MBA1767 Should You Run Multiple Businesses at The Same Time + Free Ride Friday

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SIPC Running more than one business can definitely be rewarding, fun, exciting, but they do have their drawbacks. Should you be running multiple businesses? I'm going to share a little bit of my story and share what I think works, what doesn't, and how to make this decision for yourself. First of all, as entrepreneurs, our job is to see what works, to experiment, to put things out there in the world and allow the marketplace, allow our potential, potential customers to tell us this is something they want or not. So I don't want to confuse businesses with experiments with MVPs with minimal viable products or offerings. I'm talking about businesses that have traction, that have revenue, that even have expenses, and have ambitions to grow. So if you're in a stage right now where maybe you have one business but you're trying something else on the side, you're building another project. And it's still not something that's real, that actually has a P and L sheet and is making money. This is just still an experiment. You're still just seeing if this is going to work. And there's nothing wrong with that because it's always good to explore. Because at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is improve other people's lives. As an entrepreneur, if you know how to improve other people's lives, you're gonna never starve, right? You're gonna be able to sell your product, sell your service all day, all night. It's just finding out what it is that helps people, that people actually want. So if you're in the experimentation phase, this doesn't really apply to you because you can run a business and experiment with other things on the side. Now, the key here is that when you experiment, you put things out quickly. You have quick MVPs. Limit yourself on how long it takes. Some people limit themselves to a weekend. Hey, I'm going to try to put something together, a minimal viable product over a weekend and see if people actually bite. Now, depending on how much work it requires to create your mvp, I say maximum one month. It doesn't matter. If you're in software, you're from the physical product space. If you're selling a course, it takes more than a month. This is not an mvp. You need to slim it down as much as possible. You're just trying to validate the idea and see if you can exchange money for the product or service. Now, the reason why I say you should really limit yourself to a weekend, to a week, to maximum four weeks, is that you don't want to spend too much of your time on the side project. You want to make sure it's a quick and easy mvp, because you need to make sure that your resources, your time, your effort, your money is dedicated to the business you have that is working. That is bringing home the bacon right now. Again, if you don't have that business yet and you're experimenting, then please build, build. Many MVPs fail fast. Learn from those experiences because the sooner you do that, the sooner you'll land on something that actually works and can be your business. Now, many people ask, what is it like running two businesses? Omar, how did this happen? Why do you run a successful, you know, program and brand and show podcast, the $100 MBA and a software company? Well, I actually started both of these around the same time, months apart. Neither of them had traction yet. Neither of them was really proving to have traction and bring in revenue. So they actually kind of grew at the same pace at the same time. So I had real no reason to let go one or the other. The other thing is that the podcast, the community that we have, the 100 on MBA, it really helps and supplements the other business I have, which is a software company, a webinar platform where our audience of the 100 MBA is similar. We could share those audiences between the Hunter lmba and Webinar Ninja. They serve each other. So by working on one business, it's going to help the other in the long term. It wasn't like I had A fast food restaurant and a yoga studio. Right. One customer base is interested in fast, cheap, unhealthy food. The other is interested in being healthy, trim, eating, organic. So it makes sense for me to have a business that complements the other business. So even if I'm dedicating some time to the 100 MBA or to webinar Ninja, it's still helping the other one. And I saw revenue and the business grow at the same rate for both. So it was hard for me to just say goodbye to one because both were doing well, well, well, according to my standards or according to my goals. And well, for me was just making a profit and seeing if this thing actually helps people. And both the show and the software was doing that. So we kept both going. Now, I have to tell you right now that running two businesses would be absolutely impossible if I didn't have a team around me to produce just this podcast. We have five team members involved, we have a daily podcast. So we have to make sure that we are on top of it every single day. We gotta be ahead. We have to create a lot of content. So you have me, the host. You have Nicole, my co founder and is the producer of the show. You have Carl, who's the sound engineer and editor of the podcast. He puts this episode all together. We have Connor, who's a content writer, writes all the show notes and the social media snippets and anything that needs to be written for the show, like our newsletter that get sent out about the podcast. And we have Romina, who's our executive assistant that ties up all the loose ends and makes sure that the podcast gets published on our website. It gets published on the feed, uploads all the file, basically is the glue between all the roles. So for me, as the CEO of my other company, Webinar Ninja, I can step in a couple days a week for a few hours, do my episodes, produce the content and then hand it over to my team. I can then focus back on Webinar Ninja. So the effort that I have to spend, the time I have to spend on the $100 MBA show doesn't pull me away from my duties as the CEO of Opener Ninja. But if your business doesn't grow to the point where you can fund some help, some team members, whether part time or full time, it's going to be really hard for you to sustain two businesses. You bootstrapping it yourself. Obviously this depends on the nature of your businesses, how much management you need to do. Is it an affiliate business? Is it a content marketing business? Are you selling courses? Are you selling physical products? Every business has its challenges and time commitments, but when you're being pulled in different directions, it can get really stressful. So my advice is that if your businesses, your multiple businesses actually work together, if one does well, it helps promote the other. This is awesome. And they become more like separate products rather than separate businesses. And it's definitely manageable when you have some team members to help you out, even if it's just one or two, even if it's a virtual assistant that can just do all the administrative tasks that take so much time. Now, a lot of people like the idea of having multiple businesses because they feel like it's safer. There's multiple revenue streams. If one business tanks because of the economy or the market they're in, they have a backup plan or they have a few backup plans. If they have more than two businesses, that could be true. But that's assuming all your businesses will be successful and that they will be successful despite the fact you are splitting your time, your effort, your attention across all the businesses. Now, if these businesses are really hands off and you can hire out for most of the work, that's totally fine. I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs do this. You know, one of my close friends, Noah Kagan, he runs several businesses and is very hands off. He hires managers to run the businesses for him. He checks in and works with them. But he's not overwhelmed, he's overworked. He's got Sumo.com, he's got AppSumo.com, he's got Sendfox, he's got Kingsumo, he's got a whole bunch of products out there and different businesses. But because they're all kind of doing very well, or well enough for him to hire out for and have people in place, take over the day to day and tasks that need to be done to keep this business running. But you have to remember Noah has an eight figure business in Appsumo. So he's able to make enough money to have these side businesses and try different things out and hire for them. So if that's not where you're at, don't try to use this as an example. Okay. I always like to say, you know, when you look at other examples, make sure you take everything in context. I do want to say there is an advantage that I experience when running multiple businesses or running two businesses is that you get a chance to kind of miss the other business and come back with fresh eyes when you're working on one and then going to the other. Sometimes you can get burnt out when you're just grinding at one business, and that's fine. That can happen and maybe you just need a break. But sometimes when you have another project on the side that you can work on, it inspires you. It gives you some relief. It allows you to come back with a little bit more inspiration and energy.

