When I was considering buying my business in 2009 a friend asked me a question to help me in the decision-making process:

“Are you just buying yourself a job?”

What he was getting at was the idea that entrepreneurship should create more time and more income for you to be worth the financial risks & stress. 

I recently posed the same question to a friend who is considering purchasing a business. But I gave the caveat that there may not be a wrong answer to the question.

So what if you’re buying yourself a job if you can create the life that you want? If you can create a flexible schedule, have full autonomy over your priorities and take extended time away from your business then you should buy yourself that job.*

It comes back to how we define success for ourselves. Success isn’t one-size-fits-all and how you measure success will look different than how I measure success.

If the highest income possible is your priority, ignore my advice and don’t buy yourself a job. You can make a high income by being an employee with a bonus and stock options. But you will not own your time or schedule in that role. Your employer will.

You can generate a significant amount of wealth by owning your own business. The trade-off is that it all rides on you if it will work. Typically, this requires the sacrifice of your time and freedom to achieve the success you’re looking for. You will not own your time or schedule in that role. Your business will.

The alternative route as an entrepreneur is to own a lifestyle business. This is a business that prioritizes the life of the owner over the amount of profit it generates. The business still needs profits, and those profits can be significant. But the difference is that the success of the business and of the entrepreneur was clearly defined from the start to prioritize quality of life over quantity of profits.

Which brings me back to where we started - the right life is better than the right income.

*Buying yourself a job only works if you can pay off the investment within a reasonable time from the profits generated by the business. Buying yourself a job to run an unprofitable business for years is a bad idea.