Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Would You Buy a Flamethrower Company for $2 Million?

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

In this episode the hosts analyze a surprisingly profitable flamethrower manufacturing business and debate whether its massive margins, regulatory risks, and robot-mounted flamethrower products make it a brilliant niche acquisition or a liability nightmare.Business Listing – https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/flamethrower-manufacturer-relocatable/2375683/Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.Looking to build a professional website in minutes? Try Wix: https://wix.pxf.io/c/6898629/3115214/25616?trafcat=templateHubSpot is the backbone for how businesses scale without chaos. Try them out here: https://go.try-hubspot.com/OeG9VrSubscribe for more episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@AcquisitionsAnonymousPodcast?sub_confirmation=1Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.acquanon.com/newsletter💰 Sponsored by:Quiet Light Brokerage specializes in helping entrepreneurs buy and sell businesses with experienced operators as brokers. They offer a free valuation clarity call to help owners understand what their business is worth and how to increase its value before selling. Learn more at https://quietlight.com/FRANZY - Thinking about buying a franchise instead of an independent business? FRANZY is a free platform built for acquisition-minded entrepreneurs who want to explore franchise ownership without broker bias. FRANZY matches you with franchise opportunities based on your capital, goals, and lifestyle—and includes free coaching from experienced franchise operators. If you're exploring ETA but want a structured, system-driven alternative, check out https://franzy.com/ This week the Acquisitions Anonymous crew reviews one of the most unusual listings ever featured on the show: a flamethrower manufacturer based in Ohio. The company is listed for $2.2 million, generates approximately $836,000 in annual revenue, and claims an eye-popping $542,000 in seller discretionary earnings. Founded in 2015, the business designs and sells specialized flamethrower systems used in agriculture, vegetation management, fire ecology, entertainment, and even robotic platforms.Key Highlights:- Asking price: $2.2 million with $836K revenue and $542K SDE (roughly 65%+ margins).- Business sells specialized flamethrowers, including drone-mounted and robotic dog-mounted systems.- Hosts debate whether the company has a defensible moat through patents, regulation, or certifications.- Major concerns include insurance costs, liability exposure, lender hesitation, and future regulation.- Strong disagreement among hosts: some love the niche marketing potential while others wouldn't touch the business.Subscribe to  weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking hereDo you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show!Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations.For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

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. We'll set, Acquisitions Anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory line. 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 a 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 Quietlight. I 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. 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 Quietlight 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 Quietlight. 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 Sop's, great systems. I just felt like I was in really good hands all three times with Quietlight. So if you're interested in selling your business, especially in e-commerce or SaaS, hop on over to Quietlight.com, fill out their onboarding reform for a free valuation call, and you can tell them Bill or Acquisitions Anonymous, sent you.

Dear listener, we have a special guest today, Brad Wayland from Quietlight, who was starting to tell us about an episode in which she 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 with... Well, I emailed Bill, and I was like, you know, when I listen to your podcast, I get very frustrated because I kind of want to jump into the podcast to defend myself. And he was like,

And here we are. Here we are. I'm here to defend. Guess who's not here? Bill. Bill. Brad's about to rip us a new one. And guess who's not here?

You know what? We're going to be so nice about the listing today. It'll be like all just sunshine and rainbows. I promise to play friendly. 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. you away, blow you away.

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 bootstrapped a company with some friends that was 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 QuietLight since 2017. In my time at QuietLight, I have closed 113 deals. And I'm a 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. 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? Yeah, Mark Douse is the founder of Quietlight and currently owns 100% of the firm. But Quietlight is unique because, for one, every advisor at Quietlight runs a company underneath Quiet Light. We have 15 in our advisory, and Quiet Light works on a shared fee model. So one of the things that we've seen from buyers that do a lot of shopping at the different platforms is they always tell us, you know, when I come to Quietlight, I feel like I'm getting a

little bit of a curated list of businesses for sale. That's basically because we work on a shared fee model. If you see a listing on Quietlight, some advisor has looked at that and said, hey, I think I might be able to generate fees selling this business. And if I can't get it sold, I'm not going to make anything. So over time, I think that just is a natural kind of a curator of businesses for sale. So it doesn't mean you're going to love everything on our site, but we're not a pay-to-play platform. One of our competitors is a franchise. We're not a franchise. We have a long line of people that want to be

quiet light advisors. We have a good reputation in the industry that we're in and I think it's because of the way Mark set it up. You guys have some really interesting listings to. You guys as employees get individual, you get salaries working

there and if you want to just skip to the deal and tell me to shut up, I'm fine with that. So you guys get salaries and then there's a shared fee structure where like, you guys all have a bonus pool based on the fees that get generated, and then there's a, like, an individual pool that you get for your own deals. Is that kind of how it works, or did I misunderstand things? Think of it more like a real estate firm.

