Managing and growing multiple businesses

Salam on this beautiful, gorgeous, bright Friday morning (in Malaysia :-)) It feels so full of hope.

Last night a member of the Entrepreneurs Malaysia Facebook Group posed me a question on how to make 3 different businesses successful. I am assuming that she is a small/medium sized businesses owner and she has to be actively involved in all three businesses. I might be wrong, she might be a multi millionaire (and if so I apologize for my assumption), but for the sake of discussion let's assume that to be the case.

She went on to quote a famous Malay proverb  "Yang dikejar tak dapat, yang dikendong berciciran', loosely translated as "not catching what you chase, what you carry leaking away" or something like that.Which I totally agreed.

And before I proceed with my opinion, I would like to thank and congratulate all the respondents who shared their views on the matter, Raja Azam Baezah, Zamara, Desmond, Faina and I am sure more later by the time I finished writing this post. Kudos to you all. They have their points and they are all valid in one way or another; let's face it, they are all entrepreneurs too. You can go to the group and search the thread there.

So back to the small business owners with multiple business.

First you have to understand how did you arrive at the situation. Most small business owner, especially when they are just starting out, the main goal is money -cashflow. And by putting cash as the passion and goal, the owners tend to grab whatever opportunity that comes their way. Who can blamed them, the mantra that has been fed to them were "Grab the Opportunities", "Opportunities are everywhere", "Problems are opportunities", "Opportunities are money" ad nauseum. While the mantra is true, you have to be able to differentiate between opportunities that you can handle and those which are not meant for you. Bill Gates; when he started, it was only in one categories of opportunity - computer software and that was the case until the end. Being a conglomerate comes later.

But when small businesses start grabbing opportunities from different categories of business, that is when they start having multiple small businesses (There are other reasons, like having different partners, that causes multiple businesses but we are not going to discuss it here). What happened in this case is that "small business owners tried to be everything for everyone".

This is well understood and accepted nor. This goal for money started as a "must", especially in the beginning when you have not found your core. You need cash more than anything and you are trying out which business models is going to work for you. That is fine, that is natural. But you have to remember that you have to find your core, you have to build a business - like Zamara said, it is your reputation, it is you. Only if you find you core, which would always work along your the line of your passion, would you be able to be a great entrepreneur and build great businesses.

Well some of you might say, the problem is that the one that is bringing money is not what you am passionate about. My answer to that is: passion does not have to be about your product. Passion is about what you like to do. What you like to promote, what you like to talk about, what you love to do. For example, you are passionate about children but you a contractor. And the contracting job brings in money. Well in that case, you could create a trust/foundation for distress children and sit on that trust/foundation. Give some shares of your contracting company to the foundation, not much but pledge some meaningful amount. Then you work to grow that construction company so that it could support your passion. When it is big enough, you hire best CEOs and employees to run your company while you monitor them as a board member and rep from the children's trust - your children's trust.

The point is: you can start from passion (which I prefer) or your can start with cash but weave your passion back into your business. You do not have to be everything in the company. Get your employees to do it and you focus on what you love to do - you will be more productive and happy.

But if you have this problem of being a serial entrepreneur, a problem that I have, where I love building businesses and being part of multiple organizations, you need these basic things:

1. A good system to monitor where your money is everyday. I have a simple system that forces my 'generals' (employees managing my businesses) to report to me daily a snapshot of the cashflow movement. I know where my money is everyday, and I check form time to time to make sure it is there. Having this system freed up a lot of my time and mind. I could do other things when I know the system is making sure my businesses are making money or if not, I would know about it immediately.

2. Have trusted generals. Employees and partners that can share your activities and your burden. In order to do this, you must have a very clear picture of your business models and map out the critical activities and resources and who is responsible for each. If you are flying solo, you will find you name everywhere - try to delegate some less critical to someone else. You are the owner of your business, not the slave of your business.

3. Prioritize the businesses depending on what stage you are in and your needs. If you are a start-up, while it is best to start with doing something you are passionate about, it is not wrong to focus on the cash first - the cash cow. Work to build the system around that business so that it will run automatically and you can monitor it from far, effectively. Once the system is up and running, then you can focus on the next one. If you already have the cash, then you may want to start on something a bit closer to your passion.

4. Do not be afraid to sell out some equity to get value-add partners or employees. Encourage your employees to think like an entrepreneur and reward them based on performance. Then they will sell the products and business for you, freeing up more of your time to manage the other business. Get professional help when you want to do this - it is not as simple as it looks.

5. Multiple business are actually a business model of an investor rather than entrepreneur. You need to get properly acquainted with becoming an investor, eventually.

Work Smart People

The Author is the principal of ElixirEducate - a training house for Smart Entrepreneur Program Series. He was an international investment banker, corporate financier and a business coach where he coaches entrepreneurs on building and growing their businesses. You can find more information on ElixirEducate on their facebook page, here.  And be a facebook friend  of Yazdi . Please share this information with your entrepreneur friend who may benefit from this post. They could be an existing entrepreneur or someone who plans to start a business.  You can also join the growing business network of Entrepreneurs in Malaysia by joining this group. Thank you and have a meaningful day.