It never really occurred to me, but this is going on *offline* too. The next time you’re out browsing around in a tourist town or even doing your weekly grocery shopping at your local market, take time to notice all of the “little guys” who are selling cool specialty goods. Olive oils, cheeses, hand-made chocolate pretzels, yoga trainers, book writing consultants — the sky’s the limit!

Of course, people have been doing this kind of niche work for years. It’s nothing new. These folks are called artisans. But what I’ve noticed lately is artisan goods and services are taking off like wild-fire. There’s greater demand for homegrown and handmade everything.

So what does this have to do with your passive Internet Business and creating multiple streams of income…? Everything!

Just like the pretzel maker and the wine master, you should be thinking just like an artisan in your online business. Here are some quick ideas for how to start thinking more like an artisan and less like a cookie-cutter corporate slimeball…

*Personalize Everything
People love faces and names. They want to put your face and name with the product or service they’re buying. This helps build trust and credibility between two human beings (you the seller and the buyer). Add more personality to your websites by posting your picture or the picture of your staff members in highly visible places. Be sure to keep your bio updated and interesting. People want to know you.

*Interact More With Your Audience
Once people get to know you, they want to know more about you and to stay in touch. Welcome to the wonderful world of *social media.* Get your Facebook marketing rolling! But again, try to keep it personal and real. Not corporate and boring.

*Don’t Be So Uptight
Depending on the market you’re in, it’s probably more likely that you need to be *more relaxed* and interesting and *less professional* and uptight in how you present yourself to your audience. Sure, big flashy websites are impressive but they can also be intimidating and overwhelming. Make sure your logo is interesting. Choose a website design that’s homemade but functional over one that’s sharp and sleek.

Content marketing for your niche is supposed to be fun and engaging. Try incorporating some of these tips into your current approach and see what happens. Spend less time strategizing that next “laser-targeted email campaign” and just sit down right now and hammer out something friendly, approachable, and funny. See what happens.

Remember…

Being an artisan is about being unique and standing out from the crowd.

Download the MP3 Here (right click)

Recently I had the great pleasure to interview an author I’ve been exploring more and more lately, Dr. Neil Fiore. (There’s a bit of a sound problem at the very beginning but it gets better after the first few seconds, I promise.)

Dr. Fiore is an inspirational speaker, an executive coach, a psychologist, trainer and author has helped thousands of people and hundreds of organizations become more productive and achieve their optimal potential.

As an entrepreneur, I am constantly learning and experimenting with productivity methods to get more results in my day-to-day work. Neil Fiore’s popular book The Now Habit is a great example of the kind of book that can really help all of us think more about how we work and how we manage our daily lives.

In this interview, Neil and I talk about…

• Why entrepreneurs as courageous risk takers
• How your ego is probably holding you back
• What you can do about procrastination
• Where you can create a “third place” of CHOICE every day
• Why “Getting Things Done” should really be called Getting Things Started
• Plus much more!

I hope you enjoy the interview, and I also hope you find the time to explore Neil’s website www.NeilFiore.com and his books The Now Habit, Awaken Your Strongest Self, and coming soon The Now Habit at Work (I’m already on the Amazon pre-order list for this one).

I didn’t write this to try and prove to you that outsourcing works. I know it works and, hopefully, so do you.

I wrote this post to offer a nice overview on the topic so you can get a better idea of where you might stand with your own business. If you’re not already outsourcing tasks in your operations, I think this article will turn you on to the idea and encourage you to take action today. If you’re already an outsourcer, I hope this article encourages you to reflect on new ideas to improve your existing system. Maybe you need to outsource less. More likely, maybe you need to outsource more. Give it a read and see what you think.

Who Needs to Outsource?

The easy answer to our first question is EVERYONE. In fact, even if you’re not a business owner, you probably already have experience with some form of outsourcing. Do you pay someone to mow your lawn? Do you take your weekly laundry to your local dry cleaner? Are you paying a paperboy to toss the Daily News on your doorstep? All of these are examples of everyday outsourcing.

But the rules in business are a bit different than personal services. The general idea is this — in business, outsourcing can save you precious time to help you complete a task so you can focus on more pressing and high-priority issues. The problem with entrepreneurs is we think we’re great at everything. We’re control freaks at heart. And, in many cases, we are really good at the tasks we do. But only a handful of tasks in every business are really so critical that they deserve our personal and daily attention.

