The Ideal Lifestyle Business

Many people think I’ve dropped out of the business world since I’m not selling stuff all the time.

I no longer…

….host webinars.
…market affiliate products.
…sell info products anymore.
…accept coaching clients.
…no advertisements plastered all over my website.

I dropped out of all my mastermind groups. I don’t attend seminars.

On top of this, I sold my fitness business a few years ago. I “retired” from real estate sales and I no longer manage any property for other people. I sent my real estate license back to the state and it sits there as “inactive.”  Poor thing. Must be lonely.

On the surface, it looks like I’ve “quit” and walked away. But this is far from accurate. The truth is I no longer have to do any of these things for money. I can and do say “NO THANKS” to just about everything that comes to me. I just don’t want the aggravation. In the past week, I’ve turned away two new coaching students, an investor from Canada who wanted me to help them acquire income properties here in Ohio, and an info marketer who wanted me to promote their products with a 75% commission split.

Life gets a lot better when you don’t have to chase every dollar.

Now, I’ve hinted at what I’ve been up to in a few articles on this website. I’m not sure many have picked up on it. Or if they have picked up on it, they’ve immediately discounted it as a waste of time.

I have a business. A profitable business.

My business doesn’t require much time. On average, I probably work one to two hours a day.

The income of the business grows each and every month. I have no employees. I have no office and work from home. I have no overhead. I have no clients. I pay for no advertising. This means no advertorials. No pay-per-click advertisements. No social media marketing campaigns. The business has no website. No lead capture page. No free reports. No facebook page. No twitter account. No social media whatsoever.

The best part is I only work when I want to work, which is from 1 to 2:30 in the afternoon. I can sleep in every day of the week. I can wear whatever clothes I want. Jeans. T-shirt. Ball cap. In fact, here’s my typical schedule:

I’m usually up by around 6:30. The day starts with my journal and coffee. I spend some time thinking and writing. Next I take the dog for a long hike. After the hike, I typically do some sort of workout. Weights, Mini Tough Mudder, Satan’s cycle (airdyne), sprints, etc. After the shower, I’ll spend some time writing for the blog. Around noon I’ll have lunch with my wife. After lunch, I typically work on this business. By 2:30 or 3:000 my work is finished for the day and I’ll usually spend the rest of the afternoon reading followed by dinner with the family. The evenings are for books, movies, or other fun activities.

It’s the ideal lifestyle business. (Notice the hard work is always done first thing in the morning.)

The basic plan is to design your business to support how you want to live. Reading, thinking, writing and hanging with my family are my favorite things to do. So this is what I’ve designed my business around. My mission is to really enjoy every aspect of my life. Most people don’t think this way and design their lives around their businesses/work. They put their businesses/work first and everything else second.

For them, work is the priority. For me, enjoyment is the priority. Sure, I could work more and make more money. Why? More money wouldn’t provide more enjoyment and would, more than likely, cause more aggravation.

20 years ago I learned a very valuable time management lesson at a Craig Proctor seminar. Craig explained how life is like a glass. The glass can only hold so much so you have to be careful what and how you load things into the glass. Craig said the most important things are the ice cubes. These go in first. Once the glass is full of ice, you can then pour in water. The water flows around the ice cubes.

For me, the ice cubes are the things I want to do in life. The water is my work.
Notice the ice goes in first and then the water fills whatever is remaining.
Most people put the water in first and then have no room for ice.

Back to my business…

I could hire someone to manage this business for me and be completely hands off. However, working 1 to 2 hours each afternoon isn’t too hard so I manage everything myself. It’s actually pretty easy and I do a better job than anyone else would. Here’s a summary of this business….

– No continuing education requirements
– No networking meetings
– No clients
– No listings
– No sales presentations
– No suits
– No office
– No showings
– No website
– No sales funnels
– No partners
– No hiring assistants & employees
– No training assistants & employees
– No managing employees
– No firing of employees
– No limitations on your income.
– No debt.
– No franchise fees.
– No monthly fees.
– No fancy CRM software. (Just a free google spreadsheet)

This business was designed to avoid aggravation, which means everything listed above. People can be are challenging and I purposefully structured this business to work alone. Structuring your life to avoid things you dislike is an important step to the ideal lifestyle business. If you continue allowing yourself to be in aggravating situations on a daily basis, you’re going to be a miserable person.

This entire idea starts with thinking seriously about how you want to live. About what you enjoy doing. About what you don’t enjoy doing. Create a business designed around your best life. Once you do, you’ll realize you don’t need to play the same game everyone else plays.

Want to know more about my business?

From time-to-time, I offer to help a few people copy my existing business for themselves. This includes a 4-week period where I’ll personally help you do exactly what I do. There is a cost for this program. If you would like to be notified and receive additional information when new openings are offered, join the notification list with your email here: