Today I’m going to share my thoughts about why a lifestyle business can be considered better than a real job by outlining 7 reasons why I think it’s better than being an employee for someone else.
Hopefully by the end of the article you’ll have a better understanding why so many people are choosing to invest their time and effort into building a lifestyle business that they can call their own, and better still I’m hoping you’ll be inspired to start the process of creating your own.
Reason 1: Flexibility
Have you ever tried telling your boss that you aren’t going to work from 9-5 today and instead you’ll work from 7-10 then have a couple of hours off before fitting in another 2 hours around lunchtime and then polishing off the rest of your usual 8 hour days late that evening? I can’t imagine that a) too many people have any bothered having this conversation and b) if anyone has the answer wasn’t positive.
One of the biggest problems with the usual 9-5 is it’s just that, 8 hours per day at a time of your employers choosing. After all even if you don’t do 9-5 the chances are the hours are set by your boss and there’s very little choice in the matter. And that’s one of the best ways that having a lifestyle business really stands out… you can set your own hours and change them as you see fit.
If you need a day off during the week to meet a friend or catch up with family you can, just make up the time when it suits you. If you’d prefer to work late in the evening because you want to spend the day with your kids then that’s fine too. At the end of the day, you can choose when and how much to work based on the tasks you set yourself and the goals you have in place for your business.
Reason 2: You keep all the profit
I bet there’s been plenty of times in your career when you sit back and wonder why you spend so much effort doing your job well, only for someone else to benefit from that hard work. When the company has a stellar year and makes massive profits who usually reaps the benefits? Most of the time it’s the guys or girls at the top of the tree and/or the shareholders that make the most of things rather than those that are actually responsible for the added profit.
If you’re running a lifestyle business however this is most certainly not the case. If you put in extra effort during a month and in turn generate additional profit, you get to decide what to do with it, not some random person who isn’t involved in the day to day running of your business. If you choose to reinvest it for the future or spend on treating yourself, that’s entirely up to you!
Reason 3: Do things once, profit over and over
A lifestyle business provides you with the opportunity to do a task once, such as set up an affiliate link, create an email series or build an affiliate link, and then profit from it over and over again. This could mean that you spend a day or two doing the work that’s needed to get everything set up and once done you are able to use this asset to generate an income for a long time into the future, even potentially not working on those things again.
Contrast this with working in a ‘real job’; if you’re finished with one task that has been set for you on any given day it’s unlikely your boss is just going to let you finish then and there. Their logic will be that your being paid for 8 hours a day so they’d better find you enough to do to keep you busy for those 8 hours, regardless of whether or not those other tasks actually provide any real value.
This brings me onto another reason a lifestyle business is better than a ‘real job’.
Reason 4: Escape the “Time = Money” mindset
At most jobs it’s pretty common for you salary or income to be based on how many hours or days you work, after all this makes it pretty easy to calculate what your annual salary is, what happens if you are unable to work and how to calculate overtime etc. In essence you are agreeing with someone else that an hour or day of your time is worth a fixed sum of money, however the biggest problem with this is that there are only so many hours in a day or days in a week so your income is ultimately limited.
On the flip side, with a lifestyle business, not only can you profit many times from the same period of work i.e. one hour of work could generate income for years to come, you can also adopt a value = money approach and multiply your income. Let’s imagine you decide to run a workshop for your clients that takes a full day to prepare for and then run, the value of this workshop is the same for every attendee regardless of how many attend.
You can choose to offer this education or information to as many people as you like, each paying a fee for the privilege, so instead of you receiving $247 for a day’s work you could in turn have 10, 20 or 30 people attend, all paying you $247 instantly multiplying your income. Even better still, record the event and people will pay for these in the future, the value to them is the same but your effort is practically nothing for each future sale… maybe a trip to the post office if selling a copy on DVD!
Reason 5: Location is not important
Even in this modern age of the internet, laptops and the always on lifestyle we all tend to lead, most businesses still insist that when you work for them you do so from a particular location, usually of their choosing. Now, in some instances this is entirely to be expected, after all you can’t really work in a retail store or restaurant and not physically be there, but it’s fair to say that for many other types of jobs you don’t really have to be at that particular desk in order to do it well.
And that’s another reason why a lifestyle business beats a real job, most can be run from a location of your choosing. Sure there are likely to be situations where you need to be in a certain place at a particular time, but a lot of the time, if you have internet access and your laptop it’s easy enough to be in control of your business and perform the most important tasks that you need to complete.
Best of all, you can decide on any given day where you’d like to work… the local Starbucks, your backyard in the sun, a local shared office location or maybe you’re on holiday and need to check in from the beach… it’s all entirely up to you.
Reason 6: You can never be downsized
It seems that very few days go by without some large company announcing that it’s going to downsize its workforce in order to protect the bottom line and keep the shareholders happy. Even if the economy is booming technology is allowing computers to do the jobs that people used to do in the past, meaning that every day highly qualified people are finding themselves without the security of a job they may have been doing for many years.
The beauty of having your own lifestyle business is that you are the boss and you get to decide what your business focuses on. Your have much lower overheads than most businesses, it’s easy to change course if something isn’t working and the only person you have to answer to is yourself, so the fact of the matter is there’s not going to be a pink slip in your lifestyle business future.
Of course, when it comes to the many roles you’ll have to play in your business there may be the opportunity to fire yourself from a few of those if you can find someone else to do it better (but that’s for another article).
Reason 7: If you do it right, it won’t feel like work
Let’s be honest, some people love their jobs and don’t mind turning up each and every day to do something they enjoy. The problem is that no matter what you are expected to turn up every day, regardless of how you’re feeling, whether or not there’s actually anything to do or how many times you done or deal with the same thing in the past.
At some point, due to the very nature of a job, it is highly likely that you will resent having to do it. If you don’t have any control or choice in the matter it’s hard not to get to the point when you’re just going with the flow and going through the motions each and every day.
On the flip side, when you have control, can choose what to do and when you do it, can decide whether or not a particular client or customer is right for your business it can be far more rewarding. Find something your’re passionate in, which is usually the key piece of the lifestyle business puzzle, and you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to ‘work’ on your business each and every day.
Conclusion
So there you have them, 7 great reasons why a lifestyle business is better than a ‘real job’.
The beauty of these are that they are just some of the reasons why a lifestyle business can be great, not only that but they’re also only from my perspective and you may have a whole range of other reasons why you’re thinking a lifestyle business would be right for you. Of course I’d love to hear your views, so feel free to leave a comment below and of course if you think someone else would benefit from checking out the article feel free to share.
Until next time…
