I agree that both positions are ridiculous. I also want to add that all businesses are "lifestyle businesses." But it's how you define your lifestyle that makes

I agree that both positions are ridiculous. I also want to add that all businesses are "lifestyle businesses." But it's how you define your lifestyle that makes the difference. I'd rather run a small shop that allows me to pay myself to build things, hack software, play with new technologies, and sleep in. OTOH, someone else might want to fly all around the country, sit in meeting after meeting, get on the cover of Forbes, and have fancy dinners every night. To each his own, but I'd much rather run a business that enables the former than necessitates the latter. But that raises a question, is it possible to take a business to scale without sacrificing the things you loved to do yourself? Derek Sivers is one example--he structured CDBaby so he could keep writing code most of the time and sold it when the business wasn't fun for him anymore. Any other examples?