What about Richard Branson? He's done _exactly_ that. Throughout his career he has frequently started new businesses in totally new markets. Now his empire includes trains, planes, spaceships(!), record shops, music publishing, banking, telecommunications etc etc. In fact I would argue that people that have that business "spark" could pretty much make a success of any market if they were minded to.
Whilst of course it's sub-optimal to discard or under-utilise what knowledge or experience you currently have, it's probably even worse to not keep learning new things. And more often than not, business experiences are transferable. OK you may not know the technicalities of a new field, but these can be learnt.
Basically: a gigolo for tourists is probably not the best source for business wisdom.
His expertise is marketing and branding. Until he starts a business that doesn't sell to consumers (even very rich ones who pay for spaceship rides) and isn't branded "Virgin", he's still parlaying off of what he knows how to do.
The very fact that people know the name "Richard Branson" and that he's personally involved in all these ventures is a big part of it.
Edit: It's not a criticism--it's hard to succeed in different fields--but the basic idea of the OP, which is to expand your business ventures along the lines of what you know how to do, still applies to Branson a lot more than he's a counterexample of it.
Yes you're right he's leveraging a known brand. but marketing and branding - that _is_ business.
The point about staying in one industry is not about your technical knowledge, it's about your relationships. These are hard to build, and are the major barrier for all new ventures in any business: building your customer base, your sales channels, reaching out. That's tough.
There are very few Richard Bransons. But there are lots of millionaires who just did one thing and kept expanding in the field and growing bigger and bigger in related fields.
Sure I know it's one example, and I have no idea how the numbers would stack up if some kind of research was done on this. All I'm saying is that this is not necessarily good advice, and from a learning perspective potentially counter-productive.
But look, let's keep this in perspective. This is a blog post by an entrepreneur with a new start-up. This is nothing more than press, publicity, visibility, mind-share, whatever, designed to get people talking, discussing, linking. So to be taken with a pinch of salt at best.
Sure - it's anecdotal. But right off the top of head, how about Duncan Bannatyne, Peter Jones, Alan Sugar.
> And I think a guy that figured out how to make $100,000 a year is a pretty good source of business advice.
It wasn't a 100k/year. It was a 100 total, over several years, and that's only his word for it. These things tend to be exaggerated. But anyway, so what if he did? I could probably make a 100k a year selling my body, but I'd rather not.
But really, has Branson done anything that has been successful which didn't rely primarily on better customer service being the sole differentiator from any of his competitors?
Whilst of course it's sub-optimal to discard or under-utilise what knowledge or experience you currently have, it's probably even worse to not keep learning new things. And more often than not, business experiences are transferable. OK you may not know the technicalities of a new field, but these can be learnt.
Basically: a gigolo for tourists is probably not the best source for business wisdom.