To determine where you think you are in your business, you may have first identified at which stage you are at. Then, look at where your business should be based on the years you have been in business.
First let us establish whether you are a lifestyle business or a sellable asset base business.
A lifestyle business could be ascertained as a business that is owner run where the business is designed to support the owner who has other responsibilities e.g. a mother who is caring for children or other family members, or who has other responsibilities that make it more difficult to hold a full-time job. You may prefer to work from home, rather than traveling to an office. You may find that you can earn more working part time for yourself and prefer it to working for a boss or you have no other option. A lifestyle business definitely allows for flexibility of time but would require a very strong discipline. This type of business is heavily reliant on the business owner – no work no pay!
On the other hand, a sellable asset-based business generally has employees. They often involve equipment and processes that allows your business to run whether you are present or not (a topic for another day for those superheroes). Typically, they operate from premises away from home and may be in multiple areas.
A lifestyle business is a perfect opportunity to enable you to invest your profits outside of the business by way of investing in property portfolios, shares or any other wealth creation vehicles. However, the asset-based business is able to scale, enabling you to have the potential to sell it to someone else and walk away with not only the salary and profits earned (hopefully) over the years of running your business but also the money you banked that you received from the new buyer. To do that, however, you need to structure your business so that you’re not an essential part in the business, as you would be with a lifestyle business.
Our definition of a business is a commercial profitable business that works without you!
Now that you have hopefully identified what stage your business is at and you have seen our definition of a business, I’d like you to make a conscious decision. Do you want to continue to run a lifestyle business and work for yourself or run a sellable asset base business that can work for you whether you are present or not?
To enable you to make this decision you should be very clear on why you are in business in the first place (Your Purpose and Why). You should know how much time and money is required to provide for you now and that will sustain your lifestyle for as long as you shall live.
Once you have established that, then you will be very clear as to whether you would want to continue to run a lifestyle business (you are the business and the income generator) and have the *Freedom to Choose (dependant on time and money available) or a sellable asset base business that can provide you with the time and money to enable you to have the *Freedom of Choice (don’t need to sacrifice time or money).
Need a sounding board? Click on the link below and set up a discovery call with me to help you find your true purpose of why you are in business.
Feel free to join our next MemberSHIP Workshop (Third Tuesday monthly) to meet our clients who run both lifestyle and asset-based businesses and hear what they are doing.
Contact me on https://linkshare.co.za/marlenepowell or call +27 (0)83 479 4471.
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