Although it may seem challenging, some entrepreneurs can pull off handling multiple businesses. Is it easy? Not as easy as owning a single business. But you can employ specific strategies if you want to work for multiple companies simultaneously.
Entrepreneurs that have ideas for multiple businesses live a very organized life. They manage their schedules well and are ready to cope with massive financial setbacks. Hiring the right people in different positions is the key to managing multiple businesses successfully. If you have efficient human resources available, you can manage the workload by delegating.
Handling multiple businesses isn’t easy because you have to build them and then ensure smooth business operations so that you can make profits from both.
Tips for Owning Multiple Businesses
1) Hire Good Leaders
The biggest challenge of owning multiple businesses is getting overwhelmed by having too many tasks in front of you. You may feel that your attention is needed everywhere as you try to stay on top of your business operations, resolve queries, and prevent future problems. If you have had this feeling, it means that you are yet to find the right leaders for your multiple businesses.
To ensure smooth business operations, you must have an ideal recruitment strategy. You can hire executive-level leaders who can put their experience and energy into running your businesses.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
Neil Patel is a brilliant example of an individual who owns multiple businesses. He owns a digital marketing agency alongside three other software companies. He believes that if you work on multiple businesses with a good team, you will eventually realize that you have little to do. This isn’t because you have delegated many of your tasks, but because you have discovered the secret of mastering entrepreneurship.
When you hire individuals for your company, make sure you look for strong personalities who can demonstrate their talent and skills. You should always communicate with them if they need any help, but you should also trust them to carry out operations independently. You should always motivate your employees to improve their skills and gain knowledge.
2) Invest Less Than What You Earn
It is likely that when you started your first company, you would have invested everything into it. However, when you are running multiple businesses, you have much more to lose than gain. It is not about investing everything at your disposal to be a risk-taker for your business. You cannot assume you should overspend on one business if the other works well. When you manage multiple businesses, you must have firm boundaries and a stable business budget.
According to some of the top business leaders in the world, you should earn more than what you invest. You must look for cheap solutions to keep your overhead costs low. For example, you can create a permanent shift for remote work. Numerous companies in the world have explored remote opportunities after the COVID-19 pandemic. Schedule certain shifts where your employees can work from home will greatly reduce your overhead costs.
There is no problem in investing for the future, even if it makes you lose out on money. However, your long-term plan should always be to make more than you spend.
3) Prioritize Businesses That Grow Fastest
There can be many reasons to give more time to certain ventures. Still, it may disrupt the success of your other companies that are going through critical stages. If your fastest-growing business needs your leadership, devote your time to growing it until you hire an executive who can conduct the day-to-day operations with your structure.
For example, you would rather have one successful business than multiple mediocre companies? If so, you should prioritize the best-working business so that you are capitalizing on every opportunity. Most importantly, you can also ensure that your successful business acquires a venture that it can support financially.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
Once you have mastered the skills of making one of your businesses successful, you will find it easy to apply those tactics to others. You may even go for a strategic approach by working on one business in the short term and keeping the other up your sleeve. When you own two or more businesses, you can ask yourself the following questions:
- Which one of these businesses can grow faster?
- Can you use the success of one business to launch another business?
When running multiple businesses, you must look at the bigger picture. You should consider your businesses as a whole portfolio to see more opportunities for their growth and improved decision-making.
4) Create Separate Corporations
If any of your business plans include retail sales or buying equipment, legal risk and liability can be your two main talking points. According to a blog shared by Nellie Akalp, the best thing is to register each of your businesses as a separate entity, regardless of it being LLC or corporation. As a result, if any of your businesses face legal issues, it wouldn’t harm any other companies.
The biggest benefit of this approach is that it isolates the risk to every individual business. Usually, real estate investors build an LLC for each property to protect each investment. Therefore, if Property Alpha is sued, it won’t risk your assets belonging to Property Beta or Property Gamma.
Although some people having multiple businesses tend to create a holding business that acquires all of their other companies, it can risk complications. If there is a potential legal or tax issue found within any of your businesses, you will struggle to get rid of those accusations. Although more paperwork is involved in creating separate entities, there is less damage control.
Advantages of Owning Multiple Businesses
When you have multiple businesses, you have the chance to test a lot of strategies at the same time. For example, you can highlight the marketing strategies you should use or when to push online sales. This informed decision-making is essential when selling products on different platforms, such as eBay and Strikingly. By having this approach, you will understand which platforms are better equipped to run advertisement campaigns and which platform is better for driving more online sales.
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As long as you have a strong team and effective contributors, you will realize that running multiple businesses isn’t time-consuming. You can trust your team members to make the right decisions and solve potential problems.
As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive impact on many industries worldwide, and the employment sector is one of them. The unemployment rate has increased, and many running businesses have seen a decline in revenue. If you own multiple businesses, you can make a lot of money even if one of the businesses goes down.
Multiple businesses are not for fragile mentalities. It is expected that you will deal with many problems and stress coming your way. You may think that it is a drawback, but actually, it is not. You can develop a thick skin by handling so many problems simultaneously.
Build an Online Store with Strikingly
Image taken from Strikingly
If you rely on a website builder like Strikingly, building an online store is quite a straightforward process. We provide our users with ready-to-use website templates that can be easily customized to suit your brand and personality. These templates are optimized for mobile phones, which means that you can manage your online store from any place and anywhere.
The ready-made website templates ensure you don’t need to invest in building website designs from scratch. You can use the drag-and-drop feature to all the relevant elements on your web pages, such as call to action (CTA) button, navigation system, etc.
Moreover, our user-friendly tools help you create your online store independently without writing a single line of code or investing in a professional website developer.
Image taken from Strikingly
Once you have built an online store, you can sell products by owning multiple businesses on the same platform. Make sure to add multiple payment gateways, create an attractive eCommerce product page, set the right prices, and promote your eCommerce website.
The basic website features required to build an online store feature is available in our free plan. It means you don’t need to invest much money in making this shift. Your online store can also work as a one-stop platform for marketing and selling your business products on the Internet.
Conclusion
Running multiple businesses takes considerable skills that you cannot learn overnight. However, achieving success in one business can motivate you to succeed in owning multiple businesses because you apply the steps that you learned from your first business. From a legal standpoint, many experts believe you should incorporate both businesses as separate entities. If one of your businesses becomes financially weak, the other business can acquire it to minimize the losses.
Although running multiple businesses is not for everyone, it can still be achieved with the right mindset. Make sure you follow all the tips mentioned above before tackling this challenge. You should imagine how you will work as a dynamic force before taking on multiple companies at once. You can keep your business healthy by finding a balance between your professional work and personal life.
