Lifestyle Business
Extracting myself from this level/aspect of reality to join another level/aspect of reality.
Lifestyle business is more or less centered around making a business out of aspects of your life. I don't think many people would want to make their life in its entirety a business.
Don't know even if that's possible except for these reality TV shows that have turned existence itself into content, proving that yes, you can make your entire life a business IF you're willing to sacrifice privacy.
At least that's my understanding to this meta about doing what you love to do as work. Very grateful for living in an age where such things can be attempted and actually have a shot at working out. The internet has democratized the ability to turn niche interests into viable income streams.
As always, one of the first things that would hit you as a realization trekking on this path of turning passions into paychecks is the burden of watching the monotony creep in on the things you once loved doing purely for their own sake.
That spark that made you fall in love with said passion starts flickering when you have to do it on days you're not feeling it and deadlines loom over.
Of course, it isn't a realization per se but it does facilitate one of those 3 AM existential inventory checks where you need to sit with yourself and ask whether you're still doing this for the right reasons or if you've accidentally turned your favorite hobby into just another job with worse benefits and evidently no HR department.
I think the journey is much longer than expected, less straightforward than those "I quit my job and now make six figures doing what I love" posts would have you believe, and the opportunity costs from taking this path, e.g the years spent building something that might not pan out and also the social capital spent explaining to relatives what you actually do for work, can feel astronomical when you're in the thick of it.
When there are no guarantees, it's easier to get disproportionately discouraged with any experience of failure, even if it's just a bump in the road in the grand scheme of things.
Make yourself a product
Like lifestyle business, productizing yourself, as it's mentioned within the entrepreneurial circles and self-help industrial complex, is another route that is more focused on packaging your expertise into something scalable.
In some sense, both are just one and the same thing but approached from different angles.
Making yourself a product in this regard is having a skill that can be taught, replicated, or delivered consistently and it's something that doesn't really require you to show up as your full authentic self every single time but rather as the professional version of yourself that people are paying for. Think courses, as the most common example here.
Don't think that's necessary with a lifestyle business as the main selling point is the personality of the person. Bonus points for having actual skills too, but theoretically you could build an audience just by being interesting, relatable, or entertaining enough that people want to follow along with whatever you're up to, I guess.
I'm with the perception that most of us are probably somewhere in the messy middle between these two categories.
Not quite charismatic enough to coast on personality alone but also not systematized enough to fully productize and step away.
For me, that's fine and very much preferable the messy middle, it's flexible.
Also, I don't think the goal is to near perfectly execute either strategy.
I'm thinking more so of putting together something that works for your particular combination of skills, personality, risk tolerance, and how much you're willing to share of yourself online.
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