What Is a Lifestyle Entrepreneur?

A lifestyle entrepreneur is someone who tailors their business to support their desired lifestyle. Learn more about what sets a lifestyle entrepreneur apart from other styles of entrepreneurship.

What Is a Lifestyle Entrepreneur?

A lifestyle entrepreneur decides on the kind of lifestyle they want to enjoy and then builds their business in a way that supports it. It's different from how other entrepreneurs operate, which is to put the business first and then design their lifestyle to accommodate it.

Lifestyle entrepreneurs put great emphasis on freedom (such as working a particular number of hours or traveling as they see fit) as well as passion. They may want to work only enough to earn a certain income, which in turn supports their lifestyle of choice. Therefore, they may be less focused on growth than other entrepreneurs.

• Alternate names: Lifestyle business, digital nomad

How Does a Lifestyle Entrepreneur Work?

Traditionally, people find a career and then build their lives around it. The lifestyle entrepreneur does the opposite: they build their career around their life. Their businesses make money, but that money is used to support their passion, hobbies, interests, and goals.

Although home businesses have been around for a long time, the internet allows people to start and run a worldwide business from anywhere in the world—even while traveling. Cloud computing, smartphones, and laptops help the lifestyle entrepreneur to take work on the road.

For example, Natalie Sisson, author of "The Suitcase Entrepreneur," created a business that supports her love of travel. She provides coaching and information products to other entrepreneurs who want to live a life of travel and freedom. She conducts business with her phone and laptop, allowing her to travel freely and pursue a lifestyle she enjoys.

Similarly, lifestyle entrepreneur Tim Ferriss sells books and records podcasts about entrepreneurship and personal development. He is well-known for his book The 4-Hour Workweek, which teaches readers how to build a career that emphasizes lifestyle over work. His business supports his income goals, and his lifestyle informs his business products.

How To Become a Lifestyle Entrepreneur

To become a lifestyle entrepreneur, you'll need to roadmap a plan for your success. The following steps show you how it's done.

Decide on the Lifestyle You Want

You first must decide on the lifestyle you want to design your business around. You may ask yourself the following questions:

• What do you want in life?
• What are your passions and goals?
• Do you want to live and work while traveling?
• Do you want to simply earn enough to support a grander mission?

Pinpoint Your Passions

What are you passionate about? In some cases, you might be able to combine your passion and your business. For example, if you love food and travel, you might be able to build a lifestyle business around a travel food blog.

Brainstorm Ideas That Align With Your Passions

There are essentially three ways to make money: sell your skills, sell physical products, or sell information.

Using your list of passions, come up with business ideas that involve making money from them. For example, if you love gardening, some ideas to make money can include a landscaping business (selling skills), selling gardening tools (physical products), or selling a course on gardening (information).

Research Your Ideas

Pick a few of your top ideas and research whether or not they can help you create the life you want. If they don’t provide you with the freedom to pursue your lifestyle goal outlined in the first step, then they’re not the home business you want.

Things to consider are portability (if you want to travel), flexibility, and income potential. You'll also need to determine if there is a market for your ideas.

Develop a Business Plan

Make a list of what is involved in getting your lifestyle business off the ground. The basics include a website and email list service. But you also need to consider what you’re offering and how you’ll deliver it. In this step, you want to list all the to-dos and equipment you’ll need to get started.

Next, write your lifestyle business plan. This should include all the details that go into a traditional business plan, such as your product and service idea, financials, marketing, and so on. However, you'll also want to pay special attention to make sure it's going to support the life you want.

Take Care of the Paperwork

Obtain any permits and licenses necessary to set up your business structure and legally form your business. If you plan to be a traveling lifestyle entrepreneur, you still need to pick a place to call home. Even if you don’t live there for most of the year, you need a place of residence that will be listed on all your business documents.

Develop Pricing and Marketing

Set up pricing for your products or service. Make sure you’re charging enough to fund your lifestyle goal, but not so much that you don’t have a market willing to pay your prices.

You'll also need to build your website and email marketing funnel. This is essentially your business center. This is where you’ll sell yourself, as well as your products and services.

You'll need to define your ideal client/customer, figure out the best place to reach them, and create materials and systems to get your business in front of them. Email, social media, blogging, interviews on podcasts, and videos are all great ways to spread the word about your business.

Automate, Systematize, and Outsource Where Possible

Automation can include things such as digital product delivery after a sale or social media scheduling tools.

Systems are processes that run your business seamlessly. They can include lead generation systems, sales funnels, and sales processes.

You can hire a virtual assistant (or several) to manage many of the day-to-day aspects of your business, such as customer support, social media management, public relations and marketing, and bookkeeping. The more work you can delegate to someone else, the more time you can spend on your lifestyle goals.