Although every business owner should outsource at least some aspect of his or her business, not every entrepreneur is immediately ready for outsourcing. If your business is still in stage one development (aka you’re not really making money), then outsourcing is probably not right for you. Then again, this is not always true. Perhaps your lack of funding and inability to focus on critical tasks to move your business forward are precisely the reasons you’re not moving into a profitable stage. Outsourcing might be your ticket to success at even the earliest stages of some business models…

What Can You Outsource?

Any area of your business that is not already automated should be considered a candidate for potential outsourcing. I would suggest starting by making a list of all the things you do or steps you take on a daily basis. Your goal is to eliminate as many mundane or repetitive tasks as possible so you can focus on the high-value work.

For example, suppose you have an online business running a membership website. The most important tasks in your business are likely 1) getting new members and 2) producing new valuable content for your members. Within those two categories are very long lists of smaller tasks you fulfill in order to reach your goals. This is where you have to ask yourself, could somebody else do this for me?

In business, this question can be very hard to answer honestly. In the personal services realm it’s almost always a no-brainer. Of course I pay someone to cut my hair. Could you imagine what it would look like if I did it myself? Are you crazy?!?!

This is one of the advantages of learning more about the 80/20 rule and applying it to get more results in your business. Sure, maybe you can do many things yourself. But the more you outsource, the more you can focus on the key tasks that generate more profit and bring more results. Determining which tasks are most critical and which tasks are secondary to the goal of building your business is the first step!

When Should You Start Outsourcing?

As I pointed out above, you should start doing it as soon as you identify tasks that eat up your time and prevent you from completing the really critical steps.

In my own marketing business, I realized at some point that I could only focus on building the business and creating more profit if I started sharing some of it with other people. This is that enigmatic message you’ll hear from successful entrepreneurs all the time — the best way to get wealth is to help other people get wealthy. Well, this is exactly the point. By sharing some of the profits you already have now, you can start increasing the total profit of your business long-term. That’s entrepreneurship at its finest.

It can be difficult to determine exactly when you should start outsourcing. Some areas can wait, while others will need to be handled by someone else as quickly as possible — perhaps even from day one. This is where trial and error is required. Experiment and go with your gut. You know when things are piling up, and you have to be honest with yourself if you expect your business to grow. The hardest part about choosing a time to outsource is accepting that more money will be flowing out of your business initially. But if you play your cards right, the investment should pay off soon enough.

Where Can You Outsource?

Outsourcing is as easy as pie these days. There are a myriad of websites and directories and networks where you can either hire full service firms or you can find freelancers who will do particular types of work for you. From website design to organizing your email, from mail handling services to taxes, outsourcing is a true art and there are tons of options available out there.

Here are a few I’ve worked with at one point (or still do) and can recommend:

• Ask Sunday
  This is a fairly new firm based in New York and operating out of India. I used their service for about two months before deciding to go with another firm. They aren’t bad, I was just too busy to handle both firms at the same time and the other was better.

• Get Friday

This is the firm I still use today. They provide excellent customer service and are very concerned with keeping you happy. Be VERY specific when you tell them what you want so you get the right assistant.

• Craigslist

If you’re looking for a few hired hands, Craigslist is pretty darn good. Some folks swear by it. I won’t go that far (it gets a bit too spammy for me at times) but it’s an excellent starting point.

• Elance, Guru, Odesk

Ideal for web design, web programming, or similar types of work that require a real expert. Spend time interviewing providers before you blow the whistle.

All of these websites make outsourcing easy, but I would also recommend looking around at your existing business and social networks. You may know someone who can do the job for you. Depending on the type of work you need done, a personal relationship could be a major advantage or a tremendous disadvantage. Keep that in mind when you’re choosing the person for the job.

Why Should You Outsource?

This point should be obvious enough. Outsourcing saves you time and should help you make more money. I’m not a big fan of cleaning my house. I’d much rather spend the time having fun and relaxing or working on a high-value project than do it myself. Simple enough.

But there’s another benefit to outsourcing: It makes you feel more executive and thus more responsible for your business. You begin to realize just how important it is to delegate. This is an important lesson to learn!

How Can You Make Outsourcing Work for You?

