312: What Is a Lifestyle Business and Why You Should Have One

If you want weekends off, a manageable stress level, and a business you love, you just might be looking for a "lifestyle business."

Often disparaged as not a serious business, we deeply disagree and actually think that they require more discipline and excellence than someone who works 80+ hour weeks due to a lack of boundaries or a bigger picture for their success. 

In this episode of the podcast, we discuss what is a lifestyle business and why it's a worthy pursuit for vision-led entrepreneurs. You will discover:

• The concept of a lifestyle business and how it offers a balance between work and personal life
• Why the entrepreneur's 60 to 80-hour workweek culture can be detrimental to personal well-being and relationships
• How a lifestyle business can provide freedom, fulfillment, and alignment with one's vision
• The importance of self-investment and the "tending triad" concept from the Superabound book
• Practical steps for transitioning to a lifestyle business, including time management, delegation, and leveraging AI

You will also learn about the upcoming Lucrative Lifestyle Business Mastermind, starting in January 2025, which will help you create a business that supports your desired lifestyle while incorporating AI and other modern tools.

Learn more and apply for the mastermind here

Full transcript:

Steve Haase  0:01  
Steve, welcome to the Superabound Podcast with master coaches Erin Aquin and Steve Haase, where vision led entrepreneurs learn to build a generous business without sacrificing what matters most. You are listening to episode 312 what is a lifestyle business and why you should have one (if you want one).

Erin Aquin  0:20  
that's a long title. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so first of all, the elephant in the room, lifestyle, business as a term, is often used in very dismissive, chuckled, little tones.

Steve Haase  0:41  
It basically means not serious to something

Erin Aquin  0:45  
real. Yeah. And I want to start with this, because the idea of having a lifestyle business, the way that people who are kind of negative about that mean it is, you've built yourself a cute little business so that you can, like, sleep in on weekends, go on vacations, and all these cute little things that us very serious business owners who work 60 to 80 hours a week and have no personal life, would never dream of doing and the very first thing I want to say, here's my judgment about the 80 hour work week people who think that they are so They're Die Hard, they're so committed, they're hustling, their businesses, their baby, all of that stuff. Those people do not have better lives than me. Those people, most of them have, are burnt out or on the path to burning out, and if they have relationships in their life or on the path to losing those relationships, we have seen it firsthand, unfortunately, with so many people, many of our clients have been there. That is why they decided they wanted to get help. Because they were, you know, really overly obsessed with work. They were very much stuck in what we call the goal swamp, and it is a really shitty way to live, in my opinion. And I don't say that just as an outside observer, because I have been pretty much in that similar situation, too, and I've watched what happens to people and how much harm and damage it can do, not only for the person, but for their partners, their kids. If they have them, it is it can be really rough if they haven't learned how to take care of themselves. And so I don't actually think that having a lifestyle business means you're not serious. I actually think that people who are overworking, burning out are have it like have a really messy life, and it takes a lot of effort, energy and organization to be able to run a business and have a personal life. So I actually think those of you out there who have lifestyle businesses don't ever let someone tell you that that's not serious or real or good. You have figured it out. And to be honest, from the people we have talked to, you have what most people want, and there's just some people out there who like to be mean about what they don't have and like to be jealous by making you feel small and diminished. There's my ranch

Steve Haase  3:53  
episode complete.

Erin Aquin  3:54  
I had some coffee working, spicy coffee.

Steve Haase  4:00  
It you know how you never hear a news story about like this good thing happened in your village today, because no one would ever read that news. But that's what actually makes life good, is all the kindness that people show to each other and the way that life is actually just working just fine. Lifestyle businesses are kind of like that. You will never read in the business press. Entrepreneur has a four day work week, right? Four day work week, great income, living the life they want,

Speaker 1  4:36  
like when a three week vacation? Yeah, it's such

Steve Haase  4:41  
a non event, and yet that is what so many people actually want, is just the freedom. Because if you really think at the at the at the heart of what people want, freedom is at the top of that list, the ability to do what you want, what. You want, with whom you want and why you want. That's freedom that is kind of the the top of the business mountain, and that goal is often not sold enough, at least not outside of rather scammy circles. Yeah, you know, how do you create your next pyramid scheme so you can achieve freedom?

Erin Aquin  5:24  
Well, everybody does the work, yeah?

