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…
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
