A Lifestyle Business Is The Way To Go Thumbnail

After publishing, Can Financial Samurai Be The Next Billion Dollar FinTech, I got a lot of feedback from readers about what I should do. After checking out the poll results and reading all the comments, I’ve come to the conclusion that a lifestyle business is absolutely the way to go!

For most of us, blogging is a fun way to connect with other folks and earn a few extra bucks. What I’ve noticed about blogs who pursue riches is that they ultimately lose their voice. Once you lose your voice, you lose your brand. And once you lose your brand, there’s no more fun because you’re simply doing everything for money.

WHY A LIFESTYLE BUSINESS IS BETTER THAN A BIG BUSINESS

1) You remain the Queen Or King of your business. Instead of reporting to investors how your business is doing, you can make your own decisions and go at your own pace. There is no pressure to please anybody but yourself. In property terms, bringing on investors is like buying a condo. You may be the boss of your condo, but you’ve still got to follow the rules of the condo association.

2) You maintain your voice and brand. There’s only one you. Once you try to blog for the sake of making money, you end up hiring a bunch of writers that dilute your voice. You then start hawking credit cards and affiliate products that you don’t use. Having a great voice online is priceless because it opens doors to many other opportunities. You also gain a tremendous amount of respect from other people.

3) You maintain maximum flexibility. Running a lifestyle business doesn’t mean you can’t scale up. You simply scale up on your own time. If you want to go travel for four weeks, you can go right ahead. If you want to work with some consulting clients, there’s nobody stopping you. Freedom and flexibility cannot be appreciated enough.

4) You don’t grow just for the sake of growing. Growth is the key to creating a big company. So many companies spend boatloads of money, hire lots of people, and invest in products all for the sake of growth. Then they blow themselves up because they didn’t grow in a prudent way. How many startups have you heard go through millions and millions of dollars only to end up with nothing?

5) You don’t have to deal with other people if you don’t want to. There’s a great saying that hell is other people. Once you grow a business, you’ve got to manage egos, motivate employees, worry about retention and all sorts of stressful stuff. If you have a lifestyle business, you keep your eye on the ball and stay lean.

DON’T UNDERESTIMATE A LIFESTYLE BUSINESS

You can make a lot of money with a lifestyle business. We all know there are plenty of bloggers out there pulling down $500,000, $1,000,000, $5,000,000+ in revenue a year from their sites. Sure, some of them might be spending half their revenue on advertising to gain traffic, but they’re still earning a lot of money!

My one problem running an online business is that I reinvest hardly any of my profits back into growing my business. Instead, I either invest the proceeds elsewhere or spend the money on living life! I already made my money in my previous career and my passive income streams are producing enough to live a comfortable life. As a result, my hunger to make more money just isn’t as high as it could be.

It’s much easier to create a sustainable lifestyle business than grow a massive business that might one day sell for tens of millions of dollars or more. It often takes an army to create something huge. I’ve spoke to plenty of entrepreneurs and nine out of ten tell me they would much rather own a lifestyle business making enough to live a comfortable life than go their route.

As we look forward to 2016, I think it’s a good idea to regain our business mindset if we’ve been too lax. At the same time, let’s not lose our voices. So many sites that sold have become completely uninteresting. Do your best not to give up your income producing lifestyle business. You’re sitting on a much more valuable asset than you realize in this low interest rate environment!

Finally, once you’ve built a lifestyle business, you always have the optionality to build that mega business!

Would you rather go the lifestyle business route or try and hit a home run? Have you ever thought to think that your lifestyle business might already very well be a home run?

Related: My Passive Income Stream Update For 2017 (I finally hit $200,000 a year!)

STARTING A MONEY MAKING BLOG

I never thought I’d be able to quit my job in 2012 just three years after starting Financial Samurai. But by starting one financial crisis day in 2009, Financial Samurai actually makes more than my entire passive income total that took 15 years to build. If you enjoy writing, creating, connecting with people online, and enjoying more freedom, learn how you can set up a WordPress blog in 15 minutes like this one.

Leverage the 3+ billion internet users and build your brand online. There are professional bloggers now who make way more than bankers, doctors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs while having much more fun, much more freedom, and doing less work. Get started. You never know where the journey will take you!

My favorite investment opportunity for 2017 – 2021 is RealtyShares. They are the best real estate crowdfunding platform around. I’m looking to invest $250,000 surgically through them in the heartland of America.

Updated for 2017 and beyond.