What is Time Freedom? My take after years in online business.
Living Lifestyle Freedom is all about teaching you to create time freedom, money freedom and freedom of choice in your business and life. As a mom of two I started my first business in 2002 to have complete time freedom to raise my kids.
I’ve made over $1.3 million in those years, hustled for years and had years where I worked 10 hours a week and I’ve taken most of the last 24 summers off to enjoy with my kids. I’ve never had to miss an important activity, event or sick day because I created the time freedom to do so. In this post I’ll share my best times on how you can do the same 🙂
This is my take…
So what is Time Freedom?
It’s the freedom to do what you want, when you want, where you want and with who you want. It’s total freedom over your day, your week, your year, your time.
How to Achieve Time Freedom
There are so many ways to create time freedom through an online business.
Here are my favorites:
Affiliate Marketing
- What is affiliate marketing: Sales commissions for selling a digital or physical product.
- How you do it: Sign up to get your link and start sharing it.
Don’t confuse this with network marketing or MLM.
The original affiliate marketing costs you nothing to sign up, does not require you to buy any products, doesn’t have a downline structure and doesn’t tie you to any one company.
As an affiliate you can sign up for as many companies as you like and earn anywhere from 5% to 50% or more of sales generated from your affiliate link. You can do this without a website (sell to your email list or on social) and even from your phone.
Digital Products & Courses
- What is a digital product: Various forms of content packaged for someone to buy.
- How to do it: Find potential buyers, create an offer and present it with a payment option.
You can sell PDFs, Audios, Videos or any combination of any type of media that you like. There is no limit here to the creativity you can put into selling a digital offer online. What matters most is: do people want it?
Coaching & Consulting
- What is coaching: Typically one on one support.
- How to do it: Develop a coaching process and sell it to clients.
This wouldn’t typically fall under the time freedom category if done in the traditional way coaching is done. But as a time freedom lover I developed a process I call “coaching without calls” because I still wanted the rewards of working with one on one clients WITHOUT the time commitments!
So I don’t do coaching calls. I don’t do discovery calls. I don’t do a single call at all when I coach high ticket coaching clients. That makes this method very much fit the time freedom model and if you get coaching clients on a monthly recurring coaching plan then it also provides amazing income stabilization.
Add group coaching as an option here as well. This includes turning a course into a group coaching program or running mastermind groups. You CAN include calls and still have time freedom – just make sure that it’s all on terms you like and best to start with shorter term to see how you like it.
Membership or Subscription Models
- What is a membership or subscription: You charge a recurring payment for delivering something consistently.
- How to do it: Create something people are willing to pay for monthly, quarterly or annually.
Be careful with this one! It absolutely CAN create time freedom but it can also be a total time TRAP where you spend all your time building and growing a membership that you HOPE will pay off some time in the future. Ask me how I know 😉.
So… building a membership or subscription offer can take so many forms. Monthly digital downloads, monthly workshops, ongoing coaching community.
This type of model requires ongoing commitment so don’t decide lightly. Is this something you can do for the next 3-5 years and are you willing to wait while it builds up and gains momentum?
There are so many ways to build time freedom
As I said this is merely a sampling of potential online business models you could use to create the free time you want in your life and business.
Everything I’ve mentioned here takes work, effort and time. It’s not realistic to decide you’re going to do one and then expect to be free as a bird in a few months. They all work on different schedules and have different payoffs.
I worked for YEARS building a combination of the models above in order to then spend many years working 10 hour days and taking full summers off to spend with my kids. Then I had to get back to it, hustle again, adapt to industry changes and more. This isn’t a free ride. It’s hard work for awesome rewards. If you’re down for that keep reading as I have more advice and tips (hard won) on this…
Now let’s talk about something I missed for many years:
Time Freedom vs Financial Freedom
Time freedom and financial freedom are not the same. And of course everyone has different definitions on things.
Google’s AI says financial freedom is:
Financial freedom means having enough savings, investments, and cash flow to cover your lifestyle without being forced to work.
I really like that definition!
So you can have time freedom but NOT have financial freedom. I personally with I had aimed for both in the very beginning of starting my business (in 2002).
Since I didn’t, I’m starting now. I have to work. But there will come a time when I CHOOSE to work and I look forward to those days!
I’ll be writing more posts on this and how I’m building towards financial freedom so do stick around if you’d like to read them. You can sign up for my email list here.
In the meantime let’s talk about the tools you might need to create YOUR time freedom:
Tools for Time Freedom
This list is not an absolute. Don’t go and click and buy everything on this list without really thinking about the business you want to build and what you might need.
That said here are the tools I’ve been using for years and years to build my time freedom. Starting with the most essential tools at the top!
Email software
I use Kit and recommend this. There is a free starter plan but I do recommend you get the lowest price plan as soon as you get serious so you have email automations.
WordPress
My website/blog you are reading here is created in WordPress, which is free with almost all hosting plans. I use WPX for my hosting because it’s fast, affordable and the support is absolutely fantastic.
Shopping Cart (and more)
I’ve used ThriveCart since 2022 as my shopping cart and it’s been my favorite because it’s easy to use. You can also host courses, run an affiliate program and host a community on ThriveCart. It’s got everything I need to run my business in one place.
Documents & Spreadsheets
Google Drive is great for creating the documents and spreadsheets I include in my products, coaching and more. It’s easy to use and free. Works for me!
Images & Graphics
It’s a goal of mine to use my own images as much as possible. Graphics wise I create those in Canva.
Videos
I screen record or do talking head videos in Loom or Zoom. I host my videos on Loom and will embed them into ThriveCart for selling my courses and other offers.
Those are the main tools. Of course i can get into a huge list but I don’t think you need that right now if you’re just getting familiar. If you want to see my long list of recommended online business tools you can see that here: Recommended Tools for Online Businesses
Is Time Freedom Even Real?
Yes – it’s real. No it’s not easy. If it were everyone would have it.
Over the years as I would show up for places I would feel some guilt about how much freedom I had while others worked hard hours at jobs they hated on late nights and weekends.
Mostly the guilt was because I thought people didn’t know there was another way. But also I think some people really don’t believe it’s true.
So I’ve dropped the guilt and decided I will keep showing up to teach. Maybe you are one of those super hard working people who HEARD this is possible but not sure you believe it. I get it.
Start with one thing. Prove it to yourself. Affiliate marketing would be my suggestion. Sign up to an affiliate program, get that link and get your first sale. Then do the math. Thing about what you’d need to have that time freedom and what you need to do to create it.
You got this.
I’m cheering you on.
Here’s to total lifestyle time freedom!
❤️Angela