“Lifestyle Business” Defined in Under 140 Chars
The way the term “lifestyle business” is bandied about has bothered me for some time. I’ve decided to try and come up with a new definition. Twitter friendly version:
“Lifestyle business” is the patronizing term for businesses unwilling to grow at the expense of the quality of their product or workplace.
Twitter unfriendly version:
“Lifestyle business” is the patronizing term used by many big businesses and investors for businesses that are unwilling to pursue growth at the expense of a) the quality of their product/service and/or b) the happiness of their employees. The terms is often applied to businesses that don’t want said investors’ money.
Do you have a better definition? Feel free to take a crack in the comments.
Join the discussion 15 Comments
Matt
March 14, 2009 at 7:37 am
Challenge: Remove 23 characters so we can attribute you with a tinyurl link…
“Lifestyle business” is the patronizing term for businesses unwilling to grow at the expense of the quality of their product or workplace http://tinyurl.com/db82lj
Hillel
March 14, 2009 at 8:02 am
Not pretty but done. ;)
Lifestyle biz – the patronizing term for a biz unwilling to grow at the expense of product or workplace quality. http://tinyurl.com/db82lj
Don
March 14, 2009 at 8:16 pm
I like your “Twitter Unfriendly” definition because I’m building a lifestyle business too, and you captured it perfectly!
Saqib Shaikh
March 17, 2009 at 9:49 am
I don’t run my own business, so may be missing something, but why is this term patronising? I have friends who run such businesses and when I first saw the term thought it was an apt description. Is its offensiveness related to the frequency with which it is used, or the people that use it?
Tony Wright
April 11, 2009 at 6:39 pm
I’ll second the “why is this patronizing” question?
Lifestyle businesses aren’t just/always about quality– there are plenty of lifestyle businesses with crappy products and there are plenty of big/high growth companies with good ones (Zappos? Amazon?). Growth and quality can mix quite well at times.
Lifestyle businesses is the term for a business that sets aside the dream of growth and megariches for some other dream. That dream might be a fabulous product that couldn’t be done without curtailing growth. It might be a company that feels like a tight-knit family. It might be a 4-day (or 4 hour!) work week.
(not far from the Wikipedia definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_business )
There’s no shame in these decisions, just as there is no shame in choosing to aim big. I generally think that taking a defensive/offensive posture toward the other side isn’t constructive. We’re all “in the arena” in one way or the other.
Hillel
April 11, 2009 at 9:10 pm
I don’t think there needs to be anything patronizing about the term by default. However, I think that often in its usage it has become used in a patronizing fashion to dismiss these typically smaller businesses as not “real” or “serious” businesses. The dictionary often evolves definitions to reflect the reality of the usage of a term independent of the original intended meaning.
And as for megariches, I suppose it’s accurate to say that lifestyle businesses give up the dream of megariches (i.e. billions). However, in reality I wonder how many people pursuing that dream get even moderately rich relative to people who pursue smaller footprint businesses and don’t distract themselves with the fantasy of hitting a google-like IPO lottery that almost nobody experiences.
That said, I generally agree that there are large businesses that create things of quality, and small businesses that make crap. I also do think that in terms of the laws of physics of businesses, scale is the enemy of quality. You can choose to laud big businesses that do a good job even more based on that axiom, or seek out more small businesses that are doing quality work you may have never heard of (or both). :)
David Regler
September 14, 2009 at 5:50 am
I understand why it’s thought of as “patronizing”, since it’s generally viewed that way by business books, articles, etc. I wonder whether the current economic climate is changing that view though.
Jack Hanson
December 3, 2009 at 11:35 am
Frankly, it is your definition that is patronizing.
My definition:
Lifestyle business = a term used by people who don’t know that a true business is scaled trough DELEGATION, and not by working a impossibly huge amount of hours.
Hillel
December 4, 2009 at 6:28 am
@Jack: Where did my definition say that delegation was bad and working a huge amount of hours is good? Never mind the fact that implicit in your statement is that scale is always good. I agree scale is good up to a point, but scale can also ruin your business (in my opinion).
I think many people running “small-batch businesses” delegate all the time (including us). They have to cause they’re not flush with other people’s cash to spend on full-time employees.
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Sasmito Adibowo
March 22, 2011 at 1:11 am
Twitter friendly version:
“Lifestyle businesses is a derogatory term invented by VCs to dissuade entrepreneurs from bootstrapping.”
Twitter unfriendly version:
Lifestyle businesses is a derogatory term applied by venture capitalists (VCs) to dissuade potential entrepreneurs from funding their business from of their own money. As these entrepreneurs are likely to be highly-proficient technologists that kickstart their ventures by working in their spare time and using their dayjob’s salary for their initial funding, VCs may experience brain drain if a critical mass of technologists follow this route.
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March 24, 2011 at 5:23 am
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pat
January 26, 2012 at 6:21 pm
So the alternative is a business that grows by compromising on the quality of their product and the the happiness of their employees?
(That doesn’t sound like a business I want anything to do with, either as an employee or a customer!)
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