
Is “lifestyle business” the only worthless venture?
With the press focused on the millions raised by high-profile startups, many would-be entrepreneurs are becoming convinced that these are the only worthwhile ventures to pursue. “Lifestyle business” is a term in the startup lexicon that refers to businesses that aren’t a fit for venture capital.
What is a lifestyle business?
A lifestyle business is a small business that typically begins as a mom-and-pop shop. Better said, a lifestyle business is a typical small business with a slow and gradual growth plan. The purpose of the business is to provide occupation and income for the founders into the future.
What is the difference between venture scale and lifestyle business?
Those companies which do not fit this criterion are often referred to as lifestyle businesses; and while the term may not sound as sexy as “venture scale,” there are plenty of positives to building a lucrative and profitable lifestyle business. As it pertains to venture scale, there are three key distinctions worth understanding.
Is a sustainable lifestyle business right for You?
If the idea of a business where you maintain control and can lead a quality lifestyle sounds attractive, a lifestyle business may be right for you. Below are the characteristics your company should exhibit in order to be a sustainable lifestyle business.

What is a lifestyle business example?
Examples of a lifestyle business A lifestyle business is often (but not always) a hobby that has become a source of reliable income. Some examples include blogging, photography, writing, teaching, cooking, or training.
What does lifestyle business mean?
A lifestyle business is a passion-centered company that generates enough profit to allow an entrepreneur to work and live from anywhere, earning an income on their own terms.
What do lifestyle companies do?
A lifestyle company or lifestyle business is a concept that is usually owned and operated by its founders. These types of companies aim to offer products or services that contribute to the lifestyle of the consumers in their market.
How do I start a lifestyle startup?
8 Steps to Starting Your Lifestyle BusinessChoose Your Niche! ... Know Your Life & Business Goals. ... Identify Your Ideal Market. ... Define & Create Your Brand Ideal. ... Plan For Profit. ... Build & Grow Your Audience. ... Develop Your Business Model. ... Scale & Diversify.
What are examples of lifestyles?
Examples of lifestyle habits include:Sleeping patterns.Eating tendencies.Level of physical activity.Stress management practices.Hydration habits.
Who is a lifestyle entrepreneur?
A lifestyle entrepreneur is an individual who creates a business for the purpose of changing their lifestyle instead of making profits. This type of entrepreneur usually wants to create a business because they are passionate about it and believe that it will be personally rewarding for them.
What are the 6 types of lifestyle?
Men of all ages can improve their health and quality of life by focusing on these six lifestyle elements: a healthy diet, regular physical activity, brain activities, social activities, regular doctor visits, and avoiding risky behaviour.
What type of business is a lifestyle brand?
A lifestyle brand is a company that aims to sell products by marketing a particular lifestyle. Lifestyle brands attempt to establish an emotional connection between their products and a certain lifestyle image.
What kind of business is a lifestyle brand?
A lifestyle brand is a brand that attempts to embody the values, aspirations, interests, attitudes, or opinions of a group or a culture for marketing purposes. Lifestyle brands seek to inspire, guide, and motivate people, with the goal of making their products contribute to the definition of the consumer's way of life.
What is the opposite of a lifestyle business?
Lifestyle business focuses on healthy work culture, and meaningful life, while startups tend to change the world and challenge the status quo. If you're starting a digital business, you may consider which path you're willing to take.
What is a lifestyle start up?
December 2010. A lifestyle business (also referred to as a lifestyle venture) is a business set up and run by its founders primarily with the aim of sustaining a particular level of income and no more; or to provide a foundation from which to enjoy a particular lifestyle.
How do you build a lifestyle?
7 Steps to Create the Life You Want to Live, Starting TodayStep 1: Find your purpose. ... Step 2: Set long term goals to live a successful life. ... Step 3: Learn the habits of successful people. ... Step 4: Stay focused on what you want in life. ... Step 5: Stay motivated on the way. ... Step 6: Refocus when change happens.More items...•
What is the difference between lifestyle and growth business?
Lifestyle entrepreneurs look to company profitability for personal income, keeping in mind growth goals, while growth entrepreneurs put all the emphasis on growth. Lifestyle entrepreneurs are averse to raising outside money while growth entrepreneurs always try to raise money.
What is a lifestyle simple definition?
: the typical way of life of an individual, group, or culture.
What is a lifestyle service?
