No one goes into business with the intention of making a loss. However, as the statistics have shown, many would-be entrepreneurs have set out with what they believed to be a great idea, but were ultimately unsuccessful. Often, this is simply due to a lack of research and a failure to do the math.

“Lifestyle Entrepreneurship: A CPA’s perspective” intends to teach you how to create and sustain a lifestyle business by understanding the finances of your business. It outlines the financial considerations and calculations to perform when looking to take your idea from inception to your desired outcome.

What is “Lifestyle Entrepreneurship” About?

Being a lifestyle entrepreneur is about more than simply running your own business to provide an income that frees you from having  to work for someone else. The goal of a true lifestyle entrepreneur is to create a business with enough assets so that at some point it can continue to provide an income and the desired lifestyle without the need for the entrepreneur to work within the business any longer.

The main purpose of “Lifestyle Entrepreneurship” is to show how it is necessary to keep track of the state of your business at all times by using a variety of metrics. These metrics provide you with the ability to make informed decisions with regard to how and where to spend your time and money.

In “Lifestyle Entrepreneurship” the author takes an idea for a business and sets the rules and the goals that her fictitious lifestyle entrepreneur wants to attain within a given number of years.

Having selected a business and the services that will be provided by the business, various calculations and predictions are used to determine the budget needed to set up and start running the business. Revenue generation, cost structuring and cash management are each discussed in detail, and made more understandable by relating them to the proposed business and the desired outcomes specified.

Through use of this information, projections are then made possible, and goals set for the lifestyle entrepreneur to be able to achieve a predetermined exit from the business while still having financial freedom.

About the Author

Based in Springfield, Illinois, author Evelyn Ivy (@LifestyleCPA) is herself a lifestyle entrepreneur. She is a Certified Public Accountant, a Certified Valuation Analyst and the Founder of LifestyleCPA  specializing in helping entrepreneurs to achieve financial freedom.

What Was Best About This Book

There are many types of businesses and ways to generate an income stream. While the basic accounting principals apply to all businesses, such a diversity of income streams means that there are many different ways to determine whether your business is achieving the level of success required to attain financial independence.

The business portrayed in “Lifestyle Entrepreneurship” and used to illustrate the various metrics which can be used to measure financial progress has three different sources of income. This is particularly helpful as it has allowed the author to cover a variety of different metrics which can be used depending on the type of business applicable to the reader.

Each of these metrics is explained in full, making the explanations provided together with the numbers easy to comprehend. Therefore, whether you have studied accounting or not, you should be able to apply these metrics to your own business.

What Could Have Been Done Differently

“Lifestyle Entrepreneurship” covers the majority of the accounting practices and metrics that can be used when running a business. However, it specifically focuses on the initial setup and first month of operation of the business. I believe that had the data for the business covered a lengthier period of time, the examples showing the progress for the business would have appeared more realistic and meaningful.

Why Read “Lifestyle Entrepreneurship”

This is an ideal book for entrepreneurs who want to calculate the viability of a business in terms of cost and potential earnings before startup. It is also useful for small business owners who want to maintain and understand their own financial records rather than using the services of a book keeper or an accountant.

A failure to truly understand the financial state of your business is often a precursor to running into financial trouble. “Lifestyle Entrepreneurship” provides the methods and metrics to ensure that you are in control of your finances, and can view the financial state of your business at anytime.

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