How many income streams?

As an individual, a family, an entrepreneur, or a business owner, you will have your own reasons why you want to create and grow multiple streams of income.  And you’ll have good reasons why you should NOT grow seven different streams or more.

However, here at CEO Mentor, we have seven major reasons for ‘insisting’ you  create and grow multiple income streams – whether you are a single individual, an entrepreneur, a family, a group of colleagues, or the owner of one or more small businesses:

1. Western nations, and China also, have reached key tipping points.

As a result, the coming decade will be full of uncertainty, risk, pain, even chaos – and also full of new opportunities:

• old technologies and industries will die even faster as new technologies and industries take over.  For example, Australia has known strengths in medical technologies, biotechnology, material sciences, sensor technology, information and communications technology, photonics, and nanotechnology.
• jobs in male-oriented industries will keep falling, while jobs in the female-oriented services will keep rising
• major changes will occur between nations as one of the greatest shift ever of wealth transpires
• Generation C will rise and rise.
• we’ll see increasing numbers of entrepreneurs – both of entrepreneurs out of necessity,   and entrepreneurs of choice.

In such times, we do well to expand our portfolio of options, knowing some of our diversifications will do well, some will limp along, and some will die.

2. The Internet, and a range of readily available on-line software, content, and business systems make it readily possible for individuals, families, or tribes to ‘easily’ create and manage seven or more income streams – both on-line and off-line.

3. Major changes in economies of scale and the power of choice mean it’s feasible to serve profitably and well “markets of one”  and niche markets  not readily accessible to the big players.

4. Access to global markets, plus a wide range of different marketing systems and distribution channels means we can take the same basic content and market it in at least seven different forms.

5. As old industries continue to die, or transfer from the West to the East, they leave vacancies for new opportunities for smaller players.

6. At the same time the growth of new industries continue to be in data-information-knowledge-wisdom-applied intelligence and in one-to-one services.  Many of these opportunities, though not all, suit the smaller businesses, including, home-based businesses.

7. The plethora of new global problems means the stage is now well-set for many, many new waves of innovation – many of these are ideal in multiple ways for the sharp entrepreneurs.

See, for example:

• The Sixth Wave  
• various videos on TED
• hardware innovation
• crowdsourcing
• crowdfunding
• green technology
• innovations in learning technology

Where to from here?

If you are open to creating and growing multiple streams of income – perhaps seven or more – here’s how you might move ahead.

1. Spend some time exploring the growing content here
2. And at here
3. Invest serious think time to research and explore the pros and cons, and the issues, problems, difficulties, options that open up to you as you move to seven or more income streams
4. Talk this over with your family and your mentors
5. Start to refine and identify, say, 20 opportunities that might interest you.  For guidance on this, see:  How to be an entrepreneur – ten key secrets .  And How to create opportunities by asking exploratory questions
6. Filter this list down to around seven.
7. Draw up a list of the skills and resources you will need to develop these seven streams.
8. Match these skills and resources with people you know and trust.
9. Call them together and invite their involvement.
10. Drill down to the first opportunity to grow your multiple income streams, and start actioning.

This blog is original and copyright, but you are welcome to copy, use or post on your web site provided you acknowledge Neville Christie of CEO Mentor as the author and www.ceomentor.com as the source.  10 September 2012.