The 4-Hour Workweek

The Power of Now

Think and Grow Rich

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

The 4-Hour Workweek

Tim Ferriss

Actionable Takeaways

Embrace the 80/20 (Pareto’s) Principle
Automate and Delegate
Adopt a Results-Oriented Work Environment

In 3 Sentences by ChatGPT

The “4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss advocates for a radical redesign of work and lifestyle, emphasizing the importance of automation, outsourcing, and focusing on high-impact tasks to achieve greater freedom and efficiency. Ferriss introduces the concept of “lifestyle design,” encouraging readers to create businesses that require minimal maintenance and provide the flexibility to pursue personal passions. The book also offers practical strategies for escaping the traditional 9-to-5 grind and leveraging remote work and entrepreneurship to achieve a more balanced and fulfilling life.

Memorable Quotes

“The opposite of happiness is boredom. If you’re not doing something that excites you, then you’re wasting your time.”

“People are always looking for the perfect solution, the perfect job, the perfect relationship. The truth is, there is no perfect. There is only the best you can do at the moment.”

“You don’t have to be a genius, you just have to be yourself.”

“Focus on being productive instead of busy.”

“Most people are living a life of quiet desperation and are so afraid to rock the boat that they would rather cling to a life that is unfulfilling than risk doing something different.”

“Remember that fear is the most powerful motivator and that it will stop you from doing what you really want to do.”

“The goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, but to create more of what you want.”

“The things you own end up owning you.”

“You don’t need to be a millionaire to live like one.”

“What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.”

Excerpts from the Text

My Story and Why You Need This Book

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” – Oscar Wilde

I never enjoyed answering this cocktail question because it reflects an epidemic I was long part of: job descriptions as self-descriptions.

The New Rich (NR) are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility. This is an art and a science we will refer to as Lifestyle Design (LD).

People don’t want to be millionaires – they want to experience what they believe only millionaires can buy.

$1,000,000 in the bank isn’t the fantasy. The fantasy is the lifestyle of complete freedom it supposedly allows. The question is then, How can one achieve the millionaire lifestyle of complete freedom without first having $1,000,000?

What is the pot of gold that justifies spending the best years of your life hoping for happiness in the last?

Test the most basic assumptions of the work-life equation.

How do your decisions change if retirement isn’t an option?
What if you could use a mini-retirement to sample your deferred-life plan reward before working 40 years for it?
Is it really necessary to work like a slave to live like a millionaire?

The commonsense rules of the “real world” are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.

I believe you can have both now. The goal is fun and profit.

Reality is negotiable. Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken, and it doesn’t require being unethical.

Entrepreneur – French economist J.B. Say – one who shifts economics resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher yield.

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” – Niels Bohr

Step I: D is for Definition

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” – Albert Einstein

Chapter 1 – Cautions and Comparisons: How to Burn $1,000,000 A Night

“These individuals have riches just as we say that we “have a fever,” when in reality the fever has us.” – Seneca

“I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.” – Henry David Thoreau

Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of W’s you control in your life: what you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it. I call this the “freedom multiplier.”

Using this as our criterion, the 80-hour-per-week, $500,000-per-year investment banker is less “powerful” than the employed NR who works 1/4 the hours for $40,000, but has complete freedom of when, where, and how to live. The former’s $500,000 may be worth less than $40,000 and the latter’s $40,000 worth more than $500,000 when we run the numbers and look at the lifestyle output of their money.

Options – the ability to choose – is real power.

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” – Pablo Picasso

There are always lateral options. – Think Dale Begg-Smith of Aussie skiing and tech start-up

Chapter 2 – Rules that Change the Rules

“I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.” Herbert Bayard Swope

“Everything popular is wrong.” – Oscar Wilde

Sports evolve when sacred cows are killed, when basic assumptions are tested. The same is true in life and lifestyles.

Traditional retirement could span 30 years and inflation lowers your purchasing power 2-4% per year.

The NR aims to distribute “mini-retirements” throughout life instead of hoarding the recovery and enjoyment for the fool’s gold of retirement. By working only when you are most effective life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It’s the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.

Personally, I now aim for one month of overseas relocation or high-intensity learning (tango, fighting, whatever) for every two months of work projects.

Our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.

Focus on being productive instead of busy.

The Timing Is Never Right

For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up all the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it “eventually,” just do it and correct course along the way.

Ask for Forgiveness, Not Permission

If it isn’t going to devastate those around you, try it and then justify it. People – whether parents, partners, or bosses – deny things on an emotional basis that they can learn to accept after the fact. If the potential damage is moderate or in any way reversible, don’t give people the chance to say no. Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitant to get in the way if you’re moving. Get good at being a troublemaker and saying sorry when you really screw up.

Emphasize Strengths, Don’t Fix Weaknesses

It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor. The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre. Focus on better use of your best weapons instead of constant repair.

Lifestyle Design is not interested in creating an excess of idle time, which is poisonous, but the positive use of free time defined simply as doing what you want as opposed to what you feel obligated to do.

Relative income has two variables: the dollar and time, usually hours. The whole “per year” concept is arbitrary and makes it easy to trick yourself. Let’s look at the real trade. Jane Doe makes $100,000 per year, $2,000 for each of the 50 weeks per year, and works 80 hours per week. Jane Doe thus makes $25 per hour. John Doe makes $50,000 per year, $1,000 for each of 50 weeks per year, but works 10 hours per week and hence makes $100 per hour. In relative income, John is four times richer.

Eustress is a work most of you have probably never heard. Eu-, a Greek prefix for “healthy,” is used in the same sense in the word “euphoria.” Role models who push us to exceed our limits, physical training that removes our spare tires, and risks that expand our sphere of comfortable action are all examples of eustress – stress that is healthful and the stimulus for growth.

