# Corporate refugee

A mid-career employee who leaves a salaried job to buy a business instead.

It is the commonest buyer this site describes: an operations director, a sales manager or an engineer in their forties who has run a budget and a team inside a company and would rather own a small one. The word carries affection and a warning. The refugee arrives with savings, a resume and habits built for a place with a payroll department, and the businesses that fit are the ones where a manager's skills transfer and the owner's trade license does not. The decide-stage pages here are written for exactly this person.

In numbers: A 44-year-old operations director with $180,000 saved and a $210,000 401(k) buys a $4,200,000 HVAC company. The retirement account funds the [equity injection](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/equity-injection) through a [ROBS](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/robs), a [7(a)](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/sba-7a) loan and a [seller note](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/seller-note) carry the rest, and the first year pays a salary below the old one.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/corporate-refugee
Not dated: A definition is editorial: what a term means, why it matters, and an example. None of it reads a source that can go stale, so there is no date to take and a stamped one would be the build time wearing a costume.

Site index for machines: https://searchspheresource.com/llms.txt