Why it's important to diversify your business.

By Wanambwa M. Rogers

Kampala, Uganda (RTN) -To diversify basically means to make diverse or various in form or quality. As a person, you'll find that you need to diversify yourself first of all, i.e reinvent yourself, and then you'll also need to diversify your business or businesses.

It is imperative if you are in the business of getting and making wealth. Indeed, you'll be surprised the number of subsidiaries that successful companies own. For example, there are over 60 subsidiaries wholly under Berkshire Hathaway(Warren Buffet's company), which in turn own 200 subsidiaries.

In the car industry, many brands you see on the road are subsidiary companies of other companies. Volkswagen for example, owns Volkswagen, Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Porsche, Ducati, Lamborghini, Skoda, MAN, SEAT and Scania.

You see, the more you diversify, the more streams of revenue you are going to generate and consequentially, get. The above company gets a lot of revenue and profits from say the sale of a few Lamborghinis and Bugattis that say Toyota has to generate after the sale of hundreds of its cars. Compare a million dollar Lamborghini with a Toyota worth $20,000. How many Toyotas would the company have to sell to match the Lamborghini?

In Uganda, the Nice House of Plastics, the Mukwano Group of Industries, and the Sudhir Rupareria Group are some of the businesses that have managed to diversify their lines of business into very many streams of income. You can also testify that they're doing rather very good, right? In fact, Dr. Sudhir Rupareria is the richest man in Uganda and has been for quite some number of years, according to Forbes.

I think you can see the portrait I'm trying to paint?

In Uganda, 80% of start-ups actually see their first year, however, only less than 40% see their fifth year in business. What this means is that by that time, many have actually put in all they have. Imagine the agony.

Fact: Btw, the benefits received by over 80% of retirees in Uganda do not see the 2nd year and over 50% of these retirees die the next year.

So it is imperative that you actually diversify your streams of income so that you're not caught unawares. And you should not put emotions in business.

Do not be rigid and fail to see opportunities in other sectors because of your "love" for a certain venture.

Considering the fact that millions of jobs and businesses have been up ended during this COVID-19(in the US alone, over 40million people are unemployed now), it is now more important than ever to think outside the box.

Liquid Telecom's CEO, Mr. Dennis Kahindi said while being hosted on NBS during the #LabourCon2020 E-Conference that their company is "making a shift from just being a telecom company only to a technology company."

This pandemic should be directing you into being multitasking. By the way, the writer of this article is into Accounting, Writing and Psychology(also motivational speaking on the side). This has all been coming up as he sees the need for those particular services.