When Andrew Kurzrok’s wife, Michelle, became pregnant with their first son in 2023, he decided it was time for his life spending over 200 days a year on the road as a mid-level executive of Amphenol Sensors to end. He wanted a career that would keep him closer to their suburban Washington, D.C. home, while utilizing his manufacturing experience. And with a background in mergers and acquisitions, he thought about buying. So the Kurzroks evaluated hundreds of local companies for sale. Finally, last September, he closed on the purchase of 45-year-old family-owned Hopewell Sheet Metal Manufacturing, which operates out of a 30,000 square foot facility in Hagerstown, Maryland.
“It is a classic baby boomer-run business that was time for transition,” with no third generation member of the family ready to run it, observes Kurzrok, who holds Yale MBA and bachelor degrees. But it suited his goals just fine. “I am home with my family every single night. I am proud to say that I no longer have any frequent flyer status with the airlines,” he laughs. “It’s great. I’m 30 pounds lighter because I’m not eating food in airports all day long. Blood pressure is lower. That doesn’t mean business ownership is easy; it’s got its own stress, but I’m really happy with the tradeoff I’ve made.”
Kurzrok, 37, is part of a wave that small business experts long predicted would turn into a “silver tsunami” as millions of retiring small business owners sold out to younger entrepreneurs. Turns out, the number of baby boomer-run businesses that are actually salable may have been vastly overestimated. Small business consultant Alan Pentz explains most boomer companies “aren’t really salable” because they are one-man-bands without any real assets or a continuing book of business that will outlive the founder.
But those that are purchase-worthy are finding a growing crowd of younger entrepreneurs eager to buy at the right price. As business brokers tell it, Hopewell is a perfect example of the type of companies that millennials like Kurzrok are now eagerly snapping up: smaller firms with recurring revenue, a solid customer base, expertise in a niche market, and books that are in order. Most in demand, they say, are businesses in blue collar trades, such as plumbing, electrical work, pest control, and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning). They’re not sexy, but they generate revenue and, crucially, will continue to do well in the age of artificial intelligence.
Last year, Andrew Kurzrok (right), bought Hopewell Sheet Metal from David Horn (left), whose family founded the business and ran it for 45 years.
Andrew Kurzrok
“There are a lot of buyers, younger buyers, who do want to buy these sleepy older businesses,” says Chelsea Mandel, founder and managing director of Ascension Advisory, which specializes in both M&A and sale-leaseback deals. “They want to buy a business that’s a machine that can run itself. They don’t want to buy a job,” Mandel says of young entrepreneurs. She notes that manufacturing companies, if they run like “well-oiled machines,’’ are particularly hot at the moment.
“It’s like riches in the niches,” quips Eric Pacifici, a partner at SMB Law Group, which has helped ink plenty of acquisitions of boomer businesses. What he means by that is that millennials, Gen Zers and even Gen Xers are looking to buy niche companies that serve a specific need, often in construction trades or other industrial-type work. “There is an acceleration in people who are interested in acquiring these businesses.”
Hopewell Manufacturing is a perfect example: It does custom fabrication of ducts for HVAC systems in new buildings. “It’s one of those little things nobody thinks about, but in its own little way makes the world go round,” Kurzrok says of Hopewell, adding that business has remained steady since he took over last year. He’s got small investments planned, but notes “the prior owners invested in the right equipment for the job. That was one of the things that attracted me to the business.”
Patrick O’Connell, founder of O’Connell Advisory Group, says he’s seeing small firms with government contracts, blue collar recruiting companies, construction companies, HVAC businesses and anything that seems to be more insulated from the rise of artificial intelligence becoming more attractive to younger would-be business owners.
“There’s overall consensus that AI is not going to eliminate them, not yet at least,” says O’Connell, who worked with Kurzrok to close the acquisition of Hopewell. “There’s a little bit of a moat in some of the home services if they require licensure,” the way plumbing and electrical work does, he adds.
Demand for HVAC businesses and the like isn’t just being driven by individual millennial buyers, points out Chris Ward, the head of small business banking at TD Bank U.S. Private equity firms have latched onto the value of such basic services. “My brother is a general manager for a large HVAC company, and private equity firms are buying up HVAC because it’s such a technical need we all have,’’ Ward says. “We need them in good times and bad.”
Part of what’s generating demand for companies founded by boomers, says small business consultant Pentz, is the so-called “searcher” movement. Over the past decade-plus, young business students and MBA holders have increasingly latched on to the appeal of searching for and buying a small business, rather than building one from the ground up. This is also known as entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA). “It kind of became this joke, that you’d go to Harvard Business School so that you could own a plumbing company in Sandusky, Ohio. That was sort of their dream,” Pentz says. “It was like, what’s going on here? Why don’t you just go become a plumber?… You don’t need to go to Harvard Business School.”
