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Members of Business Brokers of Florida® (BBF) closed over $900 million in business transactions in 2025, a 5% increase over 2024 and the second consecutive year approaching $1 billion in statewide deal volume.

BBF is the largest state association of business brokers and M&A advisors in the United States, connecting more than 900 members across Florida. The organization runs the state’s primary cooperative listing platform and brings together brokers, lenders, attorneys, CPAs, and valuation professionals who collaborate on deals and refer clients across markets.

“What sets BBF apart is active cooperation,” said Ryan Cave, Chairman of Business Brokers of Florida. “Our members regularly work opposite sides of the same deal – one representing the seller, another the buyer. Most associations have no real culture of that. It means Florida sellers reach more qualified buyers and get to the closing table faster.”

BBF expanded member education in 2025, with its five districts hosting luncheons and networking events across the state. The sessions give brokers direct access to experienced deal makers, SBA lenders, transaction attorneys, and valuation experts on the issues that stall or kill deals: preparation, financing gaps, due diligence, and seller expectations.

That focus carries into BBF’s statewide member Conference, held August 27–29 in West Palm Beach. The three-day program features IBBA- and M&A Source-accredited courses alongside working sessions on SBA financing, deal structuring and tax strategy, financial recasting, AI and technology in brokerage, and the legal pitfalls that derail transactions — taught by practicing lenders, attorneys, and top-producing brokers.

“A listing platform is easy to copy. A trusted network built over decades, where our professionals cooperate confidentially to co-broker deals, is not,” Cave said. “That’s what Florida business owners are really buying when they hire a BBF member to sell the business they spent years building.”

About Business Brokers of Florida®

Business Brokers of Florida® is the largest state association of business brokers and M&A advisors in the United States. BBF operates a cooperative listing system across five Florida districts and provides education, ethics standards, and deal exposure to its more than 900 members. Learn more at www.bbfmls.com.

Welcome to the golden age of business acquisition, where the barrier to entry is no longer “capital,” “experience,” or “basic literacy,” but rather a $20/month Plus subscription and the attention span of a caffeinated squirrel.

If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, you’ve seen them: the Social Media Buyers. They are the brave souls who decided that four years of business school was a waste of time when you could simply watch a 30-second Reel of a guy in a rented Lamborghini explaining how to buy a $5M manufacturing plant with “zero money down” and “vibes.”

Here is how the modern mogul is currently breaking the economy, one hallucinated spreadsheet at a time.

1. Wisdom in 30 Seconds or Less

Why read a 200-page offering memorandum when you can get all the “alpha” you need from a vertical video with captions that change color every two words?

1. Find a “distressed” business (usually just a guy who wants to retire).
2. Use “Seller Financing” (a fancy term for “I don’t have the money, please trust me”).
3. Scale it to the moon using “AI systems.”

It’s truly inspiring. Who knew that 20 years of HVAC expertise could be replaced by a guy named @DebtFreeDonny pointing at floating text bubbles while dancing to a sped-up version of a Fleetwood Mac song?

2. The “LOI for Everything” Strategy

In the old days, an LOI (Letter of Intent) was a serious document issued after careful consideration. In the ChatGPT era, it’s basically a greeting card.

The modern buyer treats LOIs like flyers for a nightclub. Are you a dry cleaner? Have an LOI. A SaaS startup? LOI. A lemonade stand with a decent EBITDA? You guessed it—LOI. Thanks to AI, these buyers can generate fifty “custom” offers before breakfast. They haven’t looked at your P&L, but they have told ChatGPT to “write an aggressive but professional offer in the style of a Silicon Valley shark.”

3. Financial Analysis by Hallucination

Now, let’s talk about the “due diligence.” Why hire a boring CPA when you can upload a messy PDF of bank statements to an LLM?

Sure, the AI might occasionally confuse “Accounts Payable” with “The North Pole,” or confidently state that a company losing $10k a month is actually a “hyper-growth opportunity” because it forgot how to subtract. But hey, that’s just the “disruptive” nature of AI financial analysis! It’s not a “math error”; it’s a “visionary projection.”

Pro Tip: If your AI tells you the business has a profit margin of $150\%$, don’t double-check it. Just post a screenshot on X (formerly Twitter) about your “proprietary valuation model.”

4. Better Call GPT: The Rise of the Robot Lawyer

Legal fees are for people who don’t know how to use a prompt. The modern buyer prefers AI Legal Counsel, which is great at drafting 40-page contracts that look incredibly official until you realize they accidentally cited the laws of Middle-earth instead of the State of Florida.

Who needs an actual attorney to check for successor liability or non-compete enforceability when you can just type: “Make this contract sound super legal-y and include a clause where I get all the equipment for free if the seller’s dog barks during closing.”

5. The Common Sense Deficit

The most beautiful part of this new movement is the total, refreshing lack of common sense.