So there is no, for the advisory side. We do have a whole other side that does admin work that's salaried. But on the advisor side, you earn zero. Your income comes solely from deals. If you don't generate fees, you do not make money. And then the other thing that's kind of matched with that, because sometimes people think, oh, can I just sign up to do it? But there's actually a pretty long line of people that want to do it.

And so we've been bringing on about two advisors a year. And so, like we've just added a new guy this week. So we're trying to bring on about two a year. We'd like to get to about 25 advisors. We have 15 today. And so that shared fee model can be a little bit punishing in a bad market. market. But we do feel like it's been kind of a better mix. Now, to be fair, I do have some guaranteed pay because I do the managing director work. So I get a percentage of the other side of

the deals that comes in from just every deal that closes. I get a very small percentage of. Yeah, super fun. All right. Well, Bill is here. He's arrived. Do you have anything you want to get off your chest before I start to pitch you guys on this deal I brought? Hey, Brad. Awesome to see you. I was just. just sitting here farting around on my laptop and realized that the podcast recording has started nine minutes ago. So, hi. That's how organized I am today. At least he's honest. Brad was telling us about defending him, wanting to bust through the speaker and defend himself when we picked on some of his deals. So, and he said he'd sent you an email.

He has sent me emails. And you're not the only broker to send us emails, Brad. Any people would like you jump through the speakers. But I'm glad you enjoy it, though. I listen. So, yeah. You know, that's fair. We appreciate you. All right, so I brought a deal, which is guaranteed to blow you guys away. Blow you guys away. By the way, just so you guys know, my open claw found this one.

My open claw is finding us killer deals. It seems like one that your open claw would have found. Yeah, my open claw basically has the deal sensibility of a seven-year-old boy. So it's perfect. All right, this one's on Bizby Cell, not on quiet light, but we'll do a quiet light one soon. It is a flamethrower manufacturer that is relocatable. Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which, Heather, that's Cleveland, right? You're asking me? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, you're from Southern California. I thought

you were super familiar with you. No. Ohio geography? No. Why know? Because the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. So that's all I know about that. How ironic. Yeah. Gridly data. All right. So there's a picture here. And Bill, this looks like a guy. What's he doing? He, so this is a guy with a flamethrower and he is clear. It's a flame, let me try this again. It's a guy with a flamethrower. And he is clearing a field,

it looks like, a brush, which is a legitimate use of flame throwers. That is what flame throwers are for, uh, is for clearing. I mean, maybe other things too, more fun things. But mundanely,

they are used to clear brush out of fields. So guys like kind of walk back and forth and just torch, you know, grasses and fields. I guarantee you they're not allowed to do this in California. Wait, what is going on now? We've got some kind of droid. Michael just changed the slide, and now it is not a man with a flamethrower.

It is one of those Boston Dynamics robo dogs with a flamethrower strapped to its back, shooting fire. You have to join us on YouTube for this episode. Yeah. Wow, okay. Fun gurdly fact of the day, if you're interested in some depressing stats, go look at the survival rate for those guys that ran around with flamethrowers in World War II. It was a horrible existence. Very brave guys. Anyway, I'll keep going. All right, the asking price for this business is $2.2 million. Cash flow, seller's discretionary earnings is $542,000, generated gross revenue of $836,000 and established in 2015. So Mills, that means there

doing what's the profit rate here? 542,000 on 836? 66% something like that? Yeah, who needs to sell drugs? You should be in the flamethrower business. 65%? I was close.