Chapter 3 – Dodging Bullets

“Many a false step was made by standing still.” – Fortune Cookie

“Named must your fear be before banish it you can.” – Yoda

It’s not giving up to put your current path on indefinite pause.

“Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?” – Seneca

“There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, “Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything,” and an optimist who says, “Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway.” Either way, nothing happens.” – Yvon Chouinard

“You have comfort. You don’t have luxury. And don’t tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do this money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have no fear of discomfort.” – Jean Cocteau

Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering.
What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily?
What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, or more probably scenarios?
If you were fired from your job today, what would you do to get things under financial control?
What are you putting off out of fear?
What is it costing you – financially, emotionally, and physically – to postpone action?
What are you waiting for?

Chapter 4 – System Reset

Doing the Unrealistic is Easier Than Doing the Realistic

If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.

Having an unusually large goal is an adrenaline infusion that provides the endurance to overcome the inevitable trials and tribulations that go along with any goal. Realistic goals, goals restricted to the average ambition level, are uninspiring and will only fuel you through the first or second problem, at which point you throw in the towel. If the potential payoff is mediocre or average, so is your effort.

The fishing is best where the fewest go, and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone else is aiming for base hits. There is just less competition for bigger goals.

Doing big things begins with asking for them properly.

Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.

“What would excite me?”

This is how most people work until death: “I’ll just work until I have X dollars and then do what I want.” If you don’t define the “what I want” alternative activities, the X figure will increase indefinitely to avoid the fear-inducing uncertainty of this void.

Remember – boredom is the enemy, not some abstract “failure.”

Dreamlining – it applies timelines to what most would consider dreams

The goals shift from ambiguous wants to defined steps.
The goals have to be unrealistic to be effective.
It focuses on activities that will fill the vacuum created when work is removed. Living like a millionaire requires doing interesting things and not just owning enviable things.

Fail Better

“I do what I always do: find a personal email if possible, often through their little-known personal blogs, send a two- to three-paragraph email which explains that I am familiar with their work, and ask one simple-to-answer but thought-provoking question in that email related to their work or life philosophies. The goal is to start a dialogue so they take the time to answer future emails – not to ask for help. That can only come after at least three or four genuine email exchanges.”

“Life is too short to be small.” – Benjamin Disraeli

The best first step, the one I recommend, is finding someone who’s done it and ask for advice on how to do the same. It’s not hard.

To have an uncommon lifestyle, you need to develop the uncommon habit of making decisions, both for yourself and for others.

Remember: There is a direct correlation between an increased sphere of comfort and getting what you want.

Step II: E is for Elimination

“One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.” – Bruce Lee

Chapter 5 – The End of Time Management

“Perfection is where there is no more to add, but no more to take away.” Antoine De Saint-Exupery

“It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.” – William of Occam

Being Effective vs. Being Efficient

Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible.

Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.

What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is useless unless applied to the right things.

“What gets measured gets managed.” – Peter Drucker

Pareto’s Law: 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs.

The goal is to find your inefficiencies in order to eliminate them and to find your strengths so you can multiply them.

Make no mistake, maximum income from minimum necessary effort (including minimum number of customers) is the primary goal.

Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.

“Entrepreneurs are those who make things happen.” – Ed Zschau

Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It is the magic of the imminent deadline. If I give you 24 hours to complete a project, the time pressure forces you to focus on exertion, and you have no choice but to do only the bare essentials. If I give you a week to complete the same task, it’s six days of making a mountain out of a molehill. If I give you two months, God forbid, it becomes a mental monster. The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.

Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20).
Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law).

The best solution is to use both together. Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

“Love of bustle is not industry.” – Seneca

Ask yourself: Am I being productive or just active? Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important?

The key to having more time is doing less, and there are two paths to getting there, both of which should be used together: (1) Define a to-do list and (2) define a not-to-do list. In general terms, there are but two questions:

What 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
What 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcome and happiness?

You are the average of the five people you associate with most.

If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?

As for “outsourcing” your banking, any company that needs to take checks (cheques) should consider a lock box solution. Just about any bank that does business banking offers it. All checks go to a PO box at the bank, the bank processes the checks and deposits them, and according to your instructions can send you a file of all the checks that are deposited. Normally this can be done in either a flat, Excel or other file type that can interface with any accounting systems from Excel, to Quicken to SAP. Quite cost effective.

Chapter 6 – The Low Information Diet

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” – Herbert Simon

“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brains too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” – Albert Einstein

Problems, as a rule, solve themselves or disappear if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others.

“There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The first step is to develop and maintain a low-information diet.

“Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.” – Robert J. Sawyer

Develop the habit of asking yourself, “Will I definitely use this information for something immediate and important?

It is not enough to use information for “something” – it needs to be immediate and important. If “no” on either count, don’t consume it. Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.

Practice the art of nonfinishing.

More is not better, and stopping something is often 10 times better than finishing it.

Chapter 7 – Interrupting Interruption and the Art of Refusal

“Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. – Ralph Charell

“Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.” – Dave Barry

Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without have to beg or fight for it every time.

Use this to cut the BS: “Hi, I’m right in the middle of something. How can I help you?”

“No, I have a minute. What can I do for you?”

From this moment forward, resolve to keep those around you focused and avoid all meetings, whether in person or remote, that do not have clear objectives. It is possible to do this tactfully, but expect that some time wasters will be offended the first few times their advances are rejected. Once it is clear that remaining on task is your policy and not subject to change, they will accept it and move on with life. Hard feelings pass. Don’t suffer fools or you’ll become one.

