Monthly Archives: April 2013

Why Designing Your Business Around Your Lifestyle Matters

Leave a reply

Once you decide to embrace the idea of doing work you love, it’s important to think about your overall goal for doing this work.

Like many people, when I first contemplated the idea of working for myself, I thought that choosing this path was the key to personal freedom.

As it turns out, I began to recognize that how you go about it can mean the difference between creating your freedom and creating something even more demanding than working at a job.

If you are thinking about test driving new business ideas that may lead to leaving your job, there are some very important considerations to make.

laptop-at-the-beach

Lifestyle Business or Startup Company?

Many people make the leap to working for themselves without a clear picture of what they want their business to do for them. Some people will begin with a traditional startup where they will add employees, secure funding, and grow their business. This is a proven model for success but may not offer you the lifestyle that you originally envisioned when you got excited about working for yourself.

There is another option. Advances in technology, communications and social media have made it possible to start and run certain types of businesses in a much different way. Instead of hiring employees, a company can now rely almost solely on contractors and service providers. Instead of renting physical office space, people can communicate over Skype, through email, or via social networks.

A newish term for this kind of company is “microbusiness” and the people who start them are classified as “solopreneurs.” These types of companies are leaner, smaller, and more able to adapt, easier to run and grow, and most of all, more supportive of the owner’s lifestyle goals.

A microbusiness is loosely defined as a company with five or fewer employees. A better definition would be around the intent of the company. The intent of a microbusiness would be a company that is designed to run and grow with five or fewer employees.

After doing a lot of research and having had personal experience with traditional startups, I’m going the microbusiness route and I’m already seeing the benefits. As I began testing my idea to launch a web based interview show and educational site, I wanted to make sure that I could run my business from anywhere with a decent internet connection. This way I’m not attached to anyone else’s timeline or expectations and I can hire other small business experts to assist me with video editing, site design and edits, scheduling my show interviews, etc.

I can also easily start my business on a part-time basis while keeping my day job until the time feels right to move into my “lifestyle business” full time.

This may change slightly as I move forward with my business, but I’m very intent on keeping my business lifestyle friendly.

This will be very important as I move towards my goal of living in different locations during the wet winter months that we experience here in Portland. Part of my criteria is to engineer my business so that I can operate from pretty much any location worldwide. This gives my wife and I the flexibility to travel and conduct business from where ever we like.

As an example, I am writing and posting this blog (joyfully) from Hawaii. And most of the blogs that I have completed, I have written while on an airplane traveling for work. My web show will also have the ability to operate from virtually anywhere. All I will need is my laptop, a high speed internet connection, my portable HD web cam, and my video editing software.

Can Any Business Be Lifestyle-Friendly?

Let’s take a look at how a traditional business can be designed to operate as a lifestyle business. While not every business can be designed to support your ideal lifestyle, I do think that many can be creatively designed (or re-designed) to support the way you want to work and live.

Example: Yoga Business

Let’s say that your dream is to start a yoga business. Most people might tell you that you need to invest in the physical space to open a studio and hire employees to help manage and run the business.

But wait! Let’s first consider your lifestyle goals.

If you love yoga and your goal is to launch a yoga business, lets also take your lifestyle goals into consideration and design a business around them. Let’s say that your lifestyle goals are to travel more, not have employees, and not have to deal with the overhead of renting or buying a yoga studio space.

Based on your lifestyle goals, you may have some options that you might not have considered. For example, you could create income and travel by learning how to plan and lead successful yoga retreats. You could also launch your own yoga training program by finding and leasing a temporary studio space or creating a program to be delivered online. You could embrace your travel bug by offering to lead yoga workshops in other cities or yoga retreat centers around the world.

There is no limit to the number of ways that we can be creative with our businesses. And I believe that the first step should be factoring in our lifestyle goals so that our business can support them.

If you currently have a business, or are planning to start one, ask yourself “how can I make this business more lifestyle-friendly for myself and everyone involved?” You’ll be much happier for it!

Michael

What Is It That You Can’t Not Do?

Leave a reply

change the world

I think that almost everyone would admit that we are here to do things that really matter. Deep down, most of us know that we have some inner force that calls us to be the best version of ourselves.