Steve Haase  5:27  
Well, everyone works for you that does, you know, makes you money. So this idea of actually creating a business that both brings you fulfillment has an impact in the world, is aligned with your vision and gives you that freedom that allows you to shut the lid, not keep working, spend time with people you love, doing things you love. That is something you just don't see in the business press. That's not going to be in the New York Times, and yet that is, in so many ways, a powerful and worthy goal and lantern that you can light to make your life better.

Erin Aquin  6:05  
Yeah, I'm glad you actually brought up the the scammy aspect of it, because that is also true. There's a lot of people that diminish the idea of of a lifestyle business. Because, yeah, there are plenty of people out there selling, like, make money while you sleep, or let your team make money while you sleep, like, go on vacation. Like, there is a scammy aspect, I think, to some of the way that that has been put out there, and it's also why I'm really interested in, like, helping people reclaim this idea, those of us who are visionary, who really do care about seeing our work impact the world in positive ways. Because the case I will make for having a lifestyle business, you know, we are coaches. We are our work is in being very present with our clients, learning new skills to support them. You know, we've been recently talking about how we can help our clients save time, money, energy, through utilizing the best the AI has to offer at this moment. And the thing about our business in particular, as being a lifestyle business, it means that our health and our well being is part of the offering that we bring to the table for our clients. Because I don't know about any of you, but personally, I don't want to work with a coach who has my session smashed in the middle of talking to 20 other people, who doesn't remember, you know anything about my business from one week to the next, who is stressed out, who may be teaching something they're not practicing. That, to me, doesn't hold a lot of integrity. I don't want to work with someone who hasn't been willing to go first and invest in themselves and in their well being and their health, and so I take it really seriously, because I want to be a good role model for my clients, even if they choose to do their work and their business in other ways, I definitely have clients who some weeks work a lot of hours, because that is the nature of their industry and their business, but I want to be a person who can also help them make sure that they're getting the kind of elite recovery that they need not through some intellectual process, but through my own lived experience, through my own wisdom that is really important to me. So working four days a week is usually what we do, not to sit there and brag and say, ha, ha. Look at how much money we're making when we only work four days a week. But to say you can be very successful without having to be in your business every second of the day, counting your pennies, pushing people towards your next offer so that you can pay your mortgage at the end of the month, which is, unfortunately, what a lot of these Messier businesses that haven't prioritized the well prioritized the wellness of the human are unfortunately doing, which I think is actually a bigger scam, totally,

Steve Haase  9:37  
totally and You know, the thing that's awesome, even just about the name lifestyle business, is it puts the two things that really matter in the same sentence, yes, like, what kind of a lifestyle Do you have? How are you filling your own cup? How are you supporting your own energy? Yeah. So even if you're not a coach who needs to be walking their talk, which must be happening if you're going to have any real impact in your coaching. But let's say you're in charge of you know, a services business or even a software business, your energy as a leader is going to influence everybody on your team. We actually just talked about it on social media earlier, that the people you have around you profoundly impact you. The energy that those people have makes such a difference on your own energy. So what are you doing as a leader to make sure that your lifestyle supports your business? And oftentimes it's like, you know, you kind of just fit the lifestyle within this grand scope of, you know, put it all towards the business. But I really want to reclaim this idea so that we can put them together, because that's where they belong. Business is not there to receive your offering. It is there to be a support for you. It is there to help you live the life that you want.

Erin Aquin  11:16  
In our book, Superabound, we dedicate a lot of time talking about self investment, and we use a process that we developed called the tending triad. We had a very successful business owner read our book and say, Gosh, I wish that tending Triad was the very first chapter, because it is the most important part of the book. And we were like, we agree, but the reason that it didn't come first was because so many people take that stuff for granted, and they don't really feel the impact of how important the lifestyle piece is until they've screwed it up in some way. Unfortunately, it's so easy to pour all your energy into your business. It's so easy and it's a little bolstering. Sometimes it's like good for the ego, like little pat on the back to think I'm so important to my business that I just can't take a day off. I just can't have a Sunday all to myself, and people

Steve Haase  12:23  
wear it as a badge of honor. Yeah, I'm right. The culture's like, you know, in it just grinding away, doing the thing. That's how, you know I'm important, and that I mean it. And, you know, it's, it's sad, but it's, it's respected from our culture, yeah,

