The Lifestyle Business Isn’t Second Best - It’s the Smartest Business You Can Build ,with Brian Herriot

Speaker 1 (00:03) Welcome to Building Your Leader Brand. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Brian Harriott. Speaker 2 (00:11) Time freedom doesn't mean just time off. Time freedom is these intense periods of work combined with the extended period of time off. So there are periods of time when I work hard and I work really hard and I enjoy it, and that's okay. You know, that's still time freedom if you ask me. It's just Now though, I want to be able to take a trip to Ireland and a trip to Australia next year. Speaker 3 (00:32) Hi there, and welcome back to Building Your Leader Brand. My name is Bob Denton, and every week I speak with incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing, and monetizing their expertise and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new, take a moment, sit down again, don't start walking about and doing important things, and hit the follow or subscribe button wherever you're listening to podcasts. It's your shortest route to guaranteed being allowed into heaven. Official Bob Gentle said so. Also, if you're new, you will probably also love the Personal Brand Business Roadmap. It's 50 pages of everything you need to start, scale, or fix your expert business. 100% free as a gift from me. Just visit amplifyme.agency/roadmap. So That might be the fastest way to grow or fix your expert business, but your life is a little bit bigger than that. And today we're going to be talking about how to find a little bit more freedom, flexibility, and start finding strategies for enjoying life without necessarily having to wait until we retire. And I have probably made a terrible job at describing that, but Brian Harriot is going to make this Really simple for us. Speaker 3 (01:47) Brian, welcome to the show. Speaker 2 (01:48) Thank you, Bob. It's great to be here. Speaker 3 (01:51) So you are on your second visit. It's a very elite team of people that get to come back twice. And I really enjoyed our conversation last time. We're not going to cover the same ground today, but we are going to go deeper on one particular area. And it's an area you've spent a lot of time thinking about, written a book. And if you're watching a video, it's over his left shoulder from my side. Tell us about the book. Where did it come from? What's it called? And who's it for? Speaker 2 (02:16) Well, this is a project that I've been working on since we spoke the last time. So it's, you know, coming up on 2 and a half years, but I've written a book that I believe can help a lot of people. The type of person who doesn't, isn't completely happy in the conventional life path of, you know, work hard, 2,000 hours a year for 45 years. save up a bunch of money and then eventually live your life. That, yeah, for many reasons didn't work for me. And so I've been able to create this life where I work essentially 9 months out of the year. It's when my son's in school and I live here in California. And then over the summer, I'm fortunate enough to spend time at a family cabin that we have on a lake. And this lifestyle has been wonderful for me. And so many people ask me how I did it. I Felt like I had to write this book. So the book is for anyone. I mean, think to— I mean, if you want more freedom, desire more flexibility, want more autonomy, optionality in life, choice, ease, and you want it sooner than if you strike it rich and become independently wealthy where you can just do whatever you want, or you don't want to wait until you're retired, this is the book for you because I lay out a formula and I have calculations for how you can design this lifestyle, align it with the money, because money is important to be able to live this way, but also the way you work. Speaker 2 (03:49) Oftentimes entrepreneurship, but doesn't have to be. And it's only when I found that you could align these 3 things that you could figure out a way to achieve this lifestyle. And the promise I make in the book is in 3 years, especially for those who are middle career, meaning they have some money saved or they have entrepreneurial skills. But some people are just starting out or starting again. And so, in that case, I promise 10 years. So, it's not an overnight success, but it's also not something that's not even possible. And so, for that, I'm proud of the book and I think it can do things for people with just slight adjustments in how they look at life. Speaker 3 (04:28) So, The obvious comparison, and I know it's a very unfair comparison, is The 4-Hour Workweek. I sense, and I think a lot of people listening probably read that at one time or another and got goosebumps and thought, oh my goodness, 4-Hour Workweek, that sounds amazing, and then done very little about it. Or yeah, I think we all got excited about that at one point. I'm guessing this is not that. Speaker 2 (04:58) What a great question. I've actually heard it described by different people as The 4-Hour Workweek, but much more broadly applicable and doable. So, I read The 