Business Opportunities Weblog

Flip That Business!

By on December 5, 2007 in Profiles

Now that the real estate market has tanked, it’s much more difficult to flip a house. There are, however, a select group of “flippers” that are making money despite the real estate slump. What’s their secret? They aren’t flipping houses, they are flipping businesses.

These Bizz Flippers (named coined by the company BizzFlip) are taking advantage of the relatively untapped marketplace of buying and selling existing businesses. How are they making money? They are using the same basic principals that apply to flipping a house. They buy a business, make improvements and renovations, and then sell the business for a profit.

There are two significant differences here between flipping a house and flipping a business. The first is that it takes more work and more business experience to run and then flip a business. That seems obvious. The second, and what makes it so appealing to people, is that during the interim of the flip there is an opportunity to make money from the business itself. In contrast, during the interim of a house flip you run the risk of falling into the red. Bizz Flippers are effectively decreasing the risk involved with their investment. 



It’s hard to say, but it certainly seems fathomable that sometime in the future we will see a spike in this. Who knows, next time you turn on the television you might see that Flip That Bizz has replaced Flip That House.

Photo via Housing Doom.

buying a business value

Business Opportunities Weblog editor and publisher Dane Carlson lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, just 15 miles from Yosemite National Park. He accidentally became a professional blogger in 2001. He has added 12,203 posts to the site.

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  • http://www.moretimegreatmoney.blogspot.com Stacy O’Quinn

    That is a very interesting concept. Can you imagine the opportunity? Of course it probably would help if you had knowledge of the industry that business is in. I would guess that finding the business to flip would be the hardest part.

    Brings up another point. What if you flipped an MLM position within a company. You bought a position built the momentum if you have that experiance and then “flip it”. Just an interesting thought thinking outside of the box!

    Stacy O’Quinn

  • Tyler Carbone

    This is essentially what private equity firms do.

  • Josh

    Have you ever heard of LBO? This has been going on for years and made people extremely wealthy. Think Ivan Boesky.

  • http://www.theflipboard.com Richard

    Isn’t this exact what the venture capitalists have been doing for decades? Buy a business, get it profitable and then sell it for a profit?

    I’m glad the little guy can get in on this action now~

  • KC Truby

    I have been doing this for years on a small basis (one business at a time) but plan to buy 2 or 3 companies in 2013. My big problem is finding management partners that will be as dedicated to the plan as I will be. I’ll need to come up with some sort of revenue sharing plan to get real dedication.

    After 40 years in accounting I have seen every mistake a business owner could possible make so we developed a 72 step standard business system that can be laid over the top of any small company. All based on what we have seen work and fail in our own 7 companies and the thousands of people we have done accounting for.

    It looks like it will be a lot of fun over the last 10 years of my working life and I hope to have 12 firms paying me $2,000 to $10,000 a month net as we get this done. Of course in some cases it will make more sense to sell – generally when you have a business like construction that is difficult to standardize.

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