The lifestyle business trend is all about developing a way to earn a living while pursuing your dreams. By creating work that pays the bills AND gives you the freedom to pursue your dreams, you have the best of both worlds. Typically, most people who pursue a lifestyle business have work that allows them to work when and where they choose–even from a cafe in Morocco–without having to put in crazy hours.

One of the easier–and more profitable–ways to build a lifestyle business is by consulting, since a consulting business has:
–>low start-up costs,
–>flexible hours,
–>high hourly pay rate, and
–>you likely already have the expertise to get started.

I’ve found that fear often stops aspiring consultants from starting a consulting business, and on my blog (http://www.StartMyConsultingBusiness.com), I talk about how to overcome those fears. I also talk about practical, concrete things you can do to start and run a successful consulting business, along with tools, tips, tricks, and techniques for automating your business and keeping costs to a minimum.

One of the neat things about becoming a consultant is that you DON’T need a pile of cash to start a consulting business. For example, you can create a professional website for under $100–typically in an evening (I have a free ebook that shows you exactly how to do this, even if you’re not a techie).

I started my consulting business over 4 years ago as a part-time way to make extra cash, and it’s grown into my full-time endeavor, where it’s the sole income for my family of 4 for over 2.5 years. I make several times what I used to make at my day job, and have much more flexibility.

i’ve decided that it’s probably less risky for me to take the trip now before i accumulate more school debt and have a time/life-consuming 9-5.

Before he started this job he probably believed that if he worked hard and made lots of money, that would in turn bring him happiness. But he’s now realised that it didn’t – so he’s now asking himself ‘what’s the point of it all’ and ‘what DO I have to do to be happy’. He has the beautiful home and the money in the bank, but his life still sucks! He’s finally realised that it’s not all about the things that we can by and to make it worse for him he’s working in a job that he doesn’t even enjoy!!

This is actually much more common than we think. How many people do you know that seem to have lots of lovely material things, but they are deeply unhappy? How many people do you know that really HATE their job.

The reason that this is so common is because people spend more time planning their weekly shopping list than they spend planning their life! If you don’t plan, things tend to happen by accident and probably not the things that you wanted to happen. Because they weren’t clear about what they REALLY wanted or what was truly important to them, they got what they thought they wanted (‘I want money’ ‘I want a new car’ etc). I did it too for many years, until one day the reality of this hit me!

It’s not difficult to plan for your future. Just google the ‘be do have’ coaching method and give it a go. It will take you no more than a couple of hours maximum.

Mel