There’s Always a Way to Invest in Anything you Want

For the last week or so my brain’s been in serious wandering mode.?It happens to me pretty often where I get antsy and want to “do something.”?And by “do something” I mean be active or involved in something.?It doesn’t even have to be in a business but my brain does work financially so if I can do something I like while attaching money to it then why not??So here’s what my thought process has been like.?Right now?I’m in the business?of content based websites only.?I get paid for ads on my site so long as they keep generating visitors.?But for the life of me I’ve always wanted to break into E-Commerce.?In fact I even had a 6 month stint where a partner and I created our own product.?Around 4 years ago we created a brand of measuring spoons and sold them under our brand name on Amazon.?We basically started an Amazon FBA business.?We had a supplier from China.?We came up with a cool design for the boxes.?We did the whole thing.?The best part is that we never had to store any inventory.?The products were shipped straight to Amazon. When the business got going I realized that while it’s definitely a challenge, one can be extremely successful at it if they do all the right things.?We made a little bit of money (a few thousand) but never really made a huge go at it.?I bring this up because the concept always interested me and still does.?Fast forward to today and I’ve been obsessed with this company called Thrasio Holdings.

What Thrasio does

In case you don’t know who Thrasio is, they’re the fastest profitable company to ever hit Unicorn status ($1 Billion Valuation).?The key word here is “profitable.”?There are tons of unicorn companies out there but not many are even close to profitable yet.?Thrasio on the other hand is killing it.?So much so they’ve recently raised over $1 Billion from some of the best venture firms in the entire world.??So what do they do??The explanation for their business is simple.?The execution of it is not.?Thrasio acquires Amazon FBA businesses, grows them like crazy, and then either sells them or keeps them.?Basically they buy consumer brands that exist on Amazon and take them over for their own portfolio.?While this is straightforward, executing the business is not.?In fact Thrasio currently has 500 employees to manage it’s 75 company and growing portfolio.?While something of this size is completely unrealistic for me, I got thinking to myself, “if I can take over a website and grow it, why can’t I manage a product on Amazon?” Especially since I already had.

So I started looking around for businesses

From my research on Thrasio I found out that one of the main places where they would look for potential acquisitions was a website called Empire Flippers.?These guys have been around since 2014 and are one of the largest online marketplaces for buying and selling online businesses.?They range from content based websites to E-Commerce to SaaS.?Basically if there’s an internet based business for sale, they will look to broker it.??They’ve done over $300 million in transactions so it’s not exactly like these guys are small.?I usually look at this site weekly for potential acquisitions in my space: content based sites with display advertising.?But then I started snooping around for potential Amazon FBA businesses to buy.?I wanted to start off small so I was looking at companies that only had 1 or 2 products.?Even though I wouldn’t have to deal with any inventory, things like accounting, logistics, ordering, customer service, and all that other crap can become very time consuming the more products you have.?There weren’t too many companies that fit this bill in my price range.?For what I want to do 50-100K seems about right.?Usually with that kind of spend you should expect to make over 2K a month and grow from there.?I began looking at P&L’s, looked at their Amazon pages, researched their products, basically due diligence.?Then I realized something very very quickly.

My conclusion

I realized that I can’t stand doing this stuff.?I’ve been working for the last 15 years to get to a point where I don’t really have to work much anymore.?Buying and operating one of these businesses, while potentially lucrative, would simply be a time suck that I don’t want to deal with at all.?I realize that eventually my goal is to be a “full time” investor.?And by that I just mean most of my income will come from investing.?It doesn’t mean I’m spending tons of actual time on it.?So I thought to myself, “can’t I just invest in these businesses?”?Turns out you can.?There are a number of options out there from funding one person to investing in some kind of a fund.?For me however, I wanted to least possible responsibility and for the investment to be as passive as possible.?Luckily for me, Empire Flippers began their own arm called “EF Capital” where investors can do exactly what it is I’m talking about.?EF Capital vets potential “operators” or people to run businesses.?They raise money for operators with proven track records and investors have the opportunity to invest in their businesses.?This works out way better for me.?I get to invest in people who are already doing this stuff and are being vetted by experts.?Basically I don’t have to do anything except put my money in.?Now that’s something I can get behind.

Chances are, it’s out there

I wanted to take you through this exercise to show you that the route you go to be a part of a particular business can take many different directions.?My process went like this.?The first thought in my head is “Amazon FBA.”?I knew I had done this before and was considering doing it again.?So then I thought, “who’s doing this?”?I wind up finding Thrasio and did my research on them.?I then find out how they’re sourcing deals so I go to the same place they did.?Now I start sourcing deals for myself but realize that I really don’t want to be doing this.?So then I start researching “Investing in Amazon FBA businesses” and realize that the very site I was sourcing deals on has their own capital arm that allows investors to be part of these businesses.

I began with an idea and then went down a rabbit hole.?You can use this same model for nearly anything.?Think about baseball cards.?Let’s say you’re interested in baseball cards but you’re just now sure how to do it right as in you don’t really know how to value cards or make predictions about them.?Did you know there are crowdfunding sites that allow you to invest in collectibles like baseball cards?

I’m telling you, there’s a market already out there for almost anything you can think of.?And if you’ve thought of something and there’s ZERO market for it??Well then that means you might be onto something.?But if not, who cares??You can still be part of anything.