The revival of the arts and the birth of the sciences from the 14th century through to the 17th gave rise to the term renaissance man – one known as an expert in many fields, ultimately typified by Michelangelo. Are you someone who finds it impossible to choose between your many loves? If so, don’t be surprised to find yourself starting a second business!
We used to live in an either/or universe where we had to trade off our loves against each other – the costs of dabbling in many fields were simply prohibitive. The immense changes in recent years (social media, outsourcing, cloud computing etc.) are now allowing us to create innovative business models which have very different requirements in terms of time and resources when compared to traditional start-ups. Successfully operating multiple businesses has become a very real possibility for us renaissance types.
The good news is we can now choose AND instead of either/or. We can choose to do a whole lot more of what we love! I see a lot of people frustrated with the advice to ‘choose a niche’ and stick to it. That’s because we have so many great ideas, and so many interests.
So how do you move from that long list of things that bring you joy and bliss into multiple profitable businesses? Choose the business idea which is most likely to generate the greatest profits for the least effort. This business will most likely bankroll the second business you start. If you look at Warren Buffett’s investing strategy it makes use of this simple concept – each investment he makes provides the cash for the next investment.
Don’t start the second business until you have the first business running successfully – ideally with a team in place. This is closer to the Richard Branson model – he gets to play with lots of ideas that are fun for him because he did the hard yards in his first businesses. His philosophy is that if you can run one business well, you can run any business well. The key to success here is working out what a successful business model looks like, taking into account your management style, talents and abilities. It’s different for all of us!
Keep a list of business ideas. It will be easier and faster to start the second business if you can leverage if off the first one! Before you start celebrating and run off to start your next business, you’ll need to think about the risks – I’ll cover some of these in my next post.
