Dave Bramlett Buys a 20-Year-Old Online Resume Business as a Semi-Passive Holding

The Setup Dave Bramlett is not a first-time buyer. Before Resume Writing Group he had rotated through pet food delivery, bounce house rentals, chemical distribution, and real estate photography. By 2019 he was hunting for an online business that would throw off cash without demanding 60 hours a week, something he could hold into retirement. His screening filter was unusual for the era. While most online buyers were chasing Amazon FBA rollups, Dave deliberately excluded anything that sat on top of Amazon's rails. Platform risk was the disqualifier. He wanted a business with its own traffic, its own customers, and its own P&L that would not evaporate if a single marketplace changed a policy. The Deal He found Resume Writing Group on BizBuySell while browsing FBA listings. The business was 20 years old, running at roughly $150-170k per month in revenue (call it $1.8M-$2M annualized), with an existing management team and a stable of contract writers already in place. Purchase price and multiple were not disclosed on the episode. The attractive pieces: two decades of SEO equity, no platform dependency, a team that ran the day-to-day, and a seller willing to stay engaged after close. The unattractive piece was the calendar. Dave closed in March 2020, the same month the US economy stopped hiring. First 100 Days Dave spent four days on site with the outgoing owner. Not enough. The transition surfaced two gaps almost immediately: - Code and site maintenance knowledge lived in the seller's head, not in documentation. - Operational tribal knowledge (vendor quirks, writer preferences, exception handling) also lived in the seller's head. Instead of cutting the cord, Dave kept the seller on a retainer-style relationship. Monthly check-ins, Zoom calls when something broke, phone support for technical questions. He treated the seller as a permanent part of the post-close stack rather than a 30-day handoff. Then COVID hit. New job postings collapsed, which meant fewer people needed resumes rewritten. Monthly revenue fell to $90-120k, a roughly 30-45% drop from acquisition-era run rate. Operating Moves Dave ran the business as a holding, not a hands-on turnaround: - Kept the existing management team in place rather than importing his own operator. - Kept the writer roster intact through the revenue dip, betting that rebuilding capacity post-recovery would cost more than carrying it. - Stayed at the strategy layer, delegating daily operations to the team he inherited. - Preserved the relationship with the prior owner as a technical backstop. He did not try to rebuild the website, relaunch the brand, or add services during the first year. The move was stabilization, not reinvention. Where They Are Now As of the recording in early 2022, revenue was still below acquisition levels at roughly $100k/month average, but the business was holding and Dave expected restoration as hiring normalized. The management team and writer staff were still in place. Dave was still spending part-time hours on it, consistent with his original passive-holding thesis.