We want to do something that matters – to us and to the world. We want to do work that we are proud of. We want to do work that feeds our Soul.

Some of us are just getting started, others are well on their way and the rest are just starting to believe it’s even possible.

As I talk with people about doing work that matters, I find that there is one statement that tends to hold us back more than any other.

 “But I Can’t Just Quit and Start Over”

Very few people have the flexibility to “just quit” what they are currently doing and begin something new.

There may be exceptions but many of us have mortgages, families, student loans or a million other reasons that keep us in our jobs…at least for now.

Many of the people that I talk to about pursuing a more meaningful life are between 40 and 60 years old. And most of them have a couple of children and a mortgage – none of which are going anywhere.

But that is NOT an excuse to give up on our dreams.

That is not an excuse to condemn yourself to a continued life of quiet desperation for the next few decades.

You must control what you can control – and fortunately we are in control of a lot more than we might realize.

Not being able to ‘just quit’ does not mean you can’t begin the process of building a career around something meaningful while you still have a job.

Regardless of your situation or current obligations, it’s still possible.

The best time to create a new career is while you’re at your old one.

If you just quit tomorrow, the odds are that you would instantly start to panic about some made-up story of you and your family starving on the streets. This would likely cause you to immediately go into panic and desperation mode, which would eventually lead to you getting another job.

But it does not have to be this way.

And if we want to create meaningful change and find a path that genuinely makes us happy, then we must go about it differently.

In my previous blog series about ‘Getting Paid to Make a Difference’, I reviewed the following framework:

  1. Simplify and Prioritize Your Life
  2. Create Room for Expansion (so that you can create something brilliant)
  3. Begin Experimenting and Pursue Your Meaningful Idea
  4. Surround Yourself With People That Support You (I just added this one and you’ll hear more about it later on!)

This framework was not designed for the unique individual who can afford to quit their job tomorrow.

It was designed around my own real world experience. It was designed for any of us.

It was designed for the people who need to bridge the gap between where they are and where they want to go.

It will be up to you to do the work on yourself and make the discoveries, ideally while you’re at your current job – in the morning before work, during the evenings after work, on weekends, during commute, on lunch breaks, on vacation days, whenever…

Because if you don’t figure out what you’re looking for, you’re never going to find it.

And knowing yourself (your unique blend of skills, talents, passions and life experience) creates massive confidence.

When you don’t know what it is you want to do – when you don’t have a clue what work you simply “can’t not do,” then you feel like it’s impossible to make a change. And that, over time, is exactly how complacency kills a dream.

For example:

My wife Jill, can’t not do yoga.

My friend Johnny, can’t not do fitness.

My friend Alissa, can’t not do design.

My friend Skylor, can’t not do healthy food and living.

The object is to figure out what you Can’t Not Do!

Jill, Johnny, Alissa, and Skylor are all exceptional at what they do and it has taken them time to get where they are. Success didn’t happen overnight for any of them. But with consistent effort over time, they have all created businesses around the things that they can’t not do.

Once we realize what makes us come alive – the natural talents, strengths and skills that we apply to make our impact in the world, our fear suddenly gets converted into pure confidence and excitement.

And that’s when the magic starts to happen.

I challenge you to make 2013 your year to finally do something about the job you might not be very excited about.

Decide to make this the year to finally get serious about that little hobby or side-project that you’ve so badly wanted to call a business.

I challenge you to make this your year to commit to learning about yourself and finally start doing the work you can’t not do.

Things really can be different but we’ve got to take action.

What matters most to me is that you realize that things can be different, and then you begin taking the steps to live that reality. I don’t care how that happens. All I care about is that it happens.

Please, for you and for everyone around you, decide that you are done complaining and making excuses and that you’ll actually start doing something about doing work that really matters.

There is no standing still.

There never is.

A tolerable work situation now often becomes a miserable existence in a few years.

Your dreams either move forward or they die.

The great thing is you get to choose.

We are all here together to express our unique purpose.

All that’s left is the doing.

Here’s to 2013 being the year we do more of what we can’t not do!

Michael

Are You Working Towards What You Really Want?

2 Replies

wake-up-and-live

I just finished reading ‘The War of Art’, a book about facing resistance as we go about leading a life of authenticity and creativity.

