Sure! Lifestyle businesses are great, and so is the whole digital nomad thing (I spent all of 2016 and a good chunk of 2015 traveling around the world).
There are a ton of upsides but I wouldn't go back to it full time. For one, it's surprising how few of the digital nomad types are really that interesting, and while integrating with local populations is fun, you'll still find yourself missing the familiarity of people from your own culture (or similar, Western cultures, assuming you're a Euro or American)
Once you get used to life on the road it's grand. Still, nomad nests like Chiang Mai are insipid and full of scores of people hustling their drop ship schemes. More power to them, but it's just not my vibe.
I dunno. Go nuts, travel, see a bunch of shit, just don't assume the beach is going to be as stimulating as the (very likely) metro urban environment you're living in now.
Life on the road was not for me. Sure I loved seeing the world but ....
1. Always having to make plans for the next place to sleep was stressful for me. I'd arrive at some city and have to start planning the next city else I'd be homeless once my hotel/apartment term expired. I started booking longer (4 weeks, 6 weeks, more) but even then just the fact that I have a place I don't have to think about is less stressful for me.
2. No hangout buddy or really close friends. Some people are great at making new friends and I did make a few in certain cities but I'm at least a little introverted and felt pretty lonely quite often.
3. There only so much tourism I can take. At some point it just got boring seeing yet another old church, yet another museum, etc. Some recent book claimed you should take several shorter vacations than fewer but longer ones. They recommended no more than a week at a time.
4. Not being able to buy/own anything. That might appeal to some but not to others, it means no shopping, something that many people enjoy while traveling. It also means no PS4, no Vive/Oculus, no gaming rig, no tools, no food supplies. Sure if I rented an apartment I could go buy a few things to cook but when I have a permanent residence I have tons of utensils and spices and other things in my kitchen that I just don't have the time to gather in a temporary place. Similarly I had drawers or closets full of parts and tools, something I didn't have digital nomadding.
Of course that's all just me. I've met others who really enjoy that lifestyle. Good for them!
One group of people it can work a bit better for, in terms of living somewhere you have a real connection rather than living an expat lifestyle, are people who are themselves from somewhere with a lower cost of living, but can't find good jobs there, so moved elsewhere. It lets you sort of halfway move back to your home country while retaining some of the income advantages of the wealthier country. I have a Greek friend who does something like that, running a small business that is mainly economically based in northern Europe, but because he has a flexible working environment, he's able to spend a significant portion of the year in Greece, which he left in the first place only because there were no jobs, not because he wanted to leave.
In some formal sense the mechanics are very similar to an American running a lifestyle business from a beach in Crete, but culturally it's different from the "digital nomad" lifestyle.
Question...
Legally, how does the digital nomad thing work? Specifically WRT travel visas. Are you entering countries on a holiday visa and just working anyway? Establishing some sort of residency? Are you taking contracts in those countries, or working for US-based companies? Or, just blogging on your own and making a living through affiliate links, etc? Where do you pay income taxes?
To me traveling with a laptop and working is neither traveling nor working well. Im sure there are ways to eeke it out to make a ramen diet more pallatable overseas, but you arent really connecting with locals and local culture if youre online "hustling".
When I think about Lifestyle business, I don't really think it mean traveling.
I personally want a lifestyle business but for my lifestyle. That is wake up late, enjoy the day, maybe go for a road trip or hike, work in the evenings, work till midnight or so. Or if I feel like it, take a day off.
Go on vacations but not worry about return date. Bring the laptop and if needed, work. Otherwise just enjoy the vacation.
I'm also what you call a digital nomad. I find it tough to work while "on the road". It's stressful, you want to get out and see places, meet people, but you still need to work. This is why I prefer to move to a city for a few months at a time and slowly do all the touristy things.
Also about what you said about others not being very interesting; I completely agree.
> you'll still find yourself missing the familiarity of people from your own culture (or similar, Western cultures, assuming you're a Euro or American)
I didn't find that to be true. I miss foreign people and cultures after settling back down. If you want to find people from your own culture while on the road, stay at a hostel or take a break from roaming at any backpacker/nomad/tourist trap.
The human mind wants freedom and to have options. That's why the grass is always greener. Spend a month traveling and being back at home will sound ideal. Get stuck in an office and traveling sounds perfect. Finding the right balance is the key. In my case though I have had the freedom at times to be anywhere I still gravitate to keeping a home base.
