Is it me, or is it suddenly cool to talk about ‘lifestyle businesses’ again?
I dunno…
For years, everything I’ve seen on social media has been “how to [hundreds of millions] and 10X in 37 minutes, and if you’re not literally bleeding from the eyeballs you’re doing it wrong” type vibe.
Whereas now, everyone be like: “How to have a fun freedom business!”
It’s probably just my imagination.
Or my feed.
Or both.
Either way, it always makes me chuckle, because I’ve been quietly doing the lifestyle thing for 12+ years.
Just plugging away, same as ever, doing my thing, running a business that is unapologetically lifestyle-first…
Watching social media hustle culture from the sidelines in utter bewilderment…
Wondering what the hell everyone is smoking, like a sober person at a rave wondering why everyone’s hugging lamp posts.
See, for me it’s only ever been about a “fun, freedom business”.
Sacrifice the next 10 years for an outside chance at a $100m exit?
Nah…
I’d rather just live now.
The goal: make £1M profit, working a couple of days a week.
Then take off to Japan for a month.
Play chess with my daughter at 4pm.
Take a tennis lesson on a Monday morning.
The thing is, it’s embarrassingly easy to run your business in a way that gives you this kind of freedom these days.
Perhaps you even had times in the past when your business was like this too.
But, like a lot of people, you might have fallen prey to the siren call of “Scale, baby, scale!”, and now spend a little too much money on consultants, a little too much time in meetings, a little too much margin on team…
And nowhere near enough time doing the stuff that you know gives you life (whatever that means for you).
Don’t get me wrong…
I’ve been down those rabbit holes too.
I’ve wanted more.
I’ve pushed too hard.
But I quickly realised that avoiding stuff I don’t like was far more important to me than “accumulating stuff”, like gold toilets, or whatever the cool kids spend their money on.
I much prefer to use money to buy time…
And then to spend that time in epic ways…
Namaste,
Olly
