2021 — A Year in Review

Mark Daoust is the Founder, President, and CEO of Quiet Light, a business advisory firm that helps online entrepreneurs achieve amazing exits. Since starting the firm in 2007, Mark has guided dozens of entrepreneurs and small business owners through their exits. Before his work at Quiet Light, Mark founded Site-Reference.com, an online publication with a subscriber base that he expanded to more than 220,000 members. Now, Mark is a well-known presenter and guest author, as well as the co-host of the Quiet Light Podcast.

Joe Valley is the Co-owner and Director of Brokerage Services at Quiet Light. Joe joined the firm after selling his own e-commerce business through Quiet Light in 2010. He has advisor expertise in all web-based niches, including SaaS, e-commerce, and content businesses. In addition to this, Joe is the co-host of the Quiet Light Podcast and the author of The EXITpreneur’s Playbook: How to Sell Your Online Business for Top Dollar by Reverse Engineering Your Pathway to Success.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [01:31] Mark Daoust looks back on 2021 and shares his growth predictions for the new year
• [05:02] How Quiet Light has grown and the ways it delivers value to the brokerage industry
• [12:34] Joe Valley discusses Quiet Light’s average deal sizes for closing transactions in the past year
• [15:06] What is a common misconception about the timeline of closing a deal?
• [19:51] Mark and Joe explain the importance of brokers when selling a brand
• [26:50] How to perpetuate a strong, culture-based, and high-growth business into the new year

In this episode…

Do you want to increase your investor pool for a greater exit in the new year? Are you looking for customer-focused representation to help you achieve your goals?

It’s difficult to avoid unnecessary risks and find authentic and honest instruction when exiting your brand, especially as a new entrepreneur. That’s where the team at Quiet Light comes in. Over the past year, the firm has grown exponentially, thanks to the value, support, and million-dollar exits they deliver to business owners. As a client-driven team, Quiet Light is focused on developing connections that are crucial to the success of you and your brand. So, how can Quiet Light help you start to scale your exit in 2022?

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley and Mark Daoust sit down to review Quiet Light’s growth over the past year. Listen as Mark and Joe talk about the 37% increase they saw in closing transactions, their tips and tricks to avoid risks when exiting your brand, and how Quiet Light is changing the game for buyers and sellers everywhere. Stay tuned!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Quiet Light
• Quiet Light on YouTube
• Joe Valley
• Mark Daoust
• Quiet Light Podcast email: [email protected]
• The EXITpreneur’s Playbook: How to Sell Your Online Business for Top Dollar by Reverse Engineering Your Pathway to Success by Joe Valley
• Elaine Eason 
• Ethan Alexander
• Ryan Condie
• Paul Andersen
• Pat Yates
• Jon Hainstock 

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Quiet Light, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. By providing trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations, your Quiet Light advisor isn’t your every-day broker—they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on their website. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light is offering the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email [email protected], or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:07

Hi, folks. It’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Joe Valley  0:18

Hey folks, Joe Valley here, welcome to another episode of the Quiet Light Podcast. This episode is going to be a recap of the last 12 months of 2021. And I’ve got a special guest. Well, is he know, a co host? I don’t know what you are anymore because you never show up for a podcast? What are you? Who are you?

Mark Daoust  0:46

Well, I’ll tell you I’m not special. I’m just I’m just at this point, I think we can officially put me into the guest category because it’s been what, eight months or so since I posted an episode. So we’ll just say guest

Joe Valley  0:58

yet. Go ahead. Do you still have one of the top podcasts of the year even? Naturally? Yes.

Mark Daoust  1:07

Although you sent the list over and I couldn’t identify which one it was.

Joe Valley  1:12

It’s all a blur. 2021 was a blur. For those that don’t recognize the voice guys. It’s It’s Mark. Okay. You know, I’m back original founder of Quiet Light. He’s back at least for this episode. He’s been very busy. VNR CEO doing lots of different stuff. And very, very busy year. So let’s let’s talk about the year was it? Was it busy Mark, what was 2021 like?

