Ben's 1x1x1 - Everyone suddenly wants to buy a plumbing company - October 16, 2026 🚀
For those of you that are new here, every week I send what I call a 1x1x1.
One thought from my week. One interesting find/tool from my week. One image from my life.
Let’s dive in 👇
Thought from the week
Everyone suddenly wants to buy a plumbing company.
Okay, maybe not everyone.
But something interesting is happening in the world of buying small businesses.
For years, there’s been a growing movement of people leaving traditional careers to buy and operate a business.
Search funds. ETA (entrepreneurship through acquisition). Self-funded searchers. MBA grads. Corporate refugees.
Whatever you want to call them, more people are looking at a business and thinking:
“Wait… instead of climbing the corporate ladder, what if I just bought the ladder?”
And I think AI is pouring gasoline on this trend.
Not necessarily because people think AI will replace every job.
But because it’s making people rethink which businesses are actually durable.
If your business is basically:
A website
Some SEO
A bunch of blog posts
And a guy named Chad who knows how to prompt ChatGPT
…you might have some concerns.
And the data is starting to show this.
Flippa reported that content-business transactions fell 39% in the first half of 2026.
The biggest decline of any business model they track.
Meanwhile, the businesses people really seem to want are things like plumbing, HVAC, electrical, pest control, landscaping, healthcare, and other wonderfully unsexy businesses.
You know, businesses where the customer still needs an actual human to show up at their house.
AI can write a blog post.
It cannot unclog your toilet.
At least not yet.
And this isn’t just an AI story.
The broader ETA (entrepreneurship through acquisition) market has been building for years.
SBA acquisition lending hit a record $8.3 billion in FY2025, and Stanford’s latest search fund data shows search activity remains at historically high levels.
But here’s where it gets really interesting:
The number of people who want to buy businesses may be growing faster than the number of good businesses available to buy.
Because despite all this buyer enthusiasm, actual closed transactions are down.
Q2 2026 saw 2,117 businesses change hands, down 10% from both the previous quarter and the same quarter last year.
SBA acquisition lending is down too.
So are people suddenly less interested in buying businesses?
Probably not.
It looks more like we’ve got a supply problem.
There aren’t enough great businesses coming to market.
Which makes sense.
The “silver tsunami” of retiring baby boomers selling their businesses has been talked about for years.
But apparently the silver tsunami got stuck in traffic or already passed us by.
Owners aren’t selling as quickly as everyone expected, while buyers are increasingly showing up with money, ambition, and a healthy fear of getting replaced by an AI chatbot.
And I think that creates a pretty fascinating dynamic over the next 5-10 years.
More people want ownership.
AI is making certain businesses look riskier and other businesses look more attractive.
Financing is getting tighter.
And the supply of high-quality small businesses isn’t keeping up.
So if you’re sitting on a boring little business that throws off $500k a year…
Congratulations.
You may have accidentally built one of the hottest assets in the economy.
Which is a pretty funny outcome for a business whose biggest technological innovation this year was finally switching from QuickBooks Desktop.
Find from my week
Speaking of buying businesses, it’s pretty rare to get a behind-the-scenes look at what actually happens when someone buys an off-market business.
This Forbes feature does a great job showing the playbook in action and what buying a traditional small business actually looks like.
Spoiler: it’s a lot less “Shark Tank” and a lot more spreadsheets, cold calls, and figuring out why the owner’s cousin is apparently the only person who knows how anything works.
The New American Dream: Buying & Growing An Old-School Business
Image from my life
Every year, I organize a mountain bike trip with some of my best mates.
This year, we rode Post Canyon in Hood River.
I’ve known many of the guys in this picture for more than 13 years, which makes these trips pretty special.
A lot changes over 13 years.
Jobs, businesses, families, kids… but it’s pretty damn cool that we still get to disappear into the woods together for a few days every year.