A Lifestyle Business is one where usually one or two founders create a business based upon their talents and abilities, and never intend for it to be a mega-corporation; in fact, most are created by people who want to set their own terms and live their lives they want to live.

They’re not out to change the world – they’re out to make a little profit, hire some cool people, and take the afternoon off to see little Suzy’s dance recital.

You know what’s cool about a Lifestyle Business?

• All the equity belongs to you. Want more money? Work harder. Or simply work until you can pay all of your bills.
• Where you want to live is where you work. Don’t like your current city or state? Pack up the company and move wherever you like… hopefully a business tax friendly state.
• You don’t have to answer to a board of directors or stock holders. If you want to try something, you try it. You are accountable only to your customers and yourself.
• By definition, Lifestyle Businesses are or they aren’t, generally speaking. That is to say, they are usually bootstrap operations funded solely by the founders with no outside investment. If they’re not profitable, they cease to exist. There is no “next round of funding.”

What stinks about Lifestyle Businesses?

• The responsibility is yours and yours alone. You don’t make payroll, it’s on you. You don’t get paid, you don’t eat.
• Most Lifestyle Businesses depend heavily on the talents of one or two key people. They quit, you’re done. That makes buying Lifestyle Businesses a very risky proposition, because you’re not really buying a company but you’re buying one or two people, more or less.
• Lifestyle Businesses don’t have the capacity or capital to scale. Unless you invent the next hula hoop or slinky.

There are some Lifestyle Businesses that do sometimes scale, a bit, and do get purchased by bigger companies. Techcrunch, the tech blog created by Mike Arrington, is probably the most prominent example of a business started in someone’s house and was later bought by a big company (AOL). However, as it turns out, the sale was a risky one for AOL, since the value of the company was largely vested in Mike, and with his departure the brand quickly fell apart.

But I am writing this little piece not to bury Lifestyle Businesses, but to praise them.

I owned and ran a Lifestyle Business for fifteen years, from 1996 until this past year. I spent every February (at least until my kids started school) living in the Florida Keys. I took my vacations whenever I wanted to. If I wanted to work harder I did, and when I didn’t, I didn’t. And I pretty much ran things the way I wanted to, how I wanted to, and when I wanted to.

Ultimately, it became time to do something else. The kids got older… and college for the boys started looming large in the windshield. After weathering a few recessions, successfully, there were other challenges I found I wanted to tackle. Truth be told, I simply got older, and for a large part of what I did for the last decade and a half, it really was a young(er) man’s game.

For those out there chasing your dreams, not wanting to be the next Facebook but to simply create something of beauty and utility and personal satisfaction, I say “awesome.” You can be successful, send your kids to great schools, live where you want to live, pay the mortgage, and have an extremely satisfying life. You don’t have to create the next PayPal or Twitter or Facebook to do that.

And you don’t need venture capital to do that – you simply need an idea, drive, talent, and passion.

Don’t let someone who poo-poos your Lifestyle Business as something less than worthy bother you in the least. Chances are in five years you’ll still be in business doing what you love, and they will be onto their next Pivot.

So, here it is, 2012.

Where is my Flying Car, already?

In truth, I’m still saving up for a hooptie that can simply get me from place to place here in town semi-reliably. For now, we are a one car family.

But a boy can dream, right?

In the absence of a flying car, here’s what I really want:

• A car that can wirelessly play content from my mobile devices, so that I simply get in the car, press play on my phone, and drive off.
• A car that can wirelessly play video content over a passenger entertainment system, so I can stream Netflix to my boys in the back on long trips.
• A car that can be its own mobile WiFi hotspot (I know some cars can already do this).

In short, I want to be able to drive my iPad around town.

Is that too much to ask?

Maybe it’s the Vicodin from my dental surgery yesterday talking.

Or maybe those lazy R&D n00bs in Detroit just need to get to cracking on that drivable iPad.

Am I right? Am I right?

Dang straight.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 50,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 19 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

I know such filtering in the application process is being used extensively even today; but I see no brakes being applied by the Millenials I interact with, and what they choose to share on the interwebz.

Maybe it will lead to a more forgiving political climate. Maybe it will lead to a more open social structure.

But how will those embarrassing photos from your twenties play out when you’re up for that “big promotion” in your forties?

Think before you post. There’s no delete button – yet – for the Internet.