Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I am half way through "4 Hour Work Week".  What are your thoughts?  (I would say more, but my time is already in excess of the 4 hour work-week limit).

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Mike Michalowicz
Author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur

i just taped an interview with tim, the author, that`s going to be broadcast on the weekend of july 14. i think tim`s got a great concept - but in some ways, i think the book is misleading by its cover. really what he`s saying is, "work smarter". no?

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Rich Sloan , Co-Founder, Chief Startupologist, StartupNation

OK ObsidianLaunch, gist us!

I read that book twice, I LOVE it!

I was working about 10-15 hours before I read the book and I learned how to get that time down to half by using just two suggestions in his book which I am in the process of implementing now. I started my business 2 years ago and out the gate I was outsourcing everything and saying NO to customers that I didn`t want to deal with. Those things came naturally to me because I did not see the value in focusing my time and energy on such things.  For others I think that it is difficult because naturally you don`t want to `spend money` on help until you are earning a certain amount of money (and inevitably more often than not, that time never comes). Quite a few of my friends are reading this book and they are fascinated with it but struggling with it but I also see them in their businesses and they often work long hours in their business and have not learned how to separate from it nor do they utilize outsourcing. Until you are actually outsourcing and can master working `outside` of your business or as some people say `working on your business, not in it`, I think that it is hard to see the value in the book.

Having said that, I think it really is possible to work a 4 hour work week if you truly understand how to leverage the resources in that book. It just takes a different kind of mindset and delegation of time consuming tasks and learning to say NO! is just the beginning of that.  You really have to have a niche product and well defined target market as well.

Many of the most successful entrepreneurs learned how to leverage their `networks` and a small pool of resources and they were able to build a strong brand by effectively marketing to their target audience. Regardless of scale of the business, that is basically what Tim Ferriss has done and he has been able to do it by himself essentially because he has the ability to market to a global market and obtain `all the help he needs` via the Internet. He basically has created a virtual `Fortune` company on a small business scale. And if you think of virtual, it`s not really defined by `size`,  so you can always obtain more customers and make more money, but at the same time, you will always have access to more resources and the people to help you manage those prospects and sales without having to hire physical people to be onsite or open physical offices all over the place. That is the best way I can summarize the book.

Note: I have not owned a TV in the past 17 years and I have read so many books on sales, business and marketing from the early 20th century that are since out of print that I think perhaps the information I read is somehow being processed in a differerent way than it is for most. But it`s definitely a good read nevertheless and worth purchasing