“The vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the information about what’s going on so they can do a lot more than they’ve done in the past.” – Bill Gates

For the employee, the goal is the have full access to necessary information and as much independent decision-making ability as possible. For the entrepreneur, the goal is to grant as much information and independent decision-making ability to employees or contractors as possible.

It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them.

People are smarter than you think. Give them a chance to prove themselves.

Realize that bosses are supervisors, not slave masters. Establish yourself as a consistent challenger of the status quo and most people will learn to avoid challenging you, particularly if it is in the interest of higher per-hour productivity.

If you are a micromanaging entrepreneur, realize that even if you can do something better than the rest of the world, it doesn’t mean that’s what you should be doing if it’s part of the minutiae. Empower others to act without interrupting you.

For the entrepreneur of manager, give others the chance to prove themselves. The likelihood of irreversible or expensive problems is minimal and the time savings are guaranteed. Remember, profit is only profitable to the extent that you can use it. For that you need time.

Evernote

Mac Fujitsu ScanSnap

GrandCentral.com

Youmail.com

TimeDriver.com

Step III: A is for Automation

Chapter 8 – Outsourcing Life

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice. If you’re a man, you take it.” – Malcolm X

Using a Virtual Assistant (VA) as a simple exercise with no downside, the basics of management are covered in a 2-4 week test costing between $100-$400. This is an investment, not an expense, and the ROI is astounding. It will be repaid in a maximum of 10-14 days, after which it is pure timesaving profit.

Even if you have no intention of becoming an entrepreneur, this is the ultimate continuation of our 80/20 and elimination process: Preparing someone to replace you (even if it never happens) will produce an ultrarefined set of rules that will cut remaining fat and redundancy from your schedule. Lingering unimportant tasks will disappear as soon as someone else is being paid to do them.

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” – Bill Gates

Principle number one is to refine rules and processes before adding people. Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production; using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems.

“I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.” – Bishop Desmond Tutu

Each delegated task must be both time-consuming and well-defined.

VA – More in-depth – Page 132 – 134

How do you know which to choose? That’s the beautiful part: You don’t. It’s a matter of testing a few assistants to both sharpen your communication skills and determine who is worth hiring and who is worth firing. Being a results-based boss isn’t as simple as it looks.

Per-hour cost is not the ultimate determinant of cost. Look at per-task cost. If you need to spend time restating the task and otherwise managing the VA, determine the time required of you and add this (using you per-hour rate from earlier chapters) to the end sticker price of the task. It can be surprising. As cool as it is to say that you have people working for you in three countries, it’s uncool to spend time babysitting people who are supposed to make your life easier.

In the context of Vas, redundancy entails having fallback support. Hire a VA firm or VA’s with backup teams instead of sole operators.

Commit to memory the following – never use the new hire. Prohibit small-operation VA’s from subcontracting work to untested freelancers without your written permission. The more established and higher-end firms have security measures that border on excessive and make it simple to pinpoint abusers in the case of a breach.

Never use debit cards for online transactions or with remote assistants…(page 140)
If your VA will be accessing websites on your behalf, create a new unique login and password to be used on those sites…

Choosing a VA – Page 142 – 147

Chapter 9 – Income Autopilot I

“As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Business Model Revenue Stream:

A prospective customer sees his Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising on Google or other search engines and clicks through to his site.
The prospect orders a product for $325 (the average purchase price, though prices range from $29-$7,500) on a Yahoo shopping cart, and a PDF with all their billing and shipping information is automatically emailed.
Three times a week, he presses a single button in the Yahoo management page to charge all his customers’ credit cards and put cash in his bank account. Then he saves the PDFs as Excel purchase orders and emails the purchase orders to the manufacturers of the CD libraries. Those companies mail the products to his customers – this is called drop-shipping – and he pays the manufacturers as little as 45% of the retail price of the products up to 90 days later (net-90 terms)

For each $325 order at his cost of 55% off retail, he is entitled to $178.75. If we subtract 1% of the full retail price (1% of $325 = $3.25) for the Yahoo Store transaction fee and 2.5% for the credit card processing fee (2.5% of $325 = $8.13), he is left with a pretax profit of $167.38 for this one sale.

Multiple this by 10 and we have $1,673.80 in profit for 30 minutes of work. He is making $3,347.60 per hour and purchases no product in advance. His initial start-up costs were $1,200 for the webpage design, which he recouped in the first week. His PPC advertising costs approximately $700 per month and he pays Yahoo $99 per month for their hosting and shopping cart.

He works for less than two hours a week, often pulls more than $10,000 per month, and there is no financial risk whatsoever.

Reasons to Turn Away Business:

First, the more competing resellers there are, the faster your product goes extinct.

Second, if you offer someone exclusivity, which most manufacturers try to avoid, it can work in your favor. Since you are offering one company 100% of distribution, it is possible to negotiate better profit margins (offering less of a discount off retail price), better marketing support in-store, faster payment, and other preferential treatment.

It is illegal to control how much someone sells your product for, but you can dictate ho w much they advertise it for. This is done by including a Minimum Advertised Pricing (MAP) policy in your General Terms and Conditions (GTC), which are agreed to automatically when a written wholesale order is placed. Sample GTC and order forms are available at www.fourhourblog.com.

