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 San Diego web development and web design company that focuses on business strategy and online marketing.
![[Webstigma: san diego seo company]](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}
- What You Need To Know About Being Sued Personal Finance blogger Lazy Man & Money is being sued by a multi-level marketing company called MonaVie that sells a very expensive juice. The crux of the matter is that Lazy Man is highly skeptical of the claims the company makes about the product and the company is trying to......
- Should Small Businesses Pay For Health Care? Here's an interesting article in the Washington Post. I'm not sure I agree that Medical Insurers should be applauded for growing their profits 400%+ over the past few years but the fact remains that business profitability remains the core of a strongth economy. In fact, the only way we can......
- Due Diligence For Businesses Today's guest post is from James at DINKS finance: This posting will be on the topic of doing due diligence when evaluating investment opportunities. When Iâm talking about investment opportunities, Iâm speaking specifically about taking part in new business start ups. Iâm not speaking about investing in stocks or loaning......
Related Websites
- Internet Site Is Necessary To Your Business Let's say you have the idea that the Internet site is necessary to your business. You are right, if believe that: Well-maid Internet site of the company can give to people all documents, necessary for getting representation about the company. And people can get this information at any convenient to......
- Job Online How you treat the additional profit in the world web system. The majority of people all over the world join the great deal of kinds of profit in the internet with the aim to make some money. There are people who use the money on – line with the reason......
- The Business of Blogging One of the main problems facing corporate bloggers is that they do not treat their blogs like a business, and they may not take them seriously enough. There are fortunes to be made in the blogosphere, but many companies will fail to stake their claim, simply because they don't spend......
[All content is copyright of Living Off Dividends & Passive Income]
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.