This $2M Nursing Brand Might Be Impossible to Buy

**Mills Snell** (0:00)
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous, the Internet's number one podcast for small business M&A. I'm Mills Snell, one of your co-hosts. Me, Bill and Heather talk about a fascinating business today.
It's an online business. It does $6 million in revenue, $2 million in SDE, and they are a niche nursing education program. They offer study guide materials. They sell direct to e-commerce, direct to consumer through e-commerce. It is a fascinating business. They come off the top of the listing description that it's SBA pre-qualified. We talk about whether or not that really matters. Heather always has a strong opinion on this. We talk about whether SBA or traditional financing is really the right path or not. This is a really interesting business. I really like it a lot. We all liked it, had really positive things to say about it.
I hope you enjoy the episode. Stick around after a quick word from our sponsors.

**Bill D'Alessandro** (1:10)
Hi everyone, it's Bill. I want to tell you about maybe the most exciting sponsor we've had in a long time on the pod. It's called CapitalPad. And it is the thing that I wish existed when I started my journey of operating and investing in small businesses. So CapitalPad is a marketplace for acquisition entrepreneurs. That is people who want to buy a business and need capital to list their deals and solicit capital from other people who want to invest in acquisition deals. So if you want to back somebody buying a small business, CapitalPad is the place to do it. And if you want to buy a business and need capital, you can go on CapitalPad to be introduced to investors. So the really great thing too from the investor side is that CapitalPad takes care of all of the details that can get hairy with small business acquisitions. They handle standardized terms, standardized governance, standardized distributions, all upfront in black and white. Basically, CapitalPad professionalizes investing in small businesses. The returns can be really, really good. I'm so stoked they exist. It's founded by my friend Travis, who is a phenomenal entrepreneur in his own right. So if this sounds like something that's appealing to you, if you want to buy a small business and need capital, or if you want to invest in small businesses, go check out capitalpad.com and tell them that Acquisitions Anonymous sent you.
All right. You are joining us for Acquisitions Anonymous lightning round because the hosts talked about, you know, we talked amongst ourselves for 40 minutes and then forgot to hit record. So we have 20 minutes left in this recording vlog, but we have a cool deal that we want to do. So we're going to skip the banter and get right into it. I'm going to put it on the screen for our YouTubers. If you don't follow us on YouTube, you should check it out. You can see the teasers. You can see a lot of fun pictures. Sometimes we have cool things to see. But this week, it's from our friends at Quiet Light Brokerage. This is an SBA pre-qualified 6-year-old number one nursing education brand with 6 million bucks of revenue and 2 million dollars of SDE, 14% year-over-year growth, 3 million followers on social, and 67% margins. They're asking 9.2 million dollars. So that is 4.5 times.
So let me tell you a little bit more about it.
This is a 6-year-old company. It is the number one D2C nursing education brand in North America. 6 million bucks of revenue, 2 million bucks of TTM SDE, 14% year-over-year growth, and almost 68% gross margins. Founded in 2019 by a registered nurse who created simplified study materials during her accredited nursing program, the business grew from Etsy into a trusted Shopify brand with more than 3 million social media followers. Their nursing school bundle is the most recognized supplemental resource for nursing students nationwide. Revenue stabilized at current levels as the owners transitioned from a founder-dependent viral business to a systematized operation built for scale. The 12-person team led by a COO with 4 years tenure handles all operations, content production, and marketing execution. With systems and processes that enable seamless transferability. Diversified traffic includes paid Google, 18%, organic search, 16%, email and SMS, 15%, organic social, 32%, paid social, 11%, and referral, 9%. Very well diversified traffic sources. A 425,000 person email list generates 7 to $18,000 per campaign with average order values of about $120.
Clear growth paths offer a substantial upside. Number one, prerequisite product creation, which I think is for other types of study. NCLEX test prep represents the highest value opportunity as nursing graduates invest heavily in exam prep and this company's established trust with 3 million followers positions it to capture this market. Membership monetization offers recurring revenue potential with existing portal requiring minimal development to convert product buyers into paying subscribers. Four, immediate cost optimization through 3PL transition project projects 200,000 of annual savings by reducing per order fulfillment from $19 to $14.