Step One: Pick an Affordably Reachable Niche

If everyone is your customer, then no one is your customer.
Ask yourself the following questions to find profitable niches:
1. Which social, industry, and professional groups do you belong to, have you belonged to, or do you understand, whether dentists, engineers, rock climbers, recreational cyclists, car restoration aficionados, dancers, or other?
2. Which of the groups you have identified have their own magazine?
  - Call these magazines, speak to the advertising directors, and tell them that you are considering advertising; ask them to email their current advertising rate card and include both readership numbers and magazine back-issue samples. Search the back issues for repeat advertisers who sell direct-to-consumer via 800 numbers or websites – the more repeat advertisers, and the more frequent their ads, the more profitable a magazine is for them…and will be for us.

Step Two: Brainstorm (Do Not Invest In) Products

The Main Benefit Should Be Encapsulated in One Sentence.
- People can dislike you – and you often sell more by offending someone – but they should never misunderstand you. The main benefit of your product should be explainable in one sentence or phrase.
It Should Cost the Customer $50-$200.
It Should Take No More Than 3 to 4 Weeks to Manufacture.
- Aim for one to two weeks from order placement to shippable product.
- http://www.thomasnet.com/
- Request pricing from the contract manufacturers to ensure the proper markup is possible. Determine the per-unit costs of production for 100, 500, 1,000, and 5,000 units.
It Should Be Fully Explainable in a Good Online FAQ.

Option One: Resell a Product

To purchase at wholesale, use these steps:
1. Contact the manufacturer and request a “wholesale pricelist” (generally 40% off retail) and terms.
2. If a business tax ID number is needed, print out the proper forms from your state’s Secretary of State website and file for an LLC or similar protective business structure for $100-$200

Option Two: License a Product

Option Three: Create a Product

“Creation is a better means of self-expression than possession; is it through creating, no possessing, that life is revealed.” – Vida D. Scudder
To hire mechanical engineers or industrial designers: www.fourhourblog.elance
Sell information: books, blogs, websites.
The degree to which you personally need expert status also depends on how you obtain your information. There are three main options:
1. Create the content yourself, often via paraphrasing and combining points from several books on a topic.
2. Repurpose content that is in the public domain and not subject to copyright protection, such as government documents and materials that predates modern copyright law.
3. License content or compensate an expert to help create content. Fees can be one-time and paid up front or royalty-based (5-10% of net revenue, for example).
Use the following questions to brainstorm potential how-to or informational products that can be sold to your markets using your expertise or borrowed expertise:
1. How can you tailor a general skill for your market – what I call “niching down” – or add to what is being sold successfully in your target magazines? Think narrow and deep rather than broad.
2. What skills are you interested in that you – and others in your markets – would pay to learn? Become an expert in this skill for yourself and then create a product to teach the same. If you need help or want to speed up the process, consider the next question.
3. What experts could you interview and record to create a sellable audio CD? These people do not need to be the best, but just better than most. Offer them a digital master copy of the interview to do with or sell as they like (this is often enough) and/or offer them a small up-front or ongoing royalty payment. Use Skype.com with HotRecorder to record these conversations directly to your PC and send the mp3 file to an online transcription service.
4. Do you have a failure-to-success story that could be turned into a how-to product for others? Consider problems you’ve overcome in the past, both professional and personal.

The Expert Builder: How to Become a Top Expert in 4 Weeks:

Join two or three related trade organizations with official-sounding names.
Read the three top-selling books on your topic.
Give one free one-to-three-hour seminar at the closest well-known university.
Optional: Offer to write one or two articles for trade magazines.
Join ProfNet, which is a service that journalists use to find experts to quote for articles.

Q&A:

www.contactanycelebrity.com

Tools and Tricks:

www.alibaba.com
www.fourhourblog.com/wwb – Worldwide Brands
www.librivox.org – free audiobooks
www.inventright.com – Licensing Ideas to Others for Royalties

Chapter 10 – Income Autopilot II

For a good introduction to Google Adwords and PPC, visit www.google.com/onlinebusiness and www.fourhourblog.com and search “PPC.”
Google Adwords Keyword Tool (http://adwords.google.com/select/KeyToolExternal) Enter the potential search terms to find search volume and alternative terms with more search traffic. Click on the “Approx Avg Search Volume” column to sort results from most to least searched.
SEOBook Keyword Tool, SEO for Firefox Extension (http://tools.seobook.com/) This is an outstanding resource page with searches powered by Wordtracker.
www.domaininseconds.com
www.fourhourblog.com/weebly – create one-page advertisement and then create two additional pages using the form builder www.wufoo.com. If someone clicks on the “purchase” button at the bottom of the first page, it takes them to a second page with pricing, shipping and handling, and basic contact fields to fill out.
- Include shipping and handling prior to the final order page so people don’t finalize the order just to confirm the total pricing. You want the orders to reflect real orders and not just price checkers.
Disable the feature on Google that serves only the best-performing ad. This is necessary to later compare the click-through rates from each and combine the best elements (headline, domain name, and body text) into a final ad.
www.fourhourblog.com – for sophisticated tools and free spreadsheets, go to reader-only resources
Merchant account – checking account for receiving credit card payments (Authorize.net to process credit cards)

He orders two dozen more shirts with net-30 payment terms and puts a toll-free number in the print ad that forwards to his cell phone. He does this instead of using a website for two reasons: (1) He wants to determine the most common questions for his FAQ online, and (2) he wants to test an offer of $100 for one shirt ($75 in profit) or “buy two, get one free” ($200 – $75 = $125.00 profit).

Doug – ProSoundEffects.com – Steps: (pg. 189)

Market Selection
Product Brainstorm
Micro-Testing
Rollout and Automation

Tools and Tricks

The Shopp plug-in (http://shopplugin.net/) or Market Theme plug-in (www.fourhourblog.com/markettheme) can then be used to add e-commerce capabilities. Fourhourblog.com/shopify is another good all-in-one alternative.