The most important thing you can do at this point is to get started NOW. Outsourcing isn’t going to come to you, you have to go to it and make it happen. Try out two or three service firms or other resources and just see how they go. Even if you lose a bit of money and it doesn’t work out, the learning experience will be immensely valuable to your growth as an entrepreneur and to the growth of your business.

I recommend taking action immediately. Add it to your list right now! Then, commit to spending a few minutes every day looking at new options or 30 minutes every week reviewing the results of your current outsourcing efforts. Outsourcing could make or break you, so learning how to do it the right way now is incredibly important.

This is a true story. I read the book over two years ago and worked like a dog to put his ideas into action. Now, I reveal exactly how it went down in my Five Part Series on the legendary Four Hour Work Week…

New to this blog series? Be sure to read the first four installments here:

• Part One: What is a 4HWW?
• Part Two: How My Fairy Tale Became Reality
• Part Three: Not Working is Really Not Working
• Part Four: Making the 4HWW Lifestyle Work

Uncharted Waters in Santorini, Greece

There’s no doubt in my mind that The Four Hour Work Week made me a better entrepreneur and helped me achieve a much higher degree of success than ever before. These days I work smarter and much more efficiently thanks to many of the core ideas in the book.

The funny thing about goal-setting is when you get really good at it, it actually starts happening. It’s the most exhilarating feeling to find yourself in a place you always hoped to be and then realize that it all happened because you made it happen. Truly awesome!

Then again, once you achieve a goal and quietly cross it of the proverbial list, a strange feeling comes over you. And that’s exactly what happened to me when I found myself on Santorini island in Greece during the last days of September 2009.

It was a very happy but very odd time. My business was doing great. I had more freedom than I could ever imagine. And every day was filled with endless opportunity. Life was very good. But something was missing.

And that’s when it dawned on me… The Four Hour Work Week model had served me well but it was time to move on to bigger and better things.

This is exactly when I knew that my life as an entrepreneur hinged upon three questions. I didn’t know I was asking these questions before I read The Four Hour Work Week but I definitely knew I was asking them now.

How Should You Grow Your Business?

With things going incredibly well with my web marketing services, I started wondering about taking on more. Originally, I wanted to keep things simple. Now I wanted to set the bar higher and keep growing.

There were two primary ways I wanted to grow my business: 1) expanding the marketing services by offering more to my quickly growing client-base and 2) increasing my visibility online with websites like JasonClegg.com and social networks.

This was a major departure from my “quiet web business” model of 2005-2009 but I was very excited about it — this is always a good sign when setting any new goal!

I think anyone who reads The Four Hour Work Week, puts the ideas into action, and finds success will also eventually end up on this position too. It’s exciting to think about growing a business (or starting a new business) from this position because you have already built up so much leverage, experience, and confidence to go in a new or a much bigger direction.

Plus, if you do it right, your existing business should be running smoothly without too much input from you. This allows for so much more freedom the “second time around” and an ability to make smarter, even more fulfilling decisions.

What Kind of Day-to-Day Life Do You Really Want?

Lifestyle is what it’s all about. Now that I had achieved my initial goals — traveling the world, working on my own schedule, and living freely — it was time to head back to the drawing board.

One of the biggest changes that took place in my life around this time in late 2009 was a new relationship. I never expected to find love during my travels in Europe, but it definitely happened and I knew instantly that this was one very important part of my equation.

Obviously, there’s nothing in The Four Hour Work Week about love life, but for me this really is something I always wanted. I don’t believe we should rely upon others to make us happy, but I do believe that intimate relationships, friendships, and family do contribute a great deal to personal happiness.

I also knew that a life of constant vagabonding and globe-trotting was not really my idea of long-term fulfillment. Coming home to the US with a great partner was a fantastic close to that chapter of my life. Today, we’re both working on building our lives and planning our future together. This is an exciting next step for me!

When is Your Next Mini-Retirement?

Travel is something I really value, so I knew that leaving Europe and coming back to the States would not mark the end of world exploration. This time, I just want to do it differently and with another person. There are plenty of examples in The Four Hour Work Week of families and couples traveling together, so I always knew this was a possibility. What I didn’t know was how much more exciting it could be.

Now I’m also thinking about mini-retirements in a very different way. Living in Malibu is like being on vacation every day. Plus, exploring the US is something I’d like to do much more since I’ve still visited far more countries than states.

