Can you have a successful second business?

You have spent years growing your business and you have achieved some success with it. It probably takes up a huge amount of your time and effort but it’s worth it.

One day someone comes to you with a good idea, or you have a good idea and you think I will start a second business. Immediately you get the buzz, you know the feeling, that exciting feeling of a new venture. Your mind races and you think of all the things you can do, new website, brochure, set up company etc.. You remember what it was like when you started your own business.

This business may be related to your existing business or it may be completely different but it’s not your core business it’s a brand new venture. The chances of this second business being as successful as your first business are much lower.

I have seen many second businesses start up and do very little business and some just as quickly close again. I think I know the reasons why this happens.

Firstly, if you are going to be the person running the second business and you cannot give it much time and attention, because you are involved in your first business, then the new business will never work. Without time and attention it will wither and die because in the early stages a new business is a fragile thing. It needs your attention.

If you are lucky you may have someone else involved, you may have a partner, perhaps the person who came to you with the idea in the first place, or you may be able to afford to put in a full time manager .

In this scenario the business has a better chance of making it but only if you can regularly spend some time working on the business. Unless you plan the business, outline its vision and communicate to everyone involved the business has little chance of success.

Even with someone else in this business you face difficulty as this person is not you and won’t do it as good as you would.

Out of the 10 new second businesses I saw start in the last 18 months only 2 have got any real success, a couple of these have got potential but are running at losses and the rest have done absolutely nothing.

The main reason is that these businesses are just ideas, probably great ideas but it takes a lot of time to turn an idea into reality and if you are focusing in your main business it just won’t work.

I may be wrong, and if I am I want to hear of your successes, let me know if you have a successful second business. I bet, if you have been successful with your second business, you got some good people on board early on and then spent a good deal of time working on this second business.