The four phases of closing your first business acquisition

Happy Tuesday!

One of the most common questions I get from people who are just getting started in acquisitions is:

“How long is this going to take?”

The honest answer is that most people who go through this process with real focus and consistency close their first deal somewhere between six and nine months.

I’ve seen it happen faster (as quickly as five months) and I’ve seen it take well over a year.

Here’s how the timeline breaks down in practice.

Prashant and Arvind bought a $2.7M math tutoring business in Seattle with 1,000+ recurring students and 8 employees who run the day-to-day.

They beat 17+ other bidders by reading the room: the seller wanted simplicity, so they offered 100% cash with no seller note.

👉 Want templates, tools, and a network to help you win competitive deals? Book a call with our team here.

Learning, searching, and getting ready (1-3 months)

Before you can make a meaningful offer on anything, you need to understand what you’re looking for, and you need a lender who’s already told you what you can afford.

Getting pre-qualified for an SBA loan early changes how brokers treat you, and it eliminates a huge source of uncertainty once you find something worth pursuing.

The search itself takes time by design.

You’re going to evaluate a lot of businesses before finding one worth a serious offer.

One focused hour per day is enough for most people to build meaningful deal flow alongside a full-time job.

Making offers and negotiating (1-2 months)

Most offers don’t get accepted on the first try, which is expected and completely normal.

The goal is to be moving through evaluations efficiently, submitting Letters of Intent on deals that genuinely fit your criteria, and not getting emotionally attached to any single opportunity before it’s closed.

When an offer does get accepted, the negotiation phase can move quickly or slowly depending on the seller, and the relationship you’ve built with them often determines the pace.

(Inside Acquisition Ace, members learn how to move through the search and offer phase efficiently, so they’re not spending months on deals that never had a chance. If you’d like to know more about our community and how it can help you secure your first business deal, book a call with our team here.)

Due diligence (1-2 months)

Once your LOI is signed, you typically have 30 to 60 days to verify that what the seller represented is actually true.

This means reviewing three years of financials, understanding the customer base, meeting the team, checking contracts, and confirming the operational picture matches what you were told.

This is where deals either get confirmed or fall apart, and both outcomes are valuable.

A deal that falls apart in due diligence saves you from a much more expensive problem down the road.

Closing (1-3 months)

SBA loans take time.

Expect 60 to 90 days from final due diligence to funding.

Your attorney drafts the purchase agreement, the lender processes documentation, and both parties work through the closing checklist.

This phase has more moving pieces than most people anticipate, and delays are common.

Tomorrow, I’ll cover what moves this timeline faster, and what drags it out longer than it needs to be.

If you’d like to start building toward this process with a clear framework behind you, the Acquisition Ace community is a great place to begin.

To see if it’s a good fit…

👉 Book a call with my team here and let’s talk.