MBA1547 Are Lifestyle Businesses Real? + Free Ride Friday

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All right, let's jump into today's episod. Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that delivers business truths on the daily every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn Are lifestyle businesses real? You hear about these types of businesses online all the time. A business that fits your lifestyle, your ideal lifestyle. Plenty of time to read and think. Laptop on the beach. Wind in the hair do these businesses actually exist? Can you build one for yourself? What does it take and what are the trade offs? That's what we get into. In today's episode, so much of online business is presented as lifestyle businesses. Businesses that provide you an incredible lifestyle while you're building your business, while you're growing it and serving your customers, we get to the bottom of the see if there's any truth in that, see if there's any examples. We can find all that and more. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I first heard about lifestyle businesses back in 2017 when I first read the book the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. This book is all about how you can build a lifestyle business. A business that will allow you to live the lifestyle you want with plenty of time for you to explore your hobbies, take long vacations, enjoy the lap of luxury. It had me thinking, is this really possible? Can you actually build a business and live that kind of life at the same time? I mean, I know that building businesses is hard work. It's a lot of stress, it's a lot of responsibility. How could I be doing that along with spending countless hours on the beach, sipping margaritas and not having a care in the world? For those who don't know, I really was a big blogger. That's how I got into online business. And one of the blogs I used to follow is called Think Traffic by Corbett Barr. That BL turn into Fizzle, which I'm sure you heard of on the show before. Incorporate was the first person I met that actually had a lifestyle business. He would spend a few months, maybe about four or five months out of the year in Mexico. He would literally be able to look at the beach from where he was living in Mexico every day for about four or five months out of the year. I know him on a personal level. He didn't seem as stressed out as I was. It seemed like he enjoyed what he was doing and he had time with his significant other friends. And it was the first time I kind of thought maybe this is actually possible. I then started to get to know other people that had similar lifestyles. People like John Link Dumas from Entrepreneurs on Fire. Great podcast, great brand, great business. He has a oceanfront property in Puerto Rico. He doesn't seem stressed out. He's got plenty of free time. He travels. Him and his partner Kate seem like they got it all together and they have a very successful business that makes seven figures. I also got to know Jason and Caroline Zook They've become very close friends of ours who have a great business called Wandering Aimfully, where they sell coaching and courses, and they live a pretty good life and they keep stress pretty much at bay. So maybe I'm doing something wrong, right? Is what I thought to myself. But then a few years went by and I got to know these people a little bit more. I get to know them more on an intimate level, become closer friends. And I started realize these people work really hard. They actually work more than they play. And even though that Corbett Barr was spending, you know, a few months out of the year in Mexico, he wasn't vacationing, he was actually working. And he had his own set of stresses and challenges in his business. I took a closer look at what John and Kate were doing at Entrepreneurs on Fire and how much time and effort they put into building their brand. And maybe they're not working as hard as they used to, but, man, when they first started those first four or five years, the amount of content they produced, the amount of stuff that they put out, and they still do this at some level. So it begs the question, hey, what is a lifestyle business? Let's define it first, because in my book, the idea of being able to run a business and do minimal work, where it's like 80% of the time you're on vacation, this is very, very hard to do unless you're buying an established business that has been running for years and you're more like a director and you have somebody running your business for you, a president of operations, let's say. But for most of us, we're building a business, we're growing it, we're making it happen. It's from scratch. It's not an investment that we just kind of buy. It's still something that we're nurturing. And for most of us, a lifestyle business just really means I'm able to work from anywhere. I can take my laptop and work from any location, whether it's Thailand or my kitchen table. Because running and building a business takes a lot of attention, time and care. So things became a little clearer to me. Started to realize, hey, you can either a build a business that's flexible, that allows you to work from anywhere, and that's most online businesses, and continue to build this business and pace myself and kind of try my best not to burn out, try to give myself enough time off, right, and balance the two. I get to travel a little bit, work a little bit, and if that works for you, great. Or you can just focus on building the business. And not really the lifestyle, so to speak. Now this doesn't mean you're suffering. It just means your main focus, your only sole goal is to build this business as big as possible. And you're making some personal sacrifices. Meaning maybe you're not going to go on so many vacations, maybe you're not going to have so much time off. But the reason why you're trying to build this business as big as possible is, hey, at some point I'm going to cash out. I'm either going to sell the business, I'm going to let it go, I'm going to take my earnings and leave the casino and at that point I can quote, unquote, retire. So to me, these are kind of the options that entrepreneurs have and it's just about preference. Some people prefer to be able to work from anywhere, to have a balanced lifestyle and to continue to do it for as long as possible until their 80s. Some people are like, no, I don't want to do this until my 80s. I want to retire and take up hobbies and just have enough cash me not to worry about my finances for a long time, for the rest of time. Really. One of the things I realized when we did the eight week working while traveling experience back in 2017, I should say it was actually an experiment. I wanted to see if I liked to work while traveling. We spent eight weeks traveling Europe and the US and we were sort of on vacation, having that lifestyle, business lifestyle and really, really trying to enjoy the travels, enjoy the sights while running our business, recording the podc, building our software, all that kind of stuff, right? And through that experiment, I learned a lot about myself. So did Nicole, my business partner, my partner in life. And what we realized is that we don't want to work and play at the same time. We want to work hard and we want to play hard. We want to be able to fully shut off when we go on vacation. We almost felt like it was a shame. We're in these beautiful places, beautiful sights in Europe, Italy, in Germany, in Switzerland, and it was gorgeous. But I wasn't fully present. I had one foot in the business and, and one foot on vacation. And it just didn't feel good for some people. They love it. That's their lifestyle. They want that for us. We were just feeling like we wish we had all the time in the world to enjoy it fully and not really have the worries of the business in the back of our mind. That's just how we tick now. It doesn't mean that we don't Travel at all or go on vacations. It just means instead of trying to make our whole life a vacation or most of our life a vacation, or we just try to block out certain weeks out of the year to really fully shut off, go on vacation, come back and work hard. That's what works for us. You need to find out what works for you. Lifestyle businesses, quote unquote, work from anywhere they exist. But there's a cost here. There's a trade off. It's a psychological cost, it's a mental cost. It's an emotional cost that you're going to have to balance. For some people it's a great deal, but you need to find out for yourself. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

