How to Start a Lifestyle Business

Why start a Lifestyle business?

If you are looking for a way to escape the 9-5 rat race and live your life on your own terms, you, my friend, are in the right place. A decade ago, my wife and I worked stressful sales jobs in cold Toronto. But since we both had some experience in marketing, we decided to go all-in with it and see where it took us.

The beauty of building a lifestyle business is that there’s no right or wrong business model. E-commerce is no better than coaching; a digital marketing agency is not more lucrative than selling an online course.

You can create a lifestyle business with virtually any business model as long as you are ready to commit to it in the long run.

So, before you chose the model for your lifestyle business, ask yourself if you can use your current skills or profession to build your own version of success.

For example, my very first attempt at becoming a digital entrepreneur consisted of me trying to sell Pop-Tarts on Amazon. Then, once I realized that the competition was fiercer than I expected, I pivoted and started selling mobile accessories.

Then, just a few months after that, I learned how to create my own brand and launched a kitchenware line along with many other home and garden products.

Subsequently, I realized that I had accumulated experience with Facebook and Google ads. So I decided to launch a marketing agency and partner up with other e-commerce stores to help them achieve the same results I had been getting. 

That's when I realized I was much better off offering my services with a revenue share model instead of asking for a monthly retainer. Not only that kept me accountable to my clients, but it allowed me to push the envelope and create massive value for them.

By late 2019, my clients were selling between 50k and 300k a month through my ad campaigns, and I was collecting 10% of their gross sales. And best of all, my three team members were working on these accounts independently! Not bad for a semi-automated income stream, right?

I had my agency for four years, and lastly, I decided to offer coaching services and remove my business from the hands-on aspects of my clients' success. 

Now, my team and I help professionals scale their professional lifestyle firms. We do that by building their organic outreach and PR teams so that they can get a constant stream of qualified leads and lots of features on industry publications. Each client pays $10,000 to work with us, and once they are on board, we inject our proven systems into their business, and they can expect to see results within one to two weeks.

I am sharing my journey with you to show you that you don't have to have it all figured out. The main goal in the early stages is to get the ball rolling and start looking for ways to leverage your skills and get a proof of concept. I have a marketing and business background, so it made sense for me to start with e-commerce, but if you have a professional degree or any other hard skill, start with that first.

Whatever works, keep doing, while anything that doesn't, set it aside and learn from it.

If you are an accountant, don't waste your hard-earned experience. Instead, just leverage the internet to scale faster and offer a more customized experience for your clients.

If you are a dentist, build an audience online and use your expertise to consult other dentists or practices.

What's crucial is that you want to test and optimize your business model fast.

For example, the first thing I noticed when I was selling Pop-Tarts was that dealing with food permits took much longer than I had expected. I spent most of my days filling out paperwork and applying for permits. So as soon as I had the chance, I dropped that product and tried to re-create a similar system, but this time, without the food component.

You can do the same! Start by offering a service or product that comes naturally to you, and then optimize your business model. 

Whatever you decide, make sure not to stall! Do you know how many people told me they wanted to follow in my footsteps?! Way too many! In fact, in my first years running my lifestyle business, I spent a good chunk of my free time helping my friends figure out what they could do. 

But sure enough, it was all wasted time! Every time someone would decide to get the ball rolling, something happened, and they'd take some more time to think about it. 

Some people blamed the economy, others their full-time job, while others said they didn't want to risk losing "everything" by making some stupid mistake with their business. 

To me, that's just a bunch of different ways to say one thing: "I don't care about my freedom as much as I care about my comfort."

So, to avoid getting trapped in the proverbial rat race for the rest of your life, give yourself a strict deadline, share that with your network (family and close friends), and work towards it like there's no tomorrow.

As I said, you don't have to have it all figured out by the deadline! But that public accountability will help you move in the right direction.

The meaning of “lifestyle business”

Building a lifestyle business and making money online are two different things. Sure, the end result of both goals is cash in the bank, but merely making money online is not enough to achieve true personal freedom. As a coach, I came across countless online marketers who were able to launch successful products but didn’t persist long enough to set up multiple sources of income or achieve true financial freedom. And sure enough, when the sales from their products started drying up, they were left with some big bills to pay and a lot of anger inside.

My coaching clients are primarily professionals looking to use their current skills to make money online. These folks have gone to post secondary-school (or higher) for at least four years, so they understand what it means to work on a goal for an extended time. When you adopt that marathon mindset and stop chasing the quick bucks, you open up the door to a new conception of business. Put simply, a lifestyle business is nothing more than a regular business that prioritizes personal experiences and lifestyle choices over plain profits. Don’t worry, you’re still in it for the money! But when the time comes to choose between making even more profits and spending time with your family, you can optimize your business for the latter.

Lifestyle Business ideas for professionals

If you are a professional you worked hard for many years to get where you are today and you may not want to discard it all. So why not use all that experience to pivot into something that gives you more freedom? I’m going to share with you a few lifestyle business examples in a bit, but for now, let me make something clear. Even if you want to start from scratch with an e-commerce business or a digital agency, you can still use your skills and experience to get ahead of your competition. Most entrepreneurs with no academic experience find it hard to create business systems and stick to them. That gives professionals an edge since they are used to thinking in frameworks.

Lifestyle business examples

Most businesses can be lifestyle businesses. You just need to optimize them for two things: more free time and location independence. So I will show you how you can do just that with a few examples below.

