This article seeks to give some practical ideas for Lifestyle Businesses. But first, we need to explain what we mean by a “lifestyle business.”
What is a Lifestyle Business?
A lifestyle business is a business that is founded with the goal of maintaining a specific level of income and/or to provide a foundation with which you can live a particular lifestyle. To me, this could encompass a large array of business types from what I would call “conventional” to “nonconventional.”
Shifting Mentalities
In order to really understand this concept, you need to shift your mentality from thinking you need to just “do what’s needed the rest of your life” to contemplating key questions involving your passions, purpose, and lifestyle.
Key Questions to Consider
We all need to do what is necessary at some time in our lives. But when we seek to start a business, we want it to provide us with a lifestyle we love to live as well as serving others with an excellent product, service, or idea. Here are a few questions to start with:
- What are things you are passionate about and how could you make a business or businesses out of them?
- What is your life purpose and could it be fulfilled through a business or not?
- Take some time to describe in detail the lifestyle you want to live by writing it down, the income it would take to provide this lifestyle, and practical and specific actions you would need to take to accomplish this.
Timing is Important
You have probably heard the saying, “There’s a time for everything.” This would apply to a business venture as well. The better planned and prepared you are, the more likely you will be successful by overcoming obstacles. Be warned though that procrastination always finds a reason to stall taking necessary action.
A Couple Ideas I Came Across
I discovered that my purpose lies outside of a business, although business is still one of my passions. This may be the same or different for you. A couple of business models that have interested me in my situation are the following:
- Affiliate Marketing- This model of business allows you to build residual income by making a profit through marketing for a particular company or companies who will give you a cut for bringing customers into their business. Much of the marketing takes place online and once you make money, it can be run from anywhere in the world.
- Network Marketing-This model of business allows you to make connections with people you know and present them with an opportunity to have their own business if they are interested. You can build residual income through this type of business and it is usually low-cost to start because the company is not paying for expensive advertising fees. Instead, it allows people to use word of mouth to bring others products, services, or ideas as well as bring others into the business.
- “Conventional businesses” that don’t seem like work because they are the intersection of your passions, potential, and profits. The intersection of these three factors in this case would indicate your purpose. These kind of businesses could be anything that coincides with the lifestyle you would like to live.
Determining What Will Be Your Starting Point
When choosing a lifestyle business a couple of questions need to be asked first:
- Can you create residual income vs. linear income or minimize the time put into it from the time of inception to the maturity of the business? Linear income means you need to work to get paid. Residual income means you do the work once and continue to be paid later.
- Understand your local demographics. If you wish to start a network marketing company which sells health-related products, for example, are the products affordable for the average person in that geographic region or the people you are networked with? I ran into this issue with a company I was representing, and could never make many sales because people would not buy “overpriced products” despite the health benefits the company claimed they provided.
- Understand your resources- The three main resources are time, money, and energy. If you have more time, but not much money, you may be better looking at network marketing companies. If you have more money, but not much time, you may be better investing in an affiliate marketing company and pay for advertising or look into profitable investments like real estate, stock, etc.
- What are your gifts, talents, strengths? Or, in other words, what can you do well?
- What training is available to learn this business? All businesses require training if you are serious. So do you have quality training that coincides with your learning style? Some of us learn experientially, some visually, a combination, etc.
- Given all the facts, apply the principle of finding the most efficient route or “moving with your victories.” Summing up the above factors like your demogaphics, gifts and talents, training available, pesonal resources, kind of income, etc., chose a path that seems the most efficient fo you.
- Allow space to experiment within the confines of low risk. Sometimes you make the best guess and you end up not where you expected to be for various reasons. The best approach is to always have the mentality that you are going to find some way to make this business work without “betting your whole life savings on it and losing.” Only when you tried all options and put some time into it is it time to move on to another business option.
Summation
A lifestyle business is a money-making venture that provides excellent products, services, or idea and also allows its owners to live a particular lifestyle. In order to find the one that suites you best, you need to change your mentality and assess what your best starting point would be.
Your Application
Have you shifted your mentality to trying to create a business with a Lifestyle you want to live and answered all of the key questions? When looking over some of the practical ideas for lifestyle businesses, what is your best starting point and what are your written down and clearly measurable steps to building this business?
If you would like more information on building an online lifestyle business, check out this link:
https://digitalmarketingmentors.com/skmartin
