How One Operator Runs 7 Verticals Across 2 Countries

The Setup

Running a business in one vertical is hard enough. Running seven verticals across two countries sounds like something that requires a funded team of 15-20 people, multiple office locations, and a multi-million dollar operating budget. The conventional wisdom says you pick one market, dominate it, and only then consider expanding -- because the operational overhead of multi-vertical, multi-geography operations scales linearly with each new market you enter.

This assumption rests on a specific model: each vertical requires its own technology stack, its own team, and its own operational playbook. Under that model, seven verticals genuinely do require seven teams. Two countries genuinely do require two offices. The overhead is real because the infrastructure is duplicated.

But that model is not the only one. When infrastructure is shared, when deployment patterns transfer between verticals, and when the operator owns the full technology stack, the overhead math changes. Not theoretically. Measurably.

What the Data Shows

Harvard Business Review research on multi-business operators (2023) found that companies managing 5+ business verticals spend an average of 35-45% of their operating budget on coordination costs -- the overhead of keeping multiple businesses aligned. A Deloitte analysis of cross-border digital operations found that companies operating in 2+ countries face 2.5-3x the administrative burden of single-country operators, with technology fragmentation as the primary cost driver.

Michael George Keating shipped 10 production systems spanning 7 verticals and 2 geographies (United States and South Africa) in 116 calendar days. Total build cost across the entire portfolio: $65,054. Replacement value: $795,000-$2,900,000. Equity retained: 100%.

Here is what the portfolio includes:

System	What It Does	Build Time
Internal operations platform (PRJ-01)	Replaced 6 SaaS vendors -- CRM, tracking, analytics, communications	74 days
Seasonal e-commerce (PRJ-06)	Personalized video products with 7 integrations	28 days
Insurance lead generation (PRJ-08)	Life insurance vertical	24 days
Insurance lead generation (PRJ-09)	Auto insurance vertical	23 days
Insurance lead generation (PRJ-10)	Annuities vertical	25 days
Insurance lead generation (PRJ-11)	Multi-vertical financial services (5 sub-verticals)	11 days
Insurance quoting (PRJ-05, South Africa)	9 insurance sub-verticals, ZAR processing	20 days
Insurance quoting (PRJ-07, United States)	US market expansion	16 days
Legal services (PRJ-03)	Lead generation for legal vertical	9 days
Business reporting (PRJ-04)	Customer report generation	5 days

The progression across these builds tells the story. Early projects took 23-43 days. Mid-cycle projects took 11-28 days. Late-cycle projects shipped in 4-9 days. External support costs dropped from $7,995 for the first project to $0 for the ninth. The operator's direct contribution went from 30% in October 2025 to 93% by January 2026.

The financial picture: monthly operating costs dropped from $6,312 average to approximately $825. Contractor spend went from a $9,046 per month peak to $0. Six SaaS vendor subscriptions were replaced by internally built systems. External dependency dropped from roughly 70% to roughly 7%.

How It Works

The seven verticals are not seven separate businesses with seven separate technology stacks. They run on shared infrastructure. Authentication, admin interfaces, database patterns, deployment pipelines, analytics -- all of these were built once and deployed across the portfolio. Each vertical received only the business logic specific to its market.

The two-country operation works the same way. The core architecture is geography-agnostic. Currency, compliance, and local provider integrations are configuration layers, not architectural decisions. The South African operation and the US operation share the same foundational patterns. They differ only in the 20% that is geography-specific: payment processors, regulatory compliance, and local carrier integrations.

This means the operator is not managing seven separate technology stacks. The operator is managing one shared architecture with seven configurations on top of it. The coordination overhead that typically scales linearly with each new vertical instead stays roughly flat, because the infrastructure underneath is unified.

What This Means for Business Operators

The 7-vertical, 2-country operation is not a theoretical model. It is the measured state of a portfolio as of January 2026, with 2,561 total commits across 596,903 lines of code, all verified through git records and financially audited. The product defect rate across the portfolio is 12.1% -- half to one-fifth of the 20-50% industry norm -- while output velocity increased 4.6x over the build period.

For operators evaluating multi-vertical or multi-geography expansion, the question is not whether one person can manage that complexity. The question is what the infrastructure model looks like underneath. Seven verticals on seven separate technology stacks requires seven teams. Seven verticals on one shared architecture, with the operator owning the full stack, requires one operator and disciplined deployment patterns. The difference is not skill. It is architecture.

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Related: How to Expand a Digital Product to a New Country in 16 Days | How to Enter a New Business Vertical in Days Instead of Months | How to Run Dual-Currency Business Operations Across Two Countries

References

1. Harvard Business Review (2023). "Multi-Business Operations Study." Coordination cost benchmarks for companies managing 5+ business verticals.
2. Deloitte. "Cross-Border Digital Operations Analysis." Administrative burden and technology fragmentation in multi-country operators.
3. Keating, M.G. (2026). "Case Study: The Full Portfolio." Stealth Labz. Read case study
4. Keating, M.G. (2026). "The Compounding Execution Method: Complete Technical Documentation." Stealth Labz. Browse papers