- Why become a multi-business owner?
- How do you acquire or start new businesses?
- How do you manage multiple businesses?
Q: Should I own multiple businesses? What should I know before becoming a multi-business owner?
A: Owning multiple businesses is a great way to increase profits and minimize your risk. Before becoming a multi-business owner, you need to understand how to protect each of your businesses, how to use your new market share effectively, and how to capitalize on the network built through owning multiple businesses.
The only thing better than owning one successful business is owning multiple successful businesses.
When you own multiple businesses, you’re giving yourself several new avenues of growth and profitability.
More market share, multiple streams of income, and most importantly, a growing network of motivated professionals are just a few of the benefits associated with becoming a multi-business owner.
While profit and market share are the pillars on which your business was built, the network you’ll build through the acquisition of other businesses is invaluable to your future endeavors.
Creating a vast network of connections and customers is something that every business owner dreams of. With a large enough network, you can easily react to shifts in the market, quickly strike when opportunities present themselves, and maximize profit.
However, creating this network will often require multiple businesses, as one business simply isn’t far-reaching enough to have the influence that a conglomeration will have.
This begs the question: how can business owners create a parent company and acquire more businesses?
Well, becoming a multi-business owner doesn’t happen overnight.
In this article, we’ll be taking a closer look at why you would want to become a multi-business owner, how to go about acquiring new businesses, the best way to manage multiple businesses, and some virtual solutions for the modern multi-business owner.
So, if you’ve ever wondered about the “multi-business owner” definition, keep reading!
- Why become a multi-business owner?
- How do you acquire or start new businesses?
- How do you manage multiple businesses?
- Virtual solutions for the modern multi-business owner
Why acquire multiple businesses?
Before we dive into the benefits associated with acquisition, let’s take a look at a few commonly asked questions as well as the real multi-business owner meaning.
- How many companies can I own?
- How should I protect myself and my businesses?
- What is the average multi-business owner salary?
- Can I be the CEO of all of my businesses?
How many companies can I own?
You can own as many businesses as you’d like. There’s no limit to the number of LLCs, DBAs, sole proprietorships, or corporations a person can own.
Regardless of whether you’re starting new businesses or acquiring existing ones, you should do so one at a time.
How should I protect myself and my businesses?
Either through the use of a parent company, owning corporation, or individual LLCs.
While you can hypothetically run multiple DBAs through a single LLC, this is a dangerous way to do business. If one of your businesses is sued, all of your other businesses under the LLC are at risk.
Alternatively, if you’d like to use a parent company, you can operate numerous LLCs under one owning corporation LLC. If you don’t want to create a parent company or owning corporation, your best bet is to create an LLC for each business, protecting each business as thoroughly as possible.
What is the average multi-business owner salary?
This is completely up to you.
While national averages suggest that the typical American small business owner makes approximately $50,000 annually, your salary depends entirely on your motivation and the success of each of your businesses.
Can I be the CEO of all of my businesses?
Yes, there is no limit to the number of businesses you can be the CEO of.
Some companies likely have noncompete agreements or other company bylaws that could prevent you from being CEO of two businesses at once, but if you are the owner of the business, that shouldn’t be an issue.
Keep in mind, if you’re buying businesses rather than starting your own, it’s often easier to keep your new employees in the same position they were previously in.
Sure, you can find new employees to take on the higher-level positions — and in some cases, you’ll need to do so — but if the business is running smoothly and serving its purpose, don’t mess with success
Read more: Your Shortcut to New Success: How to Buy a Small Business
Becoming a multi-business owner comes with several unique benefits.
Below, we’ve covered some of the benefits associated with being a multi-business owner.
- More diverse offerings
- Highly customizable marketing
- Weathering economic downturns
More diverse offerings
First, owning multiple businesses simply allows for more diverse offerings.
You don’t have to worry about how expanding into new markets and offering new products will affect your brand image.
You can keep a designated brand completely removed from any of your business experiments without worrying about your existing customers being confused by your new direction.
Because you can use other businesses for product rollouts and other new offerings, you have an excellent, streamlined way to test the market without risking very much.
Highly customizable marketing
Second, having multiple businesses allows you to tailor your marketing to capitalize on different demographics.
If you’re operating one business, it’s not going to be easy to market to both retirees and college students, because the more you market to one of these demographics, the less you appeal to the other.
But as a multi-business owner, you can avoid this.
You can hone in on multiple audiences and connect with them on a high level. This is far more effective than trying to create generic marketing materials that appeal to several audiences at once.
The best kinds of marketing create a connection between your business and the consumer.
When you’re using multiple businesses to do this, you have the distinct opportunity to create deep connections with several niche demographics — something that would be impossible with one business.