That's insane. Either lost his fuel, I suppose, right? It's crazy. All right, so great business for sale. Founded over a decade ago as a passion project. This premier brand has evolved as a market leader within a specialized flame thrower industry. The company designs

and sells high performance systems for a wide range of applications, including agriculture, fire ecology, vegetation management, and the entertainment sector. The business operates within a highly regulated niche benefiting from significant barriers to entry and minimal direct competition. Key performance educators include acceptable margins. They maintain 80% profit margins through vertically integrated production and in-house fulfillment. They have a proven sales track record with cumulative revenue of over $6 million with a premium order value of over $2,400. The catalog features a diverse mix of wearable systems, handheld units, and a specialized remote control platform supplemented by recurring revenue from accessories. With a decade of brand equity

and high online visibility, the company is well positioned for its next phase of growth. The business model is characterized by low-coster concentration and efficient controlled operations. They think you can grow the business by expanding into retail and traditional distribution channels, they have international wholesale opportunities to meet global demand and affiliate marketing programs to leverage existing brand authority. There are two partners. They're in Cuyahoga

County, Ohio, which I'm pretty sure is outside of Cleveland. They're in a lease building of 2,000 square feet, and the lease expired back in 1970. So that can't be right. So that's it. Mills, so what do these guys do? How would you describe it?

Do you think anybody can have we're saying 60 plus percent gross or net margin. They're saying they have 80 percent that margin, what's listed in the description. I don't know any manufacturer, like, for something like this that has margins that have. They're actually making flame throwers. Yeah.

And Brad, are they selling direct to consumer, you think? Or is it wholesale or what's the channel for this? I have no idea. I haven't come across too many. flame through as I walk through the aisles of Target. But I will say something seems amiss to me. I agree with Mills. Usually if I see a business that's bringing in, you know, 836,000, you know, maybe the gross profit could be 542. But in today's day and age, we usually see a pretty hefty line item for paid advertising and other types of expenses along there. So the margins seem kind of

insane. I do think because they say average order value, they're selling direct to consumer, right? Yeah. It seems like it. It's like a catalog. I actually don't think so because of the margins. So I went on Amazon and believe it or not, there are tons of flame throwers that you can buy on Amazon. They are typically like BIO propane or butane. Like they screw onto the top of like one of those small propane or butane canisters. or you can attach it with like a hose to your grail propane and you have a flamethrower. But they are like 50 bucks. I mean, there are certainly are not 80% margins in these. The thing that tips me off is, you know, Michael, if you'll scroll down,

they said that, or the description here says they sell into a highly regulated niche, benefiting from significant barriers to entry and minimal direct competition. That plus the margins does not support, B to C flame throwers. Same thing with the average

order value of $2,400. I think this is a business to business or business to government or

something, you know, maybe they make the flamethrower packs that strap on to the robodogs that go kill

the people in Afghanistan. Like, I don't know, but I think this is a more specialized flamethrower than just the

ha ha ha, or burn the weeds or melt the asphalt or whatever. It makes me think of the fireworks distinction, Michael.

They're like, what is it? 1.4 versus 1.3? Well, what is the, what's the, the designation that you can buy at a roadside stand? Is it fun and okay. It's like safe and fun or something. I can't promise myself,

I wasn't going to girdleysplay in you something today, but I have to. Now that you asked. All right. So, so, so there's 1.1G, which is basically dynamite. Okay, that requires a certain license. You get that from the ATF.

Okay. Then there is 1.3G. That is the display fireworks. That's the stuff you see like shooting at SeaWorld or Disney. Believe it or not, Disney is the number one consumer of fireworks in the world by far. They buy more fireworks than anybody else. They do it every night in multiple parks, right? Yeah.

Yeah. They are one of the biggest. They are the biggest. So that's 1.3G. that requires an ATF license, it's federally controlled. You or I can't buy that with a license. You can't get the license. You just have to go through background checks with the ATF.

Then there's what's called 1.4G, which is the stuff like in South Carolina, you can go buy anywhere. I think North Carolina, I don't think you can. You can't buy any of that stuff in California. You can't buy it in Texas. And that's the stuff that like bursts in the air, that's firecrackers. That's the whole thing that any consumer can buy without a license. That's the backyard fireworks.

There is a subset of that stuff that is what you typically buy in, say, places like North Carolina or in California. And that is a subset of the consumer fireworks world called Safe and Sane, which is basically just like little fountains and the little tanks and stuff like that. That's what I was thinking of. Yeah. So safe and sane is a subset of 1.4G, but it's not actually like a federal classification. It's just a like a state regulation by California that other states have adopted. So that's an amazing mansplaining. Thank you. And I would never pass an ATF background check, so I'll never be able to get the 1.3G. But I think that this business is something very, I think it's segmented, right? If you want a badass flamethrower, like you can't just buy it on Amazon, like Bill said. I think there's a segment of this that is off limits to most people.

