YouTube creator, Marques Brownlee, uploaded his first video in 2009. He’s grown his channel from a collection of gadget reviews to a network of channels supported by a studio with 17 employees, brand deals, and a subscriber base of over 20 million!

He operates on the octopus analogy. An octopus has eight arms doing eight different things at the same time.

Ideally, he says his job is to find ways to chop off an arm and give it to someone else who can do with that arm more than one could ever do, trying to use all eight arms at once.

Note to self: An octopus has three hearts. The three hearts are the things you can’t chop off. Those are our fundamentals...our core mission, clear goals or metrics and disciplined habits or actions.

Each arm represents a revenue stream.

For example:

• One arm is the core service we offer.
• Another is a digital product.
• A third is speaking or consulting.
• A fourth is licensing or affiliates.
• A fifth is a membership or community.
• A sixth is stocks and bonds.
• A seventh is a seasonal program.
• An eighth is partnerships or JV deals.

Not every arm must be the same size, but each must be attached to the core of the octopus! That’s what the octopus suction cups are for - staying tight to the mission, systems, operating procedures, etc.

Octopuses are also masters of camouflage.

In business, that means we must have brand agility. Our values don’t change, but we must adapt our packaging, pricing, or platform to match our current environment.

When the waters get choppy - tariffs today, cooperation tomorrow, we’re able to blend, pivot, and keep selling.

The octopus has an ink defense too. And that’s our crisis plan! We’ve got cash reserves, legal protection, and public relations messaging ready to go.

An octopus even has “distributed intelligence.” And what is that?

It means each arm can sense, test, and act independently. How about that for delegation and data sharing?!

Each arm (each income stream) should have a dashboard with leads, conversions, margins, churn, and cash cycle. Let the team members “think locally,” while the boss can “think globally.”

And what if an octopus loses an arm? It can regenerate.

Wow! Now that’s resilience. A product’s a dud? A client cancels. Breathe deeply. Repair. Review the lessons you’ve learned. Refine your offer.

Re-launch. One setback does not stop the octopus!

Grow 8 Income Streams with these Moves:

1. Start with 2 income streams: our core offer and one scalable product i.e. a seminar, class, course, license).
2. Add a “recurring” arm for predictable income i.e. a membership, subscription, or retainer.
3. Build “suction cups” like a CRM with standard operating procedures, that track every touch.
4. Schedule monthly “checks-ins”: what messaging, packaging, or prices do we need to adjust?
5. Stock the ink. Have 6-12 months of expense money.
6. Huddle weekly with each arm to get a micro profit and loss update and key performance indicators (KPI) to spot any red flags and take immediate corrective action.
7. Rebalance quarterly to keep the mission, the message and the money strong!

We need to be that octopus! We have no control over the shifting world views, but with our clear mission, our systems in place, and eight growing income streams, we are guaranteed to thrive, not just survive!

Now…get busy! Sketch out your octopus. Build your different income streams and anchor them to your business body!