Talk about a wakeup call! Reading this book really caused me to cut through all the bullshit and realize one thing;

“To labor for any reason other than love is prostitution!”

This is not the revelation that I was hoping for. Far from it. The idea that I have spent that last 15+ years working for money is a harsh pill to swallow. But it is the truth. It is not a truth that is convenient. In fact, it’s borderline depressing. But it is a truth based on the actions of my past beliefs. And it is this truth that keeps me moving forward in pursuit of something better. Something more meaningful. Something that will give me the freedom and creativity that I truly desire.

I came to identify with this truth after taking a good look at why I do what I do for a living. It became evident rather quickly that I do my current work primarily for money. Pure and simple as that. And I don’t see it as right or wrong in any way. It’s just a fact.

We all need money to live our lives, put food on the table and put a roof over our heads. And if we’re lucky, we get to enjoy a few extras in life because we have a job that pays us well for what we do. But for me, getting to the raw truth of why I do the work I do, has helped me to clarify my vision for creating something more fulfilling. I choose to pursue something that will provide both meaning and money.

I challenge you to take a close look at your own situation. If you are working at a job, engaged in a career, or doing anything for any reason other than love, then you are selling out. You are selling your Soul. You are playing into the design of a culture built on the idea that we must trade our time and life energy for dollars in the hope that these dollars are going to make us happier somewhere down the line.

Our schools, media and culture do everything to try and conform us into what they want us to be. I realize that we all have free will and choice, but be honest with yourself. Do you work at your job so that you can live in a certain house, in a certain neighborhood, in a certain city, so that you can feel good about your life? So that you can be comfortable?

I’m guessing for most of us the answer would be ‘yes’.

And you know what? There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Let me re-emphasize that this is not a right or wrong thing.

My point is that if you don’t enjoy and love your work, you are denying yourself the possibility of being something greater. And you are also denying the rest of humanity the gifts, talents and desires that you were given to share.

It is my belief that we all come into this world with a unique personality and a specific destiny. Think about it. How many babies are born as a blank slate? No! They are all born with a personality and a predisposition to BE a certain way. That’s why we all have different desires, talents and gifts.

I’ve spent the last several years working at jobs for the money and I am currently doing it. I currently enjoy my job and I have a great relationship with my boss and most of my co-workers. I get paid well for my efforts but I also know that it’s not my greatest calling in life.

Is it time for you to wake up? 

I believe that we all have a specific job to do, a calling to enact, a self to realize. We are who we are and we can either fully embrace it or go through life pretending to be happy.

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine, but to find out who we already are and become it.

If we were born to write, then it’s our job to become a writer.

If we were born to raise children, then it’s our job to become a mother.

If we were born to teach yoga, then it’s our job to be the best fucking yoga teacher that we can possibly become.

If you were born to travel, then figure out how you are going to get started travelling.

If we were born to start companies, then it’s your job to start the most amazing companies in the world and get down to business.

Okay, this is where I throw in a little disclaimer. I am not saying that you should go and quit your job next week if you are not 100% happy. I am a big believer in making intelligent decisions that will allow us to move towards our goals and dreams in a way that is sustainable and smart.

But the first thing you must do is to wake up and come to grips with that fact that you were born to do something great and meaningful. It’s time to get in touch with that and start moving in that direction.

Play it safe or go for it?

I have recently been coaching a couple of people on how to do two things:

  • Get completely clear about what your Unique Genius is (i.e. discover your unique combination of skills, talents, passions, and life experience)
  • Turn your Unique Genius into your first profitable idea and test it in the marketplace.

One pattern that I have observed with them is that they try to play it safe and not really go for it. I think that our greatest fear is discovering that we are more than we think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent to bring our deepest desires to life. We fear that we can plant our flag and be successful and reach our promised land. And this scares the living hell out of us.

If we really go after what we want, we are afraid that we might end up alone. That we will lose our friends. Or that we will be poor and destitute.

The truth is that we probably will lose some friends along the way. I know I have. But we find new friends in places that we would have never thought to look. And they’re better and truer friends. We make our way and we are better for it. By far.

My challenge for you this week is to ask yourself the following question and answer it honestly:

What keeps you from doing work that you absolutely love?

I would love to hear your comments below!

In gratitude,

Michael