Would You Buy a Flamethrower Company for $2 Million?

**Michael Girdley** (0:00)
All right. Hey, welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous. Today's episode is going to blow your mind, literally and figuratively. We had Brad Wayland who joined us from Quiet Light. He was amazing first time here, and then the rest of the gang was all around, me, Heather, Bill, and Mills.
So always more fun when there's lots of us here. And that's what happened today. Here's the episode. I hope you enjoyed it.

**Bill D'Alessandro** (0:33)
Hey, everyone, it's Bill, and I want to talk to you about Quiet Light Brokerage. I was so psyched when Quiet Light agreed to sponsor the podcast because I am a customer. I have used Quiet Light to sell three businesses, and if I were selling an e-commerce or SaaS business, I really would not consider anyone else. Like I said, I went back to them three times. I worked with three different brokers at Quiet Light, had a great experience all three times.
Even on one occasion, they found a buyer for a business that I just didn't know it was even going to be possible to sell. So they have pulled rabbits out of their hats several times for me.
Just they've been in the e-commerce and SaaS business brokering game a very, very long time. They really know what they're doing. They have great reach with both buyers and sellers. And the other thing I really love about Quiet Light is all the brokers there are former operators. So you can't just show up and go, hey, I'm a lifetime business broker. I want to work at Quiet Light. You have to be a former operator. So they all know what it's like to be in the operator chair. So if you go to quietlight.com, they have free business valuation calls, which they'll do with you, no obligation. Just tell you what they think about your business, what they think it would be worth, and then what you might need to do to kind of get it ready for market. Those guys over there are great, great SOPs, great systems. I just felt like I was really in really good hands all three times with Quiet Light.
If you're interested in selling your business, especially in e-commerce or SaaS, hop on over to quietlight.com, fill out their onboarding form for a free valuation call, and you can tell them Bill or Acquisitions Anonymous sent you.

**Michael Girdley** (2:01)
Dear listener, we have a special guest today, Brad Wayland from Quiet Light, who was starting to tell us about an episode in which he was defending what we did for one of his seconds talking about one of his listings and he emailed Bill.
And then what happened? What happened?

**Brad Wayland** (2:16)
Well, I emailed Bill and I was like, when I listen to your podcast, I get very frustrated because I want to jump into the podcast to defend myself.

**Mills Snell** (2:25)
And he was like, And here we are.

**Bill D'Alessandro** (2:28)
Here we are.

**Brad Wayland** (2:28)
I'm here to defend.

**Michael Girdley** (2:30)
Guess who's not here?

**Bill D'Alessandro** (2:31)
Bill.

**Brad Wayland** (2:32)
Bill.

**Michael Girdley** (2:34)
Brad's about to rip us a new one and guess who's not here?

**Brad Wayland** (2:36)
No.

**Mills Snell** (2:37)
You know what? We're going to be so nice about the listing today. It'll be like all just sunshine and rainbows. No.

**Brad Wayland** (2:43)
I promise to play friendly.

**Michael Girdley** (2:46)
Well, Brad, would you do us a favor and introduce yourself to the audience? Sure. Then I brought a deal which I guarantee is going to blow you away.
Blow you away.

**Brad Wayland** (2:56)
Yeah. All right. So I'm Brad Whalen. I live on the north side of Nashville, Tennessee. I have been an entrepreneur for 25 years. I was a buyer 26 times and sold a portfolio to private equity in 2015
I also beach-trapped a company with some friends in the custom t-shirt space. We became one of the largest screen printers in the United States. That's why I live in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where we distributed from. For many years, we had 110,000 square foot facility that we were producing shirts out of. I have been with Quiet Light since 2017 In my time at Quiet Light, I have closed 113 deals and I'm managing director of the firm as well, so I also try to help our team with just, you know, deal flow, deal problems, anything that supports our advisory.

**Michael Girdley** (3:46)
So how are you guys structured? Are you just like a standard investment banking style partnership or is there a single owner? How does it work?

**Brad Wayland** (3:54)
Yeah, Mark Douse is the founder of Quiet Light and currently owns 100% of the firm.