The Life Profits Podcast
How do we measure our success as entrepreneurs?
As I've consumed more business and lifestyle design content over the years, my frustration with both has only grown—and I noticed this is particularly true in the podcasts I've listened to.
All the business podcasts promise hacks and shortcuts to millions.
And the lifestyle design podcasts are dominated by people who have already "made it"—and are more than happy to tell you to slow down, live more intentionally, and not work as hard as they did on their path to success.
There's a time and place for both—sure. But what about the people who have prioritized living life while building a successful business?
I increasingly found myself drawn towards the stories of the few people I could find who actually used their entrepreneurial ambitions specifically to fuel the type of life that they wanted to lead.
People like James Ivings and his partner Danielle, who built software from a boat while sailing around the Caribbean.
And people like Tom Coyne, a writer who loves to play golf so much that he walked around the entire country of Ireland playing all of its golf courses and wrote a book about it.
These people had done remarkable things—far outside the typical 9-5 of office life—and had figured out how their work could actually support the things that they wanted to do. And it struck me; shouldn't this be the goal of entrepreneurship far more often?
Introducing the Life Profits Podcast
I'm excited to announce the launch of a new project—the Life Profits Podcast.
It's a podcast about both entrepreneurship and life, but it starts with a fundamental question—what does it mean to be a successful entrepreneur?
The common scoreboard is financial success—and make no mistake about it, that's an important measure. But it's certainly one dimensional.
I talk to dozens of entrepreneurs every week; and an awful lot of them are extremely stressed, or borderline miserable. They're working their butts off for a hypothetical day in the future when they "make it," at the expense of the life that they could be living now.
I'm a firm believer that hard work is a prerequisite for success, but I don't believe that we should forgo our lives in pursuit of revenue.
There needs to be another dimension on which we measure the success of entrepreneurs—the extent to which our businesses are actually enriching our lives.
That seems important to me, no?
Enter Adii Pienaar—he calls this measure "Life Profitability." I first read and wrote about Adii's book by this title a few years ago, and it immediately put language to so many of the things I'd been thinking about when it came to the intersection of entrepreneurship and lifestyle design. And I couldn't be happier to share that Adii has signed on to co-host this podcast with me.
Adii is a 3-time founder who has had a pretty impressive set of entrepreneurial experiences with no shortage of highs and lows. He Co-founded WooCommerce in his early 20's—a company that now processes over $20B in online payments each year. More recently he had almost 35% of his financial portfolio wiped out, when the equity he held in one of his previous start-ups saw it value wiped to 0.
Throughout it all, Adii has taken each subsequent step with more intention than the last—carefully considering how he's building companies, as well as what he hopes he and his team's get out of them.
So we're here, now, to share the stories of more James', and Danielle's, and Tom's... we want to highlight entrepreneurs who have taken unique approaches to building fascinating lives. We hope in the process to inspire more people to reconsider what entrepreneurial success looks like by proving that it can be done. We'll be showcasing the uncompromising entrepreneurs who are building successful businesses; and are doing really cool things with their lives all along the way.
You'll get your fair share of business tips, but we'll dive into the interests, passions, and things that make these people tick outside of work, too.
We hope you tune in—you can subscribe to Life Profits here or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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