Why do we need to equate a lifestyle business with traveling the world full time? I run a lifestyle business and I go abroad maybe once a year for about a week and I am very happy. I think the point is that the lifestyle business lets you do that if you want to, but at the end of the day you can still do whatever you want.
Your chosen lifestyle doesn't have to involve sea voyages in Southeast Asia or weeklong ski excursions. It could also be living in a medium-sized town in Flyover Country, U.S.A., working 40 hour weeks on interesting problems and spending lots of time with your spouse and children. If you've ever looked around at your Logan's Run coworkers and wondered what happens when you turn 30, here's one of your answers.
I can't tell if this is sarcasm - you realize this is just "median American lifestyle," right?
The idea that you can afford a house and a boat and time with your kids on a single upper middle class income in, say, Missouri is called "normal" outside of SF/NYC.
It doesn't even need to be a lifestyle business, nor in flyover country. I live on the Maine coast working for a large company. We even have a big office here! I'm mid 30's, wife, kid, and we have a nice balance. Yeah sometimes I work a bit more than I'd like, but 40 hours per week is normal, and for the times I work more than that, it's more than offset by my 20 minute traffic-doesnt-exist commute. I feel very fortunate to live somewhere that other people visit on vacation, but getting here isn't really that challenging.
Portland (the original!) has a small but growing startup scene if that's your thing. It also has some of the best food and beer in the country, which is a distraction I admit.
Lifestyle business beats a startup, until it doesn't. I'm the example. Ran a category leading website for years until I was demolished by a fully focused bad ass team and thrown out of my leadership position. Ultimately, I was forced to sell out at a much lower valuation than I'd have if I were totally focused.
It could vary on niche and industry. But one can't generalize it one way or the other.
If you have a great position in a big sector and you don't go for the kill, someone else will and your lifestyle business would be likely chewed up by competition. If it's a business with an intrinsic moat(think a retail store in small tourist town), it's likely to sustain.
Take frequent breaks while running a bad ass startup, but don't for a while think that you can let the ball drop.
I think lifestyle businesses (like Mobile Jazz) should be more service focused (although they seem to have a few products). That way you get work, do it and get paid. No hassle of reaching the top and maintaining the lead.
I was thinking the same thing -- if you don't go for the kill, but someone else does, they'll likely end up deciding your fate for you. That doesn't exactly "optimize for happiness".
OTOH, what would you do with that valuation delta that working yourself to the bone would hopefully bring? Would it adequately compensate you for missing the children's birthdays or Paris with your SO?
Is there some reason that people keep making the case for creating a standard business that supports one or two people? These types of posts have been pretty consistent over the years: "Take control of your life with a small business" "You don't need to make a massive company to be happy" etc...
I never see articles that encourage: "Here's why you should dedicate your life to starting a company and try to dominate an industry." It's like these posts are fighting against a boogeyman that isn't there.
I think 99% of all small businesses are "lifestyle businesses" where the founders aren't trying to build a market dominating billion dollar company. So who are these articles target to?
Is it simply the amount of press that surrounds VC and hyperscale companies that these folks are rejecting? I don't think any VC or founder has ever claimed that the only way to be happy/make money/do good is by trying to create a massive market dominating company.
Not even just the hyperscale folks, regularly on Hacker News I see posts about "side project" recommendations that are beyond belief in terms of marketing. To me a "side project" is something I can spend 1-2 hours on after work and maybe a little more on weekends. If I followed those posts I'd be doing 90% marketing/10% development and maybe I'll have an actual product in 10 years.
I'm honestly not sure what those authors are doing as a "main" job that they can dedicate such time to side projects, seems like some people like to conflate "bootstrapped startup" and "side project".
Author here. Not sure if you are addressing this article in particular, but it was not my intention to describe "the one way", but rather to show how we do things and share it with the world.
Also IMHO sharing a way of doing things / a philosophy / an opinion doesn't always mean being against everything else. For example I prefer riding the mountain bike vs a road bike. Doesn't mean I'm against road cycling and the people doing it.
That said, to comment on what one of the siblings said, obviously these posts are being written with the intention of bringing more attention to what we're doing, also known as "marketing". I wouldn't however call it clickbait, as it is based on genuine thoughts and ideas and we've actually been doing it for real with a 20 people team for more than 5 years already.
Small businesses are usually the norm. But HackerNews, tech, the whole Bay Area is head-over-heels for the growth business, the make-it-rich-quick business, so the small lifestyle business concept is the outsider in this world.