Yeah, and I actually purchased one of those Amazon ones and really had some thoughts about what I was going to do with it. and it did not turn out the way that I was expecting. So I have a garden, I've been like an English garden, and my wife is like, hey, you can't spray roundup in the aisles. Like, it'll kill us. There's, like, gravel in there. And little weeds come up through there. So I saw this flamethrower, just like what Bill's talking about, on Amazon.

And I was so excited to buy that propane tank and do it. And to describe how it actually played out versus what I was in, I was thinking sort of like the picture we were looking at here where there's flames coming out for like 30 feet and it's just torching all the weeds at once. But it was more like I got the thing going. There's a little flame coming out of it and I put it on a weed. And for some reason, the weed seems to be indestructible. Like maybe it's not actually a plant. It's not burning up. It doesn't go away. I just sit it on there for a very long time and nothing happens and I've never touched since. So it did not so much throw the flames as like a lot like. candle. Pretty much. Well, I mean, it was a propane tank. So you were basically barbecuing the weeds, which is what

this like, which is... It's like a slow roasting. It was going to take a long time. Which is what, this is the boring company. So Elon Musk's supposed it flameflower was precisely that. It's like a little propane tank. It's basically the full self-driving of flamethrowers. Great name, but not exactly what

it is. Sorry if there's any Tesla fans in the audience. I use full self-driving. It's good. Yeah, but it's not full self-driving. It's not full and it's not self-driving because you're sitting there watching it. I'm excited. Don't get me started. So, but this is...

Close to full. It's, yeah, it's nearly full. Which is, like, I don't like it. Be technically accurate with your marketing. That's what I have to say. But this is not propane in here, to your point, Brad. This is like, there's something, there's a combination

of, like, kerosene and some propellant in here, and they're mixing up front. And if you mess this up, getting really messed up. Yeah. This guy has like compressed something back here. This is like compressed the error that he's shooting out. Like it is,

he's not messing around. It's founded as a passion project. So this is founded by a pyro basically. I think like to this business's credit, it's 10 years old. I would love to see, I mean, I love when people say cumulative sales.

I'm like, wow, that's cool. That does nothing for me, except to tell me that, okay, in 10 years you've done $6 million worth of sales, there's hopefully some trajectory that has like growing revenue, not flatline over the past 10 years. But like, is this durable? Maybe. Like, I think you probably could count on maybe $750,000 a year in sales of

flamethrowers. Is it ever going to quadruple? Just if you take over this business and don't change. anything? No, I don't think so. Well, I don't know, Mills. I mean, to me, it's how big is the Tam and can you take some, take more of it? Yes, I think you would have to work for it is what I'm saying. It's not going to, the Tam for Flamethrowing is not going to for X, you know, over the next 10 years. But this is the thing that I, this is one of my hobby horses about small business is people will get so hung up on the Tam. They'll go, is the, is the Flamethrower Tam one that I want to be in? What are

the long term trends in the tan? Yeah, is it a trillion dollars? or not. Yeah, and it's like this business is $800,000 of sales. This business can 5x while the Tam shrinks just by taking share and probably just by doing like good, blocking, and tackling. And Brad, I know you see this all the time probably in e-commerce businesses is like, you know, if a business is poorly run or not doing growth marketing, you can go out and grow it just by taking more Tam. You don't need, it's more easier if the Tam's expanding, but in small business, the micro overwhelms the macro and search people and small business investors often, I think, overindexed on the macro.

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capital, lifestyle, and long-term goals. You also get free coaching from people who have actually built and scaled franchise businesses. If you are exploring E-T-A and want to understand whether franchising fits your acquisition strategy, visit franzy.com. That's F-R-A-N-Z-Y.com. And thanks to them for sponsoring today's episode. One of the things I wonder about this, sometimes someone will bring me a business that has like incredible gross or net margins are both. And it's like on the surface, like I look at this sort of like this, you know, listing that we're looking at now. And it looks incredible.

