MUSIC INDUSTRY EXECUTIVE TIFFANY GAINES OFFERS ADVICE ON RUNNING MULTIPLE BUSINESSES

Tiffany Gaines, CEO and Founder of  SS Global Entertainment, has made a name for herself as a marketing maven, music distributor and Entertainment manager. For over two decades, she has managed to prove herself as not only one with intelligence and skill, but also a dedicated entrepreneur who wears multiple hats. Throughout her career, she has preserved the highest levels of professional and personal ethics by maintaining a long-term stability in providing access to a network spectrum of quality entertainment sources to both sides of the business. 

How do you wear so many hats?

What is most important to focus on when it comes to those who run successful businesses and wear several hats is to understand that this did not happen overnight. When I decide on taking on a new role, I always ask myself if the new position can fall in line with the current roles that I play. For example, when I decided to take the Hotel industry seriously, I did so because I knew that no matter what the Industry was that someone worked in, they all have to travel at some point. The ideal thing to consider was that if someone traveled out of state, more than likely they were going to have to book a room at a hotel. Being a certified hotel broker only required a few months of my dedicated time and efforts which would then allow me to be able to offer discounted rates to my entire network of professionals. I began to think about the individuals and businesses that I had access to and started calculating the potential profit I could bring in if I started offering my services annually and before I knew it I had a client base of professionals booking through me for all of their travel needs. The point I am making here is time is everything when it comes to your growth and success. If you learn to analyze and consider the benefits for taking on new roles and challenges, if they outweigh the potential issues that come with adding on new tasks to your plate, start working on a plan of action to include it in to your daily routine and before you know it you’ll be adding to your success rather than taking away from it. The goal is always working smarter, not harder.

Do you think anyone can become or run a successful business?

To answer that question generally would be like saying anyone can learn a skill without considering the time they really have on their hands to put into becoming even simply “good” at something. I can say that anyone can try to commit to a task. But being successful as a business owner is going to require way more effort than just simply saying or thinking one can do it. Not everyone is built to be a CEO or creative. Today, social media allows people to portray themselves as successful when in actuality it’s a façade. Just because it appears as if running a business looks easy online, doesn’t mean it is. There are companies that exist where it may be ran by a one-man army, but realistically speaking, most successful companies have key players designated to specific tasks to help the company run efficiently. That in itself needs managing to maintain the efficiency of the business as a whole. Is it possible, sure, but rare in my opinion, Again, most don’t know what it actually takes to run a business let alone a successful one until they’ve failed more times than they can count.

What would your advice be to someone who is considering opening up multiple businesses?

Master your primary business before taking on another. If your initial business can’t run on its own, why dedicate less time to ensuring the success of it. Just because you can potentially make more money by considering a new venture doesn’t mean that you should. Balance is key when it comes to something that requires dedication to grow. So why would you want to half grow something when you can watch it reach its potential first? Once you have mastered your primary business, and the system that you’ve created can run on autopilot, that is when you can consider trying new things. I just don’t ever recommend trying to be great a something when you can’t give it your all.