Back to the Future – Back to Basics

Regardless of how I choose to shape my future beyond The Four Hour Work Week, I know that it always comes back to the fundamental points and lessons learned:

• Stay focused with priorities in business and personal life.
• Look for new ways to apply the 80/20 rule.
• Set new goals, keep working at them, and bring them to life!

One of the greatest rules in business is this: If you’re not growing, you’re dying. It’s a bit extreme but there’s a lot of truth behind it. And it applies just as much to the personal realm as it does to entrepreneurship.

Writing this 4HWW blog series has been a great experience for me. Looking back, I am very proud of what I’ve overcome to get here and what I’ve learned along the way. But I intend to keep setting the bar higher. I hope you do the same.

This is a true story. I read the book over two years ago and worked like a dog to put his ideas into action. Now, I reveal exactly how it went down in my Five Part Series on the legendary Four Hour Work Week…

New to this blog series? Be sure to read the first three installments here:

• Part One: What is a 4HWW?
• Part Two: How My Fairy Tale Became Reality
• Part Three: Not Working is Really Not Working

The Entrepreneurship Recipe

Entrepreneurship is about three things – building wealth, designing your lifestyle, and creating more freedom. This is my greatest lesson from all of my efforts to adopt principles from The Four Hour Work Week and to make them work for me.

When I started applying the 4HWW principles, I had no idea what to expect but the practice was incredibly powerful. I learned a lot about what it takes to build a thriving business (and NOT a self-employment venture), and I learned even more about myself and my goals.

While living in Berlin and traveling around Europe, I had a unique opportunity to start over and begin thinking about designing my lifestyle in exactly the way I wanted. Living abroad was completely new, as was having a company cruise along without constant input from me — aside from the occasional “putting out fires” work.

But this was the mere tip of the iceberg.

Creative Lifestyle Design v. Copy-and-Paste

Don’t get me wrong – all of Tim’s suggestions are awesome but, as he points out himself, they’re mere starting points to get you moving in your own direction.

The hardest part of becoming an entrepreneur is just getting off the ground and building your business into something viable and stable. But the part of the equation most people miss is that entrepreneurship is a complete picture — YOU are the entrepreneur. YOUR efforts and YOUR goals are the machine. The fuel is YOUR vision, not someone else’s ideas.

Some claim that Tim Ferriss coined the term “lifestyle design.” Whether that’s true or not, lifestyle design is the single biggest reason behind the success of The Four Hour Work Week and all of Tim’s popularity (or unpopularity, as the case may be).

For so long, entrepreneurship and business development was about suits, ties, and briefcases. Now it’s about world travel, nomadic living, and mini-retirements. That’s something you can sink your teeth into!

But it’s not all about lifestyle and “running amok like a rock star.” It’s also about generating a comfortable income and increasing the degree of freedom you experience in life. This is the three-ingredient recipe that I have derived from my experiments and experiences in the last few years — wealth, lifestyle, freedom.

Most people seem to miss a very crucial point in The Four Hour Work Week book. Very early on in the text, Ferriss unpacks his acronym DEAL… Definition, Elimination, Automation, and Liberation. As Wikipedia reminds us…

“Definition means to figure out what a person wants, get over fears, see past society’s “expectations,” and figure out what it will really cost to get where a person wants to go.”

In creating your own lifestyle, the last thing you should ever do is expect someone else’s ideas to make you happy…

Being Anti-Social Defining Your Happiness

One of my biggest critiques of Tim Ferriss is his disdain for social networking. He almost isolates himself from the rest of the world with gatekeepers, low information diets, and all the rest. To be honest, and to be fair, I’m not really up-to-speed on how Tim’s handling Facebook, Twitter, and BBC reports these days but his original message was to avoid all of it as much as possible.

During the early periods of my 4HWW developments, I did exactly the same. Let me tell you, the results were absolutely amazing!

But there’s a line to draw somewhere…

If it makes you happy to stay up-to-date on the latest news or to peruse social networks as leisure activity, then do it! Tim’s right: we all need a little info-break periodically. But I’m not so sure that cutting yourself off from the rest of the world will actually make you happier. That’s your call.

Again, this is about making it work for you. Take the advice in The Four Hour Work Week with a grain of salt and find ways to make Tim’s suggestions work for YOU. Instead of keeping your social media applications running all day, set a time in the day to check and update them. Instead of checking your email constantly, use a program like Self Control or Freedom to get off the web for extended periods to write for your blog or do another landscape painting. Whatever. Just realize that too much of anything probably isn’t going to enhance the quality of your life.

