Why Ramel Newerls Wants the Next Generation to Buy Businesses, Not Build Them

The idea that changed Ramel Newerls' life arrived the way a lot of good ones do, in the middle of a problem he did not ask for.

It was 2020. Newerls, a Brooklyn-born entrepreneur who had spent years building a portfolio of single-family rentals, watched the pandemic knock the legs out from under his tenants. People lost jobs. Rent stopped coming. To stay afloat, he started selling off properties he had worked hard to acquire. Then one tenant needed somewhere to put his belongings, and Newerls went looking for a storage unit.

There were none. Not one he could find, anywhere.

"That's when the light bulb went off for me," he said. "I said, I need to figure out how to get on this side of the business."

Five years later, Newerls, 34, buys self-storage facilities, mailbox stores, car washes, laundromats and other quiet, cash-flowing businesses along Main Street. He is a serial entrepreneur, investor and educator, and his mission now is to teach everyday professionals how to own by buying what already works instead of building something new from the ground up.

The biggest handoff in American history

Newerls' pitch starts with a number most people have never heard. Right now, he says, the country is living through the largest transfer of business ownership it has ever seen, driven by what he calls a retirement crisis.

The owners in question are Baby Boomers, born roughly between 1940 and 1960, who have run their businesses for two and three decades and are now ready to step away. The problem is the exit. By Newerls' count, around 80 percent of those owners have no succession plan at all.

"The children don't want to inherit the business. They don't know how to sell the business. So they're stuck," he said. "There's a major opportunity for everyday entrepreneurs, everyday people, everyday families to go and work with those Baby Boomers to buy those businesses from them that they've built up over the last two to three decades."

The alternative, he warns, is not neutral. An owner who cannot sell often just closes the doors, taking thirty years of work and, frequently, a life's savings down with it. For the rest of us, the stakes are bigger than any single storefront.

"More than 50 percent of the economy is run off of small businesses," he said. "Those small businesses shut down, that impacts the economy overall. People lose jobs."

Washington has noticed. Newerls points to recent action raising the ceiling on small-business acquisition lending from 5 million to 10 million dollars, a signal, he argues, that the government wants these businesses to change hands rather than disappear.

Buy, don't build

The heart of Newerls' message is a reversal of the usual advice. Everyone tells you to start something. He tells you to buy something.

"Starting a business from scratch is extremely hard. It's just the truth," he said. "The studies show that 90 percent of businesses fail in the first 10 years."

His preference is to buy businesses that are already a decade or older, on the theory that a company that has survived that long has flipped the odds in its favor. He calls it getting into ownership "with training wheels." Often he negotiates a coaching agreement that keeps the seller on for 60 or 90 days to teach the new owner the ropes.

As for paying for it, Newerls says most people assume they need to be rich already, and most people are wrong. His favorite tool is seller financing, where the owner acts as the bank and carries the note while the buyer pays them back out of the business's own cash flow. He estimates more than 80 percent of deals involve some version of it, and says sellers often prefer it because it softens a big capital-gains hit. Beyond that, he points to SBA loans, conventional and private lenders, home equity, retirement accounts, lines of credit, even grants.

The businesses hiding in plain sight

Ask Newerls what is quietly changing hands and he does not reach for anything glamorous.

Self-storage is at the top of his list. He is in the middle of buying a facility from an 82-year-old owner right now. After that come independent mailbox stores, the small shops that are not a FedEx or a UPS, along with car washes, laundromats and, yes, parking lots.

The thread connecting them is a formula he teaches called the RICH acquisition method. R is for recurring, repeatable income, so he is not chasing a new customer every day. I is for an essential industry that holds up whether the economy is rising or falling. C is for consistent cash flow with more than one stream. And H is for businesses that hold value, usually because they are backed by real estate.

For a reader who has never done this, he lays out three steps: pick the industry and become an expert in it, confirm the business fits your buying criteria, then go get the money. He is just as direct about the warning signs. Watch out for companies younger than ten years, for owners whose books are a mess or nonexistent, and for a market with no real demand for what the business offers.

And the single biggest mistake first-timers make? Overpaying.

"They're super excited just to get into a deal, and now they overpaid and put themselves in a tough spot," he said. His fix is simple and old-fashioned: find a mentor before you sign anything.

Closing the gap

For readers focused on building wealth that lasts, especially in Black and underrepresented communities, Newerls sees acquisition as one of the cleaner paths to it, particularly when the business sits on real estate.

"You get the best of both worlds. You get to make money today and build wealth for tomorrow," he said. The cash flow pays now, the property appreciates over time, and the tax advantages work in the owner's favor. Stack a few of those, he argues, and you are building the kind of net worth that closes gaps rather than widens them.

He sees specific openings in the DMV. New apartment complexes and subdivisions are opening mailbox stores to handle the flood of e-commerce shipping, notary needs and virtual-business addresses, and express, automated car washes are multiplying to keep up with the rideshare and delivery drivers who need their vehicles clean and running.

Start today

If there is one thing Newerls wants a reader to take from all of this, it is to stop waiting.

"So many people like the idea of investing and buying businesses and entrepreneurship, but they sit on it and they miss the opportunities in front of them," he said. He has a mnemonic for the hesitation. "Wait stands for, what am I thinking. We think about, what if it don't work. We're thinking about what our family member is going to say. We're thinking about everything except, what if it did work. That's what we want to think about."

Newerls lays out the full case in his new book, The Boring Business Revolution: Why the Next Generation of Millionaires Won't Build Businesses. They'll Buy Them., available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble, or directly through his website. He is carrying the message on the road with his Boring Business Book Tour, which pairs signings with hands-on philanthropy. This Saturday the tour lands in Baltimore, where he plans to buy out Sunny Side Cafe, a Black-owned restaurant at Lexington Market, feed 500 families and give a car to one family that needs it.

You can follow Ramel Newerls on Instagram at @mogullifestyle_, and on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok.

Feature image provided by EPI Media Group. Photo: Demetrious Williams.