We often speak about how to grow you business, how to be more successful, how to expand your business, increase sales and drive your business forward. This obsession with growth, however, is not every business owner’s primary aim, and nor should it be.
The measurement of business success is often cloudy; people quote a massive turnover but make marginal profit, have a large number of employees but make little after their wages are accounted for. If money is the means of measuring success all that matters is the bottom line- how much profit is made.
But, what if growth is not the dominating factor for running your small business? What if the measurement of the success of your business is not based on cold hard cash, but instead on the happiness of yourself and your family?
Lifestyle businesses are just that; businesses that are created to improve or maintain the lifestyle of the business owner. Personally, I believe lifestyle businesses are an admirable choice for a person to make. It is possible to be in employment, with all the security that brings, and have a comfortable lifestyle. What the person who establishes a lifestyle business does is take responsibility for their own, and their family’s, happiness.
Many people love their jobs, but many more don’t. We spend years, precious years of our family’s lives, commuting, working in a cubicle, spending time away from our families, our homes and our communities. Lifestyle entrepreneurs are people who decide they want to have a business that works for them, where they can raise their children, see their family, and build their own future.
Success for the lifestyle entrepreneur is not measured on having an impressive turnover, a stylish office, or a large number of employees. Success is, instead, measured by the ability to spend time with their family, live a comfortable life, and manage their time as they choose.
It is these lifestyle businesses that, I believe, should become the backbone of our economy. Entrepreneurs who make the decision to go in to business for themselves and their family, to improve their lives. These businesses need help, support and guidance to be successful, in their own terms, not the terms dictated to them by ‘experts’ or other people.
I currently have some exciting projects in the pipeline that are set to help these lifestyle businesses to keep going, at their own rate, keeping their eye on their own measure of success. I look forward to sharing them with you as soon as I am able to!
How do you measure the success of your business? Top line, bottom line? Or is it something more fundamental than that? Let me know.
