In 2015, we ran a story about Odumade Dorcas, an entrepreneur who makes a six-figure income as a visual artist.
Where is she now?
We decided to follow up her story. How sustainable is her business? How passive is her income?
Here’s Dorcas, with a follow-up in her own words.

[/b]How to Manage Two Successful Businesses (and Why One Wasn’t Enough)[b]
— written by, Odumade Dorcas

When we left off, I was running TheAdeolu Visuals and I was a couple of months away from finishing my degree. I was beyond excited to be done with my degree and focus on the business full time – I was pretty sure I would be living the dream!

I was in for a disappointment. About eight months after graduating and focusing on nothing but the business, it was hitting record revenues but I was dissatisfied, bored, unmotivated and thinking seriously about getting a “real” job.

I was confused. Everything looked great from the outside: I was my own boss, had a super flexible schedule, tons of time for hobbies, and good money.
What was the problem?
It probably would have worked for a lot of people — there’s tons of advantages to running a business like that:
[/b]1.Major flexibility:[b] Gigs are anywhere from two hours to a couple days long. You show up, you do the work, you go home. There’s very little scope-creep which left me with plenty of time for other things.
[/b]2. Travel:[b] I’ve been all over the country for gigs. It’s pretty cool to travel all around without having to pay for it.

[/b]3. Creativity:[b] You can be as creative as you want. People have to be happy with their drawing, but you have major latitude to switch up your style, process, “look” etc.
But, it turns out that those weren’t the things I really valued.

The disadvantages stacked up pretty well too:

[/b]1. Loneliness:[b] I got lonely running the biz by myself. I didn’t have accountability or community. My schedule was getting really slack with nothing but my own internal drive to keep me motivated.

[/b]2.No consistent recurring revenue:[b] For gig work, you’re starting from zero every month. A great month wasn’t a guarantee of the next month being great. I value consistency and predictability and this type of industry can’t guarantee that.

[/b]3. Too much time on my hands:[b] Kind of a blessing and a curse. I had been filling up my time with Radio station and media and now I suddenly had scads of time to fill up. I tried a few hobbies, but I got bored. I needed to be busier.

[/b]4. I wasn’t challenged:[b] My passion wasn’t wrapped up in art and I didn’t want to push myself artistically. I was more interested in other domains unrelated to drawing and cartooning.
It’s not like there wasn’t any growth potential in the business, but if I wanted to grow TheAdeolu visuals into a big company, I would have needed to expand into other types of corporate entertainment, hire a bunch more people, and turn into an all round art agency
For some reason (I found out later what it was), every time I thought about running a business like that, it didn’t appeal to me at all.
After a year of running TheAdeolu visuals full-time, I decided I needed a new challenge, but I wasn’t sure where to look.
In 2016, it kinda just fell into my lap.

[/b]Starting a Second Business: Sea media[b]

A good friend of mine (Emmanuella’, but everyone calls her Elle) moved next door to me in the summer of 2016. During dinner a week or so after they moved in, she mentioned that she wanted to branch out on her own (she had a full-time job in Real estate ).
It clicked! She had the expertise in assessing the market and land titles, mortgage and terms and I had the business development experience! We already knew that we got along and worked well together, so a few weeks later we hammered out a business plan.
We named our company Sea media ( A digital and Real estate firm). We offered digital marketing , rentals/ leases, shortlets, real estate agency.

Our first client was a friend of ours whose landlord was frustrating the hell out of the flatmates. Elle worked nights and weekends on our new company, and after six months, we had enough business for her to quit her job and go full time with Sea media.
Three years in to starting the biz, we have over 50 clients and five employees making up an awesome team of humans doing work that’s valuable, important, and (for me at least) fun!
I still run TheAdeolu visuals and do a decent number of the gigs myself. Turns out, I’m much happier when drawing caricatures is my side gig and it’s balanced out with more analytical type of work.

[/b]How I Manage Two Businesses[b]
The first and most important key is that I’m not managing two businesses by myself.
Elle manages our employees and does the bulk of the account management. She definitely carries the brunt of the workload there. My job at Sea media is to bring in new business, make sales, and onboard new clients.
For TheAdeolu visuals, I have a great virtual assistant who’s been with me for over two years. She’s slowly taken on more and more of the administrative tasks, bookings, and email communications for me.
Over the years, we’ve found a couple of ways to approach work that minimizes how much time I have to spend on it.
[/b]1. Optimize your communication style:[b] Email is my scourge. A cluttered inbox will stress me out quicker than anything else. Because of that, I encourage my assistant to text me for quick questions. If there’s a bigger question, I’ll call her on the phone. Anything to reduce my inbox is completely worth it for me. When email is down, Jules is happy, so I’ve optimized my communication around that principle.

[/b]2. When in doubt, delegate:[b] There’s so many tiny tasks I do in the day that aren’t the best use of my time. But because it’s faster in the moment to “do it yourself”, those tasks pile up. The danger is that you’re spending the bulk of your day on the urgent, but not important, tasks. To mitigate that, I’ve tried to form the habit of delegation. The easiest way for me to do this is to record a screen capture where I do the task while narrating it. The task gets done, and now I have instructions ready-made to hand over. Recording a quick video has removed the barriers to delegation and allowed me to make it a habit.

[/b]3.Make the robots work for you:[b] There are a few key pieces of technology that have allowed me to automate what used to be very time-consuming tasks. For instance, writing emails – I have several dozens of email templates accessible in my inbox for almost everything: sales, follow up emails, frequently asked questions, requests for referrals, notifications, onboarding, you name it! If I have to use any type of copy more than once, I’ll make a template for it.

[/b]Finding Alignment Between Work and Values[b]
I wouldn’t recommend starting a second business to everyone who is feeling uninspired or going through plateau in their main business. But it was the right decision for me.
The biggest improvement has come from working in a team. Having a business partner and now a team is such an exponential improvement from working in (relative) isolation like I was with TheAdeolu visuals. I have people in my corner who are just as invested in the success of the business as I am. Elle helps to balance my weak points and keeps me on track. It generates a ton of momentum and keeps me striving and pushing.
I also knew I wanted to have a bigger impact on the world, and I wasn’t motivated to do it with a caricature company.
Don’t get me wrong it’s absolutely possible to have a major impact with that type of business and plenty of people do it. But TheAdeolu visuals wasn’t the way I wanted to leave my mark on the world.
In the year that I ran it exclusively, I kept trying to “solve” why I was resistant to growing the business.
Finally, I trusted my gut and started something new.
After Sea media got some traction, it became clear to me that we had what it took to tangibly improve peoples lives and businesses in the world of digital marketing , and that’s what feels right to me and motivates me to grow the business.
So I guess I’ve come full circle. Drawing caricatures started out as my side hustle, became my main hustle for a while, and now it’s back to my side hustle.
It’s been a wild ride certainly never one that I would have guessed. It may be an odd journey, but it’s mine, and I love it!
What’s next for seamedia??
— written by Odumade Dorcas
in her own words.