Frequently Asked Questions

No. Brokers list your business and charge a commission (typically 10–12%) to find a buyer. We are the buyer. You pay us nothing — we purchase your business directly, confidentially, with our own capital.

No. Private equity funds buy companies with debt and must resell them in 3–5 years to repay investors. We're a family holding company structured as a company, not a fund: we buy to hold indefinitely, nothing in our structure forces a sale, and we never use leverage that puts the company at risk.

Roughly $2M–$10M in annual revenue with $500K+ in owner earnings (SDE) or EBITDA, and about 8+ years of operating history. Close but not exact? Ask anyway — the intangibles matter to us.

Orange County is home base. We also buy businesses in Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties — anywhere we can drive to, because that's how we operate.

Most of our deals run 90–120 days from first conversation to funded close: an offer within a few weeks, ~60 days of quiet diligence, then closing. Some deals take longer — license transfers, landlord consents, or larger transactions that involve capital partners — and if yours is one of them, we tell you in the first weeks, not at the end.

Completely. No listing, no marketing package, no teaser. Until you decide otherwise, the only people who know are you, us, and the advisors you choose to include. We'll sign an NDA before any financials change hands.

Yes. Your name and reputation are assets we're buying — painting over them would be destroying our own property. R.E.S.S. has carried the same name since 1978, including under our ownership.

Your team is the reason we'd be buying. Our plan in every deal is to keep, invest in, and grow the people — and we put that plan in writing before closing so everyone knows where they stand. No honest buyer can guarantee every role forever; what we can show you is our intent on paper and our track record.

On your real earnings: typically a multiple of SDE or EBITDA based on industry, team strength, customer mix, and transferability — most Orange County businesses land between 2x and 5x. We show you the math with the offer. Estimate yours with our free calculator.

Only as long as you want. Typical transitions run from a few weeks to six months. Some sellers stay on part-time because they enjoy it; others hand over the keys and go enjoy retirement immediately.

Perfect — those are our favorite conversations. We'll tell you honestly what would make your business more valuable and stay in touch on your schedule. Owners who prepare 1–3 years ahead consistently sell for more.

Nothing, ever. No fees, no commissions, no obligations — just a private conversation. If we're not the right buyer, we'll say so quickly and point you in a better direction.

Yes. If you own your building, we can buy it with the business, lease it from you long-term (turning it into retirement income), or structure something in between — whatever fits your plans.

Brian D. Ward, our founder and CEO — a real person, in Orange County, whose name and track record are public. Not an analyst, not a call center, not a form-letter acquisition team.

Not the way you've heard about. The classic 'retrade' — an unexplained last-minute price cut that counts on your exhaustion — is something we don't do. If diligence reveals something genuinely different from what we understood, we walk you through exactly what changed and why it matters, in plain English, and we work through it together. If the facts hold, our number holds.

You can verify us. Our companies operate here — drive past R.E.S.S. in Laguna Hills, talk to the team. We meet at your shop or over lunch this week, not through a string of video meetings from another time zone. And our family's reputation lives in the same community as your business.