How To Start Multiple Businesses
A couple of years ago, I went to a real estate seminar and met a successful businessman. He was in his sixties and I was amazed to learn that he had more than a dozen small businesses going and was also trying to start his own bank.
Since I wanted to find out how did he manage to run so many different ventures, I offered to buy him lunch. (Incidentally, that’s a great way to cheaply pick the brains of someone who normally wouldn’t give you the time of day!)
Most of the various businesses he ran were some how interconnected and did a lot of business amongst themselves. Since they were in somewhat related fields, the management was a lot easier. For example, one of his businesses was writing newsletters for Trade Unions and another one was printing & mailing services.
I also learned that he had small interests in a dozen more businesses. He had cultivated great relationships over the years and whenever one of his friends needed advice on starting a new project, he would get the right people involved and help get them up and running. In return get a minority ownership stake in them, but then he moved on to other ventures. He also got a seat on the board of directors, so he had involvement in the general direction of the business but his actual time commitment was pretty small after the initial push.
I’ve always thought that was a great model to follow, especially for someone like myself with a short attention span! Not only do you not have to work a whole lot, but if have enough of these going, they provide economic diversity and lower your financial risk.
Recently I’ve partnered with some friends to create WebStigma, a web design and internet marketing company that focuses on business strategy and online marketing.
![[Webstigma: Web Design, Business Development & Strategy, SEO]](http://livingoffdividends.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/webstigma_seo_san_diego_orange-300x282.jpg)
Between us, we have experience with creating business and social networking websites, creating online business development plans and strategies, web-based applications and providing search engine optimization and marketing solutions.
If you’re interested in hiring us, mention that you’re a reader of “Living Off Dividends & Passive Income” and we’ll give you a 10% discount. Use the contact page on the Webstigma site to get a quote. No project is too small or too large for us!
And the best part is that my partners know I’m going to be studying for my MBA full-time and are OK with me working only part-time.
If you found this post helpful, consider donating to my coffee fund!![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
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June 21st, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Nice post LOD.I hope that your venture succeeds and further adds to your income!
June 22nd, 2008 at 8:44 am
[...] Off Dividends talks about How To Manage Multiple Businesses which is fairly easy to do as long as you understand it is in your best interest to participate to [...]
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:16 am
The website looks great!
There is a spelling mistake on the home page” “webstite research.”
Also, looking at it on my computer using Firefox 3 and IE 7, single quotation marks are being replaced by a wierd symbol (i.e. aren�t). I don’t know a lot about this, but do they need to use the right escape codes?
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:00 pm
I’m in the process of developing a business networking site and I found this article useful b/c I to would like to design sites, run them for a little while and resell i.e. siteflipping. I too have a short attention span and can think of a whole lot of creative things, but I don’t necessarily want to manage the sites forever. I’ll check out your site and hopefully you can give me pointers.
June 24th, 2008 at 6:05 am
This is inspiring and a lot to take in. I guess I need to file this away for when I am out of credit card debt and ready to start a business.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
I love thinking up new ways to generate passive income. Looks like you are off to a great start!
June 29th, 2008 at 10:10 am
[...] OFF DIVIDENDS presents How To Start Multiple Businesses posted at LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS & PASSIVE [...]
July 1st, 2008 at 5:32 am
I would love to start a bank and actually just mentioned it to friends but received little interest. Their normal reply sounded like “you mean that you wish to close a bank.”
July 9th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I think you are on to something very big here. Creating several businesses that leverage each other is a great idea. The Internet is a place were starting a new business is easy and has very little investment. The hardest part is figuring out the system of suppliers and customers. Generating traffic and finding partners to make an income with your traffic.
Blogging is a great way to learn the system, and once you have you can leverage your knowledge to create another website. I just read Darrans new book at ProBlogger.com and he has had as many as 20 blogs at one time.