Keys to Success and Satisfaction as a Lifestyle Entrepreneur

BY CHRIS BURDETT-PARR

Book Review of Big Vision, Small Business: Four Keys to Success Without Growing Big by Jamie S. Walters, Ivy Sea Publishing: 198 pp.

In Big Vision, Small Business: Four Keys to Success Without Growing Big the successful business owner and writer, Jamie S. Walters, pays respect to the huge impact small businesses have on the economy and has developed a new term: lifestyle entrepreneurs.

Drawing from her experience with starting her own successful business consultancy, Ivy Sea, Inc., and in her examination of small businesses and their owners, Jamie describes a new category of business owners emerging for the twenty first century.

These modern-day business owners are striving to balance personal priorities with making profit, and aim for fulfillment for both themselves and everyone connected with their organization, including employees and customers:

Extraordinary thoughtfulness, a form of respect in action, might mean that we put ourselves in our customers’ shoes, so to speak, so that we know for sure that their interaction with our business leaves them feeling better, not worse, and respected, not degraded. That after interacting with representatives from our business, they go home to their families feeling full and kind, not deflated and angry.

Big Vision, Small Business: Four Keys to Success Without Growing Big examines the following areas central to this concept:

1. Engaging in inspired visioning and planning
2. Knowing which definition of growth suits you
3. Building and maintaining right relationships
4. Choosing a menu of balance and wisdom practices

It is a wonderful book exploring awareness-raising, mindful practices, conflict-resolution techniques, communication, and incorporating these and other techniques in pursuit of a well-balanced company.