Practical guide / Free to read
Understand the owner's working week.
Use a conversation about ordinary work to understand what you might actually be taking on.
Questions about daily work, interruptions, responsibilities, and the things you still need to observe.
Look beyond the opening hours
The work that interests you may be only part of the owner's role. Use the questions below to explore an ordinary week, a busy week, and a week when someone is absent.
The U.S. Small Business Administration includes skills, lifestyle, and the business's existing arrangements among the things to consider when exploring a purchase. This guide develops the everyday-work part of that conversation.
Background: U.S. SBA: Buying an existing business
Ask for a walk-through
Invite the owner to describe a recent week rather than only an ideal schedule. Ask what happened and who handled it.
- What happens before opening and after closing?
- Which jobs can only the owner currently do?
- Who handles customer problems, scheduling, ordering, and administration?
- What interrupts the planned work most often?
- What changes during the busiest period?
- How is work covered when the owner is away?
Compare the work with your own brief
Next to each responsibility, note whether you have relevant experience, need to learn, or would depend on someone else. Keep uncertain hours and arrangements marked as questions.
Use that comparison to prepare the next conversation or a suitable observation of the work. An owner's description is a starting point; it does not settle staffing, training, transfer arrangements, or the wider investigation of a purchase.
Try it in your own situation
Make a small responsibility map
- List the recurring tasks the owner describes.
- Write who does each task now and when it happens.
- Mark what you could do, what you would need to learn, and what depends on someone else.
- Take the unresolved questions back to your buyer brief.
Sources and further reading
Original Brass Charter examples and exercises, with background reading from the sources below.
- U.S. SBA: Buying an existing business
Background on personal fit and investigating an existing business. The work-map exercise is an original Brass Charter example.
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