And then when you actually see the P&L, what you see is like a very lumpy set of like 24 months. You know, this is 10 years. But you see this kind of lumpy set. And so when you talk to the founders, you get this narrative of like, yeah, all you need to do is ad marketing. just add marketing and you're good. And I think it's hard to move those businesses because when people actually look at them, what they see is like,

this looks like a business that if I buy it, like I don't know how to get this handful of people that have made up all the sales to keep coming back. And why were there no sales in the month of October at all or something? And so I do kind of wonder if we've got a lumpy, like, set up of financials going on here, because, you know, on the surface, a very unique product, it's appealing. You definitely can find, like, I don't know who the target market is, but I'm sure you can find

them. So we've got people that can be targeted here. And yet, you know, not like a crazy multiple for the margins that we're seeing here. So it makes me wonder if you uncovered into the financials, if what you would see is sort of a kind of a strange trajectory of where the sales came in, so where it's kind of hard to explain to a buyer like, hey, Like, yeah, you just add marketing. And what those buyers are thinking is, well, it was just as easy as add marketing. Why didn't you do it? Yeah.

Why didn't you just pour a little water on it, you know, and make it work? Well, and also given the end markets that I'm hypothesizing this is, it's probably B2B more project revenue. I mean, it'd be awesome. Like, what if they make a flame thrower that goes into a larger, you know, agricultural robot or something? Like, that's a great contract, but they probably don't make these things. every day, all day. And so it might end up being pretty lumpy. But like, that can be okay unless you load it up with a ton of debt. Yeah, I agree. And I think a lender would be very concerned that a new buyer could maintain

these margins, these crazy margins. You know, it's on one hand good. Yeah, great, big margins. But usually for a lender, it kind of, it kind of throws up a yellow flag. How are they achieving that? Is this seller doing all the work? Is it kind of buy a job or, you know, it's just there's something that we don't know about why this person has been able to achieve these margins and is a new buyer going to be able to do that? Is it's just, you know, from 836,000 in sales to 542 in SDE, I mean, there's hardly any expense here. And they say there's two part-time employees. There's also got to be a facility, I would imagine. Not necessarily. I wonder if this is, I mean, just given the margins, I wonder if this is some sort of almost dropship where like they source it from China, bring it into an American facility that basically gets it certified and blesses it and makes it 10 times the price and sells it to a government contract or something like that.

I mean, storage unit size facility. Is there a lending issue, Heather, with something that's in the like pyrotechnics category? Not per se. I mean, there's no rule against it with SBA. You could, you know, we've even done a firearms retailer with SBA. So you could do that. What you will run into is this other category we call reputational risk. That's how the banks think about it. Is there a danger that someone could get hurt or use this in the wrong way? you know, a product that was sold here and, you know, it gets traced back that XYZ bank assisted with the loan and, you know, a lot of banks will be concerned on that level. They might also be concerned about liability, product liability. You know, how much product liability insurance do you have? You know, that could be something that would eat into this margin. If you go as a new buyer and just look at, you know, getting new insurance, maybe this,

this owner is a little underinsured and you come along and it's going to cost you. you a lot more. So it's lendable potentially, but there's a lot of risks that are kind of outside the normal financial risks on this one. So guys, I've found something that I need to read. There is a Wikipedia article about this company. So I found this. I googled business listed by Sean Whitehead. I assume Sean Whitehead may be the broker. Sean Whitehead is not the broker. I believe Sean Whitehead is a relative of the founder of this business. So, and I search for Sean Whitehead Flamethrower, okay? So,

Steve Google, food here. Just to put it back out there, we have not signed an NDA. We are just using something that is on Biz by Sell. We're on Biz by Sell and Google. Those are our tools here on this podcast. This company has changed his name. It is now called ThrowFle. founded in 2015 by someone named Quinn Whitehead. The company initially sought to provide

flamethrowers for agricultural purposes, but the same year the company introduced the X-15, a handheld flamethrower with a range of 50 feet, which drew media and legislative scrutiny due to its unregulated status. In 2018, they developed the XL-18 flamethrower for a government client and later made that available to the public. In 2019, they released the TF-19 WASP, a UAV mounted flamethrower attachment, so a drone

mounted flamethrower. And in 2023, the company introduced the Therminator and a

FPV robotic dog equipped with a flamethrower attachment. So that picture from the listing is not

a stock photo. It's not an AI image. That is the real product. That is a Therminator. All right,

this is terrifying. This business is actually very scary. And they say terrifying. I say awesome. Okay, I guarantee right now that they are underinsured. Whatever level of insurance, it's not enough. That's right.

