We Are Entrepreneurs, Just Like You

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Phone: 800-746-5034

Email: [email protected]

 

Address:

631 Brawley School Road

Suite 300

Mooresville, NC 28117

 

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    “I’m thinking of selling my website…would you be willing to help me?”

    Late in 2006, our founder, Mark Daoust, received a call from a good friend and fellow entrepreneur who was considering selling his 8-year-old web hosting website. Just 10 months prior Mark had sold his own profitable website and was looking for a new direction.

    Quiet Light was founded with this phone call.

    Fast Forward to Today

    A lot changed since that first phone call in 2006. Today, entrepreneurs recognize Quiet Light as a leading voice and authority in the emerging niche of selling and buying profitable online businesses.

    If we are honest, there are way more complexities in buying and selling businesses than we originally thought. But with each transaction we learned lessons, improved our processes, and refined our approach to be more effective.

    Today we can look back on over 750 online businesses sold and over $500,000,000 in total transaction value. Even though we are recognized as one of the most successful M&A advisors in the marketplace, we still take an attitude of continual improvement to our processes.

    Our Secret Ingredient: We’re Entrepreneurs, Just Like You

    In 2008, our founder hired a group of highly proven salespeople to work with Quiet Light’s sellers.

    The results were…underwhelming.

    It didn’t take long for these first business brokers to move on to other lines of work. Some started their own businesses, others found jobs, and others just found less and less time to work with Quiet Light.

    It wasn’t until 2010 that Mark literally stumbled onto the winning formula: hire entrepreneurs who have bought, sold, and started significant online businesses.

    Our Team Today

    The value of Quiet Light is in its advisors. Any person who works with our clients has firsthand experience in buying, selling, and starting their own Internet based business. In fact, many of our current advisors started as clients of Quiet Light!

    Learn more about our team below:

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    Ethan Alexander
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    Paul Andersen
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    Ryan Condie
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    Walker Deibel
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    Ian Drogin
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    Chris Duty
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    Elaine Eason
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    Chris Guthrie
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    Jon Hainstock
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    Chuck Mullins
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    David Newell
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    Amanda Raab
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    Joe Valley
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    Brad Wayland
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    Chris Wozniak
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    Pat Yates
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    Jason Yelowitz
    Ethan Alexander

    Ethan is a serial entrepreneur and has successfully built numerous multi-million dollar companies. He has sold and acquired a number of companies, one of which appeared on Shark Tank, and served as a broker for both buyers and sellers transactions’.

    Paul Andersen

    Paul is a serial entrepreneur who has built several multi-million dollar online businesses. His most recent venture became a category leading ecommerce brand which he exited for seven figures in 2019. Quiet Light brokered the sale.

    Paul has a true passion for online businesses with especially deep experience around Amazon FBA and physical product businesses. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Paul was a CPA and spent a decade in corporate finance. He holds an undergraduate degree in business and Masters in Accountancy from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

    Outside of work Paul and his wife enjoy chasing their two little kids around as well as the occasional game of pickleball.

    Ryan Condie

    Ryan Condie has started 8 businesses, bought 4, and sold 2. He owns a lead generation software company, an FBA business, and is the host of the “Let’s Buy a Business” podcast.

    In 2014, he started a candy factory from scratch which can now be found in Sam’s Club, Walgreens, and thousands of other stores. 

    Ryan also spent 8 years in software sales at several tech unicorns but his passion lies with online businesses and helping sellers achieve life-changing events through their business exits.

    Walker Deibel

    Before becoming an advisor, Walker Deibel co-founded three startups and has acquired seven companies outright, including an online business from Quiet Light.

    Walker’s bestselling book, Buy Then Build was recognized by FORBES as “one of the top 7 books all entrepreneurs must read,” and is used in multiple, ranked MBA programs.

    Walker frequently speaks at conferences, having been the Keynote speaker at Duke University, the Alliance of M&A Advisors Conference, and MIT. He has been awarded the M&A Thought Leader of the Year by both the Alliance of M&A Advisors (2019) and Axial (2020).

    Ian Drogin

    Ian ran his first profitable business when he was 19, which ignited his passion for entrepreneurship and set the trajectory of his career. He later built and sold an Amazon business, before acquiring skills in affiliate and content marketing.  

     

    Ian has extensive experience in content and SEO. Combined with his background as an ecommerce entrepreneur, this skillset enables him to identify high-leverage growth opportunities and communicate value. Over the last several years, he’s written many top-ranking articles about buying and selling online businesses and has been instrumental in crafting Quiet Light’s content strategy. As an Advisor, Ian is passionate about helping owners accomplish their goals and experience the freedom that entrepreneurship provides.

    Chris Duty

    Chris has always been an entrepreneur at heart. His first internet start-up was at age 15, reselling electronics on Ebay, where, as an early adopter, he had a 4 digit password until Ebay forced him to update in 2015. He has helped start various online businesses, including an SEO agency, online real-estate brokerage, and flash sale website before entering the VC-backed high-growth start-up world. There, Chris honed his skills in mobile product management at RetailMeNot (IPO 2013) before moving on to leadership and executive roles at Mobile Travel Technologies in London (Sold to Travelport in 2015) and Student.com in Shanghai, China. He was also a founding member of the first Amazon aggregator, 101 Commerce.

