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No one can seem to point to the exact first brokered business deal, but it’s believed to be (at the very least) some 250 years old via an old advertisement in the Boston Gazette, circa May 11, 1742. The opening lines by the Rev. Peter Thacher of Middleborough state that a slitting mill and an iron forge are to be sold, along with the surrounding land “because the Person wants the money for it, and [is] intending to leave off that Business.” While it’s significantly different being a business broker in Minneapolis these days, the intent is the same: the facilitation of selling one’s business to another through any necessary means. Looking back at the last half of the 20th Century, it’s easy to see why the business broker became such a prevalent figure among the captains of industry. The 1960s found the average worker interested in branching out from working for someone else into possibly working for himself and employing others. Bars, fast food spots, and other small retail-type businesses blossomed due to the ease and lower costs of the average Joe being able to blaze his own career path. But things got really interesting during the 1970s when foreign buyers and investors became interested in buying up American products and American companies in efforts to expand their brands and their profits. International travel allowed for the American worker to travel more outside the country while other nations, curious about our own, had their own business men traveling stateside. In many ways, the language barriers foreign visitors experienced coupled with their work ethic gave way to a great many small mom-and-pop style places, some of which still exist today. While franchising was a small part of the business brokering in the 1970s, the concept practically boomed in the 1980s and 1990s, expanding into the idea of business brokerage franchises. Many brokers came from the corporate world and had absolutely zero experience in actual brokering. As some caught on and became successful, others were less lucky as they took on all of the issues brokering entails rather than getting to relay some on to the larger company they worked for in the past. With this foray into solo brokering came the lack of vacation time, lack of health insurance, lack of days off, and so on. Massive layoffs and company closings allowed for even more people to find themselves at the brokering table, but this time as business buyers rather than sellers, giving the business brokerage industry a needed shot in the arm to stay relevant. The 2000s have seen a noticeable change in how brokering is done, what with the technology industry ballooning up and out exponentially. The more tech companies that emerge, the easier it is for them to be bought up by other tech companies and melded into their work flow, thereby creating a new and evolved tech product for the masses. This has been nothing but good for the business brokerage industry in the last 15 years, especially as it allows the broker to rely less on newspaper advertisements for possible business sales and go directly to the company themselves as the listings now appear online, readily available for many to see. This, of course, also creates a difficulty when trying to acquire a company’s business at the same time many others are as well.
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