Write Your Own Four Hour Work Week Story

I’m very happy to see Tim Ferriss releasing a new edition of The Four Hour Work Week. Hopefully more people will be inspired to think about starting their own business and stop depending on questionable corporations to do it all for us.

But what I’d really like to see more of is entrepreneurs creating their own visions for how they plan to build wealth, create lifestyle, and increase freedom.

If you haven’t already, go out and read The Four Hour Work Week. When you’re done, start writing your own entrepreneurship story.

In the final installment of this series, I’ll discuss how to move beyond The Four Hour Work Week to keep building wealth, expanding your freedom, and designing exactly the kind of lifestyle you really want! Stay tuned…

This is a true story. I read the book over two years ago and worked like a dog to put his ideas into action. Now, I reveal exactly how it went down in my Five Part Series on the legendary Four Hour Work Week…

New to this blog series? Be sure to read the first two installments here:

• My Four Hour Work Week Story Part One

• My Four Hour Work Week Story Part Two

Live from Berlin – An Entrepreneur without a Job

Living in Berlin was everything I hoped for and more! I got an apartment. I took German language classes at a local school. I met plenty of Germans and fellow ex-pats. I took side trips to some of my favorite European destinations. I even met my girlfriend there. We both lived in Berlin and came back to the US together at the beginning of October 2009. In short, I had a blast!

But my original plan to go abroad and work just four hours per week or so came with some major problems…

First, there were general business issues.
When problems come up and you’re the guy on top, you have to solve them – especially when your business systems are fairly new. I’ve been in business for a long time, but this was the first time I had many other people working “for me” that I had to manage. This stuff simply could not wait if I expected to keep the trains running.

Of course, a true 4HWW business eliminates as many “people problems” as possible by not dealing with people at all, but my business is marketing services and people are essential to what we do.

Then, there were my issues.
Not working is not as easy as it sounds, people. Believe you me. After I got to Berlin, I spent the first month or so just aimlessly exploring, meeting new people, and frittering away the days. At a certain point, that got a bit boring. The language classes helped but not working at all was challenging. Still, it was very good for me to experience this. I got to let a lot out of my system and I’m a stronger person now because of it.

Problems with the Four Hour Work Week Philosophy

A four hour work week is possible, but it really should NOT be the end goal. If you’re an entrepreneur, you really should enjoy building a successful business. IMHO, you should enjoy doing it over and over again. Working should be something you enjoy, not something you’re trying to avoid…

But I do believe in working smart, not hard.

One of the key points in The Four Hour Work Week is learning how to delegate. Every business owner needs to learn how to delegate tasks to others to free up his or her time to focus on really critical things: marketing, new products, networking, etc.

At the end of the day, this is the real message of Tim Ferriss’ book: work smart and not hard as an entrepreneur so you can focus on the top priorities and stop wasting your time on frivolous #&!@.

The 4HWW = An 80/20 Case Study

What it all boils down to is this: The Four Hour Work Week is basically an expanded case study on Pareto’s Principle (aka Pareto’s Law) or the 80/20 rule.

The 80/20 rule says you should always look to maximize results by understanding where most of your results originate. As Tim Ferriss puts it…

• What 20% of your customers cause 80% of your problems?
• Or, what 20% of your customers generate 80% of your profit, etc etc?

That’s the message folks. To be a great entrepreneur in an era of information overload, you have to learn how to 80/20 everything — your email, your contacts, your personal life, and especially your daily business-building work.

As we all know, many of the examples in Tim’s book are a bit ridiculous. Stephanie was also keen to point out that getting in touch with Tim Ferriss is a bit like trying to contact the gatekeeper to heaven. There’s definitely something a bit disconcerting about someone so impersonal in his networking style.

But I do believe a lot of the examples and suggestions inside the book should be considered more of a bootcamp style regimen than a framework for the rest of your life. Try out the 4HWW suggestions, put them into action, and then do what works for you.

In the next installment of this series, I’ll show you exactly how I modified The Four Hour Work Week model to work for me and how you might do the same! Stay tuned…

This is a true story. I read the book over two years ago and worked like a dog to put his ideas into action. Now, I reveal exactly how it went down in my Five Part Series on the legendary Four Hour Work Week…

New to this blog series? Be sure to read Part 1 first here: My Four Hour Work Week Story Part One.

