In Search Of a Boring Business
Younger would-be chief executives are increasingly seeking profits—and freedom from the 9-to-5—by pivoting from corporate jobs into often unglamorous small-business niches.
When Nicole Rizzo saw the “For Sale” listing for Die Cleaning Equipment, the first detail she liked was that it was run by a married couple. Ms. Rizzo, then 43, was searching for a company to run alongside her own husband. But her husband, David, was puzzled by the name. Was it something involving janitors?
Die Cleaning Equipment, as it turned out, employed welders. The company in Phoenix made machines that cleaned other machines — specifically, aluminum extruders, which force the metal into shapes useful for everything from bumpers to stethoscopes to gun parts. Steve Smith oversaw the shop, where a small team assembled vats and pumps out of stainless steel. His wife, Kristin, handled the finances.
The Smiths had carved out their niche-within-a-niche from scratch, with Ms. Smith initially moonlighting as a church secretary to keep food on the table. But as the couple approached their 70s, they dreamed of a new relationship with aluminum, involving monthslong trips in an Airstream trailer.
A younger couple like the Rizzos were not the obvious choice. Neither knew much about aluminum. Ms. Rizzo had worked in local government, and Mr. Rizzo had held mostly corporate jobs in farming. But a visit to the Smiths’ shop near the Phoenix airport proved illuminating.
“I saw the machines and I was like, This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” Ms. Rizzo said. In June 2021, the Rizzos bought the company for about $600,000. Ms. Rizzo became chief executive. Almost four years later, the couple have recovered their investment.
The ranks of “searchers,” as prospective buyers like the Rizzos are often called, are growing. That’s partly a product of demographics — the generation in their 30s and 40s is the largest ever — and also of a surge of workers pivoting toward greater autonomy. On BizBuySell, the popular listings site where the Rizzos found the Smiths, “corporate refugees” ditching the 9-to-5 have surged to 42 percent of buyers, roughly double the 2021 figure. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of American small businesses are owned by people 65 and older, making the Smiths part of a “silver tsunami” of sellers.
Enrollment has soared in business school courses on “entrepreneurship through acquisition” — the art of building upon success, rather than hatching it. But an M.B.A. is no requirement. A legion of influencers on YouTube, LinkedIn and TikTok bear advice for how to “think niche” and “buy boring.”
“People are realizing that buying a business is a much less risky proposition than starting a new one,” said Bob House, the president of BizBuySell.
Part of the appeal are loans from the Small Business Administration that can require as little as five percent down from small-business buyers. But borrowers are on the hook for failure. More than a third never find a buyer.
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