Mark Daoust  1:36

absolutely was busy. I think I saw somewhere that this has been the hottest m&a market in the history of m&a, or at least since 2007, which is also when I started Quiet Light Brokerage. So it’s been a very busy year, it’s been a good year, those that have any proximity to this industry, are seeing the same thing and hearing the same thing. So it’s been a good year for the m&a market. Good year for buyers good year for sellers. As a company we’ve grown like like crazy this year, we’ve added a lot of numbers to our team, a lot of bodies to the team, but not just throwing bodies. These people are awesome. It’s been it’s been a year of what is the phrase? You cast the bait when the fish are biting? Well, there’s a lot of fish biting this year was a good year for us. So

Joe Valley  2:24

absolutely, yeah, it’s good. And, you know, there’s there’s a certain level of burnout that the team is feeling as well, because there’s been so many, you know, transactions flowing and lead flowing. That, you know, you can just get worn and worn out. I mean, I did it for almost a decade. And near the end, I was pretty damn tired. So I don’t want to complain about amazing stuff. Because we had an incredible year, just looking at the numbers over here. We closed a quarter of a billion dollars in transactions, if we include the inventory in the last 12 months. What what is your prediction Mark? In terms of Quiet Light closing a billion dollars in a 12 month period? What when do you think that’ll be?

Mark Daoust  3:10

That’s a? That’s a good question. I, every time I make a prediction, I tend to put it farther out than it actually occurs. If you had told me last year, on this day, last year, what do you think you will close? In 2021? I probably would have said 125 million, maybe 150 million if things fall the right way. But lo and behold more, we’re at 250 million for the year. So when do we close a billion? Let me take my instinctual Mark prediction and say I you know, 2026 2027, and what will probably happen is it’ll probably be not next year, but the year after at the rate that we’ve been growing. I will see of course, now there’s been a couple of things that have been occurring, Joe, you know, within the company here, and that is the volume of transactions that we’re closing that we’re closing are growing. So we’ve done more transactions this year than we’ve done in years prior, we have never set out to be a high volume broker. Like that was never our goal. We just want to do high quality deals deals that we find interesting deals that we think are a great fit for the marketplace. We’ve never been a volume player. But this year, we’ve closed over 100 transactions so that that is a high watermark for us in that regard. And the average value of our transactions is definitely ticking up pretty significantly as well. whereas before we were a little uncomfortable kind of a babe in the woods when it came to the middle market. We’re definitely far more comfortable working mid market deals at this point have a lot of really good connections there and I can see that part of the business growing rapidly. So that combination, a larger deal size plus higher volume doesn’t take a math genius to know that’s going to result in a higher total deal. closed over the course of a year.

Joe Valley  5:01

Yeah, if we go back to 2012, when I joined the team, we’d have to pull up the numbers, it’s such a blur way back then. But the average transaction size was, you know, somewhere probably in the 100 to $125,000 range. And we might have closed a million million and a half 2 million in revenue tops.

Mark Daoust  5:20

Why remember, you hung your hat for a while on the fact that you closed $15 million of business within a year. Right. And that was that was, or our industry at the time? That was a big deal. I mean, it was it was kind of an eye popping number. This past year, we’ve had more than one person close that month. Oh, yeah, you’re right. I mean, this happen multiple times, to multiple people. So it’s a product, let me ask you, what do you think this is?