Reading Books and Chasing Fairy Tales

I started my first business in college. I sold used books on Amazon.com at a markup and made a pretty decent monthly income. I was never going to get rich selling books online, but I learned a lot about building a business and built the confidence I needed to do it again the right way.

After I sold my first business and liquidated the inventory, I knew I wanted to do something totally different. Most importantly, I did NOT want a massive inventory to hold me down. At the rate I was going with bookselling, I would eventually need a massive warehouse with forklifts and a shipping center. Forget it!

That’s when I stumbled upon marketing.

To make a very long story very short, I went from Amazon third-party seller to independent web marketing consultant in a matter of months. At some point, the consulting started taking off and I realized that I really had something to offer. I worked for several years in this capacity and things were going quite well.

Then two books suddenly changed my life: The E-Myth and, of course, The Four Hour Work Week.

• The E-Myth basically taught me that building a business is very different from being self-employed and that most people confuse these two — including me.

• The Four Hour Work Week taught me that building a business is great but so is having a life and that you really can choose to do it the right way if you begin with the end in mind.

These two books made me an entrepreneur. I suddenly understood the difference and realized I had to do things differently if I really wanted to succeed. I had to create a business that did not really solely on me for things to get done or for customers to be happy. I had to start making moves and taking chances if I really wanted to create something big and move beyond my profitable but small local market.

Although both of these books set me on the right path, I have to give far more credit to The Four Hour Work Week for one very essential ingredient, the burning desire to achieve a very clear goal…

You see, after I read 4HWW I set an incredibly tangible goal for myself: to build a business that could run without me while I went globe-trotting to faraway lands. Less than 2 years after I read Tim’s book, my goal became a reality and — as Tim puts it in The Four Hour Work Week — “my life has been a near fairy-tale since.”

A Fairy Tale Turned Real

The reason I give so much credit to Tim’s book for helping me build a thriving business is simple: the 4HWW inspired me to get out of a life I did not want to live and into a life I really really really wanted to live. Travel, freedom, independence, laptop mobility — I daydreamed about these elements constantly. I wanted them so bad, I would do whatever it would take to make it happen.

But here’s the real kicker… Not only did I now have something to work for that I really really really wanted — I was then living a life that I knew I absolutely did NOT want. Going through the motions in a dead-end relationship. Sleepwalking in a boring job. Living in a dreadful setting. All of it made me work that much harder just to get out.

And that’s exactly what I did.

After teaching 30-40 hours per week at the college, I would regularly spend an additional 30-40 hours per week building my business. 12 hour days became the norm. Weekends were a thing of the past. All-nighers happened more often than I’d like to admit.

But I was doing two very important things…

1. I was building a business with my goal in mind.
I knew that the point was to work less, so I was constantly moving in that direction. Yes, in the beginning the hours were long and the work was intense. But I always understood that those kinds of hours would eventually be a choice and not a mandatory process.

2. I was working towards a goal that I wanted more than anything else.
I would get so excited about my goal that the hard work rarely mattered. I knew that eventually I would arrive and it would be so worth it. And it was.

How My Dream Became a Reality

As my business started to grow, I suddenly realized that everything was about to happen as planned. The business revenue was increasing steadily. I was now working with over 10 outsourcers. I had even gone from a full-time instructor at the college to a very part-timer, teaching just one class on Friday mornings. I didn’t even need the teaching money anymore. I just did it to keep my foot in the door and to keep the fires burning towards my ultimate goal.

That’s when I started making real plans and taking dramatic action, much of it based on Tim’s detailed advice in The Four Hour Work Week.

First, I sold nearly everything I no longer needed in my condo. Then, I went paperless and setup a remote office to receive all mail and personal phone calls using EarthClassMail.com and PhoneTag.com — two services I highly recommend.

Then, I started making plans for my first relocation in Berlin, Germany. I already had a few contacts there, knew a little German, and had a fairly good idea of what to expect. I also planned a brief stop-off in Dublin for a week or two to disconnect from my “old life” and begin my journey into this new and exciting world.

Living a Dream and Dreaming Something New

In March 2009 I left SFO airport and headed first for Dublin and then to Berlin. The feeling I had the day I boarded the plane in San Francisco was unimaginable. Freedom and independence, plus a chance to recreate my life as a laptop entrepreneur — all of it was so unbelievable!

