More precisely, the article's advice is: "You take plenty of risk in your business; as an investor, you should keep it simple, spread your eggs among many baskets, keep fees and taxes low, and tilt the odds in your favor with indexed mutual funds and exchange traded funds." If you cannot completely stanch your entrepreneurial mindset from bleeding over from your business life to your personal-investing life, then try to use no more than 10% of your total investment money on gutsier plays.

The article provides a wealth of more specific advice on specific funds to look at, indexing strategies, ways to deal with taxes, and the like. The whole thing is well worth a read.

The big, single takeaway from the piece is a tried and true one: diversify, diversify, diversify. Usually when that advice is given in an investing context, it refers to the investing itself: spread your money among different industries, different types of investments, and so on. And to be sure, that is smart advice for the investing small business owner, too. Take another step back, though, and you see that a conservative investment strategy represents diversifying one's life. There are few riskier and high-stress things, after all, than starting and running your own business. Why not temper that with the safe bet where you can?

Finally, this article appears to herald the start of a new Times small-business blog, You're the Boss. Welcome to the party, guys!

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