I feel like you're grouping dry cleaning businesses in with software businesses. In software, there's definitely a perception that the optimal path is to meet VCs, take a bunch of rounds of investment and become a hockey-stick unicorn. You don't see articles that encourage that because it's the status quo.
> I never see articles that encourage: "Here's why you should dedicate your life to starting a company and try to dominate an industry." It's like these posts are fighting against a boogeyman that isn't there.
Really? Much (most?) stuff on HN is to do with "scaling" (ie. growing as fast as possible whether it makes sense for the business or not), rounds of venture capital, handling shares, all leading up to an "exit".
The fact that a profitable business with a dozen employees which is growing at a steady, sustainable rate is considered a "lifestyle business" at all is a symptom of this bizarre mindset.
> I never see articles that encourage: "Here's why you should dedicate your life to starting a company and try to dominate an industry."
Try to look for older articles. There is a reason so many people are replying to them, it's because they not only existed, but even used to claim that either a "lifestyle business" in IT was impossible or that nobody would want it.
This is awesome. I have noticed this type of logic with most content online. If a message is targeted towards a demographic consistently it probably means its not actually a problem and that the reverse message perhaps needs more representation. I suppose its just another result of the clickbait economy that makes low quality articles popular on the web?
From someone who's done both, they are not comparable, directly, but they have a complementary relation: The DN (digital nomad) life is absolutely an engine for the kind of creative and free thinking that engenders killer startup ideas. Startups are "the thing" you want to commit your life to, the world-changing vision that you're ready to sacrifice for; the DN/ lifestyle business/ remote gigs mode is the fertile ground, for when you lack strength of vision, you don't know what you want right now, so you slow down, gain experience, and grow your thinking.
Only ever doing one in your life without the other is unenviable, and makes it hard to fully enjoy and appreciate, or even excel at, whichever one you've chosen.
"A good lifestyle business could even be turned into a multi-million dollar company, if that’s what you want.": I've stopped reading there, I don't understand how articles that empty can arrive on top of HN. These questions (where to work? On what? How much?) get way better answers in "Ask HN" threads, articles coming from nowhere with a topbar selling me something are really not making me dream anymore.
This digital nomad thing just looks hellish to me. Maybe I'm getting old.
Can't imagine being somewhere nice but glued to a laptop, or getting anything useful done without reliable wifi etc, or being part of a team where the boss has gone on holiday but still showing up in slack etc.
I'd hate to feel like I wasn't part of the team for not getting our kids together or not wanting to holiday or spend a day off with colleagues. I'm not impressed by instagram or medium posts from perfect looking beaches giving business advice.
Not sure when a lifestyle business went from being a business that fits around your lifestyle to making the appearance of living an idealised lifestyle everybody else's business.
I... I feel I can't believe the company has 1) top salary, 2) top benefits 3) unlimited travel 4) work remote 5) top enterprise clients 6) small teams 7) work as much as you want?
either someone is ridiculous at managing at all of this (kudos!) or something is slipping somewhere. Even in custom-dev it can be cutthroat, especially with large-scale projects and demanding clients.
Meh, kind of a generic article about how you should prioritize lifestyle over building a startup. I guess this is nothing new to me, I did the digital nomad thing with Remote Year for a year and change, and now I'm still working remotely in Austin, TX.
I do miss the constant travel, there is always something coming up to look forward to. When you are in one place, not constantly traveling, you have to make your own fun. Which is why I've taken up other things like riding motorcycles, brewing beer, and speaking at my local Python meetup.
All that year I was working full time as a Python Developer while traveling constantly. Every weekend was an epic adventure. It's an amazing lifestyle if you can pull it off, but its not for everyone can definitely will wear on you after a while.
I own a lifestyle business and I work at a startup as the founding engineer, but I work remotely.
When you work remotely, you can treat both your lifestyle business and your gig the same, insofar as you have the freedom to take an hour off your gig to do some calls for your lifestyle business in the middle of the day, or you can test particular technologies on your lifestyle business before you commit to it in your startup.
I find them both to be healthily married.
I still have the freedom to hang out with my kid at lunch, or work from a far away place, while at the same time achieving my career goals and attaining financial independence.
Give me a break. He is playing fast and loose with terminology and it is disingenuous because he is twisting lifestyle business to be whatever he wants it to mean while dissing startups and not giving that term the same flexibility to be "anything that grows fast, even if it doesn't eat the CEO's life."