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To wrap up today's lesson, Running multiple businesses can be a challenge, but they can actually help each business if they relate to each other. If you have the same market that you're serving in each of them, if you have the same types of customers, one of the ways you could look at it is does one customer graduate from one business to the next, from one product to the next? For example, you could be teaching a podcasting course and then you have another product or another business that sells podcasting equipment. So when they graduate from your course, they are happy to go and shop at your online store. Make sure you start thinking about building a team around you to help you manage that load. But consider if you have multiple businesses that are not serving each other, that are spreading you really thin and wearing you out, take a hard look at these businesses. Which ones can you cut out or maybe stop working on for a bit? Experiment. See what happens. Take a month off one of these businesses and dedicate the time you'd normally spend on it on one of the businesses that are actually getting some traction. One of them that's really helping you grow. Do you see any differences? That business that you spent more time on now get better. What about the business you stopped working on? Has it tanked? Has it stayed the same? Has it improved without you there? Give it a try. A month is a good period of time to experiment. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 VA Show. Today's episode's not over though. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride and the Winner is Linlap. Lynnlap says Bite sized practical tips 5 stars Omar shares no nonsense practical advice to entrepreneurs. Easy to walk away with. The next step to do after the episode. Thanks Omar. Well, thank you Lynnlab for that great review on Apple Podcasts. Your mission is to email me at omar00mba.net so we can hook you up with Free Ride Friday and give you access to Easy course over at easycourse Co. If you want to win a free ride, just go ahead and leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday, just like today to see if you won. It's that easy. Thank you in advance for joining Freeride Friday. Joining by leaving an Apple Podcast Rating and Review Before I go, I want to leave you with this. There's one other thing that I want to mention. When it comes to multiple businesses, sometimes you'll build a business around your own ip, your own ideas, your own brand. And I would consider like the hundred RMBA to be like that. And sometimes you'll build a separate product, a separate business like Webinar Ninja, my webinar software. That's not necessarily me personally, it's not my brand. And that's okay. Because if one day we sell Webinar Ninja, I can always fall back and have something to do with my time. I can continue to do the $100 ba. I can focus on that and grow it as I continue to grow as a person, as an entrepreneur. So if one of your businesses is sort of like your personal brand, that's totally fine. It's a good thing to have with you along the journey. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. We've all been there. You hold onto a coupon but forget about it and suddenly it's expired.

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