Lifestyle Concierge is a very personal service designed to help you balance your schedule in your personal, family and professional life; meaning a service that supports you in all areas required to manage your lifestyle, which will give you the time back to spend on the things you enjoy.
What are the lifestyle products?
Lifestyle products are goods that are perceived as an expression of an individual's style, preferences, values, way of life and social status. Customers have strong preferences in this category such that they are often willing to pay a premium for goods they feel match their lifestyle and personal image.
What is lifestyle venture?
Lifestyle ventures, the second most common form of start-up, are examined in detail. More than a survival business, which exists on a hand-to-mouth basis, the lifestyle venture can be relatively profitable. It affords the entrepreneur a decent living, and so supports a lifestyle for them and their families. We explore the nature and importance of these ventures, identifying the specific characteristics that make them a unique category. We consider how they emerge, and how they come to define the lifestyle of the entrepreneur. Some of the more significant strategic and operational challenges confronted by lifestyle entrepreneurs are investigated, and the relative efficiency and role played by technology in these ventures are reviewed. Based on their characteristics and the challenges they confront, implications are drawn for ways lifestyle ventures can be sustainable.
WHAT DO LIFESTYLE ENTREPRENEURS LOOK LIKE?
In the United States, just over half of the entrepreneurs are 50 years or older, with one-third between 35–49 years old, and 16 percent under 35 years of age. While 55 percent are owned by men, 36 percent are women-owned, and 9 percent are jointly owned by men and women. With regard to race, Whites own 72 percent of these firms, Hispanics own 13.5 percent, Blacks own 6.3 percent, and Asians own 6.2 percent. The percentages of lifestyle ventures run by women and minorities are far higher than for managed and aggressive growth ventures. In terms of educational backgrounds, 39 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher, 33 percent have some college education, and 28 percent have a high school education.
What do entrepreneurs create?
Four different types of ventures created by entrepreneurs are explored in What Do Entrepreneurs Create?: survival, lifestyle, managed growth and aggressive growth. The concept of a balanced venture portfolio is introduced to guide public policy formulation and the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems.
What is lifestyle entrepreneur?
A lifestyle entrepreneur is any individual who creates a business with the main goal of improving their life in some way. An example of a lifestyle entrepreneur is someone who travels the world and posts articles and pictures to a blog throughout their journey. To best understand what a lifestyle entrepreneur is, ...
Why is lifestyle entrepreneurship important?
This form of entrepreneurship is important to many individuals because it allows them to run a business while they're traveling or from the comfort of their own home.
What are the benefits of being a lifestyle entrepreneur?
The many benefits of being a lifestyle entrepreneur include: Being able to spend more time with your friends and family. Being able to make your own schedule and work when you want. Allows you to focus on your strengths instead of honing new skills.
How to function properly in lifestyle entrepreneurship?
If you want to function properly in lifestyle entrepreneurship, it's important that you use the right tools that will allow for substantial automation while also matching your business idea. In the event that you want to run an online storefront while you travel, you should make sure to create this storefront on the right platform that will help you obtain long-term success.
What is a traditional entrepreneur?
A traditional entrepreneur is someone who finds a career to enter and then builds their life around the career. While this is a perfectly fine way to live, it's not always personally rewarding if you're not 100 percent passionate about what you do.
Why is it important to create a travel blog?
If you enjoy writing and traveling, creating a travel blog is a great way to enjoy both of these passions while making money at the same time. The business ideas that you think of should correlate with your passions.
Should lifestyle entrepreneurs be flexible?
No matter the type of business you are looking to start, lifestyle entrepreneurs should be flexible enough to know when to change tactics as new challenges arise
What is lifestyle business?
Let’s define lifestyle business as one that’s launched with the goal to allow the principals to lead a great lifestyle. And, let’s define a startup as a company that’s run to provide a return to investors. It’s worth noting that companies that don’t raise venture capital are the vast majority of businesses. Some of these businesses require just as much work as those that are VC-backed, and can become world beaters themselves.
Is a lifestyle business sustainable?
If the idea of a business where you maintain control and can lead a quality lifestyle sounds attractive, a lifestyle business may be right for you. Below are the characteristics your company should exhibit in order to be a sustainable lifestyle business.
Who coined the term "lifestyle"?
The authors attributed the word ‘lifestyle’ to psychologist Alfred Adler and sociologist Max Weber. “Newspapers have their business sections, which, of course, use terminology from economics, but they also have their lifestyle sections, which use terminology from sociology,” Merton and Wolfe wrote.
