Transcript

Introduction

Hello friends, Stef here from PPC University. I'm the founder of PPC University and the owner of a digital agency called My Internet Marketing, located here in Montreal, Canada. Today, I'd like to quickly explain what a lifestyle business actually is. I had a few questions about this because there seem to be different definitions of it. And I'd very much like you to give you my definition of what lifestyle business is.

And I'll also explain why I believe that this is the best time, actually, now to build one yourself.

What is a lifestyle business?

So what's a lifestyle business? A lifestyle business basically is a business that you build with the sole purpose to be able to live the lifestyle that you want. Now, how is that different from a normal business? Well, usually businesses target or have as a goal to generate as much revenue as possible.

Or let's rather say as much profit as possible. With a lifestyle business, that's not the purpose. A lifestyle business really is a business that allows you to generate or to plan your income in such a way that you only generate what you need to live the lifestyle you want. And between me and you, that depends entirely on your choices of lifestyle. If you like to travel and you need funds to finance those travels to different countries, discover different places on our beautiful planet.

Others have the lifestyle of their home and the family and build their lifestyle around that environment. So the objectives can be very different. And in contrast to a normal business, the usual business definition is, again, you do not focus on profits first. You also focus on profits, but not first. Profit and generating as much money as possible is not the objective of a lifestyle business.

So that's the first definition. I like very much to add something to that definition. And because it's dear to my heart, it's a personal choice, obviously, and that's to pursue the possibility of finding and living one's purpose. So when I define my lifestyle business with it, as you know, I'm a digital marketer. I have a digital agency.

I wanted to build my lifestyle business, not just around the lifestyle. And my lifestyle is being with family, working at home like this here. This is my home, my office at home. But I also wanted to not lose sight of what's really important in life or in my life. Rather, let's say, and that's to find something to do that is a little bit more than just generating money, having skills and offering them in terms of service or products.

And I bring that purpose, that observation into my lifestyle business. To give you an example, the way this materializes, as far as I am concerned, and my digital marketing agency and the services that I offer. I could just offer digital marketing services, sell them, take that money, and use the profit to build and live the lifestyle that I want. I wanted something a little bit different, a little bit more. On top of that, I wanted to get the sensation of doing something that is really of use, let's say, really, really important to clients that I'm serving.

How we helped Marilyn save her business

And again, I give you an example. What pops immediately into my mind is a few years back, I had a lady coming to me wanting to talk to me during a seminar, and she said, "Stephan, I understood what you're doing. You're doing digital marketing". It was a young lady. She just she just financed and invested into her medical cabinet.

She was a podiatrist. So taking a foot doctor if you want. And she said, "Stephan, I really have a real problem. I invested all my savings into this clinic and I opened it and did everything I thought was necessary to do. But I don't have enough clients to continue by doing my business".

As a matter of fact, she told me maybe three weeks left before I need to close the door for good. So you imagine me listening to her and understanding the problem she was facing. And I told her, you know, there are digital marketing tools that are adapted for this kind of situation. I can't promise anything. But there's one tool in specific in particular that I think maybe adapted to what you're trying to achieve, because basically you're trying to save your business.

And we have three weeks. And what immediately popped into my mind is obviously PPC pay per click Advertisement on with Google ads because the effect once the ads are online is immediate. If you did a good job, the advertisements show on Google when users do a search for a specific service and the phone starts ringing. Right. So I told her that's what I suggest we do, and we should start, like today, because there's not much time to lose.

It takes a little bit of time to set up the campaign. So I promised her to be able to set up that campaign within 24 hours. So I've been working right away after this. She gave me the mandate, and we took 48 hours in total to put everything online. And then it took a week or so until the first calls came in.

We were optimizing the campaign, the conversion rate optimization. We looked at everything in terms of the clicks that came through and which clicks transformed into a phone call. So it took a few days up to a week, a little bit less, actually, for the phone calls to come in. Second week, she had her first booked clients, and before the end of the third week, she had at least enough revenue to face her financial obligations for that month. So you see, for her, the story was over when she met me, and it was just a happen chance that we met.

And she knew and understood what I was doing. And the capacities of Google PPC ads. And I give you this example just to explain to you how my digital marketing skills, how I get for the first time, really, the feeling that the skill set I knew that I mastered, we're actually helping somebody in a very concrete manner to make a huge difference in her life. She would have closed down as easy as that. And it's just not her and her business.