The searchers have been able to take advantage of SBA 7(a) loans of up to $5 million as a tool to buy up boomer companies. But in some cases, that has meant buyers have taken on loans for businesses they really weren’t qualified to run. Some of these long-term loans (up to 25 years for real estate and 10 years for equipment) are made with adjustable interest rates, and when interest rates shot up in 2021, some loans failed, and fewer new ones were made, as criteria for obtaining the loans began to tighten up.
So how many businesses are now changing hands? Heather Endresen, founder and owner of Viso Business Capital used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain SBA loan data from 2019 through the first quarter of 2026. It shows a record 6,915 SBA-backed business acquisition loans worth $8.17 billion were closed in 2025, up considerably from just over $5 billion in 2023 and well above the last peak, in 2021. “It’s much slower than a tsunami,’’ says Endresen, but boomer sellers “are slowly learning, they’re being taught – by the buy side and the banks – what it takes to have a business that is salable.”
Endresen estimates that 85% of the boomer businesses that go on the market never end up selling. (See tips below for both sellers and buyers.)
Those businesses that go unsold don’t reflect a lack of demand, Pacifici stresses. They just don’t pass muster. “I can introduce you to some broker friends of mine who sell businesses. They’ll list a good business, and they’ll have 60 non-disclosure agreements [from prospective buyers] signed within 24 hours.” In addition to blue collar businesses, Pacifici sees demand for bookkeeping and accounting services. “The reality is, if you have a decent business, you can get it sold,” he concludes.
Kurzrok, for his part, was specifically looking for a manufacturing company because that fit his experience. He advises other prospective buyers not to think too narrowly. “It has to be a business that you’re interested in, but I wouldn’t limit folks to, ‘Well, I did connectors before, so I can only do a connector business,’” Kurzrok says. “It’s much more about, what are the skills and activities you’re doing every day? But fundamentally, if you don’t like dogs, then you probably shouldn’t own a dog grooming business.”
“You’ve got to look at somewhere between 100 businesses and 1,000 businesses to close one deal,” Kurzrok says. “Is this a business that not just historically has been good, but will it remain good and stable under you? … The most important thing I was looking for was transferability of the revenue. Could I actually step into the role and the business would continue?”
So far for Kurzrok, the answer has proven to be a resounding “yes.”
4 Tips for Boomer Sellers
- Take a hard look at what you have to sell. Is your business a one-man operation whose biggest assets are your knowledge and relationships? “The problem is, a lot of these businesses don’t have salable assets. There’s nothing to sell,” says Eric Pacifici, partner at SMB Law Group. “Most lower middle market businesses are comprised of a founder who is running a glorified job.”
- Consider grooming a replacement. If the business’ most valuable asset is you, consider grooming a replacement from your family or from within your operation. Having a replacement might actually make the business more salable, since a buyer could arrange to keep that person on–and with them retain key customer relationships.
- If need be, clean up your tax act. Heather Endresen, of Viso Business Capital, says she also sees a surprising number of boomers put businesses up for sale that have messy accounting or have actually been cheating on their taxes. “The dirty little secret no one wants to talk about. They also cheat on their taxes, just insanely huge amounts. And so they don’t clean it up before they go to sell,” Endresen says. “They just think they can keep cheating all the way and you’ll buy it with all these crazy add backs.” Her advice: “You probably should stop doing that for a couple years so someone can buy you.”
- Give yourself time to make sure your books are in order and debt is minimized. Even if you’re not a tax cheat, your books and business may not yet be ready for prime time. Several experts told Forbes it typically takes a few years of work to get a small business in proper shape to sell, so begin the sale planning process early. “Ideally, three to five years before they intend to exit is a good timeframe. The earlier the start, the more options,” says Erik Daniels, head of SBA lending at U.S. Bank.
4 Tips for Millennial, Gen Z and Gen X Buyers
- Don’t move too fast. There’s a glut of companies up for sale from retiring baby boomers, and most aren’t worth buying. Potential buyers need to take their time and perform proper due diligence prior to signing a letter of intent. After all, you wouldn’t buy a home without researching its value and getting an inspection, would you?
- Look for predictable, recurring revenue. Buyers should look for “predictability, strong cash flow, recurring revenue, diversified customers, documented processes. In other words, I need to know how this business is run,” says Erik Daniels, head of SBA lending at U.S. Bank. “The most valuable businesses can thrive even if the owner takes a month off.”
- Move on quickly if there’s a red flag. Viso Business Capital founder Heather Endresen estimates 85% of boomer businesses aren’t really salable and suggests buyers move on quickly as soon as they see a major red flag, such as extreme outstanding debts, a “key man” like a founder or CEO who can’t be replaced post-acquisition, or other obvious weaknesses, including messy books and indications of tax cheating.
- Don’t underestimate what it takes to run a small business. Andrew Kurzrok, the new owner of Hopewell Sheet Metal Manufacturing, says there’s a misleading trope that buying a small business is a quick path to freedom from the corporate grind. You might not have demanding bosses anymore, but running a small business is a lot of work, with its own set of headaches and demands. What he sees on social media “airbrushes over a lot of the realities” of business ownership, Kurzrok says.