Is Your Life-First Business Just Lazy Solopreneurship in Disguise?

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Many solopreneurs quietly worry that building a life-first business means they've become lazy. In this episode of The Life-First Solopreneur, Carly Ries and Joe Rando explain why that fear is misplaced, and how to tell the difference between real intention and hidden avoidance.

Is choosing a life-first business the same as being lazy?

No. Laziness is the avoidance of effort. A life-first business is the intentional allocation of effort. The two can look similar from the outside because a life-first business often means fewer hours, no big team, and no giant launches. But less visible activity does not mean less intention. It usually means more.

Where does the belief that rest equals laziness come from?

The hosts trace it to hustle culture. Joe walks through the shift from the relaxed hippie era of the early seventies to the yuppie era of the eighties, when long hours, fast money, and material success became markers of worth. That conditioning taught many of us to equate visible sacrifice with value, which is why doing less can feel like failing even when it's a deliberate choice.

How do you know if you're being intentional or just avoiding hard work?

The episode offers a simple gut check. Ask yourself whether you're avoiding a hard thing and calling it a boundary. Ask whether your freedom is actually stagnation. Ask whether you'd be proud to explain the choice or whether you're hiding from it. Intention tends to feel clear and calm. Avoidance tends to feel defensive and full of excuses.

Can family time really count as work?

Joe reframes it this way. If you've defined the values you want to live by, then anything you do in pursuit of those values is your work. Dinner with your kids is not a distraction from the business. It can be the very thing the business exists to protect.

The bottom line

Building a business that supports your life takes more self-knowledge, not less. You have to know what enough means to you and redefine success as alignment between how you spend your days and the life you actually want. As Carly puts it, lazy has no plan. Life-first is all plan and all design.

Listen to the full episode of The Life-First Solopreneur, and share it with a solopreneur who needs the reminder.

Episode Transcript

Carly Ries: Ever been told that if you're not grinding around the clock, you're just plain lazy? On this episode, we tackle that head on. Does choosing a life for a solo business mean you've checked out and given up? Spoiler alert, absolutely not. We get into the messy history of hustle culture and the very real difference between designing a business around your life and just hiding from hard work behind a fancy word like boundary. Plus, we do a gut check that will tell you whether your freedom is actually intention or just procrastination in a costume. So grab your coffee or don't. But regardless, just take a break because this one might change how you see your entire calendar.

You're listening to the Life First Solopreneur, the podcast for those in pursuit of a life first business. I'm Carly Ries, and my cohost, Joe Rando and I spend every episode with solopreneurs who are proving there's a better way to run a one person business and experts who are helping make it happen.

We like to say life first, then business. So let's get right to it. So, Joe, question for you. Does choosing a Life-First solo business mean you're lazy?

Joe Rando: Absolutely not.

Carly Ries: Okay. That's our main point. Listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. As always I'm just kidding. But that is the main point we wanna get to. I so wanted to do this episode. It's funny because I actually have a personal story. So my husband and I are very different. I'm a busybody. if we're watching something, I also need to be doing laundry or making dinner or something.

Joe Rando: just busy yeah. Let's define because in my world, busybody means like a nosy person.

Carly Ries: Oh, okay.

Joe Rando: And I don't think you're a nosy person.

Carly Ries: No. No. Thank you for clarifying. I always just need to be doing something. I struggle with downtime.

I like scheduling things on the calendar. My husband, he is so efficient with his work time. he does so much in his brain that he's so good at relaxing. Like, he can prioritize doing a hobby and it was funny, at the beginning of our relationship, I'd be like, you would just like sit and do nothing? And he's like, yeah. It's called taking a break. and he's so good at it. And I was thinking about, those differences and the way people view solopreneurship. Or, Life-First Solopreneurship. And I think people often think if you aren't grinding as a solopreneur, you're lazy. I had that misconception when I was first dating my husband for a little bit like, get off the couch, dude. And he's like, no. I'm actually just really efficient with my time.

And my husband's not a couch potato, like, off the bike, dude. That would be the other one. He loves cycling.

But he was just like, no. I'm really efficient with my time so that I can prioritize cycling and doing whatever I want to do. I can take those breaks. And I see the world now almost fifteen years later, I see the world completely differently from his lens and I appreciate it so much and I have to work on that. But I think a lot of solopreneurs have to work on that too.

That if they're not grinding, it's not because they're lazy. I think the whole lazy story comes from hustle culture conditioning. We've been taught to equate visible business and sacrifice with birth in the working world. And there's just an optics problem. A life first business often looks like doing less from the outside, fewer hours, no team, no big launches. But really, it's just their core distinction is laziness is avoidance of effort, but life first is intentional allocation of effort. And that's what I want to talk about about today. Do you agree?

Joe Rando: I totally agree. I would just like to dig in a little bit to the history of hustle culture. it's funny because being older and kind of watching the world from, the middle of not quite the middle, but, near the middle of the twentieth century in the seventies, in the late sixties and seventies, there was this kind of hippie culture, which was very, you know, chill and, good times. I mean, yeah, there were drugs and a lot of music and all this kinda chill.

