Buying out your boss follows a repeatable path: confirm the numbers privately, line up SBA financing, structure your buying group, bring the owner a real offer, and close. With an SBA 7(a) loan you can buy the firm with as little as 5 percent down, and the owner gets paid at closing rather than carrying you for years. Here is the sequence that works for architecture, engineering, and surveying firms.
Step 1: Confirm the numbers before you say a word
Start with a confidential conversation with an advisor, not with your boss. You need to know whether the firm's size, profitability, and cash flow make a buyout financeable, and roughly what it is worth. Most owners do not know their own firm's value either, so walking in with a grounded number changes the whole conversation.
Step 2: Line up the financing
An SBA 7(a) loan can cover the purchase price, goodwill, working capital, and closing costs in one package. The standard equity injection is 10 percent, and it is frequently split 5 percent from you and 5 percent from the seller through a standby note. This is the structure behind the Step-Up Legacy Plan, and it is why a deal that once looked impossible becomes bankable.
Step 3: Build your buying group
You do not have to do this alone. Adding a second or third key employee spreads the down payment and strengthens the application if one buyer is short on credit or liquidity. A smaller group of two or three is easier to finance and simpler to govern than trying to include everyone.
Step 4: Approach the owner as a plan, not a wish
Now you raise it, with a financeable structure and a valuation basis in hand. Owners overwhelmingly want to hand the firm to the people who built it. When you arrive with an offer the bank will support, you are not asking a favor, you are presenting a credible path that pays them in full at closing.
Step 5: Close and take ownership
The bank funds the balance, the seller receives 95 to 100 percent of their proceeds in cash at closing, and you step into ownership. From the point the owner is ready to move, this typically takes three to six months, because you already know the business.
Where to go next
This is the compressed version. For the full picture of the buyer's side, see how employees buy the business they work for, and for the broader context on the opportunity, read our guide on buying the boss out. When you are ready to test whether your specific firm is financeable, that is exactly the confidential conversation to start with.