What is a lifestyle business?
A lifestyle business is a type of business that is primarily established and run with the aim of supporting the owner's desired lifestyle rather than pursuing significant growth, expansion, or high-profit margins. In other words, the primary goal of a lifestyle business is to provide the owner with a comfortable and fulfilling way of living rather than maximising financial returns.
To keep it real - a lifestyle business is a business that is established to make the profit level you need to live the lifestyle you want.
All clients who work with me, complete an exercise that has them look at the cost of their dream lifestyle.
To start with, these lifestyles often look like being able to take plenty of time off (school holidays for parents), get a cleaner, take a couple of holidays and long weekends away every year, be able to do whatever they choose without having to worry if they can pay for it, and to build savings.
It is nothing too wild. No private jets, fleets of cars, teams of staff or private jewellery collection…it really is just looking at things that would make life more comfortable.
When they hit that profit goal, they inevitably add more things but to start with, it's fairly simple. It's just a lifestyle that would feel good. It would bring them joy and they could live in peace and not stress about money at all.
A lifestyle business allows you to go to sleep full of gratitude because you got to spend the day doing work you love, with clients you adore, during the hours you wanted to work, in the location you wanted to be in and your bank balance is high enough for you to spend your downtime doing things that make you happy. The fundamentals of your life are all taken care of.
Significant growth, expansion and high profit margins might be something you want to pursue down the line but to start with, you just want to build a business that makes you the money for you to live the life you want to live.
What are the key characteristics of a lifestyle business?
Lifestyle businesses often have similar characteristics, so let’s take a look at what they are.
1. Personal fulfilment
The business is typically centred around the owner's passions, interests, or hobbies, allowing them to enjoy their work and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
2. Growth over scale
Lifestyle businesses generally focus on steady, sustainable growth rather than aggressive scaling. The owner might intentionally choose to keep the business small and manageable to avoid undue stress and time commitments. However, down the line this may change, if you are wishing to exit the business.
3. Independence and flexibility
The owner often has the freedom to set their own work hours, location, and pace, which allows them to integrate their business into their lifestyle seamlessly.
4. Limited external funding
Lifestyle businesses are often self-funded or rely on small loans, savings, or investments from family and friends, as they typically don't aim for massive expansion that requires significant external capital. This means no external parties asking questions or influencing your decisions.
5. Small team or solo
You will likely need some support in your business but you’ll never be running massive teams because that would detract from the lifestyle you want to lead and it’s not necessary in the lean, lifestyle business you are building. Lifestyle businesses usually have a limited number of team members (usually virtual freelancers rather than employees which means no scary employer rules to worry about). Keeping the team small also helps maintain control and reduces the need for complex management structures.
6. Niche focus
These businesses may serve a niche market, ensuring that the owner can personally connect with their customers and maintain a close relationship with them.
Building your lifestyle business
1. Data
Whilst your lifestyle business will still need to hit revenue and profit targets (to be able to pay for the lifestyle you want to live), the success of your business is often measured more by your happiness and quality of life than purely financial metrics. That does not mean you can avoid calculating those metrics though, as they give you the data you need to make decent business decisions.
Let’s look at how your data dashboard might look:
Sales value target for the year/month (this is calculated by reverse engineering your desired take home pay
No of units of specific products/services to be sold to hit that target
Where sales are not automated and need calls - closed sales calls target (no of people you need to say yes on your sales call)
Number of calls/presentations you will need to give (number of appointments who actually show up to the call to hear your offer/presentation)
Number of appointments you need (leads who book into talk to you)
Number of leads you need in the month
Depending on where your leads are coming from - you will then need to add stats to know how effective your lead sources are - for example if you are creating content on social media for one of your lead sources, you’ll need to track reach, engagement, clicks etc. If you are using landing pages as part of the funnel, check visitors, average time spent, clicks and completions. This will help you find the weak link in the cycle (if there are any) so you can make informed business decisions on how to fix it.
Profit for the month
Stats for email lists, social channels and groups
I appreciate this sounds like a lot and setting it up is always harder than maintaining it but doing this stuff will give you back time and stop you chasing your tail or focusing on things that just don’t move the needle. We want to work less and maximise the ROI of the time we do spend working - data dashboards help.
2. Client Value Journey
It is super important that you understand the journey your client needs to take. You must be clear on their start point and the end point they want to get to.
You can then offer a range of services/products that help them move from start to end but don’t solve the whole problem which is reflected in the price point and then your signature product which solves the whole thing and is priced accordingly.
You then offer a recurring monthly service that supports your clients in maintaining the dream result that you have helped them to achieve.
This leaves you with roughly 3-4 service offerings that you focus on. For some of my more creative clients, they don’t like the restrictiveness of this in the first instance, however the consistent messaging, revenue and profits soon change their minds PLUS there is often space and time to do additional one off fun services to scratch any itch they may have.
3. Systems and operating procedures
Sounds boring, you may be thinking but SOPs are the difference between you running around like a headless chicken and things being streamlined and feeling like they move with ease. They are also what allows your business to continue running if you are unable to work.
Track what you do, every day, in your business. Record yourself doing it and use an AI tool to help you turn it into an SOP - create these for all key tasks and it will help you to delegate, ensure a core standard of work across your business and increase efficiency. You’ll probably also find as you create these that you tweak the way you do things to improve it - the outcome of this effort is so worth it, trust me!
4. The right tools
There are so many possibilities on the market that it can be overwhelming to decide what you actually need.
We suggest:
a decent marketing, email and CRM tool,
Xero (for your financials and it comes with Hubdoc for uploading receipts etc), Google workspace for your email, data storage and working tools
You might want Zoom but you can use your google meet account
Fathom to record meetings and share updates to your clients and team with ease
Clickup for assigning tasks to your team and making sure everything gets done on time
Domain name provider (I use Namecheap)
Don’t overload yourself with different tools and multiple subscriptions for marketing and CRM purposes - I created The One so that you could do everything you need in terms of marketing (think website, social media content, email newsletter, funnel automations), delivery (courses, memberships, surveys) and your CRM (client and prospect data tracking) all in one place, for the cost of one subscription (£79/month).
The One is a white labelled High Level account except we built all the automations you need, gave you a website template you can make your own and wrote all your emails for you too (obvs you need to tweak for your product/service and clients).
5. The right team
Find the people who can do what you can’t and do it really well and then let them. Share the vision for your business, the financials so they are clear on what they can contribute, their KPIs so they know what to deliver and guide them with your SOPs - your job is to lead not micromanage.
These 5 steps will have you well on your way to growing your lifestyle business.
And that leaves to me ask some questions:
Are you building a lifestyle business?
Do you know what the cost of the life you want to live is?
Is your strategy telling you what actions to take on a daily basis and are you hitting those lifestyle business profit goals?
Let me know in the comments or drop me an email, I’d love to hear more about your business journey.
