How To Start Building A Lifestyle Business

Hey there. So before we dive into any guest interviews or anything, deep discussions of lifestyle businesses, I really wanted to take things back to basics with what is a lifestyle business? I want to dispel the myth that a lifestyle business means that you need to be a digital nomad. You need to be living on a beach in Thailand or some equally exotic location paying 200 bucks rent, and therefore you only need to make a thousand bucks a month. A lifestyle business is a purely motivational distinction from a normal business. So in a normal business, you're very growth-focused. You're thinking about increasing your top line, your bottom line, you're potentially thinking about selling. You're building a team to run the business for you. Those are the traditional business route. In a lifestyle business, the only thing that's different is your motivation isn't growth. It isn't selling your business. Your motivation is supporting the lifestyle you have decided do you want to have. And that lifestyle does not need to mean you live on a beach in Thailand in order to pay your bills. If you have responsibilities and commitments, you probably can't run off to a beach in Thailand to do that. So it only comes down to motivation. You have made a conscious decision that you'll be business is being built to support your life rather than you are there to support your business in its growth goals. So how do we get started with that in mind? We're going to flip things. Normally we would say, okay, my business is going to make a million. How close am I to that goal? I need to work harder. I can work a bit less. That's normally how it works. For a lifestyle business, you have to be way more intentional. So you want to start right now with how much money do you need to support your current lifestyle? And think of this in terms of you're not scrimping and saving. It's what are your bills? What about retirement? What about savings? What about the rainy day fund? What about the big purchase? So it's not about a scrimping lifestyle right now, but it's also not starting off with this is my absolute dream, lifestyle. It's what do I need right now? Then think in terms of what is going on in your life and ideally how much time would you be able to give to that business? From that point, you can work backwards into what your business goals are. The reason I get people to start with the current level is that when you start aiming for a revenue goal, that's not really attached to anything. It can sometimes be a little bit of a guess. You get so focused on that, that you move into that growth mindset. You start to stretch your team. You start to stretch your systems and things start to break, and then you have to step in. So it's very intentional around what you need and that time commitment that you can make and evaluate your business model. Now, this doesn't need to be an overnight switch. Like I'm going to drop everything and completely changed my whole business, but it'll allow you to look at your business and see where it's not being supportive of your life right now. Whether it's not making enough money or it's taking too much of your time, and that will give you something to work towards, . But you need to start with a genuine need related goal for your revenue line as well as a time commitment goal.