Tuxed data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile. Just bring your number. $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days. Okay. Does this happen to anybody else? You sit down with a juicy QPC, some McNuggets and those golden fries from McDonald's. Then you take a long sip of your Sprite because you can still hear your mama saying don't fill up on that drink before you eat your food. But you're grown now so you do what you want. Share and share alike with the 20 piece McNuggets from McDonald's for just $6 limited time only. Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer to wrap up today's lesson. Lifestyle businesses exist but understand it's not all play and no work. It just means you can be able to combine work and play in what you do every day. Some people love that. Personally, I like to be fully committed to work or fully committed to play. I don't like to content switch. I don't like to switch back and forth. It's tiring for me. When I go on vacation it takes me like three or four days just to fully unwind. I'm still thinking about work and worrying and all that kind of stuff. Imagine me trying to do that several times during the day. If I'm working from a beach for example. Doesn't work for me. So you need to find out if that works for you or not. If it does, more power to you. Possibilities are endless and you could pace yourself and you can really make the business work for the way you want to live. Thank you so much for listening, but today's episode's not over. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's free ride. And the winner is Sponge to Sponge. That's the handle over on itunes. Sponge to Sponge says a must listen for anyone starting a business. Omar, I want to thank you for creating the $100 NBA podcast. I listen while driving and commuting with my kids. And thanks to you I've started working on my project which only existed in my mind. My kids in the car imitate your heyo and welcome. Thank you so much Sponge to Sponge for that awesome review. And thanks kids for listening along. You are a free ad Friday winner. So email me over at omar100, NBA so I can hook you up with the free ride to Ezcourse. If you're listening right now and you want to win a free ride, just leave us an itunes rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday, just like right now. Thanks so much for listening and being a subscriber to this podcast. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of my favorite books is by Derek Sivers. It's called Anything youg Want and it talks about how your business is your choice, how you run it, the way you build it, the way your life is around it. You get to dictate. This is the beauty of business. It's your creation. You make the choices, understand the choices you're making, understand what you're going to be living with with those choices. Highly recommend that book. Check it out. Anything youg Want by Derek Sivers. Thanks so much for listening. I'll check you in Monday's episode. Until then, take care. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

Tuxt and data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile. Just bring your number. $30 first month at $25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days.