Buying or starting boring businesses

The claim

“Boring businesses are undefeated. These are the top 10 income streams that will set you financially free (bookmark this): 1) Vending Machines” (truncated: the stored text ends at a link)

@benkellyone, 17 May 2024, 18,173,006 views¹

The stored text of our 3 tweets gives no profit, hours or debt¹. This page judges the scheme, not the people who tweeted.

The sums

The main pitch: buy a small firm that already has customers, such as a pool service or a laundromat, with a bank loan and live on the profit.

Among 2,117 sales that brokers reported to the listing site BizBuySell in the second quarter of 2026, the median price (the middle one) was $349,250 and the median yearly “cash flow” was $155,921². That is the pay for one full-time owner plus the profit, on the seller’s own adjusted figures, not passive income⁶².

These sums are our estimate²³⁵⁶. They treat the two medians as one firm, leave out legal costs, running cash and repairs, and assume the seller’s figure is true and sales hold after the old owner leaves. The 10% rule rests on a broker’s quote and a blog; the government rulebook would not open²⁹¹⁰.

Most buyers borrow: 78% of those surveyed expected to use a loan backed by the US Small Business Administration (SBA)². Owners of at least 20% “generally must guarantee the loan”, so if the business fails the bank can pursue the owner’s own assets⁷.

For vending, a small 2020 survey of 23 operators, taken in a pandemic year, found average sales of $309 per machine per month, with about 40% kept in one illustrative example²⁰. At that rate $1,000 a month takes 9 machines, costing up to about $18,000 with stock (our estimate)²⁰.

What happens to most people who try

We found no independent account of what an ordinary buyer takes home a few years in.

Many who set out never buy. Among buyers paid by investors to find and run one company (a “search fund”), about four in ten to half never buy, and a purchase takes about 20 months¹⁷. We found no equivalent figure for people buying smaller businesses with their own money. One course seller’s disclaimer says many who join “never complete a business acquisition and achieve no financial result”³⁰.

One advisory firm counted SBA purchase loans from the government’s accounting years 2018 and 2019 that had ended by September 2025¹³. Of these, 6.88% were written off, meaning the bank gave up collecting after the borrower failed¹³. That is about 1 in 15 of ended loans; 27.3% of loans from those years were still being repaid¹³. The average SBA purchase loan in accounting year 2025 was nearly four times the loan in our table, so the figure describes much larger deals¹³. We could not recompute these sums, the firm earns from acquisitions, and the measure misses owners who kept paying while earning little¹³.

The upside

A realistic good result for a capable buyer near the median is about $100,000 a year before tax for full-time work, if the seller’s figures and sales hold, after many months of searching with a real chance of never closing (our estimate)².

• Investor-backed buyers. Stanford reports that investors in all search funds got back 4.75 times their money to the end of 2025¹⁷. This is measured from records, but it is the investors’ return, pulled up by a few large wins, on companies with a median price of $16 million¹⁷. We read Stanford’s article, not the study.
• Self-funded buyers. A 2023 study of people who bought a business with their own and borrowed money found “53% of searchers reported net equity proceeds of over $1m”⁴⁵. Not verified: these are owners’ estimates of what their stake is worth, not money received; most had bought within the last 3 years; failed buyers are mostly missing; and the summaries we read give no sample size⁴⁵.

What it takes to compete

Those who succeed have cash they can lose (the table shows how much), good credit, and experience running people or a trade²⁴⁷. One buyer in a course seller’s testimonials describes reviewing about 200 deals and making 5 written offers before one closed³⁴.

Before buying, ask: can you put in 10% and still have reserves? Have you managed staff or worked in the trade? For vending, compare each machine’s monthly sales after two or three months with the survey’s $75 to $650 range²⁰. A machine near the bottom needs a new site, not more machines.

Who else makes money from it

A newsletter called Acquisition Ace is signed Ben Kelly, and its pages link to @benkellyone²⁶²⁷. Its paid programme publishes no price; third parties we could not verify put it at $10,000 to $12,800²⁸³¹³².

The programme reports “200+ members closed” and says such figures are self-reported, unverified and “not typical”²⁹.

Loan brokers are paid by the bank after a loan closes³⁹. We found no regulator or court action against a course that teaches buying existing businesses; that may be a limit of our search⁶¹.