Acquiring Minds

Will Smith (not the actor) has turned Acquiring Minds into the go-to podcast for people who want to buy a business instead of starting one from scratch. With 436 episodes, a 4.8 rating from 273 reviews, and twice-weekly releases, the show has serious momentum in the acquisition entrepreneurship space. Smith interviews people who have actually closed deals, and the conversations run long enough (usually 75 to 110 minutes) to get past surface-level advice into the real mechanics of how transactions come together. Recent episodes have featured a buyer who scaled a manufacturing company 4x after acquiring it, someone who navigated equity partnerships in small business deals, and an entrepreneur who pivoted from a corporate career into business ownership through SBA financing. The length is a feature, not a bug. When you are trying to understand how someone structured seller financing, negotiated a working capital peg, or handled employee retention through an ownership transition, you need more than a 30-minute conversation. Smith asks good follow-up questions and clearly understands the ETA (entrepreneur through acquisition) model well enough to probe the interesting parts. The show also maintains a companion website with episode summaries, which helps when you want to find a specific topic in the back catalog. For anyone seriously exploring acquisition entrepreneurship, search funds, or independent sponsorship as a path to business ownership, this podcast covers the territory more thoroughly than anything else out there.