If you have never read it do yourself a favor and get Tim Ferris’s book The 4-Hour Workweek and read it cover to cover. Then reread it again.
My first impression was that Ferris is full of crap!
Just more scammy hogwash to take advantage of the broke, the naive and the desperate. But the more I read the more I realized that wasn’t the case at all. What he preaches and teaches within those pages is, in fact, being done as we speak by countless people – and though I am not there (YET) – I do know people who are and many more who are inching their way ever closer to that goal.
In fact, once I realized what he was really talking about it became clear that it was a concept I was already well familiar with and believed in. That is to build a business – or preferably multiple businesses – that have all the necessary resources to run almost completely independent of the owner once they are all in place and set up properly.
Take a large company with multiple locations. It can be a burger joint, a retail store, garage, pest control company, or a multitude of other things. If they are run using replicable systems (much like franchises are) and if the right management teams are put in place – then all that is really required is monitoring and holding the top level key personnel accountable. They will hold everyone else accountable and produce the revenue and the profits as required and desired by the owner.
This concept is even better suited to the online world. Thanks to affiliate marketing and eCommerce there are so many ways to make money online today. Many of them can be started for nothing or next to nothing and then grown step by step as far as you want to take it, and as far as your skills and abilities and your drive will get you.
Maybe that can be done in 4 hours or so per week for you – eventually. Maybe not – but either way it will take far less valuable time than having to work in your business or at a job daily and forever as most people do.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
Yet doing it is anything but, and that’s where the rubber really meets the road in real life.
Still, There is Crap in The Book…
Don’t get me wrong either – while the book does have a great overall message and illuminates a way I think most people just don’t get unless they have it pointed out to them that there are other courses in life other than the ” Normal Ways” of living.
You can build passive (I prefer to call it SEMI-Passive) income and you can bootstrap your way up beginning with almost nothing and then take it to the next level – then the next, it will definitely take a heck of a lot of work to make that happen. Most people are delusional if they think they can start out right out of the gate and only work 4 hours per week – to that I say good luck and don’t hold your breath!
The reality for most people (unless you win the lottery or have rich uncle die and leave you a trust fund) is that they are going to have to work their butts off – and then some — and do that for YEARS before they get to the MiaTai sipping palm tree hanging stereotypical laptop lifestyle part.
Look at Ferris himself – he didn’t just start out living that way at all, even according to his own story as described in his own words in his own book! He worked his tail off for YEARS before he could lay claim to that mythical 4 hour thing. And I personally doubt he works only 4 hours per week even now – maybe he does – but not likely. Of course, I have no way to know for sure and it’s just my opinion, but I bet he works a great deal more than that.
The bad part – or the crap part, is that some people will literally think they can just quit their jobs and hop around the globe beach to beach and make a killing all with just a few hours per week. I know that is not even close to being a realistic option or real income opportunity for the vast majority of people on this planet. Simply NOT gonna ever happen for most people.
Find the Seeds of Benefit and Discard the Rest
The reason I say read the book is because of the overall philosophy and SOME of the specific information it contains can be extremely useful to you. Some of it. Not all of it. Just don’t take the whole thing literally.
Get the general idea down, and then find the resources and the information that can help you and use that to start designing your own blueprint for building your own version of a better life. Then start doing it. Take action and take more action and keep moving forward.
Just realize it is going to take time and effort. It’s not going to always be simple or easy.
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