Investing- my story of sifting through the crap
As a business consultant, I am always looking out for the best investment opportunities to share with my friends, family, and accredited investors. I have reviewed hundreds of different investment opportunities in BC, and have only decided to sell for two different companies, which I will share with you later. My goal in business is to never get involved in any companies you read about in the news that have gone to zero.
When looking for an investment opportunity several things are important. The owners are first on this list. I have met with a few owners who had amazing business models, and sometimes have good financials, but for some reason we just didn’t click. Perhaps they were too serious. Perhaps they didn’t treat their employee’s right. Sometimes everything looks good on paper, but it just doesn’t feel right.
Let your gut instinct speak. What does it tell you?
I met with a CEO of a small chain of three locations in the Vancouver retail industry, and he had a great concept. It was a Vancouver marijuana dispensary, which is an industry my investors often ask me about. He wasn’t set up as a franchise yet, and he was looking for my help to set things up for him. The meeting was going fine until I asked about his staff. Suddenly, he started on a 20-minute rant about how all his staff were out to get him. Amazingly, the rant didn’t stop when an employee walked into the room. I felt very uncomfortable sitting in that chair.

I decided to see where things went, and sure enough, even before I started working with him, he was already asking me if I was going to screw him over “and run off to Mexico.” I am not sure what happened in his life to create this level of distrust with his employees (and myself) but I didn’t want to stick around to find out. I had seen and heard enough.

Some days I wish I could run off to Mexico!
The other things I look for when recommending a company to my investors are the basic investing principles.
- Is it scalable? Meaning, can it go big?
- Do they have accurate and strong financials? It is okay if they are not making a lot of profit right now, but there needs to be clear growth year over year.
- Do they have an attractive brand? The name should be clear and the logo should mean something that identifies with the customers.
- Are they good at marketing? Do they create valuable content and attract visitors to their website with it? Do they enable two way communication with their clients? Can they handle negative feedback?
Have you seen the movie The Founder? In the movie Ray Kroc says he didn’t go off and start his own restaurant because “McDonalds” is a proud American name that means something.
If McDonald’s were called “Kroc’s” would it have been as popular?
I have met with the owners of hundreds of companies in many different industries. Everything from spas, restaurants, law firms, retail, locksmiths, and so on. I wanted to bring my investors something they had never seen before.
If you go to the Canadian Franchise Show you will be swamped with tons of investment opportunities for restaurants. Most of these restaurants have $500,000- $1 million start up costs, well outside the range of the average investor. You will also be given opportunities to purchase machines that you can leave in places. These are often vending machines. You purchase the machine from the company for an inflated price, they sell you the product, and they possibly help you find a location. That is not franchising at all. I question what these companies are doing at the franchise shows. The show are also really boring, but I will save that for another story.
The SEC just shut down a company in the vending industry. It famously appeared in the show The Profit. “I feel like I dodged a bullet,” Lemonis said during the episode. “If Erik didn’t think that his primary investor being involved in a Ponzi scheme was a big deal, I don’t know what other surprises he had in store for me.” You can read the article here.
So I went on the search for something unique. I met Darren Hart at a Union Club networking event. Together with his business partner Sylvia Murr, he put together a opportunity for non-lawyer investors to invest in Hart Management Inc. Hart Legal is a law firm that practices mainly in family law (divorce and child custody.) He grew the business from three law firms to sixteen in just two years! Because of my work as a contractor on this project, I was awarded the 30 under 30 award from BC Business.
My second project just started. After years of trying to sign them up, I joined Bon Macaron. I love this company because of their brand (it’s very French, which makes sense) and the owners (who are both from France and have strong accents.) When you walk into their store it’s like being transported to France.

It’s hard to think of your problems with all the macaron art, the colors of the macarons, and of course, the smell. They currently have three locations (two in Vancouver and one in Victoria.) I have a feeling that there will be a lot more locations in two years!
Alistair Vigier is the CEO of ClearWay Law and awinner of the 2017 BC Business 30 under 30 award.