Choncé Maddox — March 20, 2019 — March 20, 2019
Have you ever thought about starting another business but put the idea out of your head because you thought you didn’t have the time? Perhaps, you already started multiple different ventures and are wondering how you’re going to keep up.
Being a serial or multi-entrepreneur is not uncommon. In fact, the average self-made millionaire has around 7 streams of income. This doesn’t mean they have seven jobs – that’s probably impossible. It likely means they are diversifying their income between active work, investing and passive income, along with entrepreneurship.
While multitasking isn’t often recommended by others, you’d be surprised at how many successful millionaires own multiple businesses. So how do you effectively manage multiple businesses without losing it? Here are a few tips to help if you’re currently in this situation or will be facing it soon.
Realize That You’re Doing It
The first step is to realize and actually accept the fact that you’re running more than one business. If you feel like you’re spinning your wheels, that’s probably because you are.
As you start to branch out and develop different services and products, establish a separate business if these don’t relate to each other. For example, I’m a freelance writer but I also run 3 other blogs and am getting more involved with content marketing and outreach.
Instead of trying to marry all these different ideas together when they may not fit, I can just acknowledge the fact that I have separate businesses that don’t quite relate to one another all the time.
Decide If You Want to Keep Separate Calendars
Planning and organizing is very important when you run a business. If you’re running more than one business, it’s crucial. Decide if you want to keep separate calendars for each business or if you just want to have one main calendar that you use.
It all depends on what you feel will work best. Different calendars may help you separate your businesses better and make sure you’re scheduling enough time to work on everything.
However, it may also lead to confusion since you could overbook yourself or schedule too many things making it unrealistic for you to focus on each business equally throughout the day. The solution would be to adopt a calendar system that allows you to tag events and tasks for specific projects so you can separate the layout or combine it into one main calendar view whenever you want.
Stop Working, Start Overseeing
If you’re trying to effectively manage multiple businesses, you can’t keep working as an employee. There are only 24 hours in a day and you can’t work full time at two or three of your businesses. At least, you won’t be able to keep that up for long.
This is why it’s important to start overseeing and stop doing all the work. Become the person who develops the strategy and procedures then hire and train other people to do the work.
It can be difficult to let go of control especially when you run an online business and can work from anywhere. However, think of it this way. What if you owned a business that was operated in different physical locations?
If you owned a few restaurants, would you be able to work a full 8-10 hour shift in each of them every day? Absolutely not. You’d have to hire cooks, servers, hostesses, dishwashers, etc. You’d probably oversee the vision for the restaurant along with the menu and the inventory. However, you’d have to do more overseeing less working in the actual business to make progress.
Hire a Team You Can Count On
Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you run multiple businesses. I’ve already explained why you can’t handle it all. The first step you should take is hiring an assistant or a contractor to take some tasks off your hands.
Consider handing off tasks that take up lots of time but can be easily learned by someone else. Often times, these tasks will involve producing some type of service or product for your customers and clients.
For my other blogs, I hire people to edit content, create images, make technical updates, and do other tasks I don’t have a lot of time for. You can hire a contractor first to test out how well things go and then consider hiring on an employee or two to help keep the business going.
An assistant can also be helpful and you can choose from a general assistant or a more niche role. For example, you may need someone to manage social media or outreach. Take the time to establish systems and properly train your team so they can be efficient and get things done without your direct involvement all the time.
Analyze Each Business Separately
You should spend more and more time analyzing each of your businesses to assess what has and hasn’t been working. Your team will look to you for direction. Plus, you don’t want to waste time and resources on tactics that aren’t working for your business.
Do a separate analysis of each business at least once a month. Track what team members are doing, what you’re doing, and how the results are playing out.
This will help you stay on track with your goals and effectively manage multiple businesses without stressing out or feeling like you never have enough time to get things done and make progress.
Have you ever thought about starting another business? How would you go about managing more than one business?
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