Joe Valley  5:45

What’s driving this? What we’re all growing up in the industry, right? A decade ago, it was it was new, fresh, unknown, not stable. And, and back, then, there were lots of ways to lie, cheat and mirrors and smoke your way to the top of rankings. So Google fix that Amazon’s gotten a lot smarter as well. And so the businesses that are being built a real legitimate businesses, buy real grown ups, and their perceived value and legitimate value has risen. There’s also a lot more competition. And of course, 2021 really drove you know, the numbers went really crazy, because people like my father, who’s 85 years old, now shops online. And so you know, people’s revenue went way up compared to, you know, pre pandemic numbers. Back to the numbers here, I was just looking, you know, quarter of a billion in transactions, I think you’re right, I wouldn’t be surprised by us announcing in 2025, that we closed a billion dollars in transactions. I’m not sure how painful that will be for you and me. We added four new advisors in 2021, Elaine, Ethan Ryan, and Paul, and Pat just joined the if you’re not John, John, right, because John just joined you. It’s funny because I was writing writing these down and like, Okay, now for No, you’re right. John, just joined, so five advisors in one calendar year. And I think it took us four years to add five advisors from 2012 to 2017.

Mark Daoust  7:25

Yeah, I think what’s an important thing to know is we are not of the growth for growth’s sake mindset, I think both you and I have resisted growth in many ways. Because what’s interesting, for me personally, is more of, do we have a good business? Are we doing good deals, I don’t want to pursue growth just for the sake of growth. Now, I’m not opposed to growth, of course, it’s it’s, it’s fun, it produces new challenges. And obviously, it gives us more flexibility to do things that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. The growth that we’ve seen, though, adding five advisors, why do we add five advisors because we have to the demand is growing, and the number of businesses coming to market has grown. And so we’ve had that need to be able to add those advisors, we’ve been just incredibly fortunate to find the people that we have found for these roles. I mean, every time we bring a new advisor on, I’m waiting for waiting. Sounds bad. I’m waiting for that drop off. Right? I joke about my kids, those listeners that don’t know, I have eight kids. And people ask, How many will you have? And I just tell them, we’ll keep having kids. So we have another big one. But we’ll keep adding advisors till we get a bad one. And so far we have it. So the talent there is just off the charts off the charts. Good. Yeah, it is. And,

Joe Valley  8:49

you know, we grew for people that don’t, didn’t listen to the year end review last year, you know, we’re up, way over 100%. In total, close transactions, the average transaction size is now to just under $2.3 million. And what’s really interesting is what the year was like in terms of buyer frenzy, we’ve had an average of 3.7 offers on every single listing or should that should I say median? Is that a median number or an average number Mark? Yeah, that’s, that’s the really interesting deal. statistic, I think, here is the referred deals. And this goes to our process and belief of not growing for growth sake, but trying to do it right, making sure we’re taking care of the client and in the process in the entire flow. Our referred deals meaning I close the transaction, I sell through quiet light. I liked it so much. I tell some folks in my mastermind I said, Mark an email introduction and say, Hey, Mark, John’s thinking about selling his business. I think you guys had the right crew to do it. then you take it and you run with it. And then eventually, if you close that transaction, you actually decided to pay me a referral fee 54% of our total closed transactions are from people that like us, which is just stunning. I think it’s amazing. Why do we have a CMO? Why do we have a marketing department? We should shift everything. Tell Chris, his new job is just working on referral stuff. He doesn’t listen to the podcast, nosy?

Mark Daoust  10:27

Oh, if he does, we can just tell him Chris, this is your notice. We’re taking out of the CMO role and you’re now just referral? No, absolutely. You know, it’s the funny thing is I know is the sounds like really nice marketing speak, it sounds like a nice PR thing to say. But I’m always flattered when we get a referral coming in. Um, there’s there’s definitely choices out in the market, I get that. And, and I guess, you know, you can refer people to any of the companies in the industry, when somebody chooses us to refer. It’s an extension of their reputation that they’re interested in to us. And I think that’s, that’s just, first of all really cool, very flattering, and it puts an onus on us, and puts the responsibility on us to make sure that we treat that referral very, very well, so that we’re not obviously damaging our reputation, but more importantly, the person that stuck their neck out for us, as well, to refer somebody that they know, and that trusts them. So I love that that number is grown pretty significantly over the past year. I think we were around 25 26% Last year, so has essentially doubled over the past 12 months. And I would love to see it continue to grow. One of my favorite payments to send out are those referral payments, and I look at it and I think boy, that was a rich introduction, right? You send somebody a $50,000 wire for sending an email, it’s not a bad, not a bad gig, if you can get it.

