The B&B Lifestyle

On our travels this summer, we've been staying at B&B's and I am fascinated by the lifestyle of the owners. Notice I said lifestyle, not business. The lifestyle is a very interesting one and seems to be fairly consistent, the business is what the individual owners make of it.

B&B's are quite popular as an economical alternative to a hotel here in the UK and in Europe. In the US, they often tend to compete with hotels, but provide a nicer experience (better food, better accomodations.

What is the B&B lifestyle? Find a lovely, good sized house in an area which people love to travel to. Furnish it well and fit out several of the bedrooms for guests, while maintaining a private owner's accomodation. Guests come in the afternoon, want some advice on where to eat dinner and maybe a cup of tea. They get a key and can come and go as they need to during the evening. In the morning, guests have a homemade breakfast and head out shortly thereafter. Rooms need to be 'turned' and readied for the next set of guests.

B&B owners, while not making a fortune, have a lifestyle. I've seen families working together getting rooms ready, in the garden. I hear parents talking with their children while making the breakfast for the guests. I see relaxed living where people have time to talk to the people visiting, to their families, to each other. Often folks who are tired of long hours, stressful work environments, living their lives away from their families find the B&B lifestyle quite appealing.

Of course running a B&B is work, it's not all beautiful country living and swanning about. Some of it can be quite manual and some is quite repetitive (the beds must be made every day, it must be spotless, renovations are work!). There are also customers, some are wonderful, some are less so. Depending upon the B&B, the money can be sufficient to replace someone's 'office' income or it can simply be a supplement. In some instances with the bigger B&Bs or guest houses, it allows both parents to stay home with their children or two partners to work together building a lifestyle-based business.

Some additional thoughts and links on the topic can be found here or do a search on how to start and run a B&B.

It's an interesting option for folks who want to spend some of their 750,000 Hours who want to transition from spending their time with the people they work with to spending time with the people they love.

Mobile You, Mobile Income

All this dream stuff is fine, but you're going to have to pay for it somehow.  Last time I checked, we all have to eat, most of us prefer a warm place to sleep, and the chances of getting by without some sort of income are pretty slim.  But what can you do besides a traditional job?

The concept of homebased businesses has been around for a few years now.  As a matter of fact, I started one in 1995.  Worked from home and homeschooled my daughter at the same time (Parade, Working Woman, Family Circle and Money magazines all wrote articles on it).  The working from home trend has only grown from then especially with the ease of doing business on via the Internet. 

Working from home is great from a 750,000 Hours perspective if your dream involves being in a single location.  If you are dreaming of a small holding, a B&B, a cottage by the sea, then a homebased business would fit in quite well.  You're in one location. 

But what if your ideal lifestyle is a mobile or moving one?  Steve and I have had a very nomadic lifestyle since the day we met, multiple locations, different companies, different countries.  Creating an income from wherever we were, at home, on the beach and now on the boat.  What if you plan on bicycling around the world, backpacking across Europe or sailing some (or all) of the seven seas?  A single location homebased business won't suite at all, you need something that will move as you move, a business that can exist 'virtually' anywhere you are.  And the Internet has made this eminently possible.

Virtual careers or income generators used to consist of things like writing books and articles, photography, editing, technical writing - and those do still exist in the online business world, perhaps even more so than they used to with blogs, ebooks and ezines.  There are many other types of virtual work which lend themselves very well to the more nomadic lifestyle.  Here are a few to get you thinking:

- Specialist knowledge - Are you an expert?  Do you know a great deal about a certain topic, a certain market?  Do you know the 'Secrets of _______'?  Specialist knowledge is in demand.  People want to know how to do things and often there is little information providing that guidance.  What are your hobbies, your interests, your areas of expertise?  Have you spent years studying a certain topic?  If you have, chances are other people are interested.  A friend of ours, Joe, has created the most amazing garden in his back yard, it's like his own private grotto.  He's done it in Florida, where it's tough to grow more than scratchy grass and standard bedding plants.  He could write an ebook on 'Creating Your Own Secret Garden Sanctuary'.  People want insights into how to do leisure time activities, they want to know how to make money, they want to know how to have a life beyond work (the wheels are turning for me now, might write one myself - 'How to Go From Cube to Cruise in a Year or Less!').  What knowledge do you have that you could share?

- Consulting - Also falls under the selling of knowledge category, but with more customer contact and one-to-one connections.  Consulting tends to be to businesses, but can also be done from a health, fittness, lifestyle design perspective.  Image consultants and personal coaches spring to mind.  There are also those highly skilled, very senior consultants who may no longer be doing the road warrior existence, but can be enticed into flying in for a short term engagement.

- Online Stores - Matching customers to goods is very doable via the Internet.  Many who run online stores create a niche storefront offering goods in a certain category (wedding linens, products which don't use electricity, sailing goods, etc.), they take orders from customers and place those orders with vendors, who then send the products to the customers.  If you understand a niche market and can negotiate with vendors, this can be a terrific online business.

- Information 'Sifter' - One of the big problems with the Internet is there is just too darn much of it.  Have you ever done a search on a topic and gotten 2,000,000 results?  How on earth are you going to weed through all of that?  You scan through the first three or four pages and then lose the will to live.  Acting as a 'sifter' and culling information on a certain topic into a concise and accessible format is valuable.  Often this is done in a paid subscription newsletter format, you'll see it from financial advisors, those in the know in the real estate or rental market, and I've seen several on travel bargains.  But why not do something similar for other niche topics?  'Secret Fly Fishing Spots of the World' - anglers of the world want to know!

- Online Education - Do you have a skill that others want?  Use the Internet to teach them!  Online courses whether in written, audio, conference or video form are all of interest.  In some instances you'll need to get formally licensed for this (if you're teaching people how to get started in a career, for example), but if you're teaching them 'How to Knit a Sweater in Just One Day' you probably won't.  'School' location no longer matters, your 'students' can be located anywhere in the world!

That's five to get your thinking started, there are many more (we'll discuss the best ones in an upcoming publication).  Key point here, no matter where you're located in your ideal lifestyle, you can generate an income to support it!