4-Hour Workweek a long time ago, and it was great for inspiring that possibility of this lifestyle design where you have more control. Having gone back and having read it since, it's very narrowly focused to the type of person that maybe doesn't even have kids, they can go live overseas, or they and do all these. It requires a bit more extreme action in order to make it work. And I also know that the title was really just a marketing-tested title that really stuck. And it wasn't even The 8-Hour Workweek or The 2-Hour Workweek. I think I read it. I can't remember where I read it, but somehow 4-Hour was the one that people loved. So well done there. Yeah. But it takes the What that book did is introduce this idea of lifestyle design. And for that, that's the best part of the book, I would say, is it got people thinking at least that this is something that's different. Like, there's a different way, there's a different path. Speaker 2 (06:09) I actually took that and I call people that pursue time freedom, and I had to come up with this because it was so long to write in the book, people who want time freedom, people who want to achieve time freedom. So, I call this group of people Free timers. And people have different reactions to that initially, but eventually you get used to it and it worked. But this free timer life path I describe is one where you have these periods of work and they're intense work because, at least for me, I love work as long as it's work I love doing. But then you can also take these periods of longer time off, extended time off. But to do this, you know, you're bringing forward your time off. So you may actually have to work longer. So this free timer path is working more flexibly, maybe less year to year, but then working longer. And people sometimes get confused by that. But when I then explain, well, really the work that you're doing is work that you've crafted to be this perfect work, why wouldn't you want to keep doing it? Because you have social connections and your purpose and you are contributing to society, all these good things. Speaker 2 (07:16) I think I, of course, would want to do that as long as possible. Maybe not as much as I get older, but I'd still want to keep doing that. Yeah. So anyway, I think, and then a difference with my book also in The 4-Hour Workweek is I bring kind of the money perspective. And so a big element of my book is this kind of attached calculator that you can go use. It's pretty easy to use that allows you to project, okay, if I were to live this way, could I actually make it work? And that comes back to the doability part. If you go to timefreedomcalculator.com, you can actually put your numbers in and say, oh, if I live in this manner, I have the money confidence now to successfully take a 3-month vacation a couple of years from now, or whatever it looks like for your particular situation. Speaker 3 (08:06) So, Everybody lives within certain constraints. Some people have certain amounts of notional freedom. Some people perceive themselves as having a lot. Some people perceive themselves as having very little. If you have, for example, a retail job, it would be very easy to say you have no freedom. You don't show up, you don't get paid. And I'd be interested to know To whom your book is perhaps not applicable. Is that a useful question? Speaker 2 (08:38) Oh, absolutely. How do I want to approach this one? So, the retail example is a good one, although I could argue that there's still a way that you could make that work. I tried very hard in the book to think about all of these different perspectives. Of course, some is perfect. So, like, the perfect example is A target reader, let me answer that first, is someone who's got entrepreneurial skills. They have this idea for a lifestyle business, which is a service-oriented business where they can structure when they work and who they work with, those sorts of things. They also happen to be a great saver and they live in a very inexpensive area. If you did all those things, you could really quickly have time freedom. However, sometimes you're not entrepreneurial or you're not a great saver. In that case, and it, you know, if that were the case and you lived in an expensive area, then it's probably not for you. You have to write for your target, and then maybe some other groups will find you. But I had— I actually thought that this wouldn't be for someone who was already retired, for example. Speaker 2 (09:45) That would be someone— although I've had reviews on Amazon that have said, I still got a lot out of this because You know, now I know how to spend my time, or I was you know someone gave me bad feedback because I still wanted to do some things even in retirement for pay, and now I'm like yeah, this is really valid, and I can definitely do this. Yeah, the probably to answer it another way, the person who if you're committed to you know you've reached a VP level at your business, and you're like this is what I'm going to do, and maybe I have five more years until I. retire. And maybe you value wealth over