Sorry to be negative. My personal opinion is it's a terrible time to try this. The current economic environment is a crap shoot at best. Employees will without a doubt be your biggest challenge. Every single business owner I talk with during the week cannot find or keep decent help. Turnover is incredible and getting worse.

After employees you'll have health care costs, taxes, regulation compliance, business insurance, workers comp insurance, trying to find a banker that understands something about your business and won't be moving on in 6 months, utilities, assessments, etc. SBA loans can be a real treat. If you're hoping to not be directly involved, you're completely reliant on someone else to run the business. Can you rely on them? How thoroughly can you vet them before closing the deal? What happens if that person decides to jump ship?

If you do look at a business, take great care to go over their balance sheet in excruciating detail. Debt load can be especially bad after the past 18 months, cash flow can be made to look much better than it really is. How strong is their business outlook? What's their competition doing? New regulations looming? I would always assume there's a good reason the owner is trying to sell and it's likely not the reason they provide you.