Inexpensive but Dependable Hosting Service – pg. 194

Royalty-Free Photos and Materials – pg. 194

End-to-End Site Solutions with Payment Processing (Yahoo! Store) – pg. 195

Software for Understanding Web Traffic (Web Analytics) – pg. 196

Google Website Optimizer (WO) – pg. 196

Online Tools for Convenience**** pg. 198

The fastest way to market with a product idea is Registera.com. Get hosting from dathorn.com [a cheap reseller account, like www.domaininseconds.com]. Within two clicks set up a wordpress blog. Apply a theme to it. Add your content and a buy now button. The buy now button links to an enter e-mail address, phone number, etc., page. The user then clicks a continue to PayPal button.

Chapter 11 – Income Autopilot III

Page 203 – The Anatomy of Automation – The 4-Hour Work Week Virtual Architecture

Outsourcer Economics – Page 204

Milestones:

Phase I: 0-50 Total Units of Product Shipped
Phase II: >10 Units Shipped Per Week
1. www.mfsanet.org
2. Sample email responses for fulfillment purposes can be found at www.fourhourblog.com
3. “Net-30 terms” – payment for services 30 days after they’re rendered
Phase III: >20 Units Shipped Per Week
1. Before signing on with a call center, get several 800 numbers they answer for current clients and make test calls, asking difficult product-related questions and gauging sales abilities. Call each number at least three times (morning, afternoon, and evening) and note the make-or-break factor: wait time. The phone should be answered within three to four rings, and if you are put on hold, the shorter the wait the better. More than 15 seconds will result in too many abandoned calls and waste advertising dollars.

“Companies go out of business when they make the wrong decisions or, just as important, make too many decisions. The latter creates complexity.” – Make Maples

Serving the customer (“customer service”) is not becoming a personal concierge and catering to their every whim and want. Customer service is providing an excellent product at an acceptable price and solving legitimate problems (lost packages, replacements, refunds, etc.) in the fastest manner possible. That’s it.

The more options you offer the customer, the more indecision you create and the fewer orders you receive – it is a disservice all around. Furthermore, the more options you offer the customer, the more manufacturing and customer service burden you create for yourself.

The art of “undecision” refers to minimizing the number of decisions your customers can or need to make. Here are a few methods to reduce service overhead 20-80%:

Offer one or two purchase options (“basic” and “premium”) and no more.
Do not offer multiple shipping options. Offer one fast method instead and charge a premium.
Do not offer overnight or expedited shipping (it is possible to refer them to a reseller who does, as is true with all of these points), as these shipping methods will produce hundreds of anxious phone calls.
Eliminate phone orders completely and direct all prospects to online ordering. This seems outrageous until you realize that success stories like Amazon.com have depended on it as a fundamental cost-saver to survive and thrive.
Do not offer international shipments. Spending 10 minutes per order filling out customs forms and then dealing with customer complaints when the product costs 20-100% more with tariffs and duties is about as fun as headbutting a curb. It’s about as profitable, too.

Those who spend the least and ask for the most before ordering will do the same after the sale. Cutting them out is both a good lifestyle decision and a good financial decision. They are low-profit and high-maintenance customers.

Policies that attract the high-profit and low-maintenance customers:

Do not accept payment via Western Union, checks, or money order.
Raise wholesale minimums to 12-100 units and require a tax ID number to qualify resellers who are real businesspeople and not time-intensive novices. Don’t run a personal business school.
Refer all potential resellers to an online order form that must be printed, filled out, and faxed in. Never negotiate pricing or approve lower pricing for higher-volume orders. Cite “company policy” due to having had problems in the past.
Offer low-priced products instead of free products to capture contact information for follow-up sales. Offering something for free is the best way to attract time-eaters and spend money on those unwilling to return the favor.
Offer a lose-win guarantee instead of free trials.
Do not accept orders from common mail fraud countries such as Nigeria.

How to Look Fortune 500 in 45 Minutes:

Don’t be the CEO or founder.
Put multiple email and phone contacts on the website.
Set up an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) remote receptionist (www.angel.com)
Do not provide home addresses.

It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.

Step IV: L is for Liberation

“It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom that to go right in chains.” – Thomas H. Huxley

Chapter 12 – Disappearing Act

“By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.” – Robert Frost

“On this path, it is only the first step that counts.” – St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney

The guard is changing. Being bound to one place will be the new defining feature of middle class. The New Rich are defined by a more elusive power than simple cash – unrestricted mobility.

“Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him.” – Thomas J. Watson

Chapter 13 – Beyond Repair

I have quit three jobs and been fired from most of the rest. Getting fired, despite sometimes coming as a surprise and leaving you scrambling to recover, is often a godsend: Someone else makes the decision for you, and it’s impossible to sit in the wrong job for the rest of your life. Most people aren’t lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.

“If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.” – Chinese Proverb

Just because something has been a lot of work or consumed a lot of time doesn’t make it productive or worthwhile.

“The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.” – Colin Wilson

If there is any question of why you took a break or left your previous job, there is one answer that cannot be countered: “I had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do [exotic and envy-producing experience] and couldn’t turn it down. I figured that, with [20-40] years of work to go, what’s the rush?”

“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.

There are two types of mistakes: mistakes of ambition and mistakes of sloth. The first is the result of a decision to act – to do something. This type of mistake is made with incomplete information, as it’s impossible to have all the facts beforehand. This is to be encouraged. Fortune favors the bold.

The second is the result of a decision of sloth – to not do something – wherein we refuse to change a bad situation out of fear despite having all the facts. This is how learning experiences become terminal punishments, bad relationships become bad marriages, and poor job choices become lifelong prison sentences

The consequences of bad decisions do not get better with age.

