My wish for you in 2025

Let’s talk about what a “lifestyle business” actually looks like, and what it costs

You will not believe what happened during my three week holiday.

I FELL IN LOVE

!!!!

By the end of Boxing Day, I already knew how I would be spending New Year’s Eve and my Friday nights for the rest of the season – my only available “date day” according to my parenting schedule. I was mentally rearranging my calendar to see where I could make space for my new love, something I told myself I’d do when the right person came along.

I am still pinching myself. I can hardly sleep.

But let’s start at the beginning, Boxing Day. I woke up way too early, extremely hormonal, and harbouring many doubts about my 3-day solo ski trip to Blue Mountain in Collingwood, Ontario.

What if the highway isn’t plowed? How will I know where to park? I suck at skiing, it is known. Doing this alone is such a drag. Where will I stash my Blundstones after suiting up in my rental gear? How will I know where to go for my ski lesson? This was the worst idea ever. Why do you do this to yourself, Tarzan??!!! You are not this brave.

I was being a whiny baby, forcing back tears the entire 2-hour drive.

By some miracle, the roads were salted and clear, the parking easy and free, and the rental shop not difficult to find other than a 90-minute wait time to get my skis, boots and poles. I marched up to my ski lesson seven minutes early with plenty of gas in my Tank of Bravery.

Turns out I signed up for the wrong class, a class for absolute beginners, which I am not. I’m an inexperienced beginner whose biggest issue is lack of confidence. They placed me in the “advanced beginner” group, but even there the instructor and classmates were utterly wowed by my incredible pizza demo. I was doing french fries on my first run down the bunny hill! The instructor gave me the go-ahead to get on a chairlift and try out a real run, and come back if I had any issues. Sixty dollars well spent.

I asked the handsome guy in my class if he wanted to ski with me later and he said, “Tarzan, you’re too good at this! I don’t want to hold you back.”

What a boost! I skated toward the biggest lift and took the chairlift all the way to the top, forgetting all about the fact that I am a lonely SOB who just got her period and hates driving in the snow. I’m Tarzan! NATIONAL MEDALIST! Top of her class! Giver of that legendary pizza demo.

The next three days were a roller coaster of huge feelings, from pure delight to absolute defeat and everything in between. I felt it all. I bought myself an extra day of skiing by cancelling my plans to get high on MDMA and hang out at my extremely fancy and expensive Airbnb, which turned out to kind of suck anyway.

So many brave humans rode with me on the chairlift. We watched 4-year olds in huge pink goggles gingerly plow down the hill making their first S turns, full-grown adults crashing into each other, dispossessed skis and snowboards flying down the hill in utter defiance of their riders.

I defied gravity on a green circle that really should have been a blue square. I nicknamed one corridor “joy of skiing” because every time I skied it, for about ten glorious seconds I felt weightless and completely in my zone gliding across the slushy snow as snowboarders zoomed past.

Three days later, on New Year’s Eve day, I went to our local ski shop and bought a second-hand pair of skis, boots and poles, plus a Friday night lift pass at Holiday Valley in Ellicottville, NY, which is closer to where I live. I also blocked all my Friday afternoons until the end of April.

(Hit “reply” if you live nearby and want to go skiing with me!)

Lots of strangers on the chairlift asked me what I do for work. “I’m in email marketing,” I said without getting into specifics, which no one understands anyway. “It’s a great job. It lets me do stuff like this. I took three weeks off to hang out with my kids, learn how to ski, and lay around reading romance novels by the fireplace. I feel really lucky.”

I have said this many times before.

The dream we are sold about online business is so much bigger than the life I have going on right now. It is unnecessarily huge. Bikini Business Coach huge. 4-hour workweek huge. Multiple 7-figures huge.

Most people would be thrilled to take a bit of extra time off over the holidays, end the year without debt, enjoy the thrill of buying inexpensive hobby-related items on Marketplace now and then (you should see my new Pit Vipers), and have enough savings in the bank that losing your job or having a tough year in business wouldn’t sink you.

You can have all of those things with a modest $350K/year business like mine.

This year, as you make your plans for how you will grow and what you will achieve in 2025, I invite you to think about what a “lifestyle business” really looks like for you.

>> Are there actual beaches involved, or do you prefer kicking your feet up on your own coffee table? 

>> How many hours would you work, ideally? What would you do with the extra time? (An extra 10 hours of leisure time is a lot! Many people create busywork or set even bigger goals to avoid it.)

>> How much does it cost to have the life you want? Do you know your “enough” number? 

Without knowing the answers to those questions, it’s easy (and less work) to simply buy into someone else’s dream. Or worse, to feel like you are endlessly wanting and never quite getting to feel that delicious and relaxing state of enoughness.

That feeling is one of the best feelings in the entire world. 

If I could wish one thing for you in 2025, it would be that feeling. Even just a few moments of it, each day.

You will still be scared sometimes. Me too. You’ll still feel overwhelmed sometimes. Me too. You’ll still feel like you’re working way too hard and your job isn’t paying you enough sometimes. Me too.

But if now and then you could stop what you’re doing, look around and say, “Look what you built! You are a goddam legend.”

You would look around at the room you’re sitting in, the desk you’re writing at, and soft blankets draped over the sofa in your living room or office or wherever you work, and think that if today were your last day on earth, you would leave this world feeling so damn proud.

That would be my wish for you.

XOT