Lifestyle Business “Ala Milana”
The words “lifestyle business” make some people nauseous. I personally used to associate this word with MLM or Networking Marketing businesses. That’s where you usually see exotic vacations, fancy cars, and paradise living.
That was until I re-defined the word “lifestyle” - it means something entirely different to me.
Perhaps it’s because I am not into travel or cars, my lifestyle is very simple and I prefer keeping it that way. I love my beautiful home, my comfortable office three seconds away from my bedroom, and the fact that I can watch a movie in the middle of a Monday if I want to.
So “lifestyle” is a very personal thing and, although it generally implies living in luxury, to many it means living comfortably.
Tim Clark, an author and the owner of the Soul Shelter blog defines “lifestyle business” this way:
Lifestyle-Focused or Family Businesses
“These are firms that depend heavily on founder skills, personality, energy, and contacts. Often their founders create them to exercise personal talent or skills, achieve a flexible schedule, work with other family members, remain in a desired geographic area, or simply to express themselves. But without the founder’s deep personal involvement, such businesses are likely to, well, founder. Professional investors are therefore rarely involved with lifestyle businesses.”
Except for the last statement, I hugely disagree! None of the above has to be true if you set it up in a different way. There doesn’t have to be any dependence on your skills or your geographic area. Theoretically, you could get a virtual team, create a system, and dissappear. Of course, most entrepreneurs don’t set it up that way.
For once, they love being entrepreneurs and can’t keep away from their creation! Second, many entrepreneurs believe they’re the best at what they do and have a lot of trouble delegating many tasks. Finally, many entrepreneurs are not entrepreneurs at all - they’re technicians who own a job (as per Michael Gerber’s definition from The E-Myth).
Only a certain percentage of the business owners discover “the bliss factor” - the ownership of a company that exists to serve them, not the other way around.
Lifestyle, Mindset, Passive Income | Milana | November 8, 2008
1 Comment
Other Links to this Post
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
By Barbara Saunders, November 17, 2008 @ 2:38 pm
I think many “technicians who own a job” stay in that situation because, at heart, that’s the situation they want! I know a person like this: he holds some of the same beliefs held by most workers I know - that there is something virtuous about working all of the time. For him, owning a business really is just about making more money at a kind of job that wouldn’t pay much as an employee.
The true audience for you - and the E-Myth - is, I believe, a person whose original reason for wanting a business actually is to have more control over life in total. It took me a while to understand that plenty of people actually aren’t seeking that.