I hate the term lifestyle business and articles like this one are part of why. I have given my POV previously here:
My recollection is that Plenty of Fish was started by one guy who never took VC money, so he got to keep all the money when he sold for millions. Articles like this don't mention examples like that when justifying their biased opinion that "lifestyle business" = good and "startup" = bad. (In part because of the lack of VC money, I assume that Plenty of Fish was not a pressure cooker. Upon rereading my comment, that assumption does not seem clear.)
A lifestyle business seems fundamentally incompatible with a team oriented business. Let's assume the goal of a "lifestyle" business by a single founder is to automate all operations such that little to no work is required on the part of that founder.
Ok, that's all well and good. But some of that "automation" will inevitably be delegation to the founder's employees. So the employees have to work. The founder doesn't have to work. How can the founder possibly show good leadership and build a strong team if his goal is to work as little as possible?
As a founder, you are responsible for the well being of your employees. That's why they're employees, not independent contractors. If you're working four hours a week with a team of employees, there is a high chance you're shirking some responsibility toward them.
And if you decide to be a full time boss, then you're still building more than a business. You're building a team that you are responsible for. That is, you "answer" to other people - your employees. At this point, the advantages of a lifestyle business over VC funded business ("low hours," "not beholden to anyone") start to lose their luster.
If you're interested in building a team, and a lasting enterprise, then it becomes more logical to just take some seed funding so you can safely pay your employees and ensure an early growth trajectory. Whereas if you're only interested in a totally automated business to provide you and your family a stable income, then you should avoid hiring employees because you'll just end up beholden to them.
Thus the ideas of a "fully automated lifestyle business" and a "lifestyle business with a strong team" seem at odds with each other.
At a certain point, this blog post seemed mostly about the great traveling opportunities that this company offers its employees. That's' neat, for employees who are kid-free. But as a developer married to developer... with 2 kids under the age of three... I can tell you that those work retreats abroad actually become pretty challenging for families. At a certain point.. people want to have kids. I would find a company who made their employee perks more about realistically supporting families far more appealing.
I'm someone who is thinking of changing carriers at 30 to become a developer. I love the idea of cutting out bureaucracy and office politics and be paid decently. I'd love any thoughts and advice from more experienced people about what I should do in the next 12-24 months.
The people who I've seen who have the best lifestyle have big chunks of work followed by big chunks of time off.
They tended to work 6-12 month contracts followed by 3-6 months off. This works great in a good economy, when it turns sour its more difficult.
The other happy group worked in mines or oil rigs on a month on month off schedule. They got paid tax free and had 6 month long vacations a year to travel.
I think I prefer those options to working while travelling.
[+] [-] weeksie|8 years ago|reply
There are a ton of upsides but I wouldn't go back to it full time. For one, it's surprising how few of the digital nomad types are really that interesting, and while integrating with local populations is fun, you'll still find yourself missing the familiarity of people from your own culture (or similar, Western cultures, assuming you're a Euro or American)
Once you get used to life on the road it's grand. Still, nomad nests like Chiang Mai are insipid and full of scores of people hustling their drop ship schemes. More power to them, but it's just not my vibe.
I dunno. Go nuts, travel, see a bunch of shit, just don't assume the beach is going to be as stimulating as the (very likely) metro urban environment you're living in now.
[+] [-] greggman|8 years ago|reply
1. Always having to make plans for the next place to sleep was stressful for me. I'd arrive at some city and have to start planning the next city else I'd be homeless once my hotel/apartment term expired. I started booking longer (4 weeks, 6 weeks, more) but even then just the fact that I have a place I don't have to think about is less stressful for me.
2. No hangout buddy or really close friends. Some people are great at making new friends and I did make a few in certain cities but I'm at least a little introverted and felt pretty lonely quite often.
3. There only so much tourism I can take. At some point it just got boring seeing yet another old church, yet another museum, etc. Some recent book claimed you should take several shorter vacations than fewer but longer ones. They recommended no more than a week at a time.
4. Not being able to buy/own anything. That might appeal to some but not to others, it means no shopping, something that many people enjoy while traveling. It also means no PS4, no Vive/Oculus, no gaming rig, no tools, no food supplies. Sure if I rented an apartment I could go buy a few things to cook but when I have a permanent residence I have tons of utensils and spices and other things in my kitchen that I just don't have the time to gather in a temporary place. Similarly I had drawers or closets full of parts and tools, something I didn't have digital nomadding.
