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Look Out – Businesses For Sale!
Thanks to the Internet and its worldwide audience, information on anything imaginable (and hardly believable) is only a few clicks away.  If you are an entrepreneur on the lookout for a new business opportunity, scanning the Web can prove worthwhile.  It can also be an immense waste of time, since search engines tend to force you to look at as many as a thousand tangentially related pages before you find something of value.  There are better sources and more sensible ways to uncover new business opportunities, especially those that offer greater local appeal.

How to Find Business Opportunities in Your Locale
There are no fewer than six major sources of information for finding a new business opportunity that suits your interests, your particular financial situation and your location.  While it helps to have at least some glimmer of an idea as to the type of industry you’d like to explore – more on that below – it’s not a deal-killer if you’re just starting out and haven’t a clue.  Believe it or not, the more you read and the more you learn about a particular field, the easier it is to accept or reject operating in that area.  Here are those six broad categories:

• Commercial investment publications – Whether in print or online, major cities around the country offer free magazines that list local businesses for sale.  Oftentimes the Chamber of Commerce or some similar organization sponsors these journals, primarily as a service to its members.  Because such a magazine tries to be “all things to all people,” they are a great resource for anyone who is just starting to explore the possibility of locating a new business opportunity.
• Industry-specific trade publications – Although these magazines are usually national in scope, they help narrow the focus to a particular field.  Want to buy a laundromat?  Pick up The Journal, the publication for the Coin Laundry Association.  Have your eye on buying a coffee shop?  Check out Tea & Coffee Trade Journal.  Every industry you can imagine has some kind of internal or organizational publication, and each one of them invariably offers a classified section titled Businesses For Sale or some such heading.
• Local newspapers – Daily newspapers have seen a decline in ad revenue over the past few years, but their “business for sale” listings are still a viable source of information regarding local new business opportunities.  The larger the circulation, the better chance you’ll have of finding a business you might care to buy.
• Alternative newspapers – Many large cities have various free publications that include a business for sale section.  They are known by different names in different parts of the country, called “penny savers” in some places and “bargain hunters” elsewhere.  Also, Chicago has The Reader, Denver has Westword, and Miami and Phoenix have their respective New Times weeklies.  Look for these alternative publications in places like restaurants, taverns, barbershops, and in colorful self-serve street kiosks.
• Business brokers – These people earn a commission whenever they sell a business, so they clearly have a bias when it comes to new business opportunities for sale.  They will talk up companies they represent and try to steer you away from companies that are not part of their “stable,” but recognizing this in advance allows you to take what they say with a grain of salt.  Nonetheless, a good business broker can be a terrific pipeline into businesses for sale that are not part of the mainstream.

A Bonus Resource – Your Federal Government
The U.S. Small Business Administration not only provides loan guarantees for prospective entrepreneurs.  Their Web site has listings of new business opportunities on a state-by-state basis, usually providing direct links to each state’s home page – and from there you can peruse the “business for sale” listings to your heart’s content.  Here’s the lesson you should leave with – business opportunities are all around, so don’t rely on just one source of information.

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