So this company, this is awesome, appears to be a pioneer in these different type of form factor flame throwers. So as we suspected, not your Amazon, your typical Amazon. Amazon flame thrower. So these are drone and robotic dog remote operated flame throwers. And so you go, okay, like, why do you do that? Obviously, you're like, are you going to use these to murder people? I'm sure you could, but I imagine these are much more useful for like remote, like brush clearing in remote areas, right? Or, you know, sending flame throwers where people can't go, right? To do or like, Mills, like I understand that people use flame throwers on roofs to like melt asphalt. We call it a torch. So it's, it's propane coming out of like a head that we ignite,

but it's not actually like dispersing the fuel as a projectile. It's just compressed propane coming out of a hose with a torch head. So we call them torches, not flamethrowers. But they're flame throwers. Right. I think the difference, honestly, between these is are they dispensing like a projectile fluid that can leave the apparatus and land on something and still create a flame? Brad, that's why you couldn't kill those weeds is you were just torching them and just barbecuing them in your garden. Pretty much. I don't recommend it. I also was thinking, though, from like the, do you buy it or not?

You know, I have five kids and they're all boys. Like, we don't have enough insurance to have one of these. Like, I don't even want to see, like, the test run. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, guys, if you Google for The Therminator, there are some amazing videos of the dog running around and throwing flames all over things. They are all it looks like in kind of the deep woods, which kind of lends credibility to the you know, this is for remote brush clearing.

Like, this is to send a flamethrower where people can't go or don't want to go, you know, et cetera. So I can totally see that there is a need for these. Like, how big is the tam for remotely operated UAV flame throwers? Like, I don't know. Maybe they're deploying them in Ukraine. Like crazy right now, I have no idea. But like I say, there's agricultural uses.

And I don't know what fire ecology is, but it sounds very important. So to your Ukraine point, Bill, I heard a crazy story. when the Ukraine War broke out, there were two guys who moved to Dubai, and it's easier to become an exporter of weapons if you move outside of the United States. And they started an autonomous UAV boat company. Remember those little boats that were going out,

like blowing up like the Russian Navy? They just went and started it. Two years later, they sold the whole thing for $50 million. That was the story I was told. Why. I was like, why am I not moving to the Ukraine or to Dubai just building flamethrowers? You could. It's not too late. You could buy this business for $2.2 million and really go ham. And go. I was like, me and Brad partner, we enlist his kids to help, we move to somewhere down there, and we start the UAV flamethrower business. It's instant bank.

I know, Brad, we just met, but I think we'd be great partners. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. He's stupid Texan. So you guys know, the Terminator, you can buy one,

the Robo Dog, you can go to their website and run your card for 10 grand, and they will mail you one. And you only need a permit in the state of Maryland. But like, okay.

That's it. So it's flying under the radar of regulation because it's new, basically. Yeah. It's a great area. The, The ATF may show up at your door in a few months.

Right. I would assume they would. Bill and Brad, if you just covered up exactly what this business does and said, I have what is most likely an e-commerce business, maybe not, but like, let's just say it's an e-commerce business doing a $2,400 average order value. Like, that immediately puts it into a category that is very attractive by a lot of metrics. And you could go, okay, let's assume the freight isn't astronomical, and I can pay for some customer acquisition cost,

whether or not they're doing that right now. This is a compelling business, right? Yeah, I mean, Brad, can you imagine the meta ads here? I mean, like, the content opportunities are endless. They really are. And the thing is what we've seen, you know, just in general, whenever I get a valuation for something that's really unique, the whole team. So we have this new system at Quietlight where we have to pay for our leads with credits.

It's unbelievable to watch this because we spent years assigning leads to people. We had a person, their job is to assign this to this person, this person, all this stuff. And we recently flipped it on its head, and now people pay with credits for the leads they want. And when something unique comes across, like a business that's in like a certain niche that's like something that could be really well targeted, things like that, people fight for them because there's just a lot of opportunity. I mean, I don't know who the audience is exactly. Like I'm, I think I understand a little bit about it, but like the meta opportunity, you could drill into it very fascinating. I don't know how much you guys have looked at the new meta algorithm, but like they don't want you to drill down anymore. Like, I've got this farming course with Joel Salton.

