The Science Behind Running Multiple Businesses at Once | Dr. Tobias Kutzewski

What if running multiple businesses isn't a failure to focus, but a different way of operating altogether?

Dr. Tobias Kutzewski has spent years studying entrepreneurs who build and manage multiple ventures simultaneously. His research followed 21 entrepreneurs over time, examining how they allocate resources, respond to uncertainty, recognize opportunities, build teams, and decide when to explore something new while continuing to operate what they already have.

In this episode of The Parallel Entrepreneur, Mark Cleveland sits down with Tobias to compare that research with Mark's own experience of building multiple companies throughout his career.

They explore strategic optionality, the ability to prepare for and seize opportunities you cannot necessarily predict, and what happened when Tobias's research collided with the enormous uncertainty of COVID-19.

The conversation also gets into one of the biggest assumptions surrounding entrepreneurship: that focus must mean doing one thing.

In this episode:

• What separates parallel entrepreneurs from serial entrepreneurs

• Why Tobias began studying founders running multiple companies

• What "strategic optionality" means in practice

• How successful founders divide their time, capital, and attention

• Why knowing what you don't know is a critical leadership skill

• The role of trust and talent when managing several ventures