Joe Valley  11:47

And the funny thing is that we never really promote or talk about the referral program. Very much course, I guess. Yeah. And so sometimes it’s really fun. Who was it? Buerk right from food blogger Pro, we paid for his kids college, made it, I made it, he made an email introduction, he had no idea that we had a referral program, and eventually close the transaction. And we sent him a whole bunch of dough.

Mark Daoust  12:16

I was such a good guy. Initially, he was saying, Oh, no, don’t worry about a referral fee. I didn’t tell him how much it was. And then three reached out to him and said, Here’s how much we want to send you. And he said, Oh my gosh, I didn’t know this was like pay for your kids college referral fee. Holy cow. Okay, you can send me that money.

Joe Valley  12:31

Yeah, that’s a fun number. The other the other is the deal size, like I just said, just under 2.3. And this is part of the reason for our total close transaction growth, right? Our total number of transactions grew by about 37% over the year. Oh, now I have to do the numbers for the actual dollar value. I didn’t do that yet. Mark grab a calculator. We went from just under 1.6 million, and median deal size in 2020 to 2.3 million median deal size in 2021. So the numbers are getting bigger people are getting better with their businesses. And we’ll talk about multiples to multiples are going up as well to do that number yet, Mark. Which number to do. I’m going to do now forget that people are beyond that now. All right, they are Yeah, it’s gone up about 50%. Folks, the average deal size went up about 50%. The other thing is, you know, why did it go up about 50%? In 2021. The multiple This is without inventory. For the E commerce side, there’s plenty of businesses, probably probably about 5055 60% of our total close transactions are ecommerce, the balance or SAS content, a little bit of service in there as well. But we’re 3.5 Multiple, I think if you add inventory, and there’s probably going to pop up to about a four time multiple compared to 2020, which was a 2.85 multiple. So it’s gone up, you know, a point a half a point plus a quarter, it’s a pretty significant jump our time to closing Mark.

Mark Daoust  14:13

Well, I’m kidding. Can I just interject here and I’m going to give a standard disclosure I always give people keep in mind multiples are a different measuring stick from one company to the next. And the way we measure multiples is a little more pessimistic than other people. But the average deal values are equivalent or more than what other firms can sell. We just we like to talk about cash in people’s pocket as opposed to cash that might be in some of these pockets.

Joe Valley  14:37

Yeah, yeah, that’s absolutely true. None of these numbers include inventory for inventory based businesses as sort of the big caveat and

Mark Daoust  14:45

many of them don’t include the full earnouts that might be included here. So the more pessimistic number then it’s the athletes contract right? $100 million contract Well, now he’s gonna get nine or 10 and Mike at the other 90, right? Yeah, we take that nine or 10. Anyway, sorry, keep things

Joe Valley  15:04

out there. No, you’re absolutely right. In 2020, it took 123 days, on average or median days, to close a transaction from the time it’s listed to the time it closes, and money changes hands. 2021, it dropped to 103 days, which is probably let’s see,

Mark Daoust  15:20

let’s talk about that for a minute. Because this is one of the more misleading statistics that we have. And if you were to actually graph this out, and like a plot chart, so you just have a bunch of scattered dots on the chart, what you would see is you would see one grouping around 30 to 45 days, and then you would see a mattering along the spectrum about 120 days out. What is that that’s the balance of deals that are being done through the SBA versus cash deals with 2021 been sort of the year of the aggregator with a lot more aggregator based deals being done, those are obviously cash buyers and private equity as well. cash buyers private equity, not going to be that fast but or other cash buyers may not be an aggregator might be somebody who has maybe understands they need to compete on a cash basis. So they raised funds, they can, they can close faster. And SBA been largely preoccupied with the PPP loans and everything else going on with the pandemic. There was not as high of a balancer. So it’s a two humped camel, or, you know, two different spots 203 We don’t have a lot of actually close at about 103. So it’s it’s a misleading statistic in that way. But I do think the data is interesting to look at, to see the balance of it the shift of the market towards more cash deals this year.

