Top Tips for Starting a Lifestyle Business

Don't reinvent the wheel

Many people are adamant that having no competition and entering a niche market is the best as it represents a great home business opportunity for you, however what is not made clear is the sheer amount of hard work and money that goes into educating a community about a niche that you are trying to promote.

Starting a lifestyle business shouldn't carry the risk of losing a large amount of money, so our recommendation would be to go into an industry with a well-educated community that knows about the products/services they are purchasing. Always let other companies spend money on marketing to developing the market that you wish to provide a service/product in as they can test the waters to make sure it's a profitable market.

Start something that you are passionate about

A lot of people are unsure about what small business idea they should start or what product they should sell. The best place to start is with something you have real passion for, which sometimes could be an obscure hobby.

Sometimes it's worth to just step back from the marketing side and business plans to allow your passion just flow through to your customers as your belief in the product/service will transfer to them.

Just get on with it

Owners of a successful lifestyle business have one thing common, they are always doing something. Instead of telling people how great their ideas are or how rich they are going to get, they simply get on with making the dream a reality.

Lifestyle entrepreneurs know that no one is going to give them any money for just having an idea, they need to be pro-active and actually do something about it.

Be prepared for a lot of hard work

There are no quick fixes in life for anything, if you truly want to start a lifestyle business then being lazy simply won't cut it. You are building a future career for yourself and that requires a lot of setup and determination to get it to a point before you can start to step back a bit from it and let it do the hard work for YOU.

Be open to criticism

No lifestyle business is perfect, so be prepared to receive criticism through the process. The best way to get your head around failure is to take it as feedback, constantly use small failures and criticism to make your business better.

Every successful person on the planet has failed countless times and only through sheer determination and self-discipline have they used failure and criticisms to their advantage to improve their business every time.

Always look out for opportunities

There is nothing wrong with being a consumer, but when running a lifestyle business you need to always be on the lookout for opportunities to produce something.

Its fine to sit and watch your favourite television program at home, but that isn't going to help your business progress. You will have to put on your producer cap and start thinking about what new piece of content you can produce, product to source, writing sales copy etc.

Research is the biggest pitfall that many lifestyle entrepreneurs fall into, while knowledge is power you should always be aware of how much time you are spending as you could end up in a loop where nothing actually comes from all the research you do.

Start networking

You will most likely start out a new lifestyle venture all by yourself which is perfectly fine but networking with other people and business owners is absolutely crucial to your success. While social media is a great platform to introduce yourself to customers and other businesses, we strongly recommend going out and actually socialising. It will not only help make sure you stay sane but it can prove to a valuable use of your time.

Solve problems

Every great lifestyle business is built on the foundation of solving a problem, sometimes the best ideas are the simple ones that solve a common problem that many people face. It's all well and good having the intention of making money out of something you are passionate about but if you are not providing a product/service that solves problems then you will end up wasting a lot of time.

To avoid spending a large amount of money on marketing your product/service make sure you focus on trying to solve a common problem that many people face instead of moving into the niche industry.

Down the line you can start to focus on quite specific problems but to begin with most lifestyle entrepreneurs do not have the capital to get their product across to the right audience effectively.

Learn SEO

With any lifestyle business you will more than likely have to create and manage a website, this can become quite a lucrative method of acquiring new customers if you can make your website stand out from the rest.

One method of making your website into a cash cow is by learning the dark arts of Search Engine Optimisation, there are thousands of useful guides online that can help you get started. To get started feel free to check out the Moz beginners guide to SEO

Have fun

If you start to find that you no longer enjoy running your business then you may not have a lifestyle business and eventually YOU WILL run out of motivation and energy to continue. While the end result of a lifestyle business is to give you time, freedom and money please remember to enjoy the journey to your final destination.