The Book
The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated by Timothy Ferriss
Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.
Opinion on the book
This is very new but is already a classic and you probably have heard of it. Basically the idea behind it is to live the life you want, and do what YOU want on a daily basis. The book isn’t that big but it’s full of useful information and tips so I’m going to separate it in two parts.
So Welcome to the second part about : creating a muse, or automated income generator.
The Book in One Sentence
Re design your lifestyle with Tim Ferris.
Quotes
“Top mistake N°8. : Not performing a thorough 80/20 nalysis every two to four weeks for your business and personal life”
Notes
This steps are generally not for people who want to run a business but for those who want to own one. And if you think “that doesn’t work in the real world” then just know that Microsoft XBox is built by Flextronics, the same company that design and ditribute Kodak’s cameras. You can outsource everything too.
# The Rules : our aim here
We need a product (if you do service then you’ll need to convert your expertise into a downloable or shippable product) that can’t take more than $500 to test, and can lend itself to automation within four weeks, meaning that it won’t require more than one day per week of management. That’s a muse.
# Step 1 : Pick an affordably reachable niche market
Don’t create demand, fill existing demand. Better : feel a need YOU have, so you know what the product must be like. First focus on the markets you belong to. What do you read? What do you do on your free time? Find two related markets.
Also think now about how you will sell because it will largely influence your future decisions. The less reseller the better, because they will compete with each other on the price, devaluating your product. Generally the more direct you-to-client the better. Go online.
# Step 2 : Brainstorm products
Now you have to brainstorm products for those markets. It must fill the criterias :
- main benefit can be told in one sentence
- cost customers $50 to $200 (enough so you make money but not enough so it’s a big investment for the client)
- no more than 3 to 4 weeks to manufacture
- easily explainable in an online FAQ (not something with 2.000 parameters)
If you want you can also sell information product instead of manufactured ones. Sell your expertise. Transform your skills into sellable information products.
# Step 3 : Micro-Test the muse
Testing here means using cheap advertising to see customer repsonsivness PRIOR to advertising. So you’ll test you products by :
- creating a one-to-three sales page, that will give offer visitors the whole process of buying without actually the possibility to buy, so you see how many sales you would have gotten
- test the offer using Google Adwords (look online if you don’t know what that is and how it works. Go to the author’s website and research it)
- invest on the products that appear to be good, and forget about the others
Other ideas : you can put fake auctions on ebay to see at what price it would sell! But don’t let anyone actually pay
Facebook groups also have every niche market ever possible.
# Step – Get yourself out of the equation
Basically the idea is to get yourself of everything you’re involved in in the organization. A schema showing how it looks like for the author :
Why you should (or should not) buy that book
This book is interesting as it is really full of useful tips, as well as giving you the little ‘push’ you may need. Starting with the author’s blog ( http://www.fourhourblog.com/ ) is a good idea, there are a lot of articles, on a very broad range of subject. But it’s a life philosophy book, and you can summarize that, but you can’t communicate it.
Also the book talks about how to apply those concepts when you’re an employee and want to stay so while still being able to have the life you want, which I didn’t keep notes about.
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Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
~Thomas
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What about you? Have you read that book? What did you think of it?




