Your Guide to Running a lifestyle Business
A solo lifestyle business can help you solve these age-old problems:
- How can I improve my work/life balance?
- How can I spend more time doing what I love?
- What type of work can I do that gives me meaning and satisfaction?
- How can I pay my bills and still be my own boss?
- Why does "success" not make me happy?
If you're anything like me, you've asked yourself these questions many times during the course of your career or life.
Whether you are already a business owner, a full-time professional, a stay-at-home mom, or preparing to enter or get back into the workforce, I bet these are familiar challenges to many of you.
My goal for this site is to provide some guidance and tools to help you better plan, design and run your very own lifestyle business. So please explore the site to learn more.
optimize your Existing Business
Solo Biz Guide will show you how to optimize your business to meet YOUR needs, not the measures of "success" that other people might define.
Understand how to plan your business growth around your lifestyle choices and your financial goals.
Identify ways to align your products, services and information with the things that give you pleasure and satisfaction.
Find creative ways to outsource or automate those aspects of your business that you don't enjoy or aren't good at.
Learn how to put processes in place to keep your business running smoothly so you can focus on the areas where you add value and passion.
What is a Lifestyle Business?
A lifestyle business is built to support the lifestyle of the business owner(s), and no more. The owner does not plan to scale it to a large enterprise.
Always remember why your business is important to YOU.
Why did you start the business in the first place? What did you hope to get out of it? Do you still have the same goals?
Decide whether you are building a STARTUP or a LIFESTYLE BUSINESS. These are two different things, with very different end goals.
grow your side business
If you're currently employed, you can run your business as a side hustle while you continue to collect a paycheck from your main job.
This is a good choice if you're unsure about the viability of your lifestyle business.
Or maybe you can't take the risk of losing your income and benefits while you're building the side business.
You might also decide that continuing your lifestyle business as a side hustle indefinitely is the right goal for you. Your main job pays the day-to-day bills while your side business brings in some extra money for savings, trips or other splurges.
Can a Successful Lifestyle Business stay as a Side Hustle?
Of course!
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of whether your side business should eventually become a full-time activity. That's the beauty of a lifestyle business - the goal is for the business to support YOUR lifestyle and needs, not the ideas that other people may have of "success".
start A new Lifestyle Business
Learn how to plan, manage and market your very own lifestyle business by following the guidelines that I will be laying out here.
Start with some introspection and self-awareness:
- What are you good at?
- What do you value?
- What do you love to do in your life?
- What would you like to change about your current work circumstances?
- How do you envision your business and your life in five years?
I will leave you with one important thing to remember: planning is important for a successful business, but execution and hard work are just as important. There are no short cuts (even though plenty of people will tell you otherwise). But building your own business can be immensely satisfying if you are willing and able to put in the work.
First, you can learn more about what makes a lifestyle business, and how it is different from a startup or other small business. And check out this list of lifestyle businesses here. Then follow these seven steps to design your own lifestyle business.
Please stay tuned for more as I continue to grow this site.
