i want to start them both....shoot me down or pick me up!

my brother and i run our family mortuary. we are high volume business and cater to an inner city crowd. many familes wear "in loving memory" tshirts and purchase large floral displays for the wakes. our facility is rather large and we have decided to keep services in house instead. we used to use a local printer for our memorial books, now we print them. we used to send families to a local monument dealer, now we sell monuments/markers. we used to send families to our local florist, now, after i have done research and realized the amazing markup for flowers, i want to set up a flower shop in our basement. i established a relationship with a flower wholesaler. the price per stem for a rose is .42 and can be lowered to .35 if my order is over 100 stems. the roses you bought on valentines day for your wife/gf where you may have spent 40, 50, 60 bucks might have cost less then $6 to the flower shop. the price per carnation is .10. of course the basket, greens, coco pads are factored in as well.....

the flower displays we see at our mortuary run range from 30 dollar small baskets to 225 large casket sprays. on a 30 dollar basket we could profit maybe 20 dollars. on a 225 large casket spray we could profit 150.....some services we have close to 15 flower pieces. i cant imagine how we could do on valentines day if the word got out. the flower shop we send families to told me they went through 15000 roses in one weekend!! they had lines around the door for 12 hours straight.


now you know we run a mortuary, i might also add that the mortuary has been in our family for 35 years, before i was even born. the business kinda runs itself. we have a qualified staff who handle the day to day operations. my schedule is flexible but demanding if that makes sense. i find myself sometimes with spare time and i want to utilize it for my financial gain. my friend had a publishing company and did well...

he would solicit ad space for his publication that gets distributed to high end country clubs, yacht clubs and social clubs. with a trained sales person on the phone, who wouldn't want their service based business in front of a local affluent crowd? that was his pitch and apparently he is doing very well. i like the idea. not the same content, not the same distribution points, but the same concept. the cost would be offset by the advertisers who pay to be in the book. the out of pocket expenses would be limited. my sales people would be paid commission. my graphics designer would be paid only if an ad sells. the publication goes to print only if we have sold enough ad space. printing costs are the most but still reasonable enough to profit from selling ad space. i have researched distribution points, i have content, i have an incredibly talented graphics designer in my family, i have a relationship with a printing company whose printing business takes up an entire city block, i have a couple sales people i can rely on however im looking for more.

any advice? what would you do? if i formed an LLC, can i use the LLC to run both business? if i wanted to actually do both business....can the LLC (named some thing like Jon Smith llc) deposit funds created from both a flower shop and a publication?? in the event of change down the road can the llc still remain as the course of business changes?