Definition of Success

Introduction

When I started looking into entrepreneurship and understanding how that could potentially look like for me, I thought the idea of success around having a business was to grow a business that could be so profitable and so huge that you would end up floating it on the stock market, having a board of directors and eventually selling it for millions, a bit like Uber or one of those businesses that have gone on to create huge success for the founders.

And what I’ve realised over time is that my values are aligned with something that looks actually quite different to that. But I didn’t realise what the difference was. In this video, I’m going to explain to you a little bit about how I came about understanding the difference between a lifestyle business and a performance business and why I personally think that a lifestyle business is what 99% of people would actually enjoy the most and why this is what I teach in my work.

And if we haven’t met before, my name is Marcela and I am a business coach for solopreneurs and founders who work with service-based businesses and want to build a simple, profitable business that allows them to live life on their terms. Here, I teach strategies, tools, insights, and my own reflections and journey of being an entrepreneur to help you be able to have your own service business that provides you the life that you love.

Let’s get into the topic today.

Point 1: Define Success for Yourself First

So the first point that I wanted to mention is that we need to be really clear of our own definition of success. So when we start listening to other people’s definition of success, if we don’t have clarity on our own, it can become so easy to get sucked into the idea of someone else’s version of success.

And especially in this day and age, when we can consume so much content from all angles, it can become very confusing and it’s difficult to know what it is that we actually want. And it’s very easy to get sold into this idea of building a business that you can then exit for millions, and then you can retire when you’re 30 and go off to Bali to live on a beach. 

But honestly, there is so much more nuance around that. And my first real experience of that was in 2018 when I co-founded a tech startup… 

The idea was to create this business and to gain a lot of customers, it was B2C, so business to customer and B2B, so selling it to other business providers who wanted to be on the platform. And we needed to have thousands upon thousands of people. To be able to get this up, up and running. And the idea, I remember doing my projections, my financial projections, and thinking, okay, year one is going be a hundred thousand pounds.

Year two is going to be like 300,000 pounds. Year three is going to be a million plus pounds in terms of revenue coming in, because I could just see what the revenue could look like if the numbers were hit, and my idea was, okay, we’ll work really hard on this business for five years and then we’ll sell it essentially for, maybe 10 million, 15 million, 20 million pounds, and then yeah, be rich.

Point 2: When the “Big Exit” Dream Doesn’t Feel Right

And it’s really interesting because as we started building that business, for me, it became clear very quickly that I actually didn’t want a business like that…

I started envisioning what this could look like, and honestly it just filled me with dread. I realised that point, that’s actually not why I want to build a business.

I don’t want to build all of those complications. That’s not what I want. I always knew deep down that what I wanted was a business that allowed me to live my life with agency, with autonomy, to have freedom…

So, of course, as someone that’s still very ambitious and hardworking, I persevered with that business for a long time. I invested over 80,000 pounds into that business… overall with the money that I wasn’t earning because I quit my job, I probably ended up about 150,000 pounds kind of worth off, after that business.

Point 3: Redefining What You Actually Want From Life

And I realised that I didn’t want to build that business in the first place. So in the end, even though I’d spent so much time and energy and effort and money into the business, I knew that business wasn’t going to make me happy…

I realised that for me it was about having something simple, something where I could have control over what I was doing…

And so it’s really about understanding our values, understanding who we are and what it is that we actually want out of our businesses before we start building something…

Point 4: Lessons From Experience (Even the Expensive Ones)

And that is something that I had to learn the hard way back in 2018 with a business that cost me a huge amount of time, effort, and money that I realised I didn’t want to build in the first place. So I don’t regret it…

I learned a huge amount, but after two years, I realised this business is not what I want. And so I had the courage because honestly, I will call it courage…

Point 5: Lifestyle Business vs Performance Business

Bigger businesses, even though they on the surface appear to create a lot more revenue, they also have a lot of fixed cost and fixed overheads and a lot more moving pieces and complexity…

Do you want to build a business where you have to be involved in lots of moving parts… or do you want something that’s going to give you life freedom, flexibility?

I personally think that most people, if they look deep down, they would probably want to choose the second type of business…

Point 6: Ego, Status, and External Validation

We live in a society where status counts for a lot.

I know this firsthand because I was a captain in the Army and I was a doctor but once we’re able to remove ourselves from that and we’re able to separate that and understand that we have intrinsic value outside of those external metrics, then we stop caring about what people think…

Point 7: What a Truly Successful Life Looks Like

Honestly, in my opinion, the biggest success that we can have is to be able to wake up in the morning and think… I can do exactly what I want… to be able to have breakfast with our partner… to take our kids to school… to say no to clients that don’t feel aligned…

Point 8: Designing Your Business Around Your Life

So with all of that in mind, the thing that I really like people to take away from this is… build your business around your lifestyle. So make your decisions around your lifestyle first, then build a business that supports that lifestyle. So you can ask yourself these questions instead of asking yourself, how do I build the biggest, most impressive business possible?

Key Questions to Ask Yourself

What do I want my ideal week to look and feel like?

How do I want to spend my spare time?

Which days of the week do I want to work?

What sort of clients would I love to serve?

What type of work energises me?

What kind of legacy do I want to leave behind?

Final Message: A Business That Feels Good, Not Just Looks Good

I don’t want a business that looks good. I want a business that feels good. Ultimately, I believe that we’ve come to this earth to have fun, to enjoy, to explore, to build meaningful connections… And so why not use entrepreneurship as the vehicle towards that? I hope that you have found this helpful and insightful. I have built a business all around fun, freedom, flexibility, and I am going to go off and travel the world now with my business.