freedom. If that's you, the book's not for you. Or I also make an assumption kind of on 2 things. And if you're not one of these, it probably wouldn't be for you. If you're someone who believes that fate kind of decides what's going to happen to you versus having an internal locus of control, like if you need an internal locus of control to to use the book. And also, you need to be very good at what you do. Speaker 2 (10:53) Like, that is an underlying assumption. And if you're not, then it's hard to, you know, move from position to position or continue to craft this work or work with the best people because, you know, you, you don't have that underlying excellence in what you do. I don't know. Hopefully that, that answers the question. Speaker 3 (11:11) It really does. I think in many, many respects, The book is for my audience, which is wonderful. And I think the one thing that resonates for me is if you're somebody who finds flow in what they do, then why would you stop? If it actually gives you strength, if you're passionate, if you come from a place of true vocation, I don't want to stop working ever, really. But I do want choice. I want to be able to work for whom I choose to work. when I choose to work, where I choose to work, for the money that I choose to charge for that work depending on who's in front of me. That's choice. And choice for me is freedom. So map it out for me, Brian. How are we going to do this? Speaker 2 (11:58) Yeah. So you couldn't have said it better. That's exactly who I'm writing for. So the framework of the book that I walk people through and then we kind of go deep into each of the areas is what I call the Time Freedom Framework. And the idea here is I started with So you're looking at a year in your life. The financial freedom framework, they don't call it this, but it's sometimes called the 4% rule. If you were going to live off of the money that you've saved, you know, you have to have your lifestyle expenses on one side of the equation equal the money that you can draw from your savings. The problem is to get there is hard, right? You need to become wealthy or you need to work forever. So The time freedom formula in this framework takes the lifestyle expenses on one side of the equation. And in a year, you need to cover that with your investment income. Yes, just like with the financial freedom formula, but then also add in this flexible work. And when you start to look, so really what I'm advocating for is perhaps using some money that you've saved even earlier in life to help with intermittent income because you're choosing to work flexibly. Speaker 2 (13:10) And you can suddenly see how these different levers can play. If you don't need that much to live off of, then maybe you don't need that much investment income or that much flexible work. If you're a superstar person at flexible work, then you can spend money on whatever you want to spend money on. And it may not even matter that you don't have that much saved. This is another thing is all of the money books out there, if you don't save and invest, you're wrong or bad, you're not doing it right. But I think there are other ways to be financially successful in life. And you just have to know how those 3 pieces fit together. Now, to fully map it out, then the next logical question someone would have is, well, that's just 1 year. What about my future? And so once you understand the concepts of the 1-year picture and you kind of, we go deep into each of those 3 areas, then that's where I introduced that Time Freedom Calculator, which I talked about. So the calculator loosely takes each of those major areas and allows you to Add in the fact that you're going to have to pay for college for 2 kids 10 years from now, or you're going to sell your house 5 years from now. Speaker 2 (14:15) And you can take the time freedom formula and start to project out into the future how that works. And that's where you can, you know, you have assumptions around investment returns and inflation, and you can add in some of these other components to see Basically, to prove to yourself that you won't run out of money by the time you die or you end up with an amount of money that you want to pass on to your heirs or to charity or whatever. Speaker 3 (14:44) It's really interesting because I mean, the phrase lifestyle design is a bit of a negative cliché in many respects or in many places. But what you are talking about here is a different way of living, really, and a different way of looking at money, a different way of looking at retirement. But what I'm sensing is if you get it wrong, it could be really problematic. So it needs to be done, if it's going to be done, very intelligently, very diligently, and really, really understanding your numbers. It's not something you can flippantly, whimsically say, I'm going to try this, because— That's not lifestyle design. That's a lifestyle hand grenade. Speaker 2 (15:26) Yeah. Well, and for me, like, I'm, I'm small-c conservative in my view of how to approach some of these things. I'm, you know, I'm— people like, oh, you're