The “Social Media Buyer” is shocked—genuinely shocked—when a seller doesn’t want to hand over their 30-year-old family legacy to a stranger who showed up with a “no-money-down” offer and a TikTok ring light. They’ve been trained to solve every human problem with a prompt, forgetting that business is actually done by, you know, people.

The Bottom Line

If you’re looking to buy a business today, remember: don’t worry about the “facts,” the “law,” or “reality.” Just keep scrolling, keep prompting, and keep sending those AI-generated LOIs into the void.

Because in the world of the ChatGPT entrepreneur, the goal isn’t actually to run a business—it’s to look like you’re about to buy one until the next 30-second Reel tells you to pivot into flipping digital real estate in the Metaverse.

Good luck out there, Titans of Industry. May your prompts be long and your due diligence be non-existent.

Headline after headline—AI this and AI that. Hell, I woke up to my Twitter feed to see the founder of Twitter slashing headcount. Shocked? No. There’s blood in the water, and like Chief Brody sitting on the back of the Orca chumming the sharks, the hacks we call journalists keep throwing more blood in the water.

I look at things a bit differently and am super excited. I’m excited because I am imagining what our world could be. And there is the challenge.

AI Usage Across the Global Population — Adoption remains narrow at the highest-impact tiers

This image lays out AI usage across the global population. The vast majority of people do not even use the tools. About 1.3 billion are using free versions—and by the way, the free stuff is not really all that impressive, and if you think it is, well… check yourself.

There are about 15 to 25 million using some paid version of AI. And then at the far end: only 2 to 5 million people are using coded scaffolding formats of AI to actually improve their business.

There is not a broker I know who is not using AI for marketing—cool pics, videos. Cute, right. And I am sure there is some modicum of benefit. The reality is, though, unless you rethink the entire architecture of the business, you will not get the true benefit. And that, my friend, requires investment into real infrastructure and process flows.

Most brokerage operations are still organized around a familiar unit of work: the engagement. A business owner signs a representation agreement, the broker builds a CIM, markets the listing, and manages a sequential process—NDA, financials, LOI, due diligence, close. This model made sense when information was slow and coordination required human gatekeeping at every stage.

AI doesn’t fundamentally change that model if you just use it to draft faster or screen buyers more quickly. The brokers capturing disproportionate value today are rethinking the unit of work itself—breaking the deal process into smaller, independently manageable components that can run in parallel, generate feedback early, and adapt in real time.

Think of it this way: the traditional brokerage runs on sequential handoffs. The AI-powered brokerage runs on continuous coordination.

Consider how buyer matching currently works at most firms. A new listing goes live, the broker reaches out to a list of known buyers, waits for responses, and qualifies from there. It’s a process organized around the listing as a fixed object—something you prepare, present, and defend.

A restructured approach treats deal components as live, dynamic elements. Instead of a static CIM, imagine continuously updated deal profiles where financial metrics, seller context, and market comps are refreshed as new data comes in. Instead of one-time outreach to a buyer list, AI monitors buyer behavior—what they’re searching, what questions they’re asking, what deals they’ve passed on and why—and surfaces opportunities in real time.

The unit of work shifts from “the listing” to “the signal.” Every buyer interaction, every passed deal, every unsolicited inquiry becomes a data point that informs sourcing, pricing, and positioning on the next deal. This is not theoretical—it’s the same structural shift that separated Shein from traditional fashion retailers, who kept organizing around seasonal collections while Shein reorganized around continuous market signals.

Two Dimensions That Move Together

When brokerages try to modernize, they typically change one thing at a time. They adopt a new CRM but keep the same deal stages. They automate outreach but maintain the same qualification process. They use AI to draft documents but still route every decision through the same senior broker.

The firms creating durable competitive advantage are moving along two dimensions simultaneously:

When both shift together, the brokerage doesn’t just work faster—it learns faster. Every deal generates structured feedback that shapes how the next one is priced, positioned, and closed.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Here’s a concrete example. A traditional sell-side process might look like this: the broker gathers financials, builds a CIM over two to three weeks, launches marketing, runs NDAs and introductory calls over several weeks, then begins a qualification funnel. Information flows forward, rarely backward.

A restructured process treats the same work differently. The moment a seller engages, an AI-assisted data room begins structuring financial information and flagging likely buyer objections based on deal patterns. Buyer outreach runs in parallel with CIM development—not after it—using AI-generated teasers that adjust based on buyer profile. Feedback from early buyer conversations is captured and fed back into the positioning, so by the time the full CIM is circulating, it’s already been stress-tested against the market.

The result isn’t just a faster timeline. It’s a fundamentally better process—one that surfaces problems earlier, allocates broker attention to higher-value decisions, and builds institutional knowledge that compounds over time.

The Resistance You’ll Face—and What It Really Means

Every experienced broker reading this probably has a version of the same objection: “Deals are relationship businesses. You can’t systematize trust.” That’s true. But it misidentifies where the bottleneck is.