While living in Berlin, my business continued to grow. I have to admit: there were plenty of times, especially in the beginning, when I didn’t know what to expect. But month-by-month everything was happening right on schedule.

I spent a lot of time in Berlin just meeting new people, studying German, exploring the city and, well… not working. I could have been building the business, expanding, and working on new projects, but this time was so important for me to disconnect.

Now that I had achieved my goal, things began slowly changing. I suddenly realized that moving to Berlin was just the first step in a much bigger experience and that it was time to start taking full control and moving towards even bigger goals.

And that’s when things started to change again…

In the next installment of this series, I’ll look at some of the problems I encountered with my new 4HWW lifestyle and how I solved them to create my own systems in my very own way. Stay tuned…

This is a true story.  I read the book over two years ago and worked like a dog to put his ideas into action.  Now, I reveal exactly how it went down in my Five Part Series on the legendary Four Hour Work Week…

Although most of my writings here at JasonClegg.com tend to cover entrepreneurship and Internet Business topics, I consider these “lifestyle design” issues (a term coined by Ferriss) extremely important.  How we approach our work is almost as important as the very work we do since it defines how we live in this very strange post-office world.  So, enough s’plaining — on with the story!

The Four Hour Work Week Plus Overtime

Tim Ferriss recently released his new updated and expanded version of his immensely popular Four Hour Work Week, which got me thinking about my own experience with this compelling piece of business nonfiction.  Tim released the first version of 4HWW back in April of 2007, nearly 3 years ago.  I picked up a hardcopy and then an audio copy sometime during the summer of 2007 when the book was really starting to take off.  And I’ll tell you what, folks — no single book or “business idea” has shaped my thinking as much before or since.

That said, I think Ferriss’ ideas have been perverted, twisted, and misunderstood by tons of people — this includes some of his biggest fans as well as some of his greatest critics.

The whole “Four Hour Work Week” phenomenon reminds me a lot of “The Secret” — that magical video that got millions of people doing creative visualization à la Shakti Gawain and “pretend driving” Ferraris and Lamborghinis in their bedrooms just before dozing off to sleep at night.

Don’t get me wrong: I think “The Secret” was great.  But let’s face it, success and prosperity does not happen by day-dreaming in your bubble-bath.

Likewise, achieving a Four Hour Work Week is not for the faint of heart (or the lazy, for that matter).  Here’s the deal: I want to come clean on my own experience with the 4HWW concept and explore some of the details of this idea.  My intention is not to suggest that you should do what I did nor is it to make Ferriss look like a superhero or a demon.  I simply want to take an honest look at the ideas behind what I consider to be one of the most influential books of early 21st century business culture…

What is a Four Hour Work Week?

One of the most misunderstood ideas behind Ferriss’ 4HWW concept is the most obvious: How the #$!@ can anyone work just 4 hours per week? Look people, just because the book is called Four Hour Work Week does not mean that you’re supposed to (or that we’re all supposed to) work only 4 hours per week.  This is just a catchy title and, perhaps more importantly, a play on what we’re used to seeing… “the forty hour work week.”

Now, I do understand that if a book title insists on itself then the contents of the book should deliver.  Agreed.  In fact, Tim Ferriss’s book does an excellent job of showing exactly how to achieve a 4HWW.  Is everybody going to do it?  Definitely not.  It takes tremendous discipline and dedication to do it, a few ingredients most of us lack.

But IMHO, the most important thing to understand about this book is that work time is often frivolously wasted on pointless activities instead of groundbreaking, critical work.  A 4HWW is a work week with clear priorities and plans of action, not dilly-dallying and screwing off on the web.  (After all, isn’t this what most of us are up to on the web throughout a typical work day?)

And, of course, a 4HWW is not intended to necessarily be just that.  What if you’re an attorney working 80+ hours per week?  It would be absolutely amazing to read Tim’s book and go from 80 hrs to just 60 or 40 or even 20!  Whatever your situation, the 4HWW prescription is completely relative.

Achieving the goal that works best for you takes work.  This is the other misleading part of Tim’s writing.  I don’t think he misleads, but I think mass popularity of the book and its ideas misleads.  You have to put in effort to make something happen.  You can’t just expect your transformation to happen overnight or without a little pain and a little extra time.

