Sounds like a great idea — start a bunch of businesses, hire people to do the work, and rake in the money. I might have to do that.
Only there’s a catch (of course there is): you still have to run them, put out all the fires across multiple organizations, hire the right people, and not go insane in the process.
That’s actually a whole bunch of catches. You threw your net kinda wide and caught the motherload.
It Looks Simple, but…
That view from 30,000 feet looks pretty simple and serene. Running multiple businesses can exponentially increase the demands on your time. Not to mention the plethora of headaches when a problem in one business actually causes problems in the other ones. Nothing like one problem becoming five, right?
Obviously running multiple businesses can be done. After all, we have all seen people who manage it and make it look easy (at least in public): Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Warren Buffett, just to name a few.
So how do they do it?
Organization
They have learned to organize their businesses. They have developed systems which they can plug into any business and get it running smoothly. They have systems and standards for evaluating talent and hiring people.
But first they learned how to organize. Delegate. Develop a method so they can offload the work that they don’t like or aren’t good at, specifically so they can spend time doing their genius work.
Organize. Some of us don’t like that word, or the structure it carries. Yet this is the key to growth; the key to expansion. It is the only way to remain sane when you start adding companies like pairs of shoes or cats. If you leave the shoes lying around everywhere, you’re going to trip all over them and ruin them. Same thing with cats.
How to Start
As the business owner, you have a vital purpose — that thing which you are really good at and which is most valuable to your company. Now in the beginning, you may have to do everything. That’s not a bad thing, because you need to know HOW to do everything. That’s necessary, because initially you will be the person who trains new hires.
As you grow (and growth can occur fast), you must hire the right people who can do the job and who like doing the job. This is where systems come into play. Don’t just hire willy-nilly. Get a hiring procedure which does a proper evaluation of your applicants so you can weed out those who don’t fit your culture or have the work ethic/qualifications/abilities you want. You will save time in the hiring process, and you will have far fewer mis-hires that you have to fire later on.
Put other systems in place to handle other areas: customer acquisition, marketing, HR, etc. And the more you can both automate and delegate these systems to other people, the more you can shed those work items that aren’t your vital purpose.
Use Tried and True Systems
Don’t start from scratch trying to design your own system. You don’t have time for trial and error management. Find proven systems and install them. They may cost you some money up front, but they will save you many multiples of that amount down the road. Wasting time and hiring the wrong people are the most expensive mistakes you can make.
As you add businesses, you implement the same systems in each company. This way everything operates the same in each organization, and you don’t have to worry about it. Spend your time doing top-level activities and hire employees to run the other parts of your companies.
New business? Rinse, repeat. You may need some tweaks to the system depending on the specific requirements of that business (such as licensing, permitting, etc.), but the main form of the system should be the same.
This is where scalability comes in. Implementing repeatable systems creates time. You can’t scale up without time to do the work.
As your businesses grow, delegate more to other people. Then your time is spent on high value activities. And the more you can do that, the more you can grow.
So get organized NOW. Implement proven systems to your company, and you will be amazed at the time you save.
Need help? We have many programs to help you get organized, including exact systems to run your business. Check it out here.
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