The relationships in a deal—the trust between buyer and seller, the broker’s credibility with both sides, the feel for whether a deal will actually close—those don’t get systematized. What does get systematized is everything that isn’t that: information gathering, document preparation, buyer screening, diligence coordination, communication sequencing.

When AI handles those layers, brokers get more time for the parts of the job that actually require them. The broker who spends three weeks building a CIM manually has less time to build relationships than the broker whose AI-assisted process surfaces the right buyers in the first week.

When firms resist this shift, it’s rarely because the logic is wrong. It’s because changing the unit of work redistributes influence inside the organization. Senior brokers who’ve built their authority around managing the sequential process—controlling when information moves, who sees what, when decisions get made—stand to lose that control when coordination becomes continuous and transparent. Leaders should recognize this resistance for what it is: not cultural inertia, but structural self-preservation.

The Question Every Brokerage Principal Should Ask

The right question isn’t “Are we using AI?” Most firms are. The right question is: “Does the way we organize deals still make sense given what AI now makes possible?”

If your deal process still moves through the same sequential stages it did five years ago—just with some faster document drafting—you’re not gaining structural advantage. You’re renting efficiency while your competitors build architecture.

The bottlenecks that define your firm’s ceiling aren’t the tools you’re using. They’re the units of work you’ve accepted as fixed: the CIM as the marketing gateway, the LOI as the coordination trigger, the closing as the feedback moment. Each of those can be broken down, distributed, and accelerated—if you’re willing to rethink how the work itself is organized.

June is a good time to step back and look at where we are.

We just wrapped up our District awards across the state. The full list of winners will be posted in the next week or so, and I encourage you to take a minute to recognize the members in your District who earned it. These events are a reminder of what BBF really is. We are not just a listing platform. We are an established statewide community of professionals who compete… then cooperate and help each other close deals for our clients.

It’s been great to see District education events packed. Southwest Florida just hosted an attorney to walk through the new Stock Purchase Agreement and South Florida hosted a CPA to de-mystify Quality of Earnings reports and net working capital. Both generated strong fantastic feedback. That is the kind of practical, real-world content that helps brokers in actual transactions. If you’re not coming to the luncheons, you should be!

Volunteer committees are active and humming along. Engagement is high! Membership and affiliate interest remains strong, and our standards for new offices remain where they should be. Growth matters, but not at the expense of quality. New offices need to contribute something to our organization, not just the other way around.

A few specific updates worth mentioning:

IMPORTANT: Our conference registration opens June 15. Watch for the email and register early. The August conference in West Palm Beach is the best chance all year to sharpen skills, meet members from other districts, build co-broker relationships, and have some fun while we do it.

Thank you to our district leaders, committee members, affiliates, volunteers, and every member putting in the work. It shows.

Let’s keep it going.

Spring always brings out the country girl in me. It’s a season of renewal — a reminder that the best harvests come from good seeds, steady care, and a little faith.

And I’ll be honest… I’m the type who wants results yesterday! But just like on the farm, business brokerages won’t work with impatience. Growth takes time.

What I can control is how I suit up and show up every day — how I market, how I continue to learn from industry education, how I nurture relationships, how I keep planting seeds even when the ground looks quiet.

When I plant enough seeds — quality listings, education, consistent outreach, thoughtful follow-up — a certain percentage always grows. Deals close. Opportunities bloom. Momentum returns. It always does, no exception to this rule!

So, this April, I’m leaning into the season.
Planting. Tending. Trusting.
And helping business owners do the same.

The Artistry of growing business brokerage practice is often overlooked. Human relationships and valuing a business are both an art and a science. I have learned the hard way; I must continue to grow in these two areas especially.

This business blends entrepreneurship, finance, negotiation, and human connection. And while the industry can feel complex, the truth is that great business brokers succeed by mastering the fundamentals and repeating them with discipline.

I have found the words “Pay Attention” very helpful. Pay attention to everything.

At its core, a business broker helps business owners prepare, value, market, and ultimately sell their company — while also helping buyers evaluate opportunities and secure financing.

A growing broker is part analyst, part advisor, part negotiator, and part project manager.

To prosper and grow, I go back to the basics

KEEP UP THE EDUCATION

KEEP UP THE NETWORKING

A SPECIALITY? MAYBE!

I was a well-known pet shop owner with multiple locations before I was a business broker. I capitalized on it, and to this day I receive referrals from that specialty. Here are some great specialties to grow on.

A niche means faster valuations, better buyer lists, and stronger referral.

Here’s the part of many new and seasoned brokers (me included!) underestimate: success is built on consistent daily actions, not random big wins.

My business model has always been “If you don’t grow, you go”. Is it easy? No, but we must keep growing as individuals, and as an industry, to get better and be better.

I hope this article is helpful to you, and that you plant and grow all season long!