I don't know if anyone's ever heard of him, but he's a world famous Haster Farmer. We've got a couple thousand students. And he, you know, it's a very specific group. And we have marketed that to like an audience of about a rolling 100,000 people for the last five years. And when that update came out in March, our ads started going to like a frequency of like 20. Terrible. And the one thing I changed, I did change some creatives, but the one thing I changed,

changed is, I went from marketing it to 100,000 people to marketing it to 400 million people because Facebook or meta no longer wants you to try to control your audience size. They're like, hey, our AI is going to be better at finding your people than you are. So you need to open it up for us. And if you don't, we're going to frequent you to death and you're going to lose money. And so open the audience wide up. So the thing is, I don't even know if you have to find the audience, bill. I think you could literally spend up a bunch of creatives, do a super broad audience, and they are going to go in there and find out where to drill that down to. And you're going to, this is the type of thing that you're going to expand your tam, right?

Like so many people are buying, you know, three people are buying robot mounted flamethrers today. But if you show me an ad and I didn't know that this thing exists, now I want one. The tam is bigger, right? Like, you have expanded your tam by just doing some marketing. So can I throw some, a wet blanket on this discussion about meta? Oh, okay. I think this actually violates their prohibition on weapons and explosives. That's definitely true.

Yeah, I think you're going to have to figure out how to get around that. Okay. There are ways. It's organic content. You can't be like, you can't shamwow yourself some flamethrower sales. You've got to figure out how to allude to the fact you're selling flamethrowers. I really don't want my neighbors to have a terminator. So that makes me feel good.

No, Heather, it's no problem. There's no problem for a goody internet marketer. Your neighbors will have flame throwers. Oh, no. Carvado, I mean, this is easy. You go on all of the gear review YouTube channels and you send them one. And you go, this thing just launched,

you're going to review the robot flamethrower dog. They will all say yes. Like Marquis Brownlee, like any of those guys, like new cool tech, flame throw a robot dog, yes, I will review that. And you're going to get a ton of free organic content and they'll just drive it to your site. Did you guys know San Antonio is like the Silicon Valley of gun YouTubers?

It's crazy. There's like a ton of them here. I did not know. Nice job working San Antonio in, though. That was good. Yeah, I went out. I went out a couple weeks ago because a guy reached out to me. He was like, hey, I'm a YouTuber in San Antonio.

And I was like, he's like, I can't find anybody else here does YouTube. I was like, well, I do. And so anyway, we got on a call and he's like, does anybody else here do YouTube? I was like, the only other people I know are people that live out in the country outside of San Antonio. and make videos of them shooting things. Like, that's the whole thing. My son watches them. These guys get millions of views, millions of followers.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, blow stuff up in the woods, YouTube. Like, gun YouTube is giant. Crazy. They didn't know they were all in San Antonio, though. There's a lot of them. All of those guys would do content on this. For sure.

Like, this thing is so viral, just inherently, you know, a little bit of a true marketing strategy behind this, you would sell a lot of flamethrower robot dogs, I think. Then you meet the final boss. you get on Mr. Beast. He would think that's awesome, I'm sure. Ladies, lady and gents, we are at the witching hour of having to wrap this one up. So it's 35 minutes in.

Our producers yell at us if we go over 35. So do you guys want to go around the horn and give us your judgment on this one? Mills, you've been very quiet. Is it because you've been finding your credit card this whole time or what's going on? Yeah, I mean, I bought the dog. I bought, you know, the backpack version. I bought, like, the pistol version. No, I mean, I always pretty much my theme with e-commerce businesses is I think they're all amazing.

And then Bill just totally like burst my bubble. Like, do you remember the, the bug zapper one? I was like, this is so cool. And Bill's like, this is literally like Amazon, fulfilled by Amazon. This is Ali Barbitrised and there's zero mode here. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, dang it.

