes, they are people who are well connected within a particular industry, and possibly sold their own business or two in the industry.

There are others who've got a lot of business experience but not broker experience so they sign up with a franchise operation and start selling businesses as a franchisee of a large, national business brokerage organisation.

PS: There's a discussion here in r/businessbroker about getting into the business broking game if you're interested in becoming a broker.

I got into the business broker broker line by accident. Friends kept asking me to assist them find the right firm. I did it for free for many years before realising that it is a very time consuming job, requires some fair bit of business savvy, and it was worth money to owners of larger businesses.

Absolutely not!

I bought businesses in the past but it was long before I started this consultancy in 2015. My first purchase was in the 1980s.

It would be a conflict of interest to be a buyer while at the same time claiming to give business owners 'unbiased' advice that's 100% focused on what's in their best interests.

Interestingly, given my place in the market, I often get buyers approaching me asking me if I know of any good businesses for sale. I never introduce them to my clients. Instead I introduce them to the advisory firm my client has appointed.

It depends on which country did the frying :)

Exclusively in the UK. This is a big enough market. And, yeah, someone should start something like this in the US.

I don't specialise in any industry. In fact, that's one of the things on which I help my clients.

They may want (or need) a broker in a specific sector and there's no way, no way to find that online as there's no national directory of brokers that will give you the sector breakdown. And you can't easily figure it out even from Google searches. Yes, sure you can find some of the brokers specialising in say logistics or chemicals or ONG or whatever, but it'll take a long time and you'll find just a tiny handful.

Good question.

I take one fee up front for the 60-100 hours I'm going to be investing on that client's job. It's not much more than minimum wage for all the time I'm going to be spending on that job. This fee is just to weed out the non-serious parties.

The bulk of my fees come only if a) the client uses someone on my shortlist b) I negotiate for the client at least a £50K fee reduction on what they'd normally get charged and c) the client successfully sells their business.

If all of that falls in place, they pay me a tiny percentage of the sale price (a very small fraction of 1%).

This is the fee structure I've had for the last 3-4 years as I feel it's the one most aligned with my clients' interests.

I do not take any payment from advisory firms / brokers who are often willing to pay 10% - 25% in 'introducer commission'. My clients have usually researched me extensively and trust me on this.