Morning Thoughts – Lifestyle Businesses

One of my pet peeves is people being dismissive of lifestyle businesses. 

I guess I should say I haven’t heard that comment lately where I live now. But, when I was in Silicon Valley, it was very common.

You would describe your independent business and they’d say, “Oh, I see. So, you’re just building a lifestyle business.”

As if that is somehow less meaningful than another type of business (e.g., one that is seeking VC funding and dreams of being a billion-dollar company).

I think that work, employment, and entrepreneurship span a wide spectrum of possibilities. 

At one end, you have 9-5 hourly wage jobs with no shared ownership of the company. 

At the other end, you have corporations like Walmart that brings in billions of dollars of revenue and employs over 2M people.

You have to do what is right for you, and ignore what other people think or say. 

There’s nothing wrong with creating your own business that provides for you and your family.

It has a lot of benefits that you can’t enjoy as an employee (e.g., way more freedom) without the headaches of a larger company that employs lots of people.