Dear Champ-

I’ve been looking at adding profit centers to my locations for awhile now. Not small stuff like Redbox, but larger operations like dry cleaning or oil change. Any advice for someone trying to grow business?

Heidi in Hattiesburg

You remind me of someone … I know … you’re just like Google.

Sure, you’re not a technology company that’s publicly traded and worth billions of dollars. But, you have at least one of the same challenges as it relates to additional revenue generation.

Google just announced that it is completely restructuring the company, forming Alphabet as the parent company, with Google as a wholly-owned subsidiary. Say what?

All that means is that Google can now focus on its core offerings; while Alphabet can focus on the additional “profit centers” like the health efforts the company had been diving into (did you know they were working on a glucose-sensing contact lens?!)

This means that Google can continue to innovate and enhance their search, advertising, maps, apps, Android and video (YouTube).

So what is the parallel for you? Simply this. As you search to find larger profit center additions to your business there are a couple of things to keep in mind.

Never lose focus of your core business. You could easily turn too much attention to what is new and shiny and your existing business could falter.

Take a page out of Google … errr … Alphabet’s book. Make sure you hire dedicated people to help run those additional profit centers. While it may seem like a good idea to be CEO of all of it … you’ll be able to have better focus, and more profitable business(es), with someone strong at the helm of each of your larger scale profit centers.