Weathering economic downturns
Third, owning multiple businesses can help you weather economic downturns.
Similar to the way smart investment portfolios spread their risk over multiple investments, owning multiple businesses makes it easier to remain profitable should any one business take a hit.
With one business, you’re insulated by the assets and revenue that that single business has generated.
With multiple businesses, you have more surface area. This means that you can cut costs in more areas, making decisions that bring value to your corporation or portfolio, rather than worrying specifically about the longevity of one business.
How to acquire or start new businesses
There are multiple approaches that you can take when you’re looking to become a multi-business owner.
First, you need to determine whether you’d like to acquire or buy another business, or start each business in your portfolio from the ground up.
We’ve created a list of actionable tips for both options below, keep reading for a firsthand multi-business owner account of how to get started.
- Purchasing existing businesses
- Similar offerings
- New demographics
- Considerable upside
- Starting new businesses
- Existing knowledge
- Easy to run
Purchasing existing businesses
Similar offerings
One straightforward way to purchase an existing business is to find something with similar operations to your current company.
With the synergy between the new business’s offerings and your existing operations, you can easily add them to what you’re already doing. This allows you to retain branding and capture more consumer interest through both companies.
Because you’re familiar with your new business’s operations, you won’t be forced to spend time and money learning the ins and outs of the industry. Additionally, by purchasing a business that is in the same market as your existing one, you’re reducing competition while simultaneously gaining market share.
As a multi-business owner with businesses offering similar products, you also have the distinct advantage of being able to collect data on two styles of marketing, benefiting from friendly competition between brands.
New demographics
Depending on the industry you’re entering, you can also acquire a new business that’s quite different than what you’re currently doing.
This route can be insanely profitable, but it’s probably not a great idea to enter an industry you know nothing about.
You don’t necessarily have to be an expert on new industries or target demographics, but you should, at the very least, know enough to hire individuals with the required knowledge.
If you are going this route and purchasing an already running, profitable business, your best bet is to retain as much of the team as you’re comfortable with. This will allow the business to continue running as it did before.
One benefit of buying an existing business with a new target demographic is that all of the customers that the business has already established can become crossover patrons.
Once you’ve purchased a new business, you’ll have access to the existing customer database, which is invaluable for your future operations. Working with and creating a deeper, more fruitful customer-company relationship with these existing individuals is considerably cheaper than standard customer-acquisition costs.
Considerable upside
The key to finding any good business to purchase is to find a business that is fairly small, but shows a very positive trajectory.
Regardless of the kind of company you’re purchasing, you’re buying a company with the intention to make a return on your investment. The more upside potential a business has, the more you stand to make.
With this approach, you don’t want to purchase businesses that are too small, because unfortunately, small startups are more likely to fail. Similarly, you don’t want to purchase a business that’s doing too well, because there isn’t as much available upside.
The idea is to find a business that’s growing quickly but still in its earlier stages. This will allow you the highest ROI on the purchase price.
Starting new businesses
Existing knowledge
The best way to start a new business yourself is to leverage your existing knowledge.
If you have a business idea that’s similar to what you’re already doing but serving a different market, you can simply replicate your existing structure with new marketing.
If you have expertise in an entirely different area, you can leverage that and repeat the same process you’ve used to build your current business.
With the tools at your disposal, the cost of starting new businesses is more cost-efficient than when businesses relied on traditional office space.
With a virtual office, for example, you can register your new business with a professional and well-known address, in any state you’d like.
With this and the other tools Alliance Virtual Offices provides, you can grow your parent company’s holdings without risking the kind of capital that traditional office rentals and basic business utilities require.
Read more: The Best Place to Start a Business Isn’t a “Place” At All
Keep in mind, starting a new business is going to require some time. With the countless digital tools the modern age has provided, it won’t be as expensive as it previously was, but it will still require considerable time, effort, and thought.
Easy to run
As a multi-business owner, you are going to be very busy.
If you decide to start an additional business, try to pick something that won’t require sizable input on your part. For instance, jobs like property management or other service-based businesses that allow you to delegate tasks are great for this kind of new business.
With the low costs of starting new virtual businesses, don’t be afraid of failure. All of your experiences can teach you something, and failure is simply part of the process.
That said, failure, when you’re starting a new business and failure when you’ve purchased an existing business, are two different things.
With new businesses, you just need to know when to cut your losses.
When you’ve purchased an existing business, you’re risking a lot of capital and expecting a return on your investment, so when purchasing an existing business fails, it can be catastrophic for your parent company.
Regardless of the path you choose to take to become a multi-business owner, the key to starting or acquiring these businesses is balancing your management.