entrepreneur, you've been an entrepreneur since 2017, you must be, you know, okay with taking risk. I'm like, well, you know, measured risk or smart risk. But no, I'm, I'm not actually. I want to make sure this is going to work out. And that doesn't mean that if something happens, you can't adapt. However, that's what this calculator, for example, can show. Like, you could put in the calculator, what if the stock market crashes 40% 5 years from now? And then you can see that, you know, to what degree it makes a difference in your personal situation based on the other numbers that you have in there. And what it's doing essentially is giving people the money confidence. The money confidence is one thing. And then the whole other side of the book is kind of giving people the what would you call it? The inspiration to do it, like the emotional part, because I was writing for— I'm a Gen Xer. I was writing for that generation who might need to be convinced that the conventional path is still okay. Speaker 2 (16:37) But then again, I've had the younger generations read this and be like, oh yeah, this is how I want to live, period. You don't have to convince me. I just have to figure out how to do it. It's been very interesting because I didn't even write for that group, but that's the feedback that I'm getting. Speaker 3 (16:52) I'm listening to how you're describing this, and I am thinking about my sons and their peer groups. And I'm absolutely thinking this is a future I think that they would be very aligned with because it just feels more humane than the command and control sort of 1940s method of work, then you get to retirement age, you get your watch, you go away, and they wheel you into a coffin. Again, it's a bit of a stereotype, but that's how a lot of people actually end up approaching retirement. Speaker 2 (17:32) One quick thing I'll mention there too is like for the younger generations, it's so much more expensive now than it was when I was just starting out. And so, with everything that it costs to just live and, you know, how much you'd have to save to buy a house and all of those sorts of things. I mean, the traditional save-to-retirement model is more difficult and there has to be another one out there, another model out there where perhaps you're working a little bit later. There's more focus on earning versus saving. I'm definitely not advocating for not saving and investing. Like, that's my core business. And that gives you so much freedom knowing that you have this money out there that you can draw on. However, for someone like my son who just can't seem to save a dime, you know, like, I really, like, part of reason for writing this book was like, what's the other solution to a financially successful life that if it isn't that? And it's work. And if you love your work, then that gives you so much freedom, really, like being able to make money in a way that you enjoy. Speaker 3 (18:41) So I was speaking to somebody earlier today. This is my second podcast interview for today. I'm breaking— I think the actors would call this the second, the third wall or something like this. It doesn't matter. I did 2 podcast interviews in one day. Kill me. But we were talking about, for the average business owner, they are one month away from going out of business. Speaker 2 (19:00) Mm. Speaker 3 (19:01) This is the constant. This is the normal situation for people. And I've been there myself. And in that situation, It's incredibly difficult to imagine taking money out of operations and putting it in your pension investments. It doesn't happen. And a lot of people start businesses thinking, well, this is going to be my retirement. And they realise very quickly, my goodness, this isn't profitable enough to sell for anything, let alone provide me any kind of retirement. And there are strategies for resolving that which are in that episode. However, If you are a business owner and you're in your late 30s, 40s, and you're perhaps thinking, I'm poorly optimised for this. I can't see a path through it. What you're describing here does actually offer an alternative path, which isn't an excuse to not find a way to save for retirement, but it is a way that it might not be a complete disaster. Am I reading this correctly? Speaker 2 (19:58) You are. At the same time though, I would I would argue that you should, like you're, so again, everyone's situation is different based on how they approach time freedom. And in this case, for the new business owner, it's someone that's not extremely profitable. Like that's what you need to focus on. That would be like the number one thing to focus on in, if I were to, you know, to have you in my group coaching programme, which is profitability. And so then I think of a book like Profit First or something. you know, where they'd say, just take the profit out first. And then you need to figure out how to spend with what's left to still run the business. You know, I mean, there's the— my book is not, you know, 285 pages on fixing your business. There's a lot of good ones out there. However, that is