Of course that's all just me. I've met others who really enjoy that lifestyle. Good for them!
[+] [-] mjn|8 years ago|reply
In some formal sense the mechanics are very similar to an American running a lifestyle business from a beach in Crete, but culturally it's different from the "digital nomad" lifestyle.
[+] [-] alistairSH|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkingkong|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e59d134d|8 years ago|reply
I personally want a lifestyle business but for my lifestyle. That is wake up late, enjoy the day, maybe go for a road trip or hike, work in the evenings, work till midnight or so. Or if I feel like it, take a day off.
Go on vacations but not worry about return date. Bring the laptop and if needed, work. Otherwise just enjoy the vacation.
[+] [-] kilroy123|8 years ago|reply
Also about what you said about others not being very interesting; I completely agree.
[+] [-] JoshMnem|8 years ago|reply
I didn't find that to be true. I miss foreign people and cultures after settling back down. If you want to find people from your own culture while on the road, stay at a hostel or take a break from roaming at any backpacker/nomad/tourist trap.
[+] [-] sperling75|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jliptzin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joeldg|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] sevensor|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _mhyx|8 years ago|reply
The idea that you can afford a house and a boat and time with your kids on a single upper middle class income in, say, Missouri is called "normal" outside of SF/NYC.
[+] [-] SmellTheGlove|8 years ago|reply
It doesn't even need to be a lifestyle business, nor in flyover country. I live on the Maine coast working for a large company. We even have a big office here! I'm mid 30's, wife, kid, and we have a nice balance. Yeah sometimes I work a bit more than I'd like, but 40 hours per week is normal, and for the times I work more than that, it's more than offset by my 20 minute traffic-doesnt-exist commute. I feel very fortunate to live somewhere that other people visit on vacation, but getting here isn't really that challenging.
Portland (the original!) has a small but growing startup scene if that's your thing. It also has some of the best food and beer in the country, which is a distraction I admit.
[+] [-] coldtea|8 years ago|reply
That's like, full time employment.
[+] [-] urethrafranklin|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] wanderings|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jitix|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dekimir|8 years ago|reply
OTOH, what would you do with that valuation delta that working yourself to the bone would hopefully bring? Would it adequately compensate you for missing the children's birthdays or Paris with your SO?
[+] [-] davemp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|8 years ago|reply
I never see articles that encourage: "Here's why you should dedicate your life to starting a company and try to dominate an industry." It's like these posts are fighting against a boogeyman that isn't there.
I think 99% of all small businesses are "lifestyle businesses" where the founders aren't trying to build a market dominating billion dollar company. So who are these articles target to?
Is it simply the amount of press that surrounds VC and hyperscale companies that these folks are rejecting? I don't think any VC or founder has ever claimed that the only way to be happy/make money/do good is by trying to create a massive market dominating company.
[+] [-] scottLobster|8 years ago|reply
I'm honestly not sure what those authors are doing as a "main" job that they can dedicate such time to side projects, seems like some people like to conflate "bootstrapped startup" and "side project".
[+] [-] znq|8 years ago|reply
Also IMHO sharing a way of doing things / a philosophy / an opinion doesn't always mean being against everything else. For example I prefer riding the mountain bike vs a road bike. Doesn't mean I'm against road cycling and the people doing it.
That said, to comment on what one of the siblings said, obviously these posts are being written with the intention of bringing more attention to what we're doing, also known as "marketing". I wouldn't however call it clickbait, as it is based on genuine thoughts and ideas and we've actually been doing it for real with a 20 people team for more than 5 years already.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanx435|8 years ago|reply
Also, ycombinator exists as an incubator specifically for companies that are trying to create a massive market dominating company.
The "boogeyman", as you put it, is at the very core of who and what ycombinator and hacker news are all about.
[+] [-] taneq|8 years ago|reply
Really? Much (most?) stuff on HN is to do with "scaling" (ie. growing as fast as possible whether it makes sense for the business or not), rounds of venture capital, handling shares, all leading up to an "exit".
The fact that a profitable business with a dozen employees which is growing at a steady, sustainable rate is considered a "lifestyle business" at all is a symptom of this bizarre mindset.
[+] [-] marcosdumay|8 years ago|reply
Try to look for older articles. There is a reason so many people are replying to them, it's because they not only existed, but even used to claim that either a "lifestyle business" in IT was impossible or that nobody would want it.