“Only those who are asleep make no mistakes.” – Ingvar Kamprad

In the world of action and negotiation, there is one principle that governs all others: The person who has more options has more power. Don’t wait until you need options to search for them. Take a sneak peek at the future now and it will make both action and being assertive easier.

Health Insurance for Self-employed – page 250

Chapter 14 – Mini-Retirements

“Before the development of tourism, travel was conceived to be like study, and its fruits were considered to be the adornment of the mind and the formation of the judgment.” – Paul Fussell

“The simple willingness to improvise is more vital, in the long run, than research.” – Rolf Potts

Mexican Fisherman Fable – pg. 252

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” – Gandhi

Why not take the usual 20-30 year retirement and redistribute it throughout life instead of saving it all for the end?

The alternative to binge travel – the mini-retirement – entails relocating to one place for one to six months before going home or moving to another locale. It is the anti-vacation in the most positive sense. Though it can be relaxing, the mini-retirement is not an escape from your life but a reexamination and automation, what would you be escaping from? Rather than seeking to see the world through photo ops between foreign-but-familiar hotels, we aim to experience it at a speed that lets it change us.

True freedom is much more than having enough income and time to do what you want. It is quite possible – actually the rule rather than the exception – to have financial time and freedom but still be caught in the throes of the rate race. One cannot be free from the stresses of a speed- and size-obsessed culture until you are free from the materialistic additions, time-famine mind-set, and comparative impulses that created it in the first place.

Learn to slow down. Get lost intentionally. Observe how you judge both yourself and those around you. Chances are that it’s been a while. Take at least two months to disincorporate old habits and rediscover yourself without the reminder of a looming return flight.

Muses are low maintenance but often expensive in one or both of two tactical areas: manufacturing and advertising. Shop for providers of both that are willing to accept credit cards as payment, and negotiate this up front if necessary by saying, “Rather than trying to negotiate you down on pricing, I just ask that you accept payment by credit card. If you can do that, we’ll choose you over Competitor X.” This is yet another example of a “firm offer,” and not a question, that puts you in a stronger negotiating position. For a detailed explanation of how I multiply points for travel using concepts like “piggybacking” and “recycling,” search for both terms on www.fourhourblog.com.

Luxury Living Examples – pg. 258

Several families interviewed for this book recommended the oldest persuasive tool known to man: bribery. Each child is given some amount of virtual cash, 25-50 cents, for each hour of good behavior. The same amount is subtracted from their accounts for breaking the rules. All purchases for fun – whether souvenirs, ice cream, or otherwise – come out of their own individual accounts. No balance, no goodies. This often requires more self-control on the part of the parents than the children.

How to Get Airfare 50-80% Off

Use credit cards with reward points for large muse-related advertising and manufacturing expenses.
1. I’m not spending more money to get pennies on the dollar – these costs are inevitable, so I capitalize on them. This alone gets me a free round-trip international ticket each three months.
Purchase tickets far in advance (three months or more) or last minute, and aim for both departure and return between Tuesday and Thursday.
1. Long-term travel planning turns me off and can be expensive if plans change, so I opt for purchasing all tickets in the last four or five days prior to target departure. The value of empty seats is $0 as soon as the flight takes off, so true last-minute seats are cheap.
2. Use Orbitz and Kayak first. Fix the departure and return dates between Tuesday and Thursday. Then look at prices for alternative departure dates each of three days into the past and each of three days into the future. Using the cheapest departure date, do the same with return dates to find the cheapest combination. Check this price against the fares on the website of the airline itself. Then begin bidding on Priceline at 50% of the better of the two, working up in $50 increments until you get a better price or realize it’s not possible.
Consider buying one ticket to an international hub and then an ongoing ticket with a cheap local airline.
1. If going to Europe on a tight budget, you could get three tickets. One free Southwest ticket (from transferring AMEX points) from CA to JFK, the cheapest ticket to Heathrow in London, and then an ubercheap ticket on either Ryanair or EasyJet to a final destination. I have paid as little as $10 to go from London to Berlin or London to Spain. That is not a typo. Local airlines will often offer seats on flights for just the cost of taxes and gasoline. To Central or South American destinations, I’ll often look at local flights from Panama or international flights from Miami.

“Human beings have the capacity to learn to want almost any conceivable material object. Given, then, the emergence of a modern industrial culture capable of producing almost anything, the time is tripe for opening the storehouse of infinite need!…It is the modern Pandora’s box, and its plagues are loos upon the world.” – Jules Henry

“To be free, to be happy and fruitful, can only be attained though sacrifice of many common but overestimated things.” – Robert Henri

I asked every vagabond interviewee in this book what their one recommendation would be for first-time extended travelers. The answer was unanimous: Take less with you.

