You hear a lot of bad things about “lifestyle business” but that’s mostly from VC’s who are only focused on scaling.

Nothing wrong with a lifestyle business imo

I’m 36 and have a few businesses now, the most lucrative being a property management company. We hit over 500k this past year in total profits through the businesses but I won’t consider myself “successful” until I have the kids retired and I probably won’t stop even then. Lol good luck my friend.

Running a side social media management business on my own. Pretty much no overhead costs except my website and canva… I’ll do monthly add ons for special projects like SEO and website designs… but yearly my overhead is like… $300? I’m making about $1200/month consistently and have had a few months of $2700+/month. I’m also working full time while doing this - so overall I’m happy with this on such a small scale but hoping to scale up slowly.

Have an alright business. I’m earning about 60% what I did working for someone else, but putting back into the business. Just me. Hired someone. That didn’t work.

I’m now contemplating rejoining the work force for someone else; if I do that and cash out, it’ll be basically be bringing me back up to the same salary I would have earned the last couple years.

Barriers are getting bigger, competition fiercer and confidence lower… so it’s been fun running my own shop, but time to step back for a bit I think.

Same here. Had a huge up cycle for a couple years, then things slowed down. I’m married, two kids, we’re comfortable but not blowing up like I thought I would by this point. When you look around the data shows most people are like this. Just try to stay focused and you’ll have ups and downs, hopefully the ups continue getting bigger and the lows don’t get as low after a while.

I’m like, hanging in there.

Started the business in 2020, was given an existing client base. Many, many people left us, we’ve not gained more clients that have left, but we’re hanging in there. We have just under 200 monthly clients and our turnover is about 2m a year. But we still don’t make a lot of profit because people are wanting to pay less and less and less for more.

I have an AI automation tool that may interest you.

Sent you a DM.

My first business, I was doing $1.2m/yr but only taking home about $40-60k/yr. This was like 2017 and I’ve just about 20x’d the numbers (besides the income part).

Call me a weirdo, but I think good employees are worth their weight in gold. Simply put, why would I take $1m and pay a key employee $100k when while expecting them to do all the work while I’m off in Tahiti somewhere. So I pay myself based on what I do and assign “partners” to individual departments who I’ll then work with to manage key employees, who then manage the boots on the ground folks. It’s not the “take the most home” business model, but it’s done very well for me and my business - including reputation.

I also only hire through word of mouth referrals. It will likely remain this way until I sell or decide to maybe franchise (probably won’t happen but w/e idk wtf I’m doing).

I’m trying to make my dad successful

Started a small bookkeeping business in 2021. Specifically, We work with local construction companies It’s just 2 of us and we turn about 240k a year.

Profit however…… maybe I keep 10-12k at the end of everything ? Currently paying myself a 55k salary so I guess I can see the end as a “bonus” at the end of the year.

Working on getting my EA so we can start completing tax returns. I’m hoping that’ll push us to the next level

Seems to be a question of margins. My consulting business brings in about $250k-$300k a year and growing, but I have no employees and very little overhead. I’m very comfortable with this outcome. Living in a LCOL area, I’m doing just fine.

Wild. We might be the same person. I too own an agency. Our revenues are about the same. I take home about the same.

It’s a frustrating place to be.

You have a lot of freedom. Control of schedule and the ability to lead is great. But it’s also consuming.

That said, personally, I have been thinking about this a lot and working to figure out, how do I get from $600k~ revenue per year to that next figure? Maybe $1.5 M per year.

I mean the burnout is real. Don’t get me wrong. But I personally feel like I have to keep a plan in place to make that next landmark or else I really would be saying; “hey, I could probably make more money working for someone else in corporate”

I’m covering bills with my main business, enjoying a bit of lifestyle with the side hustle. In the process of scaling main biz to get to upper/upper middle class in next year or so. I’m content, but work many hours of enjoyable work. Not exactly fuck you money, but I don’t get into really anything I don’t want to. No one telling me what to do is really nice.

I work for a small family business. We have an office and factory in the UK and an office in Hong Kong. We used to have a factory in China. No longer. Our products are of yesteryear and we have had some very unfortunate issues over the last 4 years, so are just now getting back in to profit. We have a very small market share due to some of those issues, so room to grow. I would say I live an ok middle class life. Have been forced to cut back on holidays and expenditure in order to save for a house that we have just bought. I would like to think that in a few years we will be back up to the £2m+ that we had about 10 years ago before I was in the company.

I sold my part of the software consulting company I founded with my friends for 2m€ this year. After taxes it will generate just enough passive income to retire if I want to which was my original goal as an entrepreneur.

Really happy about it. I am still working at the company full time and don’t really know what I want to do next but time will probably tell.