Erin Aquin  12:40  
yeah. And that is, it's, it's a problem. And I think having a lifestyle business means you are going to hear little nasty comments from people from time to time, or maybe every day. But doing it, I promise you, it is like lighting a lantern in the dark that acts as a beacon for people coming up the mountain after you. I cannot tell you how many friends I've had, and we've had personally, that have kind of watched how we've built our business. They've seen us through very stressful seasons. They've seen us through our most successful seasons. And the way our life looks does not really vary all that much, no matter how stressed we are, and no matter or like, how business stressed we are, you know, some experiment didn't go the way we wanted it to. Our life doesn't look drastically different. We don't suddenly start working every weekend. We don't start panicking. And that did not happen easily. That has been the product of us taking our own coaching very seriously and making sure that we have support. So having a lifestyle business, the tricky thing is that it looks great on the outside. You know, one of us can always pick up our kids from school, because that's how we've designed our business. When we go on business trips, we can take them most of the time. We can go on really epic vacations. We have a nice place where we live. We have a nice place where we host clients. It looks very easy from the outside, which is why I think some people get mad about that, but what it takes on the inside is a lot of mental resilience, a lot of in our case, like a lot of spiritual practice. There's a lot of meditation, there's a lot of manifestation that goes into the work that we do. And it looks like deciding to have. Of confidence in our ideas, confidence in the business, even long before we ever see results. That probably the example I can I can give about that for anyone who's ever written a book, you know what this means. You're sitting there spending hours, pouring hours time, money, effort into creating something that no one is going to be impacted from for at least a year. That sounds nuts to other people, but it is the result of a lot of deep internal mindset and spiritual work. It looks clean on the outside, but it took a lot.

Steve Haase  15:50  
And so if you like the sound of this, and you want to like

Erin Aquin  15:55  
the sound of all this hard work that we're saying, it takes all of this internal struggle,

Steve Haase  16:00  
Oh, yeah. And also the outer benefits. There's

Erin Aquin  16:02  
a lot of outer benefits, very worth it, and

Steve Haase  16:05  
you want to reclaim this idea for yourself. I wish I could say that there was a blueprint you can follow, but there is not. It's going to be a process as to what you reclaim along the way. If you're starting with 80 hour work weeks, you can't just cut it in half and then cut it in half again. There's going to be some process to it. You need to make some decisions. We have the 5r for overcoming challenges, right? If the challenges go from 80 hours a week to 20 hours a week, then the challenges include decide what needs to go. Decide where I delegate things. Decide where AI comes into place. Get insights into what is most effective for my business. Draft a vision statement that is inspiring and allows me to put more energy behind what really matters. Those are all going to be the steps along the way that will give you the container to turn your business from something that you are pouring your life into to something that gives you energy and life in return. And so one of the things that we're doing to help people with that is our next mastermind, starting in January 2025 is called the lucrative Lifestyle Business Mastermind, and we're going to be working with a small group of business owners to help you create that business that works for your lifestyle, that lifestyle that gives you the business that you want. And we're going to be using AI across the entire business stack, from planning, execution, analysis team, the whole thing, because we are in a new world. I don't know if you've noticed, but AI, for all its faults and extra hype, is a game changer in so many ways. So if that is not yet part of your business process, I can tell you, in the path to creating a lifestyle business, it will be and so the mastermind will include how to incorporate AI. It will be business reviews and in depth assessment of what needs to stay, what needs to go what needs to change, and it will be with a small group, so everybody gets that extra special attention to create the lucrative lifestyle business that you want. So to learn more about that and apply for this cohort, you can go to besuperabound.com/mastermind and we'll be taking a look at applications, starting now.

Erin Aquin  18:44  
The other piece of this that I think is so important, anytime we bring in something new into our business, anytime we're making a shift from grow as fast as possible, work as hard as possible, I have to be at the center of all of it is there is going to be a lot of static, not only in bringing in new tools like the AI or the business tech stack, but also how you think about your time. One of the things we are really conscious of is helping people reduce the amount of time, energy and even money that they're pouring into their business. But then what often happens is, if you don't have a really solid self investment practice, if you don't know what to do with yourself, if you're not maybe, maybe you don't love your personal life so much. So it makes it easy to pour all your time into your business. We have the coaching tools from our Superabound method to help support you, to make sure you don't fill in all that extra time with more work. So we're going to be supporting you in these really practical and strategic ways, but we will also be as we always are, your coaches here to support your holistic. Success in every area of your life.

Steve Haase  20:02  
Cuz, like we say, business is a spiritual practice. It is the inner world in which you create from and it is the outer manifestation of that, of your being, right, of who you are. So in the mastermind, we'll be focusing on both the inner and the outer, with all the tools and technology that we have to bear upon it. So go ahead and learn more about that and apply for the next cohort of the mastermind at besuperabound.com/mastermind

Erin Aquin  20:37  
and we'll talk to you again soon. Take care.