EP352 Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition, a New Path to Buying and Selling a Business

Most conversations about exits focus on the seller. This one flips the lens. In this episode, Colleen O'Connell-Campbell  sits down with Liz MacRae, a serial entrepreneur who has both exited and acquired multiple businesses, and who is now co-founder of Village Wellth - a tech-enabled platform helping aspiring entrepreneurs buy established businesses and helping founders exit well. Liz introduces the growing movement known as Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA): buying a profitable, established business rather than starting from scratch or buying a franchise. She explains how the model works, who it attracts, what buyers actually look for, and why acquisition entrepreneurs - people who intend to roll up their sleeves and run the business themselves - may be exactly the right buyers for owner-dependent small businesses that private equity would walk away from. With a massive wave of business transitions coming over the next decade, this episode offers founders a fresh perspective on who might buy their business, and why starting early is everything.

Key Takeaways:

Liz's path is unconventional - a fine arts degree and training in creative thinking, not accounting or law. After exploring family succession (which did not work out), she and her husband bought a franchise, then she became a business broker, moved into exit planning advisory, took over the firm she worked with, sold it after about four years, and founded Village Wellth on the buy side. She has spent nearly 10 years in business advisory and six years focused exclusively on helping buyers.

Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) is the act of buying an established business, usually leveraging senior debt or outside investment, and in most cases acquiring 100% of the business so the previous owner can retire. It lets a buyer skip the startup stage by three to five years and acquire something already profitable - able to service debt and pay a living wage.

ETA attracts people later in their careers - often leaving corporate roles - with management or leadership experience and established personal finances. They typically combine personal savings with bank debt or raised capital (family and friends, angel investors, or funds) to acquire and grow businesses from retiring owners.

Village Wellth was founded six years ago as a two-sided marketplace, then substantially rebuilt about two years ago with deal-management tooling and an AI layer. It has a team of 10, including a fo