How to manage multiple businesses
Managing a single business is a lot of work. Unsurprisingly, managing multiple businesses is more work than that.
We’ve put together three separate aspects of managing multiple businesses that will help you on your journey to becoming a multi-business owner.
These three aspects — your team, your management, and your business’s liability — need to be functioning congruently in order to get the best return on your initial investments.
Team
The best way to manage multiple businesses is to build a competent team.
In most cases, you simply will not be able to handle everything yourself. You need to focus on the big-picture items and delegate the specifics.
This is why if you purchase an existing business with a competent team, you should leave it alone. Building a team that functions and collaborates at a high level isn’t easy, and if you’ve purchased teams of employees that are already doing this, consider yourself lucky.
Management
If you’re trying to manage several businesses without the help of other high-level employees to lighten the load, you’re going to have an incredibly confusing and frustrating time with your business’s operations.
So, how can you simplify management, bring your teams together, and delegate tasks effectively?
The answer, and key to managing multiple teams across multiple businesses, is decentralization. With remote operations, you can connect the numerous moving parts of each business while remaining flexible and agile.
This allows you to make the most of your businesses and get more done.
Liability
From a registration standpoint, you’ll likely want to incorporate each of your businesses under your existing LLC.
You can do this by creating a holding LLC or DBAs, but a holding LLC is better suited to larger numbers of businesses.
As mentioned, registering multiple DBAs under one LLC is generally an unwise business decision to make.
If you don’t feel like you need to create a holding company, your best bet is to simply register each business to its own separate LLC.
However, by taking this route, you will have to spend a bit more money than if you were to use DBAs. Still, this move becomes more cost-efficient than renting a traditional office building.
With an LLC for each business, you’ll be responsible for filing taxes separately for each business, filing separate Articles of Organization, finding a registered agent for each LLC, and taking care of any other state-specific requirements for each LLC you register.
This might sound like a lot of work, but it’s worth it for the liability protection that individual LLCs provide.
Read More: Get a Virtual Address For LLC Registration
Virtual solutions for the modern multi-business owner
Running multiple businesses can be a great way to boost your profits and spread your risk.
The key to successfully owning multiple businesses is proper management.
Thankfully, with the countless virtual solutions you have at your disposal, managing multiple businesses has never been easier.
These modern virtual solutions take many shapes, and their cost-efficient nature is enough to make even the stingiest multi-business owner bank account happy.
With our Virtual Offices, Live Receptionists, Virtual Phones, and Meeting Rooms, you’ve got a streamlined way to manage multiple businesses from the comfort of wherever you’d like to work.
Further Reading
- How to Buy a Small Business – Your Shortcut to Success
- Switching to Remote Work? Don’t Settle with Your Remote Workspace
- How to Set Up Payroll for Small Business, and the Best Time-Saving Tools
- The Best Place to Start a Business Isn’t a “Place” At All
At Alliance Virtual Offices, we pride ourselves in providing several virtual solutions for motivated entrepreneurs looking to scale their operations or procure new businesses.
Our virtual offices are available in countless locations, and every office comes equipped with a professional and well-known address, increasing your business’s reputation, legitimacy and affording you unfathomable flexibility.
The business addresses our virtual offices provide also allows you to keep your home address completely private.
Registering a business requires a business address, but using your home puts you at risk of receiving countless spam messages, and gives disgruntled customers or frustrated ex-employees an easy way to get your information.
With our Live Receptionists, you can focus on the nitty-gritty aspects of being a multi-business owner.
Don’t waste your time answering phone call after phone call. Instead, use one of our friendly and professional receptionists to screen each of your calls and provide a friendly point of contact for first-time callers.
Virtual Phones allow your entire team to stay connected without relinquishing personal phone numbers. With unlimited extensions, you can easily onboard new team members and keep multiple businesses connected and communicating.
Giving an investor presentation in a crowded coffee shop isn’t a good look. Giving an investor presentation at your house might be an even worse one.
Alliance Virtual Offices’ meeting rooms are a welcome alternative. Instead of trying to host important events from public spaces, your home, or expensive hotel conference rooms, you can easily reserve a meeting room that is specifically tailored to your needs.
With our friendly and professional staff available, any technical difficulties you run across during your presentation can easily be rectified!
As you can see, there are several different tools for multi-business owners looking to effectively manage their businesses.
Regardless of the tools you decide to use, becoming a multi-business owner is an excellent way to introduce new streams of revenue, secure more market share, and grow your professional network.
It doesn’t matter if you’re brand new to business ownership and hoping to find an effective way to become a multi-business owner, or a business owner who’s been in the industry for decades – Alliance Virtual Offices is ready to help.
Contact us today to see how Alliance Virtual Offices can help your parent company or owning corporation!
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