I Tried Building Multiple Streams of Income. Here’s What Actually Happened

Lessons from four years of buying businesses to diversify income

Blake Harber

Feb 03, 2026

My wife and I bought our first small business to diversify our income.

That’s what the smartest leaders in business have told me to do…

Different industries.
Different revenue streams.
Multiple cash-flow engines spinning within months.

It made perfect sense in my head.

Reality has been way slower & way more humbling.

My original thesis (and where it broke)

Four years ago, the plan was simple:

Buy or build a few boring, cash-flowing businesses like instagram tells me
Spread risk across industries so I’m not 100% invested (mentally & financially) in 1 industry
Let them fund future growth so we can cashflow-stack businesses

On paper, it made sense.

In practice, it’s been a much rockier road to get them to:

Simply pay for themselves, not be in the red each month
Cover their own overhead (stop sucking cash out of my pocket each month)
Start contributing anything (literally) to help spit off cashflow

this part doesn’t get talked about enough.

When people say “multiple income streams,” they usually skip the part where each one demands obsessive attention before it becomes even remotely passive.

Downsides to this approach

What actually happened to me while doing this:

Constant context switching between 3 businesses (2 of which I knew NOTHING about and they were a 1 person company)
Decision fatigue - every single day I would be making decisions, but I’d default to what I knew the most about, Blake Harber Consulting. Learning EVERYTHING from the ground up was such a daunting task, it was easy to avoid each day
Half-built systems - projects that should take a few days have taken months.
Businesses that worked but didn’t yet compound - I knew buying small was going to be hard, but I think I dramatically underestimated the ability to get to a point where you could back yourself out of roles

Appleton Electronics Group lost money in year 1. About $40k.

Stocked Vending hasn’t produced any cashflow in 2.5 years since we’ve reinvested it all.

This put all the pressure on Blake Harber Consulting each month to pay bills.

Each business had its own learning curve. Its own problems. Its own operational debt.

Every one of them needed me far longer than expected.

The hidden cost: four years of mental fragmentation

For the last four years, my days looked like this:

5:30AM: vendor issue from overnight in Appleton
8:00 AM: consulting meetings with founders
3:00 PM: order pickups, repack & reship for Appleton
7:00 PM: fixing vending machines that broke down
11:00 PM Laying in Bed: thinking about everything I didn’t get to yet and struggling to sleep

Nothing was broken enough to shut down. Nothing was simple enough to ignore. So I kept switching. Every day. All day. It felt productive. but so far from scalable.

The shift: from diversification to concentration

Appleton has the foundation to lean in on in hopes to net >$100k a year, but it might take another 2-3 years. Regardless, this is the year to place the bet.

Stocked Vending net >$13,000 in January. A small glimpse of what this business can do once stabilized. We’re continuing to grow for the next few months, then stabilize with intentions it’ll pay our bills the second half of 2026.

But for the first time in 4 years, I’m seeing what it could actually become:

Pay their own bills each month
Fund their own growth as we want them to
Reduce downside risk of any one business or stream of income
Can be run & operating if we chose to be ‘offline’ for 10 days at at time

Now, instead of context switching 10–15 times a day, I’m deliberately reallocating ~95% of my time to one thing:

Scaling StudioGTM (formerly Blake Harber Consulting).

The goal for FQ1 2026 is to be able to remove myself from ~90% of the day to day of Stocked Vending & Appleton Electronics Group

Why this is the first time I’m intentionally scaling

I’ve kicked the can for 4 years on something more I’ve wanted to do with it.

For first time I’m leaning into growth with an explicit intention to push something past $10M.

I don’t know exactly how long it’ll take.
I don’t know exactly what the final shape looks like.

But the intention is clear.

What comes next

Working overtime to build the playbooks. For now, it’s all been stored in my head. Ironically just like every founder I work with for Blake Harber Consulting.

So, I’m going to run my own playbook and back myself out.

Hire a full time rep for Appleton Electronics Group (Through StudioGTM, formerly Blake Harber Consulting 😉)
Fully transfer business operations to our operator for Appleton Electronics Group
Fully playbook everything else I’m doing with Stocked Vending to transfer to my wife.

By EOQ1, this will give me the chance to lean 100% into StudioGTM to scale.

The core shift is already happening.

Less context switching.
More intentional scale.
One clear bet.

Four years of diversification earned me the right to focus, finally.

Now it’s time to actually use it.

Announcement coming soon…

If you’re a founder who knows outbound matters but isn’t fully confident in your motion yet—messaging, targeting, cold calling, or consistency—that’s exactly what I’m building at StudioGTM.

We’re focused on designing and running outbound that actually works so you don’t have to. Shoot me a note: me@blakeharber.com

More announcements coming soon.

Events to check out

ETA Utah Chapter Kickoff

The evening will include short keynotes and panels from experienced ETA leaders followed by structured breakout sessions for those who want to get involved. Consider it a celebratory working session to help shape what the ETA Utah Chapter becomes.

Wednesday, Feb 19 | 5:30–7:30 PM | Lassonde (University of Utah)

Details + RSVP: https://www.builddurable.co/events/eta-utah-chapter-kickoff

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2026 SMB | ETA Conference

The 2026 SMB | ETA Conference offers deep industry insights, education, and unparalleled networking within BYU’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. This one-day conference is bookended with optional half-day ETA workshops on both buying and selling a business (Thursday 3/5), as well as a Saturday afternoon networking event (Saturday 3/6). More details can be found on the schedule. You will be asked if you’d like to add these activities to your registration at no extra cost during the registration check-out.

Date: Friday, 6 March 2026
Time: 9:30 am - 6:00 pm
Location: BYU Conference Center