How to Create a Lifestyle Business

Have you ever watched successful entrepreneurs like Richard Branson, who is running many multi-million dollar businesses while living on Necker Island enjoying a beautiful and exciting lifestyle with his family and wondered, “How do they do it?” How can you produce such extraordinary results in business while living a dream lifestyle and a totally exciting life? Doesn’t building a business cost a lot of hard work locked up in an office 24/7 with your business partners, team, and employees?

Well, it is like that for most businesses; however, today you have every single tool you need to create a lifestyle business that you can run from anywhere in the world. Today it’s the best time in history to become an entrepreneur who has both the income and the freedom to live the way they want, either changing countries every month or working from home while raising their family. Work from the beach with a laptop is also an awesome option that is a huge part of my personal entrepreneurial lifestyle.

So the question is: how can you make that possible?

My mentors, accomplished entrepreneurs and high achievers who run multiple businesses while traveling the world, taught me 3 secrets of building a successful lifestyle business. And now I’m going to share them with you.

To create a business that you can run from anywhere in the world, you need to have a combination of the following 3 key components.

1. HAVE THE RIGHT BUSINESS MODEL

Everyone focuses on creating a business plan; however, what you really need to be thinking about first is your business model. Does your business model allow you to manage your business from anywhere with access to the Internet and delegate all the day-to-day tasks and operations to your employees? And the most important: is your business model designed to produce online sales even while you sleep?

Think of a business as a shop in a big mall versus an online shop, where customers can click a button, buy a product or service and have it delivered to them while the business owner and even their team are sleeping and enjoying their lunch with the family. All the complicated processes of sales and delivery have been automated and managed in the background. If you want the lifestyle freedom, you would have to choose the second business model.

2. CREATE SYSTEMS

Once you determine your business model, you need to create systems around how everything will operate in the business without you having to be there. Systems of what is required for the business to work according to certain standards. Systems of how your team will manage every activity and every process when you will be miles away from the office.

Your role in the business as a leader and business owner is to create these systems and processes so that you can train other people to run the business for you. If you haven’t done this before and you don’t have a clue how to create systems, hire a mentor or a consultant with proven results on building systems for their business or other businesses and let them guide you.

To get an idea of what a system means, think of a successful franchise like Starbucks. In every country and every airport around the world, you get the exact same Starbucks. It’s all based on duplicatable systems that the employees can follow in any part of the world without the owner having to be there.

3. LEARN THE ART OF DELEGATION

That was the part I personally struggled with most as an entrepreneur. Many entrepreneurs when they are starting out are perfectionists and think that if they don’t do everything themselves, it’s not going to be of particular standards. In fact, this is the exact thing that stops them in their growth because if you can’t delegate, you can’t grow. And not only you can’t grow, but you burn yourself out.

One of my mentors at the early stages John Assaraf was always saying, “You need to hire people who play at things you need to work at.” It means: know your top skills as a business owner, focus on them, then hire people who are great at everything else and delegate them the tasks in their area of expertise. As a business owner, you need to remember that you need to be working on the business, not in the business.

To sum up, any entrepreneur nowadays can build a lifestyle business that they can run from anywhere in the world. The only three requirements for this are the right business model, strong duplicable systems, and the art of delegation.

Would you like to build a lifestyle business and achieve more freedom and time for your family? What do you think you need for this? Share your insights and ideas in the comments below.