I thought that was cool. So I just get, I just get like, you know, a learning curve every time with you guys on e-commerce. So is that a yes? Yeah, I already signed the NDA mid-episode. All right, Bill. I am definitely thumbs up on this with one huge caveat that it makes is make a break for me, which is that I need to see a patent on it or some sort of regulatory protection, meaning like it's really hard to get a license to sell these things or whatever

because you want to be the only ones that can do robot dog flamethrower or UAV flamethrower like I need some sort of ring fence because if this thing blows up you don't want to be bidding against 20 guys from China overnight for this and you know the moat could be regulatory maybe you can't import this stuff maybe it all has to be in the USA and you need a whole bunch of certifications in order to even make it like that's a moat but I'm super focused on moat for this thing. Brad? I love it. I think it's a really cool business. I'm very skeptical of the margins.

And I just feel like I would, when I dug into it, I would find that it is not as easy to nail down this customer as I was hoping. Even though sending the robots, like, yes, I'll send Mr. Beast a $10,000 robot. But then what if he never responds? You said the second robot. How many people are just going to take the Terminator and be like, sucker. Like, I mean, surely they're paying something for the Terminator, right? So. You said a second robot, you say I'm not leaving

until I get the first robot back. That's right. I think I'm out. I just, I'm too skeptical. I don't think I would see enough of a consistent sales cycle to feel like I could just take it and run with it. Heather, do you have the Black American Express card out already or what's up? No,

I'm afraid of this product. I'm out because I I'm afraid of liability and or regulation. I think that regulation eventually comes along and squashes what they're doing, and you probably can't insure it adequately. So for that, I'm out. I think there are easier ways to blow yourself up than buying this business. So for that reason, I'm out.

I don't know. You would be amazed at what people manage to do and hurt themselves with something as simple as a beer can or a pocket knife. When they have something like this, there's a line where it's just too much. And that's kind of where my head's on it too. It's like, it just takes one idiot with something like this. And we haven't even talked about somebody misusing it intentionally

and what that looks like. I think there's just better ways to make money in the world than to be like this guy. Though this guy in the pictures have a lot of fun. I'll be honest. He looks like he's having a blast. But that's probably him. This is probably Sean Whitehead.

Do you think this is Sean Whitehead, Bill? Maybe. In the picture? I think or Quinn Whitehead. I imagine them as like a dynamic duo of brothers that like, you know, kind of like duke of hazard with flamethrowers. Amazing. All right.

Well, hey, Brad, in closing, love for you to tell a couple more minutes about Quietlight and then we'll close up after that. Yeah, Quiet Light. We're a sell side M&A firm. We mostly represent online-based sellers. So we do free valuations and we spend the vast majority of our time in sort of the, you know, 200,000 to 25 million market with the bulk of our deals coming in the, you know, 1 million to 5 million range. So it is everyone on the Quietlyte team is an experienced e-commerce or SaaS or content operators. so you're not talking to people that have not been in your shoes.

So we try to lean on that experience to help guide people through the process. And so if you're looking to sell, we'd love to talk to you. And you can just reach out at quietlyde.com. I should mention Brad did not tell me to say this, nor is he paying me to say this, but I have sold my businesses with Quietlight several times. I'm a repeat client. I don't know if I ever bought a business from you guys, Brad, but I have certainly sold more than one.

And Quietlight, if you have an e-commerce business, Quietlight is my first call. I've worked with multiple different brokers over Quiet Light. You know, the quality is, there's a system of quality. It's not just, oh, you've got to get the right guy. They just do a really, really great job and a really, really deep in selling e-com businesses. So if you have one, people text me all the time, and they're like, what broker should I use? This is me telling you just use Quietlight. They're number one, two, and three.

I don't send people to anyone else. Thank you. That's awesome. Bill, would you like to do a call to action, then we'll do a call to close? All right, call to action. If you liked this, and how could you not? It was about flamethrowers.

We have never done flamethrowers before, but we have done other cool stuff. There are 500 more episodes of Acquisitions Anonymous on our website, ACQUAnon.com. We also have a newsletter on there. If you do not have the time to listen to our sweet voices twice a week, or maybe you're not an audio person, or your commute is not long enough,

we will email you summaries of the episodes of the deals in the episodes. Maybe you're more of an email or text person. Just go to our website, hop on our newsletter, acqueu-unan.com, and we'll email you the deals. And it's just some other cool stuff too, but mostly deals. So with that, thank you for coming. Is there anything else you wanted me to say, Michael? Peace. That was awesome.

Brad, see next time. Brad, you killed it today. Great job. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.