Building a Business That Spans Generation: Part One

It feels good to be back her on HerBusiness and my very first piece for you today is a summation of the last few month running my businesses.

A little back story will help, so here it is: The Manager of Pyrex Outsourcing came to me one day and complained that he was getting the letterheads mixed up (all of my ventures operate from one office), and his big idea was bring it all into body, and right there in less than an hour Pyrex Holdings was born.

The last few months has seen one of these ventures slowly dying because we rarely got any clients in need of its services, a quick research showed us that its product was becoming secondary to target market, and because that is the only product of that venture the near death of the product is equivalent to the near death of the business itself. To cut the long story short I decided to give the entire management/staff/interns a one month time-off starting yesterday to enable us get time to build as many well researched pockets as possible into all of them.

Now, we see a lot of examples through history of shutdowns, takeovers, and then brands that have stood for generations, and we’re trying to find…

“What is it these ones that last generations have that the others lack?”
“What is that component in their model that sustained them?”
Why would Kodak shutdown while Fuji film lives on?

One of such component I found is ‘diversification’.

Diversification is one of the key component present in such businesses. You cannot sustain a business with just one pocket to draw from, you need to build in as many pockets because trends are going to come at you, technology is going to come at you, economic policies will come at you, recession will come at you, and a lot of times some of your products/services will not be able to withstand those times. Hence, what will keep you, and get you out of it are the other pockets you built in that weren’t affected.

So as entrepreneurs building businesses we hope will stand the test of time, today, start to build in pockets.
If you want to build a business that will stand the test of time; Diversify.

Go into as many product lines and sectors as you can afford to; so whatever gets thrown at you as the years go by; you will not only withstand but emerge stronger.

I will encourage you ladies in business to do an assessment today of your business.
How long do you want it to last?
If generations is your answer, take this week to find other tentacles you can give your business right now. Building a business is not one very long journey, it is a series of short trips. Make each trip fun and count.