The hardest part for most (definitely for me) is replacing work with something else.  As you’ll see in my persona 4HWW story to come, a lot of people who get started with Tim’s ideas are actually going to enter a period of more work and time exerted than before.  This is necessary to get through the initial period and make your desired change a reality.

In the next installment of this series, I’ll reveal all of the details from my very exciting experience with the Four Hour Work Week including exactly how I implemented Tim’s ideas into my own business and went from a 60 hour+ work week as a business owner and college instructor to an on-my-own-time successful entrepreneur.  Stay tuned…

In the meantime, please share any of your thoughts on the Four Hour Work Week and your personal experiences below.

Let’s just cut to the chase – The Magic of Thinking Big is an incredibly valuable text for anyone looking to rewire their thinking patterns in the direction of success. Entrepreneurs beware: This book is going to change your #@$#@ life!

David Schwartz is one of the most impressive “success literature” writers I’ve come across to date. The guy is 100% straightforward without the bull. He gets right to the core issues that lead most people to failure and a few to success. And as we all know, it’s all in your head.

What’s Your Excuse for Failure?
Right in the beginning of The Magic of Thinking Big, Schwartz lays into the most common problem everybody has with achieving their goals – EXCUSES. According to Schwartz, excuses are the #1 reason people fail. And most people chalk up their excuses to AGE, TIME, HEALTH, and INTELLIGENCE.

Think about it. How many times have you put something off because you are convinced you didn’t have the time to do it? How many times have you decided you couldn’t achieve something because you are too old or too young to make it happen? And how many times have you complained about your health? (Personally, this is my greatest pet peeve. People are always going on and on about how bad they feel. Who wants to hear that nonsense?)

But what I love most about this book is Schwartz gives you nowhere to run and hide. He quickly and effortlessly shows how each and every excuse you create is just an excuse and nothing more. It all boils down to one point – there is only one reason you are not achieving your goals, dreams, and ambitions: YOU.

Entrepreneurship is Thinking Big
There’s so much more to appreciate about The Magic of Thinking Big, but I’m sure you’re not exactly in the mood for a detailed review. If you’re reading this and you’re looking to get more out of life by getting greater control over your thought patterns and taking more control, I highly recommend you get a copy of this book (in fact I URGE you to do it).

Whether your goal is to start your own successful business or to get more out of your existing business, you must remember that entrepreneurship success comes down to the focus and determination of you, the one person who sets and achieves the right goals. Schwartz will help you to think more like a successful leader, to be more forward-thinking, and to get more support and cooperation from the people who matter most on your way to the top.

Audio Books for Lazy Readers
This is a bit of a geek confession, but I’ve always loved books and reading. Somewhere along the way, though, I fell in love with audio books. I’d say 60-70% of the books I read these days I “read” on audio. It’s a great way to enjoy the benefits of reading while driving, working out, or working on other tasks. I’m not a big fan of multi-tasking but I do think audio reading can be a nice way to make use of otherwise idle time.

I highly recommend the The Magic of Thinking Big (AudioBook/Audio CD). Many of the passages throughout the book are read by different voices which gives the audio version an upbeat and dramatic quality. Enjoy!

In our latest podcast, Stephanie Frasco and I rap about some great topics:

• Women as Entrepreneurs & Business Builders
• The Recent Financial Crisis & Internet Business
• Why Social Marketing is Critical for Entrepreneurs Everywhere

With our unique backgrounds online — Stephanie in social media and myself in search marketing — these topics come together quite nicely for a pretty lively discussion.

Women as Entrepreneurs

I’m a huge believer in the power of entrepreneurship to change everyone’s lives, but I think women might benefit even more than men in many cases.  The traditional workplace has long been overrun with and managed by men — at least in high-powered executive positions.  But with the web, so many doors have opened for women to make their way without leaving home.  I should know:  Stephanie and I both work from our place in Malibu and the impact on our lives and our relationship has been tremendous.

Financial Crisis in Internet Business

Despite the difficult economic times many “offline business” owners have experienced, especially within the last year, the web has seen some dramatic gains.  Now is a great time to start looking to the Internet for financial freedom and success in entrepreneurship!

Social Media for Entrepreneurs

Finally, we conclude our program with a brief discussion on how social networks are already playing a huge role online and will continue to do so in the years ahead.

I hope you enjoy the show!  Please leave your thoughts and comments below, and we’ll be sure to include them in our next episode.