what I would say in my book. That's what you would need to work on first. And then what do you do with that profit? Then you can put it over into the other element of the Time Freedom Formula and start to build that up. And then they start to work together. Speaker 2 (21:04) I think my biggest problem all through life in trying to figure this all out was that every aspect was separate. So, I had my entrepreneur sales coach and they focused on that. And then the financial planning person focused on that. And then, you know, at home you do the budget stuff. Like, until like I was able to I could never find anyone that could bring it all together. And so, I tried to present this holistic approach so that, because they play off of each other, right? And you need to use all 3 to figure out a lifestyle like this. Speaker 3 (21:38) I think another side of this, and again, the word lifestyle, if you speak to any venture capital people or any of the entrepreneurial ecosystem people, It's like you could literally see them turning their noses up when they hear the word lifestyle business, or, I have no interest in selling my business. The reality is most of us are not going to sell our businesses. So we need to get really good at running lifestyle businesses. And actually saying what it is, my business is a lifestyle business, with some pride and enthusiasm. You run it differently then. And if you're busy trying to build a business with this mythological sale at the end, you make decisions based on that. If you're building a business that's designed to support a personal investment strategy, it's a different business. Speaker 2 (22:30) Absolutely. So I would— like, my chapter 10 is called Build an Amazing Lifestyle Business. And I was also in— because I live in the Bay Area, and I was introduced to lifestyle businesses as what you get when you can't start a real business, you know? Yeah. And, and I operated under that for years until I realised what I had was a lifestyle business. And it was giving, it was this kind of almost like the, the secret key to enacting this whole deal. And so I, I completely switched my tune on lifestyle businesses. It, they are incredible and they're the key. I actually have a, a little table in the book that compares the VITs C-type business, the neighbourhood business, which we talked about a little bit with the retail, and the lifestyle business. And of course, by my metrics, lifestyle business wins on all accounts. Speaker 3 (23:21) Well, I think the question is, what lifestyle does it support? And if it's a crappy lifestyle, it's a crappy lifestyle business. If it's an amazing lifestyle, it's an amazing business. And I, I'm very proud of my lifestyle business now. It wasn't always the case. And this does bring me to the question of time freedom, great, but what do you do with this time? Because I'm somebody who is accustomed to being busy, and if I'm not busy, it actually causes me some anxiety. And I look at myself and thinking, if I didn't have to work for 2 or 3 months of the year, what in the hell would I do with that time? I'm sure that's something people must experience all the time. What are the kind of the normal reactions? Speaker 2 (24:08) I've read a lot of books over the years about people that they're written there. I would call it in the category of enough. I've achieved enough. I've made enough. I never liked those books because I also have big goals and I want to stay, continue to contribute. And so it was a worry of mine. In the book that people would associate time freedom with just taking time off, kicking back and relaxing, which is not at all what I'm advocating. What I will talk about, what I talk about in that same chapter is how you can go big and take bigger bets. And also you can come up with these creative ideas when you do have a month or two away from your business, right? So I teach this idea of the catalyst, which is, you know, whereas most time people do 10 things and try to improve their business 10% of the time, When you're forced because you have less time to focus because you've taken some time off, I try to help people find the one thing that'll grow their business 10 times. And usually it's some special skill, idea, or relationship that they have. Speaker 2 (25:13) It's a whole part of the book written for people who still want to achieve more. You can still have big goals and still have time freedom, right? Choice So, putting a book into the world is a lot of work. And so, the joke in my family that my wife says is like, when are we going to have our time freedom? And so, time freedom doesn't mean just time off. Time freedom is these intense periods of work combined with the extended period of time off. So, there are periods of time when I work hard and I work really hard and I enjoy it. And that's okay. That's still time freedom if you ask me. It's just Now though, I want to be able to take a trip to Ireland and a trip to Australia next year, you know, things like that that I can then have because I've organised my business to be able to do that. And I have the