inding a good business to buy is one of the most difficult steps toward entrepreneurship through acquisition.

So much so that this path is sometimes referred to as, simply, "search".

And you've heard all the different ways searchers tackle this challenge, from spamming owners, to handwritten letters, to showing up in person at places of business.

But the tactic in today's interview is easily my favorite.

It was 2016, and Simon Plummer was living in Melbourne looking for a business to buy.

There was no Australian equivalent of BizBuySell at that time, no central repository website where all the businesses for sale in the country could be found.

The business brokers were the gatekeepers, and you had to go from broker to broker asking what they had.

This is inefficient, but worse, as in Simon's case, if business brokers didn't take you seriously, you didn't even get to learn what businesses were for sale.

So Simon, his brother, and a friend decided to solve this problem...

...by building the equivalent of Australia's BizBuySell.

That way brokers would share their listings with him, and he would then pick the business he liked most from all those submissions.

They built the site, and the scheme worked beautifully.

Simon bought a business called BT Engineering, a manufacturer of a product beloved by bricklayers and masons that he then took to the UK, US, and Canadian markets.

In 3 years he grew the business from $2m in revenue to $3.5m, and most recently hired a CEO so that he could move on to his next project: building a permanent equity vehicle to acquire beautiful businesses in Australia and hold them forever.

It's quite a story.

Here is Simon Plummer, owner of BT Engineering and co-founder of Arbor Permanent Owners.