The Great “Lifestyle Business” Lie

Summary: As you may know, I recently attended the Ryan Deiss Internet Marketing event. On stage for most of the weekend with Ryan was his business partner, Perry Belcher. I'm personally not much of a fan of Perry. But during the weekend he did say something insightful. And that is... The idea of a lifestyle business is a pipe dream! His thinking... While his competitors are jet setting about the world, he's taking their customers. While his competitors are kicking it back in general, their business is shrinking and his is growing. I have to be honest. There's an element of truth in this. At least in my experience. I worked with many a highly successful entrepreneur and one thing they all have in common is... ... they work their butts off! Even when they're at home they're working. Why? Because they're creating. They're innovating. They're pushing the boundaries. So their minds are always working on... something. It never really disconnects. Not to say that lifestyle businesses don't EVER exist. They do. But they are the exception, not the rule. I know of one person who sold a chunk of his business for $100 million. But it took him 3 years to find a replacement to run the company. 3 years! So... let's get realistic. Let's get pragmatic. Darn it... let's be real. If you own a business you're probably selling your time for money. I know, I know. The business gurus will tell you... "There's great leverage in business" "It's better to have 1% of 100 people's income than 100% of your own". And I agree with them. But reality is simply this... Unless your business is under management - and it's under highly skilled management and not retards - you're still selling time for money. This is true even if you have a huge team of people that leverage your efforts. It's true even if you have guys like me creating kick ass marketing strategy and sales copy. Just think about all the pressures on your mind about cashflow. Making payroll. Dealing with lawyers and accountants. It all piles up, slowly but surely. Anyway, the maths are simple to work out your hourly rate as a business owner... It's five calculations: Step #1: How much did your business net last year? Step #2: How much did you take out as a wage? Step #3: Add up this total. Step #4: How many hours last year did you work on average per week? Step #5: Multiply that number by the number of weeks you worked. Voila - your hourly rate! WHAT'S MY POINT? This is NOT necessarily bad news... if... you're vigilant with managing your energy and time. If you can get your "hourly rate" up and up and up. Ideally to the thousands upon thousands per hour. Yes, per hour. This means you're pocketing i.e. net profit of at least 7 figures per year. But hopefully more. AWESOME APP THAT I'VE STARTED USING I have three businesses. A traditional time for money business with my consulting. Two other businesses that are on the road to giving my wife and I bucket loads of near passive income. While I tell myself on a daily basis that I'm building enduring income streams, it's a #%$ load of work! That's why the other week I got real about the effort I'm putting into these businesses. Since I am a huge believer in only improving what one measures, I downloaded an app onto my iPhone. This app is called Hours Tracker. I've been using it religiously for a few weeks. Many interesting findings have come out of it... Like, for example, how LITTLE I actually work on a day by day basis. See, I already knew that I can only write for 3-4 hours per day. But since I do so much other stuff in addition to writing copy, I THOUGHT I did 12-hour days. At least it felt like it. Holy moly. It's nowhere near it. For last week... Taking into account ALL my client meetings... checking my emails...