Everyone should diversify their investments. You don’t need a million dollars to invest to diversify; investing can start with as little as $40! Heh

Seriously, though, you can invest in a new opportunity for nothing, just your own time. All you need is an idea and some motivation.

If you do have some spare cash, even a little, it does help. If you do you should start talking to people, discuss some ideas on a joint venture for something, look at what you can bring to the table and come up with something where both parties can benefit. Brainstorm something together, you could even try to take your idea to a micro venture fund.

Before you know it your investing in something new and you’re ‘portfolio’ of investments has expanded and you’re more diverse than before.

I like to diversify offline just as much as I do online; my latest venture is in sushi, of all things. Unlike the internet where everything is local, and to compete with another site you need to be different, or offer something very special, offline businesses don’t have to do that, offline businesses can offer location over difference.

If you’re in an area like me, a small city, and there’s no sushi train or place to buy sushi, then there’s an opportunity there to start something, it doesn’t have to be the best sushi in the world, or the cheapest, or the greatest looking, it does help to have a good product and of course we’ll try to do that, but the location is what’s going to make it work.

Especially with a restaurant, we’ll be opening in an area with other restaurants where there is high foot traffic. Just like the internet where traffic is king, with offline businesses such as restaurants, foot traffic is king, foot traffic for restaurants is like organic search engine traffic, it’s a life blood, if you’re in an area where people naturally search for food on a daily basis, you’re going to get some hits, hopefully some bookmarks, referrals and with any luck some return visits! Try and keep that bounce rate low…

I’m no restaurant king with years of experience, but I’m no idiot either, I’ve seen restaurants with fantastic tasting food that are in really bad locations, they bleed to death slowly over years and rarely survive or make decent profits, if that same restaurant was in a street with other restaurants the traffic and word of mouth would have made it successful in no time.

Anyway, back on topic, my diversification is simple; I’m taking revenue from my other businesses and using that revenue to support a new venture in a whole different market segment.

If for some reason my development studio failed to convert projects and our staff costs started bleeding us to death, my personal backup is in a whole different industry, if we started to die because of a global market slowdown in the internet segment, which has happened before, then I’m ok, I have a restaurant, people always need to eat!

I think it’s a vital part to anyone’s financial success to diversify their personal investments, it doesn’t have to be much, and it doesn’t have to be big, start small, start small multiple times, and nurture the venture, bring in some partners so your time required to work on the venture or invest into it remains low.

In the past I’ve started ventures with upwards of 6 different partners all bringing something different to the table, we had a common interest, to diversify and supplement our income, and by dividing up the work load and investment we were able to give the business what it needed to work.

Partner up, brainstorm, plan and get it going on!