
“We are here to kickstart your ecommerce ambitions by providing you with a range of ecommerce stores in the most popular niches whilst providing you with a fully functioning business complete with products to sell saving you time, money and effort in the process."
“We are here to kickstart your ecommerce ambitions by providing you with a range of ecommerce stores in the most popular niches whilst providing you with a fully functioning business complete with products to sell saving you time, money and effort in the process."
Serial entrepreneurs can run and manage multiple businesses at the same time by following these tips…
As a serial entrepreneur, you have multiple business. But knowing how to chose the best niche for your next business, how to make the physical management process as efficient as possible and how to protect each business from your others in a legal capacity is, well difficult. So listen to this episode of the Startup Stream Serial Entrepreneur Podcast to find out how…
Let’s begin…
Use the same location to run multiple businesses
The first tip for you today, which will help with efficiency, is making sure as much as possible that you can run your businesses from the same physical location. This ensures you won’t be wasting precious time each day travelling to and from work places.
As an example, this also allows you to share resources and even staff. If you have two businesses, do both really need their own printer, do both need their own bathroom, do both need their own HR representative?
That’s right, you can also overlap the functions your staff play between businesses. You can also do this with your hiring team, maintenance, office managers… and if one of your businesses relies on one specific profession, as in our case at Startup Streams , where we have professional designers and developers; if I had another business which doesn’t need a full time developer or designer, my new business could borrow their skills, at least to help launching the new branding and website. What’s more, I am sure that your staff in this situation will welcome the opportunity to work on other projects outside of their usual day-to-day.
Prioritise interlocking niches
Imagine if you can work on one business, but it in fact helps all of the businesses that you own? Well this can be achieved with interlocking business niches. We preach this a lot at Startup Streams. We sell pre-made ready-to-grow businesses for sale at StartupStreams.com, and we offer a lifetime membership whereby any entrepreneur can startup as many of our businesses as they want for life. We often get asked by our members for advice referring to which business they should chose to startup second. Our advice is always choose an interlocking niche.
For example, if a member started up a fitness store first, their second store could be the Keto diet, healthy eating or weight loss niches stores. They can then cross promote their new business from their existing store. As you may have heard me say in a previous podcast, “the people most likely to buy from you in the world are those who already have”. So with an interlocking niche, you can turn past customers into repeat customers, but with your second business.
Prioritise your attention
For the next tip, it’s a simple one. You will need to actionably prioritise which business needs to take up the majority of your time, or do you equally split your time? When you startup a second business, the activities associated with starting up will be more in the beginning than the time to run your business daily, especially if you plan on hiring a reliable operations manager to take care of the day-to-day. Only you can choose how you go about doing this, but I recommend our previous podcasts; one called “How to find time to start your next business” and the second, “How does Elon Musk manage his time?” for more time management tips.
Carrying on…
Make sure each business is a separate entity
This is a point I learnt from a recorded interview with Virgin founder, Sir Richard Branson. Believe it not, the Virgin Group owns over 400 companies. Wow - Branson is the living embodiment of a serial entrepreneur it seems.
What Branson does well, is to make sure that each business pursuit is its own separate entity, and not all under one roof, so to speak. This is so that if one business goes under, as was the case with Virgin Cola, the rest of the businesses don’t suffer as a result. Each business is legally protected from the rest.
I am sure that Branson was relieved that Virgin Atlantic wasn’t affiliated with his other 399 businesses when they asked for a Government bail out during the lock down period associated with the pandemic, when no one was travelling.
So the takeaway point here is, when launching a new product or service at your first business, is it wise to do so under the same banner, or launch it as a separate legal entity? It may be worth considering if it is high risk.
Of course, doing so will have more red tape involved, but I’ll leave you to make the best call for yourself.
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You don’t have to go it alone
The last main tip for today is making sure that you can reply on your co-founders if you have them. It’s best at an early stage, way beyond starting your second business - if doing so by yourself or with another team - to help set expectations. The key takeaway here is to make sure that you set expectations.
You will need to be honest and forthright about how much of your attention will be split between your first business and the new.
But this is can also advantageous. Maybe you have a co-founder ready to step into more of a leadership role?
If you have co-founders, perhaps you can lean on the a little. And in turn, reciprocate the favour down the line?
FAQs
So, I have a few frequently asked questions for you now…
Q1. Can you legally own multiple businesses?
Quick answer, yes! Regarding to the US and UK, there is no legal limit to how many business entities you can own, as a single individual. If you are outside the US or UK, please check with your local laws.
Q2. Can you startup two businesses at the same time?
Whilst this is possible, it is ill advised. Especially when staring out. It will save you far more time and energy to concentrate your efforts on each business when you startup, rather than launching multiple businesses at the same time. The advise is to set one business up at a time and when the business is set to run itself, or you have put in place systems to reduce the time it takes to manage it, that is when you should consider starting the next business.
Q3. Is owning multiple businesses difficult?
Short answer is yes, of course it is - it is a challenge. If you are concerned about stress and burn out, check out our podcast “How To Deal With Feeling Stressed When Starting A New Business” and if you are seriously considering starting up your next business, check out our other podcast called “6 Signs You Are Ready To Start Up A Second Business”.
Key takeaways
And here are this podcast’s key takeaways for you today:
1. It’s best to use the same physical location to manage both businesses efficiently, whether that is a shop, garage or office.
2. Prioritise your second business idea if it interlocks the same niche and services of your first business
3. Register each business as a separate legal entity to protect it from risk
4. Lean on your co-founders for support
The Startup Streams Serial Entrepreneurship Podcast
I hope that you enjoyed listening to this episode of the Startup Streams Serial Entrepreneur Podcast? Make sure that you like and subscribe to our podcast and you can check out more episodes at StartupStreams.com right now…
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