Any seasoned traveler will tell you there are voyages that leave you relaxed and decompressed, and then there are the kinds of voyages that leave you changed forever.
In my years of travel, I’ve been to more than 30 countries, all of the continents with the exception Antarctica, and have endured additional questioning at passport control in at least five languages I couldn’t understand.
And yet the most transformative trip of my life was to a city just north of our own border, in British Columbia.
I went there for the first time years ago on a business trip to profile a new startup operating in the oil industry.
A turn-and-burn kind of affair, as my boss liked to call those quick, two-day getaways, it wasn’t supposed to be a life-changing event… just a simple dinner, an interview, and a quick tour of some facilities.
The way he explained it, I wasn’t sure whether to get ready to work or to prepare my liver for 48 hours of severe punishment.
But it ended up transcending all of that. Not only did that trip boost my interest in my own job, but it opened my eyes to a world I didn’t know existed; it changed the way I thought about investing forever; and it even put me on a path to accumulating the kind of wealth I had only dreamed about as a younger man.
More Than Just A Pretty View
The Canadian city to which I’m referring is Vancouver, but I’m telling you right now, as I sat at the bar that first evening, listening to a small group of business executives chatting, it might as well have been a trip through a wormhole into a parallel universe, where everything was almost the same, and yet stunningly different.
All the expected features of high-powered business were present: expensive watches, freshly pressed suits, 20-year-old whiskies and 30-year-old brandies, discussions of how to make do with a mere $10 million budget in the booming Vancouver real estate market.
In all, we ended up meeting with at least a dozen borderline manic people, representing a plethora of companies, over drinks at several lounges on the Vancouver waterfront.
What threw me off, however, was that of all the companies I heard discussed, I recognized a grand total of zero.
The reason I didn’t recognize any of these companies was simple: they were too small to be on the radars of the mainstream financial press.
These were companies with valuations not in the dozens or even hundreds of billions of dollars, but mere millions… The biggest one, in fact (if my shaky memory of those two days serves), had a market capitalization of barely $50 million.
That alone was bizarre to me, almost as if I was the new kid in a strange school — but the differences didn’t stop there.
These companies — all of them, it seemed — were doing something fascinating.
Innovation: The Only Meaningful Currency
One was working on a way to help farmers pollinate crops without having to rely on standard honeybees; another was using an environmental remediation method to produce oil from bitumen-bearing shale; another was working on a vertical farming system that would allow the equivalent of a 60-acre farm to be placed on a standard city block; another was developing a cure for dementia from synthetic cannabis.
Despite the fact that Vancouver was known as a big hub for the mining industry, the ideas I heard tossed around were all over the place.
But they all had two things in common: size, and an apparently fanatical commitment to innovation.
It was almost as if this entire city, and the exchange on which these companies traded, was built on and lived off new, experimental, radically disruptive thinking.
Each company I heard about as we sat and drank in at least half a dozen different locations around the city was focused on altering the status quo of its respective industry.
Everything was experimental, risky, but, also, more than anything, everything was exciting.
Exciting enough that I got no sleep the second night there.
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Adrenaline… Lament… A New Mission In Life
I laid awake until sunlight cracked over the horizon, imagining the implications of owning the creator of the next big tech craze, or the company that fundamentally altered the way people grew crops for the first time in 10,000 years, all for pennies on the dollar.
But the realization that I was sitting on a mountain of opportunity also came with a grim second revelation: I’d been wasting my time for years, doing the kinds of trades I’d been doing.
It was then and there that I made a decision that would shape the rest of my life.
I made it my mission to infiltrate this market and this society, and become a player in my own right.
It was my best and perhaps only chance to break away from the mediocrity of normal retail investing, and I knew it.
After all, if I wanted to make real money and was able to deal with the elevated risk associated with investing in early-stage companies, what better way than to get in on the ground floor with each and every swing I took?
No more eking out a couple percentage points here and there.
The list of winners on this exchange had more triple-digit home runs than anything I’d ever seen before, and it made sense.
These companies were all, in essence, startups… companies that would never even be public on your mainstream exchanges like the NYSE.
And yet, the gains to be had made everything else, bar none, pale by comparison.
A Plan Comes Together
My life can be divided into two distinct eras: the time before this trip, and the time after it.
And in the years that followed, the plan I formulated during that sleepless night gradually evolved from concept to reality.
I worked, and I networked, and I spent hundreds of hours on the phone, but eventually, this exchange became a second home to me.
And yes, my life did start to change as a result. I made more money, the things I wanted and had dreamed about for years became mine, and best of all, the freedom to do what I wanted, when I wanted, materialized.
One thing, however, did not change.
This exchange, and the opportunities it presented, is still largely a secret.
Few people know about it, fewer understand it, and even fewer are brave enough to enter.
But today, I want to change that.
Though it took me years to master this market and the society that runs it, you don’t have to do all that.
Because part of my plan was to create a kind of a how-to for the uninitiated.
It’s taken me a long time to get it done, but it’s finally ready to be presented to a select group of my committed readers.
If you’re reading this, you’re one of them.
Don’t waste another moment. Share in my epiphany and learn about the best-kept secret in investing, today.
Click here for instant access.
Fortune favors the bold,
Alex Koyfman
Check us out on YouTube!His flagship service, Microcap Insider, provides market-beating insights into some of the fastest moving, highest profit-potential companies available for public trading on the U.S. and Canadian exchanges. With more than 5 years of track record to back it up, Microcap Insider is the choice for the growth-minded investor. Alex contributes his thoughts and insights regularly to Energy and Capital. To learn more about Alex, click here.
