Tips On How Entrepreneurs Can Manage Multiple Businesses Successfully
Let us look at great entrepreneurs and take a look at how they manage their different businesses successfully. It is not easy to handle one business but most of them handle many companies. How do they manage multiple businesses successfully? We shall find out soon.
Well, do you want to know? Do you think you want to run a business someday or are you already running a business? Would you want to one day expand and run more than one business? It is quite possible but you need to know how to do it.
Dangote runs very many businesses. In fact, it is difficult to talk about any business in the country that he is not actively involved in. The same could be said of Adenuga and other top entrepreneurs in Nigeria. However, it is one thing to own a business and another thing to know how to run it. One business could be very easy for most but two or more could be a very challenging prospect.
Related: 10 reasons why many small businesses fail in Nigeria
Well, not exactly. Remember, you can do all things through him who strengthens you. I can tell you that you can manage multiple businesses successfully if you put your mind to it.
In this piece, I’m going to show you ways you can manage your businesses successfully. Just read on.
How Entrepreneurs Can Manage Multiple Businesses Successfully
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You must delegate tasks to worthy hands
In the course of managing one business, you will come across very capable and talented hands. This is no joke. It is left for you that identify the various hands or talents at your disposal and work on utilizing them. I have come across many entrepreneurs who think that they can handle every damn detail in their business. It didn’t end for them and it won’t end well for you. You can micromanage your business at your own peril.
So, to manage multiple businesses successfully, you must identify these capable hands and hand out key positions to them. you must reduce the workload and you must jeopardize the success of the business by doing that and that is why you will need hands that are as capable as you are or even more capable.
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Have a grand vision but set realistic goals and measure them regularly
Your vision and purpose are intertwined and can as far-reaching and grand as possible. The same cannot be said of goals. Goals are the ways to achieve your vision, the road map to the actualization of your purpose. For instance, if you want to establish a multi-billion construction company, you won’t achieve that in a day. You will have to set out goals like; writing your business plan, going on the feasibility study, registering your business, getting the necessary incorporations and machinery, employing staff and other goals.
These goals will help you achieve that purpose. Therefore, to successfully run more than a company, you must set the goals that are realistic and follow them.
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Be constantly aware of the activities going on in all the companies
Ideas can fly in and out of your mind at any time. You must be constantly aware of that and work with that consciousness. While you may not be at every aspect of your businesses, you know what is going on at the different businesses and must bring up ideas that will help the business grow and that is the dilemma of running many businesses.
Therefore, you must be ready for the ideas that will come and go so that you can grab them. Have a notepad or any device that will help you write down your ideas whenever they come and you can expand on them later.
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Proven ideas can be reused in other businesses
There is such a thing as the reuse of ideas and it is interesting to note. Working formulas are reused on daily basis and you can use ideas that have successfully worked in your other businesses and that will still enable you to manage multiple businesses successfully.
Take out time to look at your existing business models and see the one that can be reused and use them since they are already proven. You can copy the advertisement structure, recruitment process, production pattern, and others and reuse them.
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If possible, maintain the same location for all the businesses
For the sake of convenience, you should try to keep it simple at the initial stage. Try as best you can to have the coordinating headquarters for all your businesses in one location. It has lots of benefits to establish all your businesses in one location.
For one, you can have existing staff start off the new business and secondly, you can keep very close eyes on the companies. The general overhead cost can also be reduced and tasks and the possibility of growth will be better managed and enhanced respectively.
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Determine what it will take to start the business
For a business to thrive, there must be an understanding of what it will take to start and grow the business. You are expected to carry out an in-depth analysis and feasibility study of the new business(es) before starting up. More so, you must beware of the scalability of the business and this will show you the time and resources you will need to work out the business. If it is going to affect your current business, you can put it on hold until it is more balanced.
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Your new business should complement your old business
Well, this is not an extreme rule and it doesn’t mean that if you don’t follow this rule, failure will become inevitable. It does have its benefits though.
It makes the new business easier to run. Stan explains this point vividly using the analysis below. According to him, for “For instance, an eCommerce company with a fleet of about 50 motorcycles could start a local courier service for private businesses. Since the eCommerce company already supplies its own goods and need the services of its courier bikes, it could as well spin off the dispatch department into a brand new company that will not just manage the current courier needs of the company, but can go on to scale as an independent entity that serves a much large client base and could even become extremely successful like the likes of DHL and FedEx.”
You could diversify but you could also be very complimentary. The choice will be yours to make when you want to manage multiple businesses successfully.
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