On this episode of Buy Build Exit, Charles and I sit down with Nimi Natan, President and CEO of Gulf Coast Small Business Lending, the national SBA arm of Gulf Coast Bank and Trust. Nimi has spent more than 30 years in finance, but his path is anything but ordinary. He started in commercial photography at Polaroid, grew up around small businesses, ran a burger operation himself, and built an SBA lending platform from scratch in Dallas before selling it to Gulf Coast in 2016.We get into the biggest rewrite of the small business lending rulebook in years. The new SOP 50 10 8 took effect June 1, 2025 and brought back stricter underwriting, a 10 percent equity injection on startups and change of ownership deals, lower collateral thresholds, higher minimum credit scores, and a major change to how seller notes count toward a buyer's equity. If you are buying or selling a business, these changes hit your deal directly.We also cover why defaults climbed, what Nimi means when he talks about the industry coming off a sugar high, and how the health of the 7(a) program actually affects real borrowers. Then we get into the story everyone in our world is talking about, the Silver Tsunami of retiring owners and the record wave of acquisition lending, plus the uncomfortable truth about how many of those businesses are actually salable.Nimi calls this his fifth rodeo across five decades of crises, and his core belief is that small business backed by the SBA comes out of every cycle stronger. This one is packed with real talk for anyone buying, selling, or funding a business right now.Some figures and rules discussed are time sensitive, so always confirm the current standard with a qualified lender or advisor before you act on a deal.dealflow-os.comhttps://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...IG: @buybuildexitFree Class — Buy Build Exit Academy: https://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...

Wall Street just announced a 170 billion dollar media merger, private equity is on track to do 5.3 trillion in deals this year, and the biggest buy side firms on earth just admitted they are not sure the businesses they are buying will be worth anything in five years because of AI. In this episode Charles and I go topic to topic on what is actually moving in M and A and small business right now, and what every piece of it means for the person trying to buy a two million dollar business.I break down the one question I think you have to ask before you buy anything in 2026: does AI eat this business, or does AI feed it. We get into the barbell market that is squeezing the middle, why the run it from the beach dream got called dead this year, the searcher glut that has more buyers chasing fewer quality deals, and why the first 90 days after close destroy more deals than bad financials ever will.If you are actively looking to buy a business, this is the map for where value is moving and where the knife fights are.Chapters00:00 Cold open00:30 Intro and how we are running the show today02:30 AI is eating the buy side: does AI eat your business or feed it14:30 Wall Street spent 170 billion while you fought over a 2M deal24:30 The Tulum dream is officially dead34:30 Too many buyers not enough deals: the searcher glut42:30 The first 90 days kill more deals than bad financials50:30 The pattern behind all of it: quick hits56:30 One move for the week and where to go nextLinksdealflow-os.comhttps://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...@buybuildexithttps://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...

Most first business deals do not die because the business was bad. They die because nobody understood the money. On March 1st, 2026 the SBA quietly rewrote who is even allowed to get one of these loans, and most buyers have no idea it happened.In this episode Charles and I sit down with Alan Peterson, Senior SBA Business Development Officer at First Internet Bank and one of the top SBA lenders in the country. Alan has personally funded more than 300 million dollars in SBA loans across his career, including over 70 million last year alone. He lives at the exact point where most first time acquisitions fall apart, the financing.We get into the new citizenship eligibility rules, the truth about 10 percent down and the standby note structure, why good deals quietly die at the closing table, the idea of the SBA as a golden handcuff once you cross 5 million dollars, and exactly what to do this week if you have an LOI in hand. We close with a rapid fire round packed with quotable answers for first time buyers.If you have been thinking about buying a business this year, this is the financing playbook you have been missing.Timestamps are below. Drop your questions in the comments and I will answer as many as I can in the first hour.dealflow-os.comhttps://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...@buybuildexitBuy Build Exit Academy - https://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...