In the previous blog post, I mentioned the “self-destructing business model,” which refers to a trap and hole in business design where an entrepreneur takes three steps forward and two steps backward because their customers or staff aren’t stacking up.
I explained that, fundamentally, it’s like trying to build a tower but having no foundation at the bottom from the start, which means that no matter how hard you try to build up, you won’t be able to stack up.
By the way, this applies not only to marketing or management space such as attracting customers or hiring employees but also to the bigger picture of choosing what kind of business you want to build to better and enrich your life.
business is a means to enrich your life
Many people ended up engaging in the struggle in life because they confuse their goals and means.
Don’t get me wrong, I am guilty of this action and I learned it a hard way.
When viewed from the perspective of life, no matter how big a business became, it is ultimately a means, a tool to your life. It will have to be you who is using the tool to make your life better, and the business is one of the tools that will help you enrich your life.
In other words, once you decide how you want to spend your time, who you want to be, and what environment you want to design in the framework of life, you can lay out the plan of which tool (i.e., business) you need to use to get there.
If you skip this step and become successful in business without knowing what you want in life, you may end up being quite unhappy, misaligned, and feeling empty which I did. When I earned about 40k a month through affiliate marketing within the time span of 4 days, I was overwhelmed by loneliness and emptiness, it feels dull, with no joy, no excitement, and no drive to move.
I’ve seen many entrepreneurs who have become trapped in their own businesses, which they created with their own hands, and have lamented, “This is not what I wanted…”.
Business is like an endless video game.
There are many exciting elements, and you can never get tired of them. And with the right approach, you can usually achieve most of your dreams.
However, due to its addictive nature, if you lose yourself, you could become a “business addict,” just like a video game addict. It is the addiction that controls your life instead of you controlling your business.
You may look back one day and realize that you’ve lost some of the most important things in life. Once it is gone, it is gone.
To avoid becoming someone with regret, who says, “This is not what I wanted…”, you need to change your awareness that achieving success in business is not a goal, but rather a tool to reach your goal in life.
So in order to achieve your goal, you need to know your goal. When you are not clear about your goal, you can’t be intentional in taking action because you don’t know which action gets you where you want to go.
So the first thing you need to do is to define your future goal including your future self, and future surrounding, then You can determine the necessary income and working hours to achieve that goal.
With these two factors determined, you can work backward and see which business you should choose to use as a tool to get what you want.
If your goal is to achieve an income of around 4,000 dollars per month and has 2-3 days off per week, then working at my beauty massage salon, which I manage, is the risk-free and quickest way to reach your goal.
However, if you need an income of around 100,000 dollars per month to achieve your goal, and you only want to work 1-2 days a month, then you have to give up and eliminate the option as an employee to achieve it. You would need to start your own business and automate it.
Alternatively, if you need to manage assets of over 2 million dollar at an average annual return of 7% to live off of asset income alone, you must earn a pre-tax net profit of over 3 million dollars.
In that case, not only monthly cash flow but also business sales will be considered as option to achieve your goal.
As a result, the component of having a business that is easy to sell and attract investors may come into play, in addition to automation.
Once you are clear about your goal, you will naturally see what kind of business you should build or acquire.
To avoid falling into the trap of the “self-destruction model” at a life level, it is important that you are clear and determine to commited to the ideal way of life, such as who you want to spend time with and what kind of time you want to spend. Then, you need to understand the income required to achieve that lifestyle and the actual working hours you can dedicate to earning it.
Regarding the ideal way of life, you may hear a voice saying, “Wait a minute. I want to know how to accelerate my business. I don’t think what you are saying has anything to do with my ideal way of life,” and laugh.
I understand what you mean. I was the same, I wanted to know the business strategy and tactics rather than goal setting or forecast the vision.
However, if you are not clear about the goal you want to aim first, you don’t know what kind of business model you should use to adopt and how much money and time you need to spend to scale it.
In such a situation, you won’t be able to decide important factors for your business, such as repeat rates, turnover rates, unit prices, and gross profit margins.
Forecasting short term and structure strategy should not be ignored at the expense of playing long game. However, it should be aligned with the long term approach that will improve performance.
When you are demaded a result in the current situation, you feel so tempted to lean on short term approach without thinking about long term impact. In those situation, let’s take a step back and reflect on whether the ideal future we are aiming for is in the extension of what you do right now.
The future creates present.
It would be sad to succeed in business but say, “This wasn’t supposed to happen… I’m so sad.”
