What is Lifestyle Entrepreneur (Part 2)

Lifestyle.jpgI believe that one of the reasons that many businesses fail - and hence, what could change the tide - is deciding, firmly and decisively - whether you’re a true lifestyle entrepreneur or a traditional entrepreneur that’s aiming for the Moon.

You see, I believe there is a big difference and knowing what type of entrepreneur you are could really change your mindset and give you such clarity and focus that you’ll find it impossible not to succeed.

Will you be happy with say a 6-figure income year-in, year-out or do you want your turnover to grow from one million to 5 million to 10 million to 50 million?

Will you be happy working at home for the foreseeable future or do you envision having your own growing office with a secretary and support staff?

For you see, whatever direction you take, you need to make a choice now. Why? Because both have different influences in how you proceed in your business.

These are some of the questions that need to be answered. Because whatever way you choose, you’ll have a clearer objective ahead of you.

Knowing that you will never need office space or staff and a large enough cash flow requirement to cover all the overheads can really set you free.

You have no illusions of running a $50 million company with 100 staff and all that goes with it. Nope, once you decide on becoming a lifestyle entrepreneur you can almost sense the relief and weight off your shoulders.

If you’ve settled on becoming a lifestyle entrepreneur then the next step is to decide how many hours per day or per week you are willing to put into your business.

Needless to say, at the start you might have to put in the extra hours so that further down the road you can enjoy the lifestyle aspects of your hard work.

You might say, go for a 4-hour day, giving you a big chunk of free time. That equates to 20 hours a week to build and grow your business.

Or you might want to work full-on, 12 hours a day for the first few months of your business to get everything in place, put up systems, automate as much as you can and then slow down and watch your business run on auto pilot.

Whatever way you go, you at least know what you want, and what you are in for. And just as importantly, you’ll come to realize what you don’t want - and that can be just as effective.

If I was personally mentoring or coaching you I would definitely say to you - “Become a lifestyle Entrepreneur. The benefits and rewards are awesome, you’ll live a less stressed out life, your family will get to know you more and you will have all the time in the world to enjoy the fruits of your labors.”

And you know why I can say that? Because I am a lifestyle entrepreneur … and I’m loving every minute of it.

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Martin Neumann runs HomeOfficeVoice, a business and blog helping lifestyle entrepreneurs succeed. As a special offer for Home Office Warrior readers, Martin is offering exclusve access to his new 5-day email course “21 Steps to a Lifestyle Business to Die for” a full month before he releases it publicly. Click here to enrol. It’s free!

What is a Lifestyle Entrepreneur (Part 1)

Beach.jpgHave you ever felt the urge to simply take the afternoon off and have a round of golf?

Or maybe you love the idea of having a latte down by the beach and going for a long, lazy walk planning your next holiday.

Well, you are a lifestyle entrepreneur.

Basically, a lifestyle entrepreneur is somebody who runs a business to support their desired lifestyle.

Business, to a lifestyle entrepreneur, is a means to attaining their lifestyle goals - it’s not a means to an end.

A lifestyle entrepreneur does not thrive - or want - massive growth. They’re not interested in venture capital or hiring staff. They don’t want to be the next Google, YouTube or any of the next multi-million dollar IPO’s or takeover targets.

No. They have left the “rat race” behind for the simple reason that they value having the choice to do and be what they want.

The lifestyle entrepreneur values their freedom more than anything else.

And the beauty of today’s amazing technology is that becoming a lifestyle entrepreneur, earning a six-figure income and having the freedom to enjoy it is right there in front of us. It’s never been more obtainable.

Let me throw you up some examples: broadband, wifi, skype, twitter, google docs, PayPal, virtual Assistants … and I could go on and on.

Such tools allow anybody, anywhere the chance to transform their lives from stressed-out employee or business owner to one who’s more than happy to have a nice little business that’s there to support their lifestyle.

There’s a part two to this post but I put it on my to-do list … I’m off to have a hit of golf followed by a nice hot latte.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Martin Neumann runs HomeOfficeVoice, a business and blog helping lifestyle entrepreneurs succeed. As a special offer for Home Office Warrior readers, Martin is offering exclusve access to his new 5-day email course “21 Steps to a Lifestyle Business to Die for” a full month before he releases it publicly. Click here to enroll. It’s free!

When Failure Can Do More For You than Success

By Becky McCray (Guest Post)

If you are going to move forward in business, you’ll have to risk failure. In fact, you’ll succeed more often if you come to see that failure has positive aspects. You want to go from fearing the possibility of failure to considering failure necessary and positive.

How can failure be necessary and positive? Failure is a learning experience, and learning is positive. Failure points out a way that doesn’t work and gives you a chance to change direction. Failure allows you to step back, examine the situation, and grow through experience. If you are trying to hide a failure, you can’t learn from it. Despite what everyone has taught you, the shame is not in the failure itself; the shame is only in failing to learn from it.

Business Leader Zane Safrit calls himself a fan of failure. “Maybe it’s because I’m so familiar with it. That familiarity has taught me great lessons like humility, compassion, patience, perseverance, planning, flexibility. And it’s taught me that no success comes without failure. In fact most successes are built not on top of mountains of failure, but on top of mountain ranges of failure.”

Failure is a positive indicator that you are moving forward. You don’t really expect to move perfectly through business and life, do you? Then there will be stumbles, failures, problems. If you fail frequently, then you are making progress, failing your way ahead. If you aren’t failing at all, you probably aren’t moving. The more you fail, the more you learn, the faster you can improve.

Small Business Owner Rex Hammock said, “Even smart businesses managed by smart individuals and smart investors die. Businesses start and die every day. They always have. They always will. I am old enough - and have been fortunate enough - to have succeeded significantly and failed miserably and frankly, the failures have done more for me than the successes.”

Becky McCray is a small town entrepreneur. She writes Small Biz Survival about small business and rural issues, based on her own success and failures. She is the co-owner of a small town retail liquor store and small cattle ranch. She helps tourism related businesses from Oklahoma to Africa to maintain their web presence and helps rural nonprofits and governments with grant writing.

Previously, she was worked as an antiques dealer, city administrator, nonprofit executive and newspaper reporter.

Becky is a noted speaker on small business issues, having made presentations to business associations at the state and national level.

Are there negatives to working at home?

Negative.jpgYou can call me weird, but I just don’t see that many. Work from Home Momma had a post yesterday called, More Negatives to Working From Home.

Please leave your comments here with any negatives you deal with working from home. Maybe between all of us, we can come up with some solutions.

Sure signs of information overload

Thanks to Kick the Clutter for posting this picture on twitter this morning. When I saw it, it just reminded me of information overload.

Information overload.jpg