Who first used lifestyle?
Now, the categories of lifestyle content are infinite: wellness, eco, VSCO, vegan, minimalist, maximalist, Marxist, to name a few. Alfred Adler was credited with the first use of lifestyle in 1929. Although the term was used by Max Weber in 1922, his writings would not be translated to English until after Adler’s.
What is travel photography?
Travel photography has become a part of that vague corner of media known as lifestyle content. On social media, photographs signify the lifestyle of the person who posts them. But the concept of lifestyle isn’t limited to its depiction.
How is lifestyle determined?
Lifestyle is determined by our memories, our memories help us create meaning, and meaning guides our relationship to objects–by extension consumerism, by extension the rules that govern who deserves what.
Why was the storage business important to the American lifestyle?
The storage business was essential to creating the American lifestyle because it allowed for the movement and accumulation of things. However, the depiction of lifestyle owes a debt to public and private forms of media, images that give things value.
Where did the first moving business start?
In 1891, the first moving business in America opened in Sioux City, Iowa, relying on horse and wagon. The founders were brothers Martin and John Bekins and they soon expanded to warehouse storage as well. If you want to know how the American lifestyle was created, the Bekins family is a great place to start. During the Gold Rush, they assisted would-be prospectors in moving their possessions out West. They then stored the excess furniture that came with the Gilded Age and helped the new monied classes move into their second homes. Bekins became a Los Angeles fixture during Hollywood’s heyday by storing, cleaning and distributing film. In the early 1970s, they even made national headlines because Daniel Ellsberg was storing the Pentagon Papers in their facilities.#N#This is how the Los Angeles Times described Bekins’ California footprint in 1989: “They rise like medieval castle keeps above busy Southern California intersections. Their steep blank sides, relieved by rows of small windows, give no clue to the activities behind their fortress-like walls. Only the skyline signs reading Bekins Storage reveal the mundane purpose of these muscular architectural landmarks.”#N#In other areas of the country, storage as architecture can be glimpsed from the highway, or as billboards advertising self-storage (or in the water towers that sometimes make their way into fine art photography). Storage is marketed as aggressively as the stuff we put in it. The French Aristocracy Never Saw It Coming Either reads one particularly memorable Manhattan Mini Storage campaign. Storage is sold with the promise of the best thing most of us can hope for: some stability, even as the boom markets that sold us all that stuff would just as easily take it away.#N#Today, there are more self-storage facilities in the United States than McDonald’s and Starbucks locations combined. Storage in the cloud, however distant it may seem, corresponds to data centers that are filled with more stuff. The Bekins company is a shadow of its former empire, but the instincts it capitalized on are alive and well. The millennial may stream Tidying Up with Marie Kondo on Netflix, but they don’t get rid of stuff–they simply redistribute it. The human lifestyle is perpetually slouching towards storage.#N#The storage business was essential to creating the American lifestyle because it allowed for the movement and accumulation of things. However, the depiction of lifestyle owes a debt to public and private forms of media, images that give things value.
When was the word "lifestyle" used in the press?
Merton and Alan Wolfe published a paper about the incorporation of sociological terms into the popular press. At the top of their list was the word “lifestyle,” which was used 106,607 times in the press between 1991 and 1993.
What is the purpose of a lifestyle business?
The guiding principle behind a Lifestyle business: is to create and sustain a particular level of income for the founders or owners, nothing more. In other words, its purpose is to facilitate a particular lifestyle. This does not mean that lifestyle businesses can’t be significant. Such companies can easily be multi-million dollar companies in ...
Who is Dave Clark?
Dave Clark. Dave Clark taught Strategy at West Point and is a co-founder of FundingSage , which provides valuable information, tools and resources to entrepreneurs seeking to start, grow and fund a business.
Can lifestyle businesses be significant?
This does not mean that lifestyle businesses can’t be significant. Such companies can easily be multi-million dollar companies in terms of revenue or equity. However, they tend to be self-limiting in their ability to expand. Overwhelmingly, they tend to be focused on one or more key persons, the loss of whom will stop the company in its tracks.
Is a lifestyle business a good candidate for equity?
Because of the way they were structured, they generally are not good candidates for equity investment. In contrast, truly scalable companies focus on angel or venture financing in order to grow.
