During this historic week of the government shut down, I have had a few clients come to me in a stand still, waiting to make decisions on anything. They’re halting their business because the government has shut down, losing money by the minute.

Which makes me feel inclined to impart a few of my own two cents onto the situation at hand and give some old knowledge to those in business.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family with many entrepreneurs. My mom started her business from working with GM in our small town in Anderson, Indiana. GM had about 50,000 jobs in the town at the time, and her income depended on their engineering contracts. She did something very smart with her business when she heard they were going to be leveling every factory and moving all jobs over seas and to Mexico. She DIVERSIFIED.

She taught me the key to success is to diversify your business to the point that you don’t have one specific income source from a specific industry or area. The results of this can be fatal. This is what happens when you don’t diversify your portfolio.

This wisdom has spread through my family, my brother, for example, is an interesting case. He has dabbled in real-estate, but found his place building the midwest’s largest paintball facility. His key to success wasn’t just relying on summer traffic, but built the largest haunted house complex 4 years ago and is steadily plugging away at it now. He’s now looking into zip lines and has always loved real-estate so he doesn’t have to only be weather dependent with his income.

With my background in Finance, most of the classes taught us about how diversification of your portfolio can lead to security in tough times. Gold goes up, the dollar value goes down. US flops while China prospers. It is common sense to diversify, but why aren’t businesses doing this too?

A good businessman, takes this to heart. He has over 3 income sources in order to be truly successful. Here at Studio98, we currently have 4 divisions all separate from each other doing different things.

During a week like this one, I think it can hit at home exactly how much one as an executive needs to look toward other areas of creating business and grow in that direction. Take the time that you have sitting around waiting for government contracts to come in and create a new division of your company. It could be the best decision you ever made.