The first level of business ownerships could be a lifestyle business which is a business with sufficient income to support the lifestyle of the owner by Gary Shotton #000283
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Life Style Business
By Gary Shotton
This text is in Extreme Rough draft and will be edited in the near future.
Hello, I am Gary Shotton, I’m here to talk to you about Inspiring Better Business and on the subject of a “Lifestyle Business”. I want to define that for you. You might have heard me talk about that rotation. And so I think it’s important to understand that there’s different sizes of businesses. There’s different ways to approach business. And sometimes we use the word business and it includes everything from somebody that has 1000 employees or 100 employees or 10 employees. And so, I want to start with what a lifestyle business and that may be just you yourself and I that was we jokingly say, this view. And what I mean by lifestyle is that in certain situations, it may be best just to keep your business small enough that it meets the needs of your lifestyle. In other words, if you have a certain income level that you need, and you don’t have a job or can’t find a job that would meet those needs of your lifestyle, then you might start a lifestyle business. And I’m going to give some examples, so don’t don’t worry here, but I actually had that happen when I moved to my town that I live in. Now. I’m living at this house for several years and been in this town since 1982. And I came with the understanding that I might get a job because I had a degree and I had experience and I had a really a pretty good job that I left and I thought I could get a job well, there was no it wasn’t a job. And so my first thought was I better get some money coming in pretty quick here. And I didn’t call it that that that at that time, but it wasn’t lifestyle business because I started moving people I had moved to this town. My new location hadn’t moving my furniture. I’d put him in a trailer. It was a horse trader. It was a trailer that you could use in hauling for horses. And when I got here I unloaded that and parked that trailer in my front driveway and I’m in this dilemma where I’m thinking what would I do for income? And I tried in my occupation, it just didn’t work. And so I put an ad in the paper that said let me help you move as moving furniture like from one house to the next. Packing up things and and relocating, and let me help you move. I have this five foot by 16 foot trailer. I didn’t use the word horse in my ad. People laugh at that because that was a horse trader. And when I backed up the houses they kind of looked at it oddly but I did a great job. And I made money. I made money for two years. About a year and a half into it. I bought another truck. But for the first start, it was just that horse straighter. And it was my lifestyle. I needed money for rent. I needed money for a house payment back at my home where I left I needed to issue and I had three children. I had food, I had air all my expenses and I needed a job. And in that case, my lifestyle was based around just me and one helper that’s it. But it’s really was creating myself a job but it’s a job I had some control on. So maybe you should consider that as a starter just like I did. Now, at the end of two years. I was finishing bible school and I decided you know, this could be a business that I could roll into actual business that had employees see that was my ultimate goal is to have employees so that over time I could be not reporting to work every day. The downside of a lifestyle business is that when you don’t go to work that day, you have no money coming in. But in my case I grew up from that horse trader, one truck, two trucks and then eventually I had 50 to 70 employees. I had seven trucks that went throughout the United States, big trucks. I had local trucks, I had packing crews. Now I have a business that I had good create systems and processes and eventually hope to sell it as a unit but I didn’t have to actually physically do the work because I was a business owner. Well, that’s my personal example. And And again, in each case, that may be a good starting point for you and it could roll into something that’s just temporary. When you got past that it’s done. Or you might be able to ride on that business for quite a while. Let me give a couple examples. I had a friend again in the same era, and he happened to be a piano tuner. Boy that’s a perfect lifestyle business because he charged about 45 or $50. I can’t remember to come in and tune a piano and it took about 30 to 45 minutes maximum. Well, that’s more money than we were making work in a half a day. So in 30 to 45 minutes he made what anybody else was making in a half a day. And he didn’t always get jobs back to back but he got several on the same day and he could get more jobs in the same day. But he hadn’t made no attempt to train anybody to do anything. He trained. He tuned every panel himself that’s a lifestyle business. There’s other lifestyle businesses that that come in, it could be like a hairdresser. Okay, so you need a hair salon. You can do that in your house. In many cases. There’s many people started that way. And you make a room in your house and you kind of decorate it in a way that it’s not part of the house, but it’s a room so maybe close to the front door when your clients come into the house and they come right over and they get their hair cut their hair trimmed over the lady they get permanent permanent then the things you would in a open shop. Now that could be supplemental income for a long time. And in that you could make money and have control of your time and schedule yourself so that you could make make it actually work. I don’t think my daughter will mind but in many ways she has a lifestyle business right now. It’s just her she does bookkeeping. Now. She doesn’t do bookkeeping. She does a county because she’s not really a bookkeeper. She trains people to do the bookkeeping, and she does the technical side, the training, the how to set up the books, and she’s also a tax advisor. Now again, she can do well financially with that and have control on her time. And she in this case, I’m sure she won’t mind but a lot of times the kids will be at bed at nine o’clock at night and she may go back to work because she’s her own boss and work late into the early morning to get a project that and not affect the rest of her lifestyle. And she may take that to something where she wants to hire employees. I’m not sure that’s up to her but right now, if it’s a lifestyle business that makes them money for their household. And again, the downside is if she doesn’t go to work that day, there’s no money coming in that day. But if you can charge enough you can take have flexibility with your time. Now all of these again, could roll in to something that could be bigger than this. You might have a my friend that that has a barbecue business and he did this made barbecue made meals, catered meals he started in his house he just started cooking and he had a cooker and he started in any rented one small place. He’s still in that place. And he sometimes feeds two or 300 people because it’s primarily him and he gets a few helpers when he needs them. And he’s growing into where he needs a little more help so I don’t want to just over ride this but as I’m thinking right here he’s even as I’m talking I’m there’s a lot of businesses I know started as a one person business with no real expectations of growing any bigger than that. I will add another one someone doing computers or websites or are that part of a personal touch my the person that does my computer my my website. He’s been doing websites for 20 years. He’s a one person operation. He has a lifestyle business. Some people could call that a job, okay? Don’t be insulted. We call it a job. It is like a job in this fact that you have to report to work, but it’s not like a job because you don’t have to report every day from eight o’clock till five o’clock. You can adjust your time and schedule and some could roll into something bigger than that. Well, I hope this is helpful. You I believe God has for each person, a call to find that calling and sometimes when we say we own a business, it just looks a little overwhelming. It doesn’t need to be and I think if you started with a lifestyle business, grew it and I think God would confirm that you could go on and create systems and processes and hire people in the whole thing that frankly I have now with 60 employees. I was gone almost all this week, not at work and I was making money because I have a system and process in place in a bigger business than lifestyle. But I started Hey, I hope this helps. Blessings to you and be a part of Inspiring Better Business. Thank you!