    Elaine Eason

    Elaine is passionate about entrepreneurship and has a track record of success in online business. She started her first profitable eCommerce business on Etsy in 2009 and has built 3 more businesses since, including a content site, an online subscription service, and a multi-million dollar eCommerce brand. She exited her most recent venture with Quiet Light brokering the deal.

    Chris Guthrie

    Chris Guthrie has a decade of experience in building, buying, and selling online businesses across numerous industries. Chris has experience with building and buying content websites monetized via advertising and affiliate marketing, partnering with developers to create a SaaS business as well as creating WordPress plugins and themes, selling physical products on Amazon and more.

    Jon Hainstock

    Jon is an entrepreneur who built, grew, and exited his software business, ZoomShift, for a life-changing amount of money.

    As a consultant, Jon has worked with Costco, Hubspot, Moz, EatStreet, Gener8tor, and many more incredible organizations.

    His mission is to help founders build wonderful internet businesses and exit on their terms.

    Chuck Mullins

    Chuck built his first profitable website in 1996 at 18 years old. In college, he studied computer software engineering which taught him the skills to analyze search results and implement strategies that took advantage of the observations he made. Throughout his career of developing, managing, consulting, and investing in internet-based companies, Chuck has developed a keen ability to spot opportunities and develop strategies that lead to growth and profitability.

    David Newell

    David is an internet entrepreneur with a passion for self-discovery, internet businesses, and mergers & acquisitions (M&A).

    David worked for 4 years in M&A at Citigroup where he helped advise on deals in the tech, telecoms, and media sectors. Following his promotion, he left to join an internet business brokerage company as Head Of Brokerage & Operations.

    In his 3 years in internet brokering, he personally advised on the sale of 75 businesses ranging from SaaS, to ecommerce and content and is the author of industry’s leading book on buying online businesses. He brings to Quiet Light a wealth of transaction execution experience across SaaS, ecommerce, and content businesses in the multi-million dollar range as well as a large network of buyer relationships.

    Amanda Raab

    Amanda Raab is a highly experienced entrepreneur with multiple million dollar successes to her name. First introduced to Quiet Light Brokerage when she was looking for another business to add to her portfolio, Amanda quickly demonstrated why she is repeatedly successful online.

    Joe Valley

    Author, Guest Speaker, EXITpreneur, Advisor, and Partner at Quiet Light, Joe Valley has also built, bought, or sold over half a dozen of his own companies.

    Over the last nine years, Joe has mentored thousands of entrepreneurs whose goal is to achieve their own eventual exit. He is a ​Certified Mergers & Acquisitions Professional, and a frequent guest expert in mastermind groups, on podcasts, and at events for entrepreneurs worldwide.

    Joe has written a book (released in May 2021), The EXITpreneur’s Playbook – How to Sell your Online Business for Top Dollar. The book shares real-life stories of successful and failed exits, and teaches you how to reverse engineer a pathway to your own incredible exit.

    Brad Wayland

    Brad Wayland is an entrepreneur who began working in the online space in 2003.  He spent over a decade in the custom printing industry where he bootstrapped a business to millions in sales and over 100 employees.  While honing his SEO skills in the print industry he spent much of his time learning other aspects of the web from traditional ecommerce, to affiliate marketing, to content.  Eventually his love for content businesses led him to being a serial acquirer and he ended up on the buy side 26 times.  A majority of his acquisitions were part of a rollup strategy he was pursuing.  In 2015 he sold his content portfolio to private equity.  Brad has experienced 4 successful exits from businesses he owned and operated.  Brad joined the Quiet Light team in 2017 and has represented more than 50 successful transactions.

    Chris Wozniak

    Chris has been a business broker for the past 20 years, representing hundreds of sellers, and having earned the accreditations of Merger & Acquisition Master Intermediary and Certified Business Intermediary. Chris also created and sold his first e-commerce businesses in 2003, and has since purchased an affiliate marketing site, created multiple content sites and an Amazon FBA business. He joined Quiet Light to merge these two passions and help online business owners reach their exit goals.

    Pat Yates

    Pat is a seasoned entrepreneur with a focus on e-commerce.  In 2014 he struck a deal with Robert Herjavec on the Emmy Award winning show “Shark Tank”.  Pat grew a single slipper kiosk business into a multi-million dollar e-commerce focused business.  During that time Pat has done licensing deals with DreamWorks, NCAA, NFL and Disney.  In 2015 he struck up a relationship with Mark the founder of Quiet Light and continued eventually leading him to becoming an advisor.

    Jason Yelowitz

    A recognized speaker and author, Jason joined Quiet Light in the spring of 2010 and quickly became the most requested advisor on our team. Within one year of working with Quiet Light, Jason set a new bar in virtually every metric for our firm. He quickly established himself as an accomplished, top professional within the industry by being savvy, honest, and considerate. A caring collaborator, he consistently cultivates genuine partnerships that result in successful transactions, and has become friends with many of his former clients.

    Before and during his tenure with Quiet Light, Jason has started seven businesses, raising over $10 million in venture capital funding for the first one, alone. A prominent spokesperson at conferences and business schools, he has volunteered to coach and mentor others who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs.