Ep 256: My Secrets to Managing MULTIPLE Companies

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Alright, today’s lesson is for secrets on how to manage multiple businesses. I get asked this all the time. How do I manage so many businesses?

I have many companies in diverse industries, so how can I get it all done? Because I still have plenty of free time. I play golf, I play tennis, I work out, I have a good family. Everything’s good.

I Limit My Responsibilities to Only What I Can Do and No One Else

I try not to be everything to every company. I try not to be involved in every decision in every company. I try not to be in every meeting. I try to extract myself from everything that I don’t need to be involved in. I limit my responsibilities to just what I do exceptionally well and what nobody else can do.

1. That’s marketing. I handle all marketing. I protect the brand. Attracting customers.
2. I consult with the Highest price jobs, the highest price clients.
3. I resolve the greatest conflicts. Ninety-nine percent of the time, everybody else can come, but if there’s a conflict that nobody else can figure out, then I get involved. They’re my key responsibilities week in and week out.
4. I look over financials every single day, but I have a CPA in my office that does 99% of that and the heavy lifting.

I Manage My Time Well and Guard it Like Oxygen

I understand that I only have 168 hours in a week, and so my goal is to just guard it and manage it well. I manage my energy. I know when I’m on and I know when I’m off. And so if I know that there’s a time during the day that when I’m on, I literally have two to three times more energy. I accomplish two to three times more. That’s when I put in my heavy lifting. I manage my time in such a way that I know when I’m at my most alert for a meeting. I know when I can handle the highest workload and I schedule it.

Another thing I do is meetings start at quarter till the hour. If I’m gonna have a meeting with you for marketing, whatever the case may be, is I meet it quarter till the hour. This way they know they’re getting 15 minutes and if they don’t know when the hour strikes two, my secretary says, “Sean, you have another meeting”. They know that it’s time to leave. I did this years ago because I found out when you schedule a meeting on the hour, people just assumed they had an entire hour.

Another thing, going into a meeting, I will send a quick email, please tell me what we’re hoping to accomplish in this meeting, so if they don’t send back an email, I’ll cancel it. But if they send that back an email that’s not in line with what I’m thinking, it also tells them that, listen, we’re not gonna waste time here.

I manage my energy, so if I’m three times more effective between 9 AM in the morning and 10:30, that’s when I put my game time. If I know I’m really not my best, let’s say after lunch, and it takes me three times more to get something done that obviously not a good use of my time and my scheduling.

I Partner with Someone Who Can Run the Day-to-Day Operations

I’m good at getting things off the ground, and that’s hard for a lot of people. I’m really good at creating systems, I’m good at initial staffing, initial team building. Then I get bored.

So I’m good for about six to eighteen months. You’re gonna have my A game in a company launch, and I would argue without it, you probably wouldn’t get the company off the ground, so I’m fine with that. But I bring on a partner with more of an employee mentality background, which is fine. I’m gonna bring the entrepreneurship. I’m gonna bring a little bit of risk-taking. I’m gonna bring the capital, but I want to partner with someone who’s gonna run the day-to-day operations. They know they’re gonna work their tail off, but they know they’re not bringing any money to the table. They know I’m gonna split profit with them, and I split profit pretty much 50:50. That’s where business owners get short-sighted. 15% is fine if you’re also paying all the expenses and all of this, and really the 15% is about a true even split when all the expenses are paid, but if you think you’re gonna throw them little crumbs, you’re not gonna get a partner that’s worth anything. As I’ve always said, I’d rather had 50% of a lot, than 100% of a little…

I’d rather a 50% of something, I had to do very little work for that 100% of something had to work my tail off for.

So consider partnering in your businesses. This has been why I’ve had so many companies over so many years. My first business I partnered with was nearly 25 years ago. I’m still a business partner with that person, we just happen to own a lot of real-estate together.

I Own Businesses that Have Synergy

Synergy means they kinda work together.

I want them to build a feed off of each other. One of the businesses I own has eight companies under one roof, and my existing staff kind of overlaps and can serve all of them. Then I own a digital marketing company that and there’s still some overlap. I own land and I have a breezeway. So you go to the right, you can go to one company, go to left, you can go to the other, and I always share how diverse they are, they’re completely different staffing.

Okay, one is the people by the chain Wall and the other is the nerds in the class.

That’s synergy. I don’t have to go to two different cities to try to manage anything. I’m fanatical about convenience. There’s synergy there as well. My digital marketing company does marketing for the other companies and my big company does all the accounting for my digital marketing company. So there’s overlap. I look for similar industries locations, I don’t want things spread out, I want staff and resources that overlap.

We got one massive copying machine, well, it can serve two companies. I got one CPA in the office, she can serve multiple companies. I think you’re getting a general idea. These are the secrets that I have used over the years to be able to manage multiple businesses.

I encourage you to try this. This is why nearly 20 some years later, I have so many companies and I don’t have to go crazy and I don’t lose my mind.