Introduction · Why This Book Exists
The Grave With My Name on It
I bought a business. It buried me. Then I started counting the other graves.
A Still Searching Media book · Coming October 2026
Buyer Beware
Cautionary Tales for Anyone Buying a Small Business
By Jed Morris
Nine buyers chased the same dream you are chasing. Each one lost. These are their true stories, retold as fiction. The tenth story is the author's own.
Watch the trailer
Read the trailer text
The trailer is silent, set against a deep navy background. The words appear one card at a time: “You are about to make the biggest purchase of your life.” “The seller is smiling.” “Nine buyers. Nine true stories. Millions lost. Lessons kept.” “Every name is fake. Every dollar is real.” The camera then moves down the book cover and ends on the title card: Buyer Beware, cautionary tales for anyone buying a small business, by Jed Morris. Coming October 2026. Read it online now.
What's inside
Every story follows the same arc. The dream. The deal. The crack. The collapse. The cost. The lesson.
Part I · The Paper Trap
Deals that were structured to fail before the ink dried.
2. The Kill Switch
His company was growing forty percent a year. Twenty-one days later it did not exist.
3. The Controlling Interest
He owned 28 percent of the company and 100 percent of the guarantee.
Part II · Bought a Lie
Sellers who sold fiction, and the buyers who paid full price for it.
4. The $600 Tire
The margins were beautiful because the tires on the invoices were not the tires on the trucks.
5. The Warehouse That Lied
An industry veteran, a warehouse full of profit that was never real, and the lender who buried him anyway.
6. Mailbox Money
The fraud did not find the dumbest man in the room; it found the smartest one, because he had stopped checking.
Part III · Blindsided
The business was never what they thought they bought.
7. Someone Else Sets the Price
He fixed everything the deal hid from him, and then someone he never met cut his price by ninety percent overnight.
8. The Rolodex Walked
He did not buy the revenue; he bought the two people who owned it, and people can leave.
9. Buying the Weather
Every number in the deal was real, and the weather that made them left the month he closed.
10. The Numbers Guy
He read swim-school numbers for a living, and the only books that ever fooled him were the ones he bought.
Part IV · Lessons Learned
The patterns behind nine funerals, and the checklist that breaks them.
11. The Patterns
Nine buyers died nine different deaths, and every autopsy shows the same anatomy.
12. The Buyer's Checklist
The questions each buyer in this book wishes they had asked, gathered into the list that decides whether you sign.
The full book is free to read online. Start with the table of contents, or download it above and take it with you.
The author lived this book
Jed Morris spent ten years on active duty in the United States Air Force. In 2023 he bought two landscaping companies. Eight months later they were gone, and he was left holding more than $1 million in personally guaranteed debt.
Today he runs an investment firm, teaches business buyers, and writes the Still Searching newsletter. He lives in San Diego. This book is the field guide he wishes someone had handed him.
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