*Pack as if you were coming back in one week. Here are the bare essentials, listed in order of importance:

One week of clothing appropriate to the season, including one semiformal shirt and pair of pants for customs. Think T-shirts, one pair of shorts, and a multipurpose pair of jeans.
Backup photocopies or scanned copies of all important documents: health insurance, passport/visas, credit cards, debit cards, etc.
Debit cards, credit cards, and $200 worth of small bills in local currency (traveler’s checks are not accepted in most places and are a hassle)
Small cable bike lock for securing luggage while in transit or in hostels; a small padlock for lockers if needed.
Electronic dictionaries for target languages (book versions are too slow to be of use in conversation) and small grammar guides or texts
One broad-strokes travel guide

“It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who know his route as to the novelist who is overcertain of his plot.” – Paul Theroux

Preparing for your first mini-retirement: pg. 269

Take an asset and cash-flow snapshot
Fear-set a one-year mini-retirement in a dream location in Europe
Choose a location for your actual mini-retirement.
Prepare for your trip

Tools & Tricks – page 277

Virtual Tourist
http://outside.away.com
www.gridskipper.com
www.worldtravelwatch.com
www.perpetualtravel.com/rtw
www.onebag.com
http://bit.ly/homeschooling101
Cheap and Round-the-World Airfare – pg. 280
Free Short Term Housing – pg. 281
Paid Housing – pg. 281
www.interhome.com
www.rentvillas.com
www.writtenroad.com – Become a Travel Writer
www.workingoverseas.com
www.wwoof.org
www.freetranslation.com

Chapter 15 – Filling the Void

“Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.” – Anatole France

“People say that what are seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think this is what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.” – Joseph Campbell

These doubts invade the mind when nothing else fills it. Think of a time when you felt 100% alive and undistracted – in the zone. Chances are that it was when you were completely focused in the moment on something external: someone or something else. Sports and sex are two great examples. Lacking an external focus, the mind turns inward on itself and creates problems to solve, even if the problems are undefined or unimportant. If you find a focus, an ambitious goal that seems impossible and forces you to grow, these doubts disappear.

If you can’t define it or act upon it, forget it.

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” – Victor Frankl

I believe that life exists to be enjoyed and that the most important thing is to feel good about yourself.

Two fundamental components of the New Rich: continual learning and service

Though you can upgrade your brain domestically, traveling and relocating provides unique conditions that make progress much faster. The different surroundings act as counterpoint and mirror for your own prejudices, making weaknesses that much easier to fix. I rarely travel somewhere without deciding first how I’ll obsess on a specific skill.

Quite aside from the fact that it is impossible to understand a culture without understanding its language, acquiring a new language makes you aware of your own language: your own thoughts.

Gain a language and you gain a second lens through which to question and understand the world.

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike.” – Oscar Wilde

The world does not exist solely for the betterment and multiplication of mankind.

The downstream effects of helping is unknown. Do your best and hope for the best. If you’re improving the world – however you define it – consider your job well done.

“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

Meditation Courses:

www.networkforgood.org – Charities

Use the following questions and resources to brainstorm:

What makes you most angry about the world?
What are you most afraid of for the next generation, whether you have children or not?
What makes you happiest in your life? How can you help others have the same?

Other Resources – page 300

Chapter 13 – The Top 13 New Rich Mistakes

“If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.” – Frank Wilczek

“I’ve learned that nothing is impossible, and that almost nothing is easy.” – Articulo 31

1. Losing sight of dreams and falling into work for work’s sake
2. Micromanaging and emailing to fill time
3. Handling problems your outsourcers or co-workers can handle
4. Helping outsourcers or co-workers with the same problems more than once, or with noncrisis problems
5. Chasing customers, particularly unqualified or international prospects, when you have sufficient cash flow to finance your nonfinancial pursuits.
6. Answering email that will not result in a sale or that can be answered by a FAQ or auto-responder
7. Working where you live, sleep, or should relax
8. Not performing a thorough 80/20 analysis every two to four weeks for your business and personal life
9. Striving for endless perfection rather than great or simply good enough, whether in your personal or professional life.
10. Blowing minutiae and small problems out of proportion as an excuse to work.
11. Making non-time-sensitive issues urgent in order to justify work
12. Viewing one product, job, or project as the end-all and be-all of your existence
13. Ignoring the social rewards of life

The Last Chapter

“There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.” – Seneca

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something…almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” – Steve Jobs

If you are too intent on making the pieces of a nonexistent puzzle fit, you miss out on all the real fun. The heaviness of success-chasing can be replaced with a serendipitous lightness when you recognize that the only rules and limits are those we set for ourselves. So be bold and don’t worry about what people think. They don’t do it that often anyway.

Slow Dance***** page 306

The Best of the Blog

The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen

- - What is one goal, if completed, that could change everything?
  - What is the most urgent thing right now that you fell you “must” or “should” do?
  - Can you let the urgent “fail” – even for a day – to get to the next milestone for your potential life-changing tasks?
  - What’s been on your to-do list the longest? Start it first thing in the morning and don’t allow interruptions or lunch until you finish.

Things I’ve Loved and Learned in 2008

- - You don’t have to recoup losses the same way you lose them.
  - One of the most universal causes of self-doubt and depression: trying to impress people you don’t like. Stressing to impress is fine, but do it for the right people – those you want to emulate.
  - Slow meals = life. Mealtime with friends and loved ones is a direct predictor of well-being. Have dinner with those who make you smile and feel good.
  - Adversity doesn’t build character; it reveals it.
  - Related: Money doesn’t change you; it reveals who you are when you no longer have to be nice.
  - It doesn’t matter how many people don’t get it.
  - A good questions to revisit whenever overwhelmed: Are you having a breakdown or a breakthrough?
  - Rehearse poverty regularly – restrict even moderate expenses for 1-2 weeks and give away 20%+ of minimally used clothing – so you can think big and take “risks” without fear (Seneca)
  - A mindset of scarcity (which breeds jealousy and unethical behavior) is due to a disdain for those things easily obtained (Seneca).
  - It’s usually better to keep old resolutions than to make new ones.

How to Travel the World with 10 Pounds or Less

- - Trip enjoyment is inversely proportional to the amount of crap (read: distractions) you bring with you.

