Musings about Entrepreneurship, Technology and Software Development

Accidental Technologist

Running a Lifestyle Business – Tom Rossi Interview on Mixergy

UPDATE: There is a really good discussion about the interview on Hacker News.  Check it out.

I really love listening to realistic entrepreneurs.  The ones with practical advice based on years of experience who can clearly explain why they chose their path.  This contrasts with the ones who are out to be the next Mark Zuckerberg.  I?m not saying it can?t happen, it just doesn?t happen to most of us, like winning the lottery or becoming President. 

The main goal taught by Amy Hoy in her 30×500 Launch class is finding a group of people willing to pay you $30 a month to solve a particular problem for them really well.   When you find 500 people paying $30 you have a nice annual income of $180,00, a nice chunk of change to service a small market.

A great example of this type of entrepreneur was featured recently in Mixergy?s great interview with Tom Rossi of Molehill.  Tom created such a business with a couple products where people pay him a small sum of money for each month.  Tom, in return, he has a great lifestyle business.

A lifestyle business, in my definition, is a business where you work from home and earn a healthy living where you can come and go as you please, making your own schedule. 

From the interview, Tom is asked if running a business is not about ?millions and billions of dollars, then what is it about??:

Well, I think it?s about life. Life isn?t found in those things. We can have all the money in the world, but what are we going to do with it? Where are we going to find happiness? And so, for us, my co-founder, Kevin Finn, and I, we went into it with the idea of we wanted our business to support us in life, not our life to support our business. And sometimes it?s hard for people to relate to that because they go into it with this idea of how can we make the most money, whereas we went in with how can I have the most freedom? All of our kids, each of us have three kids. They are not even in kindergarten. My oldest is in first grade. Most of them are younger than kindergarten, and we want to be there. We want to be around. We want to be in the house. We want to have freedom to be able to go up there for lunch or go on a field trip with our kids and things like that.

Listening to Tom?s story mirrors my goals and plans so closely that I found this interview especially valuable.  Please listen to his story and decide for yourself:

 
 
Tom is a seasoned entrepreneur who chose a lifestyle business over one chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  I see so many folks trying to be the next Facebook or Google but failing to realize the odds of hitting that lottery are very small.  The path Tom takes, which resembles mine in so many ways, is doing work you love while making a decent living and being afforded the time to enjoy life.
 
I think many entrepreneurs realize it is better to make a good living doing something you love which gives you the time for the other great parts of your life.