Ben Atkins wanted to escape both the corporate world and Minnesota’s cold winters. He found himself drawn to the Gulf coast, where his family members live and where he had been vacationing for 20 years. After exploring several options, he and his wife, Carrie, purchased a Sarasota sign company called Quiksigns in November 2007.

“It seemed like a good fit,” says Atkins, who spent 10 years in the hospitality industry before logging another 10 years at the security firm Guardsmark. “We were comfortable going in, in terms of the financing and what we expected to get out of it, but we also saw a lot of potential for growth and development in this market and nearby markets.”

Atkins isn’t the only one who sees such potential. Last summer, the Sarasota-Bradenton area was named the second-best market for small businesses in the country by Bizjournals, the online media division of American City Business Journals, the nation’s largest publisher of metropolitan business newspapers. According to Bizjournals, the number of small businesses has grown 25 percent here in just five years, and the area is one of only four markets among the 75 metropolitan areas rated to have more than 3,000 small businesses per 100,000 residents.

Numbers like that are drawing seasoned businesspeople who are ditching corporate America in order to become entrepreneurs.

“Sarasota is a magnet,” says Robert Servian, president of the Servian Group, a business brokerage firm that has been operating in the Sarasota area for more than 10 years. “People from all over the country, and from overseas, thanks to the Internet, know about Sarasota or at least the Gulf Coast. I would say that at least half of our buyers now come from beyond 50 miles.”

New England native Paul Lachapelle, an 18-year veteran of the high-tech industry, is one of those buyers. He and his wife, Diana, a CPA, relocated to the Sunshine State and purchased Sarasota Neon in May 2007. “We thought it would be nice to be able to control our own destiny and to have more control over the business than [we did] in a larger corporate environment,” he says.

A desire to own a piece of the corporate pie is a common goal among many businesspeople, especially the Baby Boom generation. By buying an existing business they can take over something that, in most cases, already has a proven concept, a brand and a customer base.

But buying a business is no walk on the beach. Servian, who won the 2007 top-dollar producer award from the Business Brokers of Florida, likes to point out that of the 31 million businesses that were expected to file tax returns in 2007, almost 60 percent reported annual receipts of less than $25,000 (see sidebar, page xx). Many of the people who call him—about 75 to 80 percent from the corporate world in the 45 to 55 age bracket—want to make $100,000 annually. It’s Servian’s job to find businesses with those revenues and to caution his clients about the differences in working for corporate America versus owning their own business.

“The first step in becoming a strong buyer is to really understand that this is a very complex transaction,” says Servian. “It is the largest financial transaction they’ll ever do, and it is life-changing.”

Servian advises potential buyers to do an initial self-assessment to determine their strengths, weaknesses and interests. But they also need to realize that these may not be enough to run a business. Running their own business, he says, is very different from working at someone else’s.

“What people don’t get, as a general rule, is that the skill set for you to be an excellent employee is not necessarily, or even usually, the same skill set that it requires for you to be a good entrepreneur,” says Jim Parrish, a certified business analyst at the Florida Small Business Development Center at the University of South Florida, which serves Hernando, Pasco, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Polk, Manatee, Hardee, Sarasota, DeSoto and Highlands counties. “You may be the best computer guru on the face of the planet, but if you can’t deal with people, you’ll never be a successful entrepreneur. Your skill at doing something may be necessary for you to succeed as an entrepreneur, but it won’t be sufficient for you to succeed. All the research says the No. 1 reason [why businesses fail] is lack of skill on the part of the owner.”

And though one’s interests and past business experience should be considered, they alone should not guide any decisions. “Keep an open mind in terms of the type of business you’re looking for, because the important thing is that you buy a business that you feel you can grow,” says Lachapelle. “You’d be surprised what types of businesses have strong growth. They may not be sexy on the outside, but when you look at their profit margins, they’re healthy, and they have huge growth opportunities you wouldn’t necessarily have thought.”