The Choice-Minimal Lifestyle: 6 Formulas for More Output and Less Overwhelm

- - The more options you consider, the more buyer’s regret you’ll have.
  - The more options you encounter, the less fulfilling your ultimate outcome will be.
  - This raises a difficult question: Is it better to have the best outcome but be less satisfied, or have an acceptable outcome and be satisfied?
  1. Considering options costs attention that then can’t be spent on action or present-state awareness.
  2. Attention is necessary for not only productivity but appreciation.
    1. Therefore:
      1. Too many choices = less or no productivity
      2. Too many choices = less or no appreciation
      3. Too many choices = sense of overwhelm
- - 6 Basic Rules
    1. Set rules for yourself so you can automate as much decision making as possible.
    2. Don’t provoke deliberation before you can take action.
    3. Don’t postpone decisions just to avoid uncomfortable conversations.
    4. Learn to make nonfatal or reversible decisions as quickly as possible.
      - I didn’t want to sacrifice 10 attention units of my remaining 50 of 100 total potential units, since those 10 units couldn’t then be spent on this article. I had about eight hours before bedtime due to time zone differences – plenty of time – but scarce usable attention after an all-nighter of fun and the cross-country flight. Fast decisions preserve usable attention for what matters.
    5. Don’t strive for variation – and thus increase option consideration – when it’s not needed. Routine enables innovation where it’s most valuable.
      - Don’t confuse what should be results-driven with routine (e.g., exercise) with something enjoyment-driven that benefits from variation (e.g., recreation).
    6. Regret is past-tense decision making. Eliminate complaining to minimize regret.
  - It’s deliberation – the time we vacillate over and consider each decision – that’s the attention consumer. Total deliberation time, not the number of decisions, determines your attention bank account balance (or debt).

The Not-to-Do List: 9 Habits to Stop Now

- - What you don’t do determines what you can do.
  1. Do not answer calls from unrecognized phone numbers.
  2. Do not email first thing in the morning or last thing at night.
  3. Do not agree to meetings or calls with no clear agenda or end time.
  4. Do not let people ramble.
  5. Do not check email constantly – “batch” and check at set times only.
  6. Do not over-communicate with low-profit, high maintenance customers.
  7. Do not work more to fix overwhelmingness – prioritize.
    - If you don’t prioritize, everything seems urgent and important. If you define the single most important task for each day, almost nothing seems urgent or important. Oftentimes, it’s just a matter of letting little bad things happen (return a phone call late and apologize, pay a small late fee, lose an unreasonable customer, etc.) to get the big important things done. The answer to overwhelmingness is not spinning more plates – or doing more – it’s defining the few things that can really fundamentally change your business and life.
  8. Do not carry a cell phone 24/7.
  9. Do not expect work to fill a void that non-work relationships and activities should.

The Margin Manifesto: 11 Tenets for Reaching (or Doubling) Profitability in 3 Months

- - Profitability often requires better rules and speed, not more time.
  - The financial goal of a start-up should be simple: profit in the least time with the least effort. Not more customers, not more revenue, not more offices or more employees. More profit.
  1. Niche is the New Big – The Lavish Dwarf Entertainment Rule
    - Who you portray in your marketing isn’t necessarily the only demographic who buys your product – it’s often the demographic that most people want to identify with or belong to. The target isn’t the market. No one aspires to be the bland average, so don’t water down messaging to appeal to everyone – it will end up appealing to no one.
  2. Revisit Drucker – What Gets Measured Gets Managed
    - CPO (“Cost-Per-Order,” which includes advertising, fulfillment and expected returns, charge-backs, and bad debt), ad allowable (the maximum you can spend on an advertisement and expect to break even), MET (media efficiency radio), and projected lifetime value (LV) given return rates and reorder percent.
  3. Pricing Before Product – Plan Distribution First
    - Is your pricing scalable? Many companies will sell direct-to-consumer by necessity in early stages, only to realize that their margins can’t accommodate resellers and distributors when they come knocking.
  4. Less is More – Limiting Distribution to Increase Profits
  5. Net-Zero – Create Demand vs. Offering Terms
    - Focus on creating end-user demand so you can dictate terms.
  6. Repetition is Usually Redundant – Good Advertising Works the First Time
    - Well-designed and well-targeted advertising works the first time. If something works partially well (e.g., high response with low percentage conversion to sales, low response with high conversion, etc.), indicating that a strong ROI might be possible with small changes, tweak one controlled variable and microtest once more.
  7. Limit Downside to Ensure Upside – Sacrifice Margin for Safety
    - Don’t manufacture product in large quantities to increase margin unless your product and marketing are tested and ready for rollout without changes.
  8. Negotiate Late – Make Others Negotiate Against Themselves
    - Never make a first offer when purchasing.
  9. Hyperactivity vs. Productivity – 80/20 and Pareto’s Law
    - Invest in duplicating your few strong areas instead of fixing all of your weaknesses.
  10. The Customer is Not Always Right – “Fire” High-Maintenance Customers
    - Recognize that (1) without time, you cannot scale your company (and, oftentimes, life) beyond that customer, and (2) people, even good people, will unknowingly abuse your time to the extent that you let them. Set good rules for all involved to minimize back-and-forth and meangingless communication.
  11. Deadlines Over Details – Test Reliability Before Capability
    - Perfect products delivered past deadline kill companies faster than decent products delivered on time.

To succeed in America in the 21st century we must NOT work hard, instead we must follow the principles of the 4HWW and work smarter so that we can truly achieve the New American Dream: Freedom to enjoy the most precious resource we have in life…out time on this earth.

I rely heavily on the advice of my friends and family, but sometimes you have to ignore the advice of your loved ones to really make something happen. If you believe the impossible can be made possible, it will happen.

Alex Elias

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