Lifestyle business for accountants:

If you are a CPA or even a bookkeeper, you first need to look for the type of clients that can afford to spend medium to high-ticket prices with you. That's crucial because the goal is to work less, so dealing with ten great clients is much more efficient than dealing with 100 small ones. The sweet spot is generally businesses with annual revenue of 1 to 5 million dollars. That's because they can't afford their in-house accounting team, so they'd rather spend 3 to 5 k a month with an accounting firm. 

Lifestyle business for doctors:

Whether you are a plastic surgeon, an endocrinologist, or a dentist, you can quickly turn your experience into an incredibly lucrative lifestyle business. The internet is starving for real experts that can turn complex ideas into bite-sized information for the masses. Start with focusing on one core area (i.e., helping obese men lose weight and deal with high blood pressure) and create content for that niche. Once you get a following, start selling consultations or create a membership program. 

Know the Benefits of remote work with Deniero Bartolini.

Lifestyle business for lawyers:

Like accountants, lawyers can offer a wide array of high-ticket services remotely. The key is still the same: find a high-value market to tap into and start offering your services as a solution to a specific problem (I.e. helping businesses with mergers and acquisitions, business transactions, etc.) First, create content to become a credible source of information in your niche, then get good at quantifying the dollar amount that your clients will gain (or save) by using your expertise so you can command higher prices and work fewer hours.

Lifestyle businesses for non-professionals:

If you don't already have professional experience in a specific field, you can become an expert in a high-income skill over the span of a year and start reaping the benefits of your work within months from when you start. For example, you could master copywriting, then reach out to e-commerce stores to offer email marketing services on a revenue share model. Or you could learn how to create your own physical product and open your own e-commerce store. Or you could master Facebook or Google ads and open your own agency. As you can tell by now, you should always follow the market that has a high-value problem to solve. If you focus on providing massive value to a starting crowd, you’ll never lack clients and profits. 

The Mindset you need to run your lifestyle business.

Entrepreneurship is hot right now because of social media. Private jets, expensive trips, and private parties are cool. But you don't see the entrepreneurs that lost everything.

If you are thinking about quitting your job and becoming your own boss, realize that you won't be running a "lifestyle business" for the first few years. A new business is just a business, and it needs you 24/7. 

Just like a parent takes care of a child for 18 years before sending them into the world,  you need to "raise" your business to be self-sufficient. 

This is not a passion project you'll do on Wednesdays and Thursdays after work. If you want to replace your full-time income, you need to work full-time on your side hustle until you can hire people to take care of the day-to-day of your business. 

That also means you need to prioritize self-care outside working hours. Meditate, go for nature walks, take baths, work out, or do yoga. This is not the time in your life to watch TV, waste time on social media, or play video games. Mc Donald's Ray Crock used to say "if you have time to lean, you have time to clean." And that applies to your business and life right now. If you have time to sit around, you have time to either grow your business or reinvigorate your mind soul, or body with uplifting and energizing activities.

You have to be ruthless with your time at this stage. This is the price to pay if you want to create a machine that will produce comfort and freedom for decades to come.

Are you ready to pay that?

My client Liam used to work on his business during evenings, nights, and weekends, and then he had his 9-5 marketing job. Then COVID hit and he had to work from home too. Liam worked from 9 am to midnight from the same desk in his one-bedroom apartment. So for those 6 to 9 months, he designed an insanely productive schedule that consisted of waking up at 7 am, meditating, listening to uplifting music while exercising, and working on his side business for an hour. Then during the day, he'd work on his full-time job activities. Every time he had a break, he'd go for a walk at the park nearby. Then after 5, he'd have a healthy meal, work on his business, and go to bed. 

It was not an easy process, but he focused on the prize, and the hard work paid off. He's now living his dream lifestyle traveling the world. He hikes and bikes in nature and could resume his passion for his perming arts by getting cast for acting roles. And he's able to do all this thanks to his lifestyle business. 

You are reading this blog post because part of you wants to live a different life. For example, you may hate your job, or you are tired of lengthy commutes. Those are great reasons to start a business, but they can't be the only ones.

You can't find ongoing motivation in a negative feeling. "I hate my job" will only move you away from your job, not towards success. To keep on climbing, you need a concrete goal and a vision of the life you want. 

Start with designing your perfect house, how you're going to look, who you want to impact with your work, and the people you have around. 

Listen to podcasts and read books that motivate you to take action and push you to get better every day. 

You are not going to stumble upon your perfect lifestyle. You won't wake up one morning and find your dream home. But, to get that, you need to focus on it incessantly for years to come at the exclusion of anything else that may dim that image.

This means cutting out negative people too. Or, if you can't cut them out, you should reduce the time you spend with them.

If this sounds too intense, I understand. That means you don't want a life that much out of the ordinary after all, and that's ok!

Just be honest with yourself. Like I said earlier, maybe you don't like your current job, but instead of starting a lifestyle business, you'd be better off trying to find a different job that aligns better with you first.

But if you are ready to take the leap and live life on your terms (and you're prepared to work for it), then stick around and allow me to help you achieve your wildest dreams.

Lifestyle business myths

Keep in mind that no matter what lifestyle business model you choose to pursue, you'll need to stick to it in the long run to see real results. Lots of people still associate lifestyle businesses with "make-money-online" scams and that's due to the many online courses that claim to help you achieve insane results with little effort on your part. To avoid that mentality, think of your online business as a brick-and-mortar operation. How many hours would you need to work if you were to open a new restaurant? A lot!!! Sure, once your lifestyle business takes off, you'll enjoy time, money, and location freedom, but in the beginning steps, you need to nurture your business with the same focus you’d put into any other business.