What defines success as an entrepreneur? It’s really an interesting question. And, if I’m being honest, it’s one that I’ve had trouble answering from time to time.
But, tonight, as I sit down to write after another evening at the baseball field, it dawns on me what the real answers are.
First, I am an entrepreneur. I own all or parts of two businesses. The first has many parts and is growing into a sprawling empire. It focuses though, on what I call TAO. Tech. Analytics. Optimization. That generally falls under the umbrella of the TEAL agency.
The second is the Regulators Baseball Club, Inc. It’s a non-profit company. It is a baseball development program with seven teams.
Finally, I am a partner in Zeal Innovations (at some point we’ll have a website). Our first product is a SaaS product called Zeal Stream. It’s an online streaming platform that offers Video on Demand for marketers (think VSLs, demo videos, etc.) and filmmakers (we have several docu-series streaming with us). The data platform we are building behind it (remember TAO, it’s core to everything I am part of) will be unparalleled. And we’ll be offering a live stream service this coming year as well. But that’s just the first of many things that are coming out of Zeal Innovations this year.
I’m also a best-selling author and a consultant. In my opinion, those are entrepreneurial endeavors as well.
My wife is also an entrepreneur. Wendy owns Pediatric Theraplay Speech Services, Inc. It’s one of the largest pediatric therapy providers in North Carolina.
For all of those, in theory, you could define success as an entrepreneur in different ways.
Maybe it is profits for the agency. Or it could be subscribers for Zeal Innovations. Maybe it’s players going to college or drafted for the baseball organization. Success as an entrepreneur is defined in many different ways.
Here’s what it is for me and my path (along with that of many of my clients).
First, it was the ability to replace my full-time income.
I’ve had people ask me, “What is the salary for an entrepreneur?” The hard truth is there isn’t one. A salary comes with security. But it also comes with no real ownership of your own future. There’s no real freedom there.
So, the first goal (for me) was to replace my salary and break free from the corporate grind. That was success as an entrepreneur for me.
For you, it might be creating a side hustle (yes, I consider you an entrepreneur) that provides a car payment or a house payment.
From there, though, as I learned from my entrepreneur clients, there was another, larger goal.
The goal by which they defined their success as an entrepreneur…
And that was lifestyle freedom.
This one is harder to define. I think I’m close, but not quite there. The trick is that I love my work. I love my clients. So, in that sense, I have real lifestyle freedom. I work from anywhere in the world. Very often, that is on a beach or by a pool in the Caribbean. Sometimes it is in Hawaii. Mostly it’s in my home office.
Above all, I have the freedom to do other ventures. For example, I followed a passion when I started and am growing the baseball organization.
And, I don’t miss any school functions or parent-teach conferences.
Now, you can’t get there unless you have some of the other things, like subscribers and profits. But as you pursue them, I encourage you to design your work around the lifestyle you want. It took me a few years to hammer this out.
It wasn’t until I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris the second time that I really grasped the concept of lifestyle design. From that point forward, every new client or project I take on has to fit within the lifestyle I’ve created.
As a result, for me, that lifestyle freedom is true success as an entrepreneur.