And then we came into the eighties with what we call the yuppies. Young urban professionals. And this was where, for me, hustle culture became the thing. It was because you make money, you know, work crazy hours, make a lot of money, drive fancy cars, whatever it is, it was all about material stuff.

And strangely, a lot of those people were previously hippies. Don't know how that change came about, but if you look at the ages. So, and this was, really something that got embedded in me because I was going to college and getting my first job in the eighties, and like, I'd be in the lab because I was an engineer in those days. I'd be in the lab until, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11:00. Sometimes I would even sleep over and feel very, kind of accomplished that I did this. And it's really warped. It's really warped thinking. I know I've talked about this before, but, the idea of hustle culture and working your life away completely and not taking the time for the other things as a virtue is a really sick perspective, in my opinion, and one that I had to overcome. And still struggle with sometimes, to be perfectly honest. Because there's always something more to do.

Carly Ries: Well, and that's what I'm saying. For me, my husband's like, you just need to sit and read a book. Because I'm like, well, but I could be doing this. I could be doing this. But that's how we've been trained, like you said, with the history, and thank you for the historical perspective.

I think there's a reframe that lazy is unwilling to do the work, but Life-First is unwilling to do the pointless work. So you're choosing constraints like your clients, capped hours, and saying no to things. And that's a harder discipline than defaulting to more, more, more. I just want more. So, if a solopreneur who declines a sixty hour launch to protect dinner with their kids, they're not avoiding work. They're just refusing to trade the thing that the business exists to protect.

Joe Rando: And I'd like to frame it a little differently than that even to say that, having dinner with your kids, if that's one of your goals, that is your work. I mean, we don't think of having dinner with family as work, but, you could frame it that way, that if you've defined a set of values that you wanna live by, then anything that you do in pursuit of those values is, in a sense, work and should be treated as such and valued as such.

Carly Ries: That's a good point. Yeah. I think, if that's your design, laziness doesn't have a design behind it. But a life first business is engineered to make that your work. it's not opposite of lazy. It's just working with intention is how I would put it.

And really figuring out those priorities. But I do have a caveat. I think people can use the term life first business as an excuse for being lazy. I think there's a middle ground where there's, life first business by design is not laziness.

It's intention and you put in the work. You just don't sacrifice the things that matter most to you. But I think some people , there's like that weird middle where sometimes a life first is a costume for fear or procrastination. And I think listeners really need to check themselves and think, am I avoiding a hard thing and calling it a boundary? Is my freedom actually, like, stagnation?

And also ask whether you're proud to explain this choice or am I hiding from it? And I think those are really important questions to ask somebody to make sure they're not being lazy and not just saying Life first and trying to cover it.

Joe Rando: Right. No. That's a really good point because, we get into these tough things. You have to do something that is uncomfortable or just difficult, painful for you to do, and all of a sudden, it's like, woah. I really should take a little downtime or I should, go for that bike ride or that walk in the park I said I was gonna, look out for my health.

And it's like, sure. But if you're just avoiding things that are difficult, which let's face it, no matter how life first you design your business, you're gonna do things you don't love doing, then, yeah, that's a problem. So interesting point.

Carly Ries: I think it's just do a gut check. Like, if you're intentional and building that Life-First business, you should feel clear and calm about it. But if it feels defensive and you need to constantly clarify what you're doing come up with excuses, then maybe you're not as intentional as you think you are.

Joe Rando: If you think that doom scrolling is part of your Life-First business plan, you might wanna rethink that a little bit. Not that we don't all do some of that. And, I mean, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you I don't sometimes scroll, but, it certainly isn't something where I look back and go, yeah. Mission accomplished.

Carly Ries: Exactly. So, yeah, I just think building a business that supports your life, I think, requires more self knowledge and not less. You have to know what enough is to you, which we've talked about in a previous episode. You need to know what that enough is.

You need to know that ceiling. You just have to kind of redefine the metrics for yourself. Success isn't hours anymore, or maxed out revenue. It's alignment between how you spend your days and the life you actually are trying to live. And so if you've got that going and you build the business and you have your own angle in mind, then you're life first.

You're not lazy.

Joe Rando: And you gotta start with that vision of what you want that life to look like. You're not necessarily gonna get it immediately. Maybe you'll never quite get there perfectly, but if you don't have that vision built out for you, you're never gonna get close. So Yeah.

That's something I think a lot of solopreneurs that want a life first business deep down inside lack, is that initial vision of what the life should look like.

Carly Ries: I'm so glad you said that because the thing I wanted to end on today is I think the moral of the story is being lazy has no plan, but Life-First is all plan. It's all design. Mic drop. Well, that's what I have. Do you have anything else you want to add?

Joe Rando: I think we're good.

Carly Ries: Great. Well, listeners, as always, thank you so much for tuning in. If you found this episode helpful, which I'm biased, but if you think somebody needs to hear this, please share it with that person. Leave us a five star review because it helps us build even more credibility and reach more solopreneurs . We'd so appreciate that.

And don't forget to subscribe to our show on any podcast platform, including YouTube. And we'll see you next time on the Life-First Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures?

Closing: At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at communitylifestarr.com.