Joe Valley  16:42

Totally agree. And I’m just trying to understand what a 200 Campbell is, I’m gonna have to just sort of Google that and see what it looks like. Maybe my son wants to drive for me. The Did I cover this already an average of 3.75 offers per listing? I did. I wanted to go to deals above asking price. This is an interesting one, and I want your take on it, Mark. In the last 12 months, we’ve had 61% of our transactions have closed at or above. Asking price. No, I take it back. Let me do the math, it’s actually 66%. When we combine them at or above asking price, are we listing things too low?

Mark Daoust  17:24

Maybe that’s some are too low. If I can be very honest, you know, I think the market has moved quickly. This year, and multiples have definitely increased. However, one of the big fallacies that occurs a pitfall that can occur for a seller when they list their business for sale. Let’s say I’ve listed business for sale for a million dollars, those first three to four weeks, is when you have the most pricing leverage with that business, right, because you have the most interest from buyers. And so buyers know they have to make competitive offers, especially in a competitive marketplace. What happens oftentimes buyers will come in with a price higher than what your you’re looking at what your your asking price is. Because they know it’s competitive, right? And so they want to win that deal. From a seller’s perspective, the instinct can be, oh, my gosh, we price this too low, when the reality might be somewhere in the middle, right? It’s often in the middle. And is an indication of we actually priced this in a way that gathered a lot of buyer interest and provided you with the proper pricing leverage to be able to get the market to do what the market wants to do. And that’s provide you pricing leverage. So I think, you know, are we pricing things too low? I think there’s a conversation worth having. I know, we’ve had it internally to see what the team thinks about that. But I think for the most part, we’re pricing deals competitively. And the buyer interest has just been pushing things up, which is, which is great. What do you think?

Joe Valley  18:52

I think if you price it too high, like you said, if it wanes, stays there as a stale listing, it’s the price is going to come down a little bit. I’ve every couple of years. When I was brokering I had a tendency to go okay, this is the year I’m going to push these multiples. And the buyers would usually just slap me upside the head and say now then I get crickets on that listing. I don’t know if this is a different time different year when I said okay, let’s let’s push these up a little bit or not? Do I the basic question, do I think we’re listing things too low? I think there may be situations where that does happen. But the buyers tell us that by bidding up the list price, I think if we went to high bar to be like yeah, that’s their crazy. I’m going to go in with a really low offer and just hope to meet in the middle, which is an old school approach. I think we’re doing it right. It’s working out incredibly well. And I’m going to read a an email that wound up in my inbox, and I’m not going to tell you who sent it but it was from an aggregator and it says the joke on our acquisition team is everyone and their grandmother is going to see Quiet Light listings. So why compete? We want to see details before they go live, especially the ones that are 5 million or higher. Other brokers give us at least one week to see large deals, so that we know we’re not competing against everyone on the deal. What are your thoughts on that? But we just let me what are your thoughts on that? Mr. Daoust?

