Should I run more than one business?

Today, we are going to cover a topic I get asked by almost every client we’ve worked with.

“Should I run more than one business?”

We’ll explore the pros and cons of running multiple businesses simultaneously. As entrepreneurs, we often have great ideas that we want to test and expand upon. Sometimes, we gain traction and find ourselves juggling two, three, or even four businesses at once. I frequently get asked this question because I personally run three businesses: Purple Yak, Perfectly Polished, and Blue Bear Books.

Throughout the topic, I’ll share my personal experience of running multiple businesses, recount the events that led me to this point, and provide my recommendations for those considering running multiple businesses or who are currently working on multiple projects and wondering whether to prioritise one over another.

We will cover a range of topics, including the potential rewards and challenges of running multiple businesses, the importance of distinguishing between businesses and experiments, and the key factors to consider when making a decision about whether to pursue multiple business ventures.

So, if you’re currently at a stage where you have one business but are also trying something new on the side, building another project, and it’s still not a real, profitable venture with a P&L sheet, then it’s just an experiment. You’re simply testing the businesses viability. This is absolutely the thing to do, there’s nothing wrong with it because exploration is always beneficial. Ultimately, as an entrepreneur, your goal is to improve people’s lives as well as your own.

If you have the ability to do that, you’ll never face financial hardship. You’ll be able to sell your product or service consistently. The key is to identify what truly helps people you’re looking to serve and what they genuinely desire.

Now, if you’re currently in the experimentation phase, this advice doesn’t directly apply to you. You can run a business and experiment with other ideas simultaneously. However, the crucial aspect is to be quick and efficient when experimenting. Create minimal viable products (MVPs) as quickly as possible, limiting the time allocated for each iteration. Most business ideas and viability can even be tested over a single weekend before committing more time and testing to it.

For instance, I might attempt to put together a minimal viable product over a weekend and test its market reception. Depending on the complexity of creating the MVP, I recommend a maximum of one month. This applies regardless of whether you’re in the software, physical product, or professional services space. Creating an MVP may take longer than a month.

Remember, this initial MVP is not a final product. It’s essential to simplify it as much as possible. The goal is to validate the idea and test whether you can exchange money for the product or service.

Now, the reason we suggest you limit yourself to a weekend, a week, or at most four weeks, is to avoid spending too much time on this side project. You want to ensure it’s a quick and easy MVP because you need to dedicate your resources, time, effort, and money to the business that’s already working and generating revenue. After all, you don’t want to neglect your primary business that’s bringing in the money.

However, if you don’t have a business yet and you’re experimenting, then please build multiple MVPs, fail quickly, and learn from those experiences. The sooner you do this, the sooner you’ll find something that actually works and can become your business.

Many of my clients ask, what’s it like running more than one business? How did you get to this point?

Well, I actually started with a physical location business with my wife. We grew this to a point where the business was generating significant profits each month and my wife took the reins on that business to continue to run and grow it. My focus drifted to helping friends and family to grow their businesses by sharing my experiences, ideas and outside perspective on their businesses. I found enjoyment in this and working with business owners, one day a friend said why don’t you offer this out to other business and become a coach or consultant.

This was the first time I considered it as an actual business, all I was doing at that moment was helping people I knew and loved to create financial freedom from the businesses they were running. I tested the idea with some local businesses and out of the 20 I approached 11 took me up on my offer, this was beyond my expectations when it came to up take. After the first few sessions with the business owners it became clear this was a viable business and it was work I’m really passionate about on top of really enjoying it.

I focused my efforts into growing this new business as well as keeping my eye on our original business, Perfectly Polished.

Both of these ventures around the same time, just a year apart.

Surprisingly, they actually grew at the same pace simultaneously. So, I had no reason to let go of either one. Additionally, the experiences I had with Perfectly Polished complimented the work I was doing in Purple Yak and supporting these clients to grow their own businesses based on my experiences, challenges and opportunities.

By working on one business, it actually benefits the other in the long run.

In the vast majority of cases, to manage and run a successful business effectively, you need to have good people around you to make this happen. They need to have a clear direction on what they have to do and what their role is within the business. Without this you have people working in a business that need constant guidance and don’t really have any accountability. Empower your team with a clear understanding what you expect from them, what they’re responsible for and what they need to achieve. This will allow you to run the business instead of working in it, this in turn then frees your time up knowing your successful business, will continue to remain successful and generating you profits month after month.

The senior person in your team should then be relaying key business indicators to you on a monthly basis and tracking them over a rolling 12 month basis so you can ensure the business is still remaining successful and everything is running smoothly. If you’ve set the business targets to grow you can monitor progress and step back into the business if it needs steering back on course, this should be a last resort.

Going into the business constantly or at the first sign of an issue, will not help your business or team in the long run. Support the business and your team to assess why things are as they are now, what potentially needs tweaking, get their ideas and guide them to next steps. Then allow them the safe space to make these corrective changes, this way they will get the experience and knowledge on how to work this themselves next time.

Now, I must disclose that running two businesses would be utterly impossible without the support of a team.

When you’re “pulled in different directions,” it can become extremely stressful. My advice is that if your multiple businesses actually work together, if one succeeds, it can promote the others. This is fantastic, and they become more like separate products rather than separate businesses.

Having team members to assist you is definitely manageable, even if it’s just one or two, or if it’s a virtual system that handles admin tasks. It takes a significant amount of time. Many people enjoy the idea of having multiple businesses because they feel safer.

Having multiple revenue streams provides a backup plan, or even several backup plans, if you have more than two businesses. However, this assumes all your businesses will be successful, and they will succeed despite splitting your time, effort, or attention across all the businesses.

Now, if these businesses are truly hands-off and you can hire out for most of the work, that’s perfectly acceptable. I’ve seen many entrepreneurs do this.

One advantage of running multiple businesses is the opportunity to gain fresh perspectives when working on one project and then switching to another. This can prevent burnout, which can occur when you’re solely focused on one business.

On the other hand, having a side project can inspire and provide relief, allowing you to return to your main business with renewed energy and motivation.

To wrap up today’s session I want to leave you with this.

While running multiple businesses can be challenging, they can also benefit each business when they align with each other. For instance, if you have the same market and customer base in multiple businesses, you can consider whether one customer progresses from one business to the next or purchases products from different businesses. For example, you could offer a Personal Trainer Services and then sell home gym equipment and meal plans, potentially even meals.

So, when your clients become enthralled in your PT services, they’re eager to look and shop on what they can do to improve their situation faster and easier. However, before you start thinking about building a team to manage this workload, consider whether you have multiple businesses that aren’t mutually beneficial and are spreading you thin. Take a hard look at these businesses.

Which ones can you eliminate or temporarily stop working on? Experiment and observe the results. Dedicate the time you normally spend on one of these businesses to one that’s actually gaining traction and helping you grow.

After a month, evaluate the impact. Does the business you focused on improve? What about the one you stopped working on? Has it declined, remained the same, or improved without your direct involvement?

Give it a try. A month is a suitable period for experimentation.

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Got a burning question? Reach out on our social channels or email me at michael@purpleyak.co.uk

Thank you so much for reading.

Take care.