Here’s something that has really intrigued me…

I’ve named it a Lifestyle business because it takes into account your passion and lifestyle first and money second.
 
Everybody’s has heard the advice “Do what you love and the money will follow”. Well I’m not 100% sure that’s the case. I’ve yet to find someone who will pay me to eat sushi or pizza and play video games. That wouldn’t work because there is no value derived from watching me eat and play video games. Now with that said, you can do what you love AND provide value to others who love the same thing to profit from it. Otherwise there is no exchange of money.

Let me start with an example from one of my previous vacations and then you’ll get a better idea…

For two years now I’ve gone away to Turks & Caicos in the Caribbean to go play beach volleyball for an entire week. In fact, 50 other people from all over the world came to join me. Actually one of my highlights from my trip  was to play doubles with an AVP Pro, Adam Jewel, against Olympic gold medal winner, Eric Fonoimoana. We won!

It’s something called “Volleyball Vacations” put on by an AVP pro Albert Hannemann. AL-B’s been doing this for the last 8 years. He gets a couple buddies to come down for the week, play volleyball and party (sometimes not necessarily in that order).   While the rest of us pay for the privilege.

AL-B partnered up with a travel agency to handle all the nitty gritty details and he just gets paid a certain percentage on every package sold. I don’t know the exact economics but I do know its some nice extra money for doing something you love and getting paid to vacation. A lifestyle business usually centers around something you love and would do regardless.

Here’s another ‘experience’ one…

Have you heard of the Baja 1000?

It’s an all-out endurance race of a thousand-mile (mostly) off-road race through Mexico, from one end of the Baja Peninsula to the other. A guy named Todd Clement started an adventure outfit called Wide Open Baja after winning the grueling Baja 1000 in 1997. He recruited some other winners and seasoned guides to open a Baja racing adventure experience. My late friend, Corey Rudl first told me about them and convinced me to go. I’m glad he did. It was pretty crazy. You get to drive these incredible Baja race cars on some of the same trails as the famous Baja 500 and Baja 1000 races.

This is trip is not for meek of heart or wallet. I believe it cost about $7000 (not including airfare) for 2 people for our 4-day trip. I’ve spoken to the guys at Wide Open because I’m always curious about business models and they run 2-3 trips a week from each location (they have 2 main ones of Ensenada and Cabo San Lucas for 4-day trips.)  And each trip is usually sold-out months and months in advance. We had 10 cars in our group – sometimes there are more. But 10 cars x $7000 = $70,000/trip. Now of course, that’s not all profit and the cars are very expensive, there’s maintenance, food, employees, etc. But it can add up to some good money – once again for doing something you love.

Racing is good one because lots of guys (and some gals) are very passionate about the sport. Of course, there are tons of racing schools around the country that cater to this and once again it isn’t cheap. There’s even a racing school that lets you drive F-1 race cars (basically jets on wheels) in Europe.

Here’s another racing example that is pretty obscure: www.vintagerallies.com/levelTwo.html This guy organizes road rallies for people into vintage-sports cars. Limited to 50 cars per event and many of these rallies are sold out at $4995.00/pop. Do the math! Now when I went back to the site I noticed they’ve donated all the proceeds to charity. They state it’s over $750,000 – but there’s no reason you couldn’t keep all the money if you did something similar or in a different niche.

If you notice there’s something else that really drives these lifestyle businesses is passion. The more passionate the niche the great likelihood they’ll spend money for an experience. Plus, there’s also a social aspect around it. i.e. beach volleyball nuts get to hang out and party with other beach volleyball nuts.

Now that I’ve shown some “experience” lifestyle businesses let me give you another point of view and highlight some information product examples that I’ve discovered. Many of you should be familiar with information products ranging from ebooks to newslettes to DVDs, etc. It’s one of my favorite businesses and if you want some help there see our Instant Internet Profits course.

The first example is Robert Parker at www.eRobertParker.com

If you’re familiar with wine you’d immediately know who Robert Parker is. His 100 point rating scale for wines can either make or break a wine. I’m going back a bit – but this example is powerful. According to his bio, Robert fell in love with wine during a trip to France in 1967. Then in 1975 he thought about creating an “independent consumers” guide to wine. And finally in 1978 he plan became his wine newsletter called “The Wine Advocate”. He started off with 600 charter subscribers in August of that year. Now today – his subscription base has exploded to over 40,000 subscribers at $60/year. (hmmm…adds up to $2.4M to me.)

But that’s not all – his wine empire has spawned some spin-offs. i.e. his membership website at $99 (renewing annually), “Parker in your Palm” which is a listing of certain wine ratings that can be downloaded into your Palm Pilot, books, back-issues, wine events, etc. The wine niche is great – I’ve found all sorts of speciality newsletter publishers here. Some who focus on only on type of grape like Pinot Noir. Or even just one region like Burgundy (also Pinot Noir) from France.

Another interesting niche that I’ve witnessed lifestyle businesses work in a big and small way is travel. I have a customer in the UK who told me about his Caribbean Travel newsletter in which he reviewed accommodations, resorts, islands, etc in the Caribbean for his subscribers. It was a nice publication that also financed all his vacations.
Now, incidentally, is another big bonus with a lifestyle business is a tax write off. Of course, I’m not a CPA so check with your Accountant. But if these expenses of staying at luxury Caribbean resorts are within the scope of your “normal and ordinary” business – I cannot imagine how it wouldn’t be a write off. Plus, this gentleman told me he later sold his newsletter to another company for six-figures. Now a much bigger example in the travel newsletter business is “Andrew Harper’s Hideaway Report”.

I love the USP on this publication. Andrew Harper is a pseudonym and here’s what it says on the site:

To assure you wholly independent observations, noted travel authority Andrew Harper travels incognito – booking into hotels and paying his own way as would any typical guest. Hotels don’t know his real name, nor what he looks like because he refuses to introduce himself during inspections. It’s also important to remember that Hideaway Report accepts no advertising and is therefore totally free of pressure from advertisers! In short, Andrew Harper’s monthly recommendations are unbiased, objective and totally reliable.

Plus, on top of that there is a believable scarcity to it because they say they limit circulation worldwide (I believe it’s 20,000 subscribers) to keep these private hideaways truly private. Hey, I believed it so I signed up – plus I wanted to study their business model. For one thing – it’s been published for over 25 years so that gives you a small idea of how successful this has been. And if you ever get a copy of the newsletter (I believe there is a free sample on the site) it looks like something a guy would print in his basement. There are no real pictures – just drawings. And the whole thing only has one color. It’s very, very smart!

My bet is there are lots of little niches out there where people would pay you for experiences. Sometimes there are even combinations like a wine tour with a bicycle tour. Or for instance golf with travel www.adventures-in-golf.com, etc. 

I’ve been tossing around the idea of doing something in the adventure travel business and maybe combining it with my passion for Entrepreneurship and business. The tentative name is “Maverick Business Adventures” – the NEW MBA .

I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’d like to go on a trip like that or post about other lifestyle businesses you’ve seen.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Financial Independence, Freedom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.