Mark Daoust  20:29

If I were a buyer, I would love one week of no competition. It sounds like a great situation for them in congratulations that they have that. I remember seeing this comment come through. And it brought a smile on my face. Because this is why I mean, it’s no no mystery. If you own an Amazon business, you’ve probably been approached by at least one aggregator if not multiple aggregators, you can go direct. I know a lot of people do. So why would you use quiet light? Well, one big reason is to create competition for your listing and to be able to maximize that price. I can tell you without any hesitation aggregators love sellers who come directly to them. And it’s not because they hate brokers. It’s because they know that they have to pay more through a brokerage. Absolutely. Because a broker will identify what do we like to call it ignorance discount the things that that sellers may not know. And they also get to operate in a non competitive environment. One thing that’s been lost this year, I think, pretty significantly this year is that people think to sell an Amazon business, you have to go to an aggregator. We’ve been selling Amazon businesses before the aggregators were formed, right? And a large percentage of our deals are still being sold to non aggregators, there are more buyers out there than the eggs, there’s quite a few more out there than just those. So why would you not open yourself up to the universe of buyers? To get that competitive pressure on the price to be able to get you a deal that really makes a lot of sense. And frankly, you know, I, I just think about it from a seller standpoint, selling to an aggregator can be a great deal. I certainly obviously, we do a lot of deals with aggregators, I like a lot of the people personally there. But I know, transaction one of the last transactions I did, we sold a business that was run by a guy who was employing a bunch of retired people in a warehouse to do some very light assembly. He sold it to a woman who had a disabled son, and she was gonna run the business with her son. And he was so happy to to have that sort of an arrangement. That’s not to say that we’re all doing this for you know, the feel good feelings of this. Obviously, the deal terms have to be there. But there’s there’s a universe of buyers out there. I guess that’s the point. So when aggregator says that, that brings a smile to my face, and I’m sorry that we don’t give them a full week’s exclusive access to a deal before bringing them to market.

Joe Valley  23:04

Yeah, and shame on anybody that is because they’re not doing the right thing for the client, the seller of the business, the one that’s, you know, risked everything bootstraps and grind grinded it out for grinded it grounded out for, you know, several years before trying to cash in and make where they make most of their money, which is at the closing. And then they go ahead and list it with an advisor, a brokerage firm that’s just gonna take the easy route and give it to an aggregator we can advance.

Mark Daoust  23:33

We’ve been criticized for this for a long time, Joe, there’s a certain company out there. That turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. I’m sure people know who I’m talking about. If you followed the industry, who once complained to us that we weren’t giving them access to deals like the other brokerages were other brokerages were setting up specific feeds for them, so that they could see deals before they came to market. And that just wasn’t of interest to us turned out to be a good good thing that we didn’t do that the company was was not not legit. So it’s not something that we will do. Obviously, we will take deals to buyers privately when we know that there’s a good fit and good pricing leverage for our clients. But it’s got to be client focused first not not buyer focused. We want to we want good deals for our buyers, we want to help our buyers, but the sellers deserve some representation. And so that’s, that’s where we are. So yeah, let’s talk about

Joe Valley  24:22

the inner workings of Quiet Light for a minute. Right? This things have changed a little bit in 2021. They’ll change going forward as well, by transition from brokering and training new new advisors to I don’t know what, yeah, what

Mark Daoust  24:37

do you do? Your podcast so there’s that.

Joe Valley  24:41

That’s less, you know, 5050 to 60 other podcasts in the last six months. You know, in our team you meet we’ve got a CTO, cmo Meiburg bringing on a CEO. We’re transitioning into more of an organization where we have to have C suite executives in a team to support this now team of 15 advisors? Well, we got 14, now we’ve got duty, Chris Duty joining us in January. And then a couple of more hopefully, by the end of q1, we’ve we’ve developed a back end system through advisor central that Brian’s been building for us, that really is taking us to a new level as far as maturity and being grown out to you. And I joke about that now. And then it’s like, okay, we’re, we’re actually grownups. Right. It’s not what we what we were doing 789 10 years ago. Do you? Do you find yourself enjoying that challenge? Do you think that, you know, when we’re doing a billion in close transactions, that we’re gonna have a seamless, you know, pathway to it? Because you know, we’re working so hard with the C suite level of executives, or is the road really bumpy sometimes? And I asked this question, because we’ve got people in the audience that are listening that had the same wonderful growing pains in the last 12 months. And they’re wondering who else is going through and how they’re getting through it?

