It’s a Great Idea, but
Will It Fit Your Lifestyle?
Lifestyle entrepreneurs have more to consider than if it will
work. As such an entrepreneur, you also must consider if it will
fit your chosen lifestyle.
A pillar of traditional business rationale is to earn a return
on your investment. It’s hard to argue against this principle, but
it does need modification for lifestyle entrepreneurs because it
doesn’t include personal preferences and nonmonetary goals.
An example is seen in hiring employees. Traditional wisdom
would argue that if an employee would cost $500 per week and
the income derived from that employee would be a stable $600
per week, the hiring should be done; end of story. Does this logic
work, however, if the owner of the business just doesn’t want
employees because he perceives them as a headache? Does avoiding
that headache have a dollar value? Once again, though, traditional
wisdom doesn’t take into account the needs of the kind
of entrepreneur this book is designed to help.
Some years ago, wearing my business broker hat, I helped the
owner of a machine shop sell his business. The business was doing
reasonably well, but the owner had grown tired and frus trated with it. A few months after the sale, he called me to say he
wanted to buy a new business (this isn’t unusual; after small business
owners sell out, they often want to get back into business a
few months later). When I asked what kind of business he was
looking to buy, his response: “My ideal business is one that I can
run with no employees.” Clearly, what turned him off to the business
he sold was managing and generally dealing with employees.
Although this kind of “ideal business scenario” makes little
sense in the traditional business world, it makes plenty of sense—
and in fact is not unusual—in the lifestyle business world.
Many lifestyle entrepreneurs go into their own business largely
because they don’t want to rely on others or be responsible for
others. With the advent of office technology and the Internet,
running a business without employees is quite doable today, as
long as you choose the right business and set it up the right way.
It may work well for most professional services and certain Internet
ventures, for example, but it would seldom work well for a
manufacturing venture or a brick-and-mortar retail store.
Does It Involve Significant Up-Front Investment?
There’s nothing wrong with up-front investment in equipment,
research, development, and the like so long as you do it
with your eyes open and it can ultimately pay for itself. Keep in
mind that the bigger the investment, the more you are likely to be
tied to the business. If your reason for going into business is so
you can have the freedom to travel several times a year on a whim,
a business with significant up-front investment might prove more
of a burden than you want to take on. If you borrow $50,000 to
buy equipment, the lender, be it a bank or a relative, doesn’t want
to hear “Oh, I won’t be paying the June or July payment because
I’ll be traveling in Asia then.” The lender expects you to be working
that equipment to keep those monthly payments coming in.
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