[+] [-] a1exyz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] k__|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|8 years ago|reply
Pretty much every blue collar tradesman runs a "lifestyle business" or "freelances"
[+] [-] orthoganol|8 years ago|reply
Only ever doing one in your life without the other is unenviable, and makes it hard to fully enjoy and appreciate, or even excel at, whichever one you've chosen.
[+] [-] ArmandGrillet|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boyce|8 years ago|reply
Can't imagine being somewhere nice but glued to a laptop, or getting anything useful done without reliable wifi etc, or being part of a team where the boss has gone on holiday but still showing up in slack etc.
I'd hate to feel like I wasn't part of the team for not getting our kids together or not wanting to holiday or spend a day off with colleagues. I'm not impressed by instagram or medium posts from perfect looking beaches giving business advice.
Not sure when a lifestyle business went from being a business that fits around your lifestyle to making the appearance of living an idealised lifestyle everybody else's business.
[+] [-] miheermunjal|8 years ago|reply
either someone is ridiculous at managing at all of this (kudos!) or something is slipping somewhere. Even in custom-dev it can be cutthroat, especially with large-scale projects and demanding clients.
[+] [-] jasonrhaas|8 years ago|reply
I do miss the constant travel, there is always something coming up to look forward to. When you are in one place, not constantly traveling, you have to make your own fun. Which is why I've taken up other things like riding motorcycles, brewing beer, and speaking at my local Python meetup.
All that year I was working full time as a Python Developer while traveling constantly. Every weekend was an epic adventure. It's an amazing lifestyle if you can pull it off, but its not for everyone can definitely will wear on you after a while.
[+] [-] buf|8 years ago|reply
When you work remotely, you can treat both your lifestyle business and your gig the same, insofar as you have the freedom to take an hour off your gig to do some calls for your lifestyle business in the middle of the day, or you can test particular technologies on your lifestyle business before you commit to it in your startup.
I find them both to be healthily married.
I still have the freedom to hang out with my kid at lunch, or work from a far away place, while at the same time achieving my career goals and attaining financial independence.
[+] [-] Mz|8 years ago|reply
I hate the term lifestyle business and articles like this one are part of why. I have given my POV previously here:
http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/i-love-lucy-...
My recollection is that Plenty of Fish was started by one guy who never took VC money, so he got to keep all the money when he sold for millions. Articles like this don't mention examples like that when justifying their biased opinion that "lifestyle business" = good and "startup" = bad. (In part because of the lack of VC money, I assume that Plenty of Fish was not a pressure cooker. Upon rereading my comment, that assumption does not seem clear.)
[+] [-] chatmasta|8 years ago|reply
Ok, that's all well and good. But some of that "automation" will inevitably be delegation to the founder's employees. So the employees have to work. The founder doesn't have to work. How can the founder possibly show good leadership and build a strong team if his goal is to work as little as possible?
As a founder, you are responsible for the well being of your employees. That's why they're employees, not independent contractors. If you're working four hours a week with a team of employees, there is a high chance you're shirking some responsibility toward them.
And if you decide to be a full time boss, then you're still building more than a business. You're building a team that you are responsible for. That is, you "answer" to other people - your employees. At this point, the advantages of a lifestyle business over VC funded business ("low hours," "not beholden to anyone") start to lose their luster.
If you're interested in building a team, and a lasting enterprise, then it becomes more logical to just take some seed funding so you can safely pay your employees and ensure an early growth trajectory. Whereas if you're only interested in a totally automated business to provide you and your family a stable income, then you should avoid hiring employees because you'll just end up beholden to them.
Thus the ideas of a "fully automated lifestyle business" and a "lifestyle business with a strong team" seem at odds with each other.
[+] [-] mcone|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alissasobo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swlkr|8 years ago|reply
VC backed startups seem to just give you a new set of bosses.
[+] [-] tixocloud|8 years ago|reply
For some folks, a lifestyle business is better suited for them as they are looking to get more time out of their lives to do other things.
For others, a startup might be better because they have more control over whatever product/service they are providing.
[+] [-] znq|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] vit05|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thefuzz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb808|8 years ago|reply
They tended to work 6-12 month contracts followed by 3-6 months off. This works great in a good economy, when it turns sour its more difficult.
The other happy group worked in mines or oil rigs on a month on month off schedule. They got paid tax free and had 6 month long vacations a year to travel.
I think I prefer those options to working while travelling.
[+] [-] Naritai|8 years ago|reply