Mark Daoust  26:12

I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you and I are so good at business, that it’s been just the smooth, easy transition without any problems whatsoever. I mean, it’s been great true. No, I abhor complexity. At the end of the day, I really do. I implore things that are more complex than they need to be. But the nature of an organization as it grows, as you have to add certain layers of complexity in order to bring things back to simplicity, right. So that’s, that’s what happens, you start off with a simple organization, try and keep things as simple as you can you grow. And that starts to break down into kind of a complex mess. So you add layers to be able to bring it back to simplicity. And that’s what I hope to continue to do with my life. I love the fact that we have closed $250 million in transactions with a team of around 30 people total, that includes vendors, like key vendors, and contractors helping us out. So not even, you know, direct first level family sort of people in the Quiet Light team. I think that’s awesome. We’ve lifted a pretty big boulder here with with a pretty light team. I think, you know, moving forward, growing a business, anyone who’s growing a business, you know, to 30 to 50, people in general, there’s growing pains in their communication starts to be a little bit more of a difficulty. Culture is the biggest thing that we want to make sure we retain, you know, I have really strong feelings about this. I’m sending out a message to the team, actually, probably today or tomorrow, Monday further on this, and that is that I believe, you know, all the work that we do, like we said earlier, it shouldn’t be growth for the sake of growth sake. I know some people have that mentality. That’s that’s really fine. I don’t I want work to be something that enables us to live a good life. That’s really what I want to be able to see entrepreneurialism, because it’s the opportunity for that. And I think that’s so cool. I value my time, above anything else, I valued above money, I valued above, above reputation, and anything, that’s my time is the most important thing to me. And that’s because I want to spend that time and things that I feel are bigger than life. And that’s that’s where my values are rooted. My hope, Joe is that as we grow, we can afford that opportunity for a lot of people, the thing that excites me the most, and the thing that also frightens me the most, you know, this thing excites me the most, I love providing incomes and salaries and payments to people that enable them to live a life that is somewhat free, you know, financially free, that’s a really, really cool benefit. The thing that scares me the most is always been able to continue that right and I don’t want to ever let people down with that. That’s that’s where I take the burden on so. But it’s been it’s been a good year for that we’ve been able to add some great people to the team. Deanna has been a wonderful addition, Beth has been a fantastic addition, working on our conferences and events. Alex recently joined the team to really up our video game. And we’re super excited about what he has to bring to the table. Rachelle has been helping us out on editing. I mean, there’s there’s a host of people, Sam, a lot of the people in the marketing team that Chris has brought on have been just absolute rock stars, Ian, who’s done a lot of our content writing, we can go down this list and every single person that that I look at, I just think we’re lucky to have them. And I’m so honored when we’re able to provide them an income that hopefully allows them to live their life outside Quiet Light as well. I don’t know if that makes sense. I’m just pontificating.

Joe Valley  29:45

Now No, that’s you say it’s so well, right? It makes me want to work at this company. And I happen I happen to have that privilege. So it’s and it’s why people stick around. Right, we’ve lost one advisor since 2012 And it’s only because he had an amazing opportunity ahead of him. And he just he actually sent me a text over Thanksgiving wishing me happy Thanksgiving. That would be Darren Hardy and folks he was good guy didn’t stick around long enough. He would have been one of the great ones. Maybe he’ll maybe he’ll retire from the What is he doing? He’s building self storage units had an incredible opportunity for national national.

Mark Daoust  30:22

Anybody out there that follows like, the business trends. So that’s a huge space. Yes. You know what you’re doing? Yeah.

Joe Valley  30:28

And he does. And he does. Listen, and I think we can wrap this up people. Thank you for listening to us for the last 35 minutes. We appreciate you We appreciate your listening. We appreciate you. Helping Quiet Light, you know, with our brand and reputation supporting us through selling businesses through us buying businesses through us telling your friends and family all about us. It means a lot. We’re here to help you and in the process of doing that you’re you’re helping us as well. So thanks very much. Have a an amazing 2022 And we’ll come back and do this again next year.

Outro  31:07

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 And the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast subject or guest, email us at podcast at quietlightbrokerage.com. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.