money saved and invested in a way to make me feel comfortable that I can take the time off of the work, if that makes sense. Speaker 3 (26:16) It does make perfect sense. And I'm actually getting goosebumps because I'm starting to see what I would do with the time. Speaker 2 (26:23) Love it. Speaker 3 (26:23) I think a lot of people will probably recognise that busy work never goes away. People always want our attention. And there's very little choice that we have in how we spend our time. Even if you're the business owner, there are demands on our time all the time. But if there's a block of time where you get to decide, that's such an enriching treat. And it could be that you're going to spend 2 months Networking like you never did before. That's okay. Speaker 2 (26:53) Yep. Speaker 3 (26:53) Could be you want to start a YouTube channel. You could do a whole year's worth of YouTube content in one month if you wanted to. You could write a book. Writing a book is a life-changing event if you use that book on the back end. Or you could just learn to relax, which is what I probably try and spend some time doing as well, because— Speaker 2 (27:14) It's Speaker 3 (27:14) a skill. Well, it is. And if, if you're a business owner, you spent 25, 30 years having to kill what you eat, you're accustomed to being on the alert all the time. It's really hard to switch that off. So I think that's probably something I try and do as well. Brian, I've had a lot of time, a lot of fun, but I'm aware you do have something else to go to at some point, and we need to get into your 3 amplifiers. So Brian Harriott, amplifier number 1. Speaker 2 (27:42) I have a smorgasbord, a variety of things that are not related. One of the things I'm most proud of in my book is the storytelling, because I worked really hard on it. And the key resource, if people want to tell stories better, is a book called Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks. It's an incredible book, and I highly, highly recommend it. The guy's a genius. And hopefully, if you were to read it and then read mine, you'd be like, oh yeah, he's definitely adapted how to tell stories. That is my first one. Speaker 3 (28:13) It's mentioned probably 3 times in the last 4 months. And I pay attention to trends. Speaker 2 (28:20) That's great. Speaker 3 (28:20) So I'm gonna— you're the tipping point. I'm gonna have to read this now. Speaker 2 (28:25) My second one is I, for the first time in my life this year, invested in a personal trainer and it's been really, really great. I mean, she's incredible, but it's done a lot for me from weightlifting and health. And again, it's something that I have the luxury of having because I have time freedom. But if, and, you know, sometimes we're, you know, we tend not to hold our money and not, you know, not be sure if it's worth it. Personal training has been absolutely worth it for me. Speaker 3 (28:57) I consider myself scolded as somebody who gets almost no exercise at the moment. I need to fix that. Amplifier number 3. Speaker 2 (29:04) The 3rd one is, again, and I'm also a workaholic, who needs to do some other things, right? I sense that a little bit from you as well. But my— so I live on an island and I have in Alameda, California, and have for 15 years now. And we are surrounded by sailboats, like big sailboats. Well, my wife got into sailing in the last year and a half. It's been an incredible experience and she is getting me on the sailboat and I'm really excited to— I have not done it yet, but it is something that I'm really excited about in terms of, again, like something that's a skill you need to develop while still having fun and getting in the outdoors. I'm really looking forward to that. Speaker 3 (29:48) I am very, very jealous. I think there's something very primal about sailing that really attracts me. And I was very disappointed when I discovered that I couldn't actually run away to sea to be a pirate. They don't do that anymore. Speaker 2 (30:02) I love it. Speaker 3 (30:04) Brian, I have had a lot of fun. If people want to get closer to you, if they want to find out more about you, what's the best way to do that? Speaker 2 (30:10) Yeah, the best place is to go to timefreedom.life, L-I-F-E. And actually, when you're on that site, right at the top, there's a Time Freedom quiz. It's a 9-question quiz that helps you identify how close you are to time freedom to see if you would actually get a lot of value out of my book. Speaker 3 (30:27) I will race the listener to get there. Brian, this has been great fun. You've been Awesome. And you at home for listening, thank you for staying this long with us. I really do appreciate it. And I would also be delighted with your 5-star review. That's 5, like the fingers on your hand. Count them. Again, if you've got this far, you will love the Personal Brand Business Roadmap, 50 pages of everything you need to start, scale, or fix your expert business. Just visit amplifyme.agency/roadmap. Thanks again at home for listening. And Brian, thank you. You've been Awesome. Speaker 2 (30:59) Thank you.