“The 4-Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferriss is a journey into dreamland. Often I dream about what the author talks about in the book. My dreams: to be somewhere, anywhere, and be with my family. Whether it is a beach in Florida or a beach in Turkey, I want to be having a great time with my family. Now the caveat is that I want to be earning money while I am relaxing. I want to have rental income coming in. I want to get emails telling me that I was just paid dividends. I also want to have business income coming in as well. I don’t actually want to spend time working my business, but I want the money to be flowing in. And that is exactly what the book is about. How to create an autonomous, out-sourced business that will allow you the financial and time freedom to be anywhere you want to be. The author does an amazing job of telling the reader exactly how to begin this journey of creating a low-stress/high-profit business. He even starts with how to begin the journey while you are still an employee. He prepares the reader to slowly adjust to working-from-home mechanics. Then how to start building a business and improve processes. From there, you will need to automate and out-source what you can. Finally, once you have earned your freedom, Tim talks about what to do with your new-found freedom. Many people dream of being free but have no idea what to do once the days actually come. While reading this book, I actually started down the path of building a business that I plan to automate in the future. The tools are presented in a way that can almost be used as a checklist. The only thing holding the reader back is the reader. With that, let’s check out my 5 takeaways.
1) Cash flow first, big payday second. The author tells us that we need to work on consistent cash flow from our business first. Big paydays are nice, but the last thing you want to do is travel afar and need to close a big business deal to survive. The daily cash flow is vital to the freedom of the New Rich (what he calls the traveling entrepreneurs of the world).
2) The value of money is multiplied if you can control these; what you do, where you do it, and with whom you do it. It is called the “Freedom Multiplier”. As we plan our escape from the rat race, we realize that some people in the workforce may be earning more money than us, however, our freedom multiplier is what we value. Earning $50,000 a year with no stress can be more fulfilling than earning $100,000 in the middle of the rat race. We need to value our freedom.
3) Doing less is not laziness. We tend to grow up with the hard work mentality. However, there comes a turning point where we need to use the resources available to us to automate and outsource. Not only does it provide jobs to others but it also frees up time in our own lives to do other meaningful things.
4) Excess idle time is poisonous. The goal of automating and outsourcing is not to free up time to do nothing or kill brain cells. In order to be truly satisfied, we need to be doing positive things for our families, friends, and the overall society at large. As we build our plan, we need to prepare for the day when we are truly free.
5) Start a business prepared with the end in mind. When we start our businesses we need to know actually how we plan to automate and outsource from the start. For example, if we plan to open a lemonade stand, we can calculate in a year that we can turn it over to a 15-year-old to run for us. Therefore, everything we do for the lemonade stand needs to be prepared for the 15-year-old in mind. We need to create processes so that they can take over for us and be successful. Too often, businesses are started with no goal to turn over the work. The business owner is now stuck inside the business, trapped.
“The 4-Hour Work Week” is for true dreamers. For the few of us that dream of travel and spending time with family. The book is not focused on material things. Keeping up with the Joneses will not work well in this kind of freedom-based life. So the book is not only an exercise in work balance but in life balance as well. The less you need, the less it costs, which means the less you have to earn. It will take work in order to pull off this plan but nothing presented is insurmountable. Everything can be applied instantly or with a couple more books or courses. I am truly excited to start a completely automated business. I began my journey two days ago and hopefully, it comes to fruition. Very exciting times.
This link is to a physical product. The link above is to the digital book. Sorry. I get no credit for digital product links.
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