But I was thinking about her family, you know, the ripple effects of somebody closing down. They are not small. So I really get this sense and this contentment, this fulfillment to understand - wait a minute. I really did something to help somebody, and that meets that purpose aspect that I'm referring to a little bit earlier, and that is so important to me.

And this is just one example. I had a few other examples with a moving company and a very similar case for a gentleman offering kitchen design services, a very small company, just three people, really, and who was facing incredible competition from bigger companies. And he was not at all internet literate, so he didn't know what to do. And I saved his business, too, was not as urgent as Marilyn's business. The lady's name is Marilyn.

And you find, by the way, her testimonial on our agency website, because it was really striking. So anyway, I just wanted to provide you with this other view of launching a business, and that gives you another possibility of a reason to build a lifestyle business.

Why are lifestyle businesses different?

So per se, I think personally speaking for me, it's always been way more satisfying to work with my little team of eight people taking care of our client services and to do it at a level that I'm comfortable with and generating the revenue that I need just to live my lifestyle.

The lifestyle that I'd like and I'm working from home.

I'm with my family every day. When my little 11 year old son comes back from school, I am there at 03:00 p.m. In the afternoon and we have a little chat. We see each other. He comes down whenever he needs something.

It's like it's different than working in 9-5 and coming back home at six, sometimes later. And then you just have a half an hour on with your child be before he goes to bed. So that's really what I was looking for. But your purpose to building a lifestyle business, if that's something that has crossed at some point in time, your thoughts may be different.

Maybe you like to travel, maybe you like to be completely independent and you don't like to be told what to do. Like the typical 9-5 company atmosphere where you've got a boss telling you what to do. That's something that I didn't like either when I I left the corporate world some 15 years ago. Now, since then, I'm working from home and I never regretted that decision because not only had a much more freedom to do what I'd like to do -  family, but also travel, going out, doing my sports, my activities, my yoga, my biking, all that stuff.

I do it throughout the day instead of having a break of an hour to eat. I do breaks throughout the day and doing my biking, my yoga and whatever I want because I'm my own boss, right? Doesn't mean that I'm working less necessarily. I catch up, but also in terms of the volume of the clients that I take on, and I don't take on more clients than I need to generate the revenues and the funds that I want and that I need for my lifestyle. And as I said earlier, purpose for me is an important portion of that.

And now, as you see, I'm speaking to you from my lifestyle business. MyLifestyle.Business platform or the PPC.University platform, depending on where you're looking, where I teach digital marketing and how to become a PPC marketer, a Google certified digital marketer, or if you're looking at MyLifestyle.Business to learn how to actually build an online business and be successful at selling services such as online courses or coaching, whatever. So that's basically it. I just wanted to hop quickly online, explain what a lifestyle businesses and how I perceive that.

My purpose on building a lifestyle business

And yeah, purpose is for me personally, something important.

And there are tools actually to help you find that purpose, because between you and me, it's not that evident. Not everybody knows why we are here, but there is a possibility to nail that down. And in the beginning, my purpose was to help small businesses succeed with my digital marketing services. But now a little by little, I'm moving over. My purpose becomes helping other people succeed in doing something similar that I did, and that allowed me to live the freedom that I'm living today.

So that's why I am now teaching how I build a digital agency and how I became a digital marketer. All started with becoming Google certified. So from the agency business now and helping small businesses succeed, I'm now moving my purpose to helping others like you build their own online business. So purpose is not one monolithic thing that always sticks and stays the same throughout your life. Your purpose evolves too.

But in order to to make that happen and understand how to make it evolve, you have to listen to yourself, obviously. And that's something I do with meditation and meditative practices. I do a lot of yoga, and so it helps me to understand how the mind works. It's a mind thing that maybe one day I teach as well. We'll see.

Anyway, long story short, I leave it there. I thank you very much for listening today. And don't forget to subscribe to my live streams, my weekly live streams on PPC.University or on www.MyLifestyle.Business  and also sign up to my channel is obviously Facebook YouTube Instagram. I'm a little bit everywhere, and my podcast will soon be started also. So a lot of opportunities to listen. On a regular basis, I will provide these types of insights, answers, and there will also be livestreams with questions and answers.

So until the next time, I thank you very much again for listening. And I will talk to you soon. Bye bye.