Make Money, Save Time – 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
I have recently finished the book “The 4-Hour Work Week: Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich” and what a great little book. We live in times where the world is changing so rapidly and Tim has managed to take advantages of the opportunities available and enrich his life.
He talks about the New Rich.. these are those who have managed to get rich by exploiting our world today. These are people like guys who set up Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the guy who set up Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg etc. Most of the New Rich are those who have exploited the internet or found ways to use the internet to help their existing bricks and mortar businesses.
The Old Rich are those who have made money the old traditional way such as property magnates, big corporation bigwigs etc…
Whilst the main crux of the book is about outsourcing your life and mini retirements…. it’s the outsourcing your life parts which were fantastic and hold immense worth if you value your time in our information loaded lives. The mini retirements were more of a lifestyle once you’ve managed to outsource your life.
Outsourcing your life, in a nutshell, means finding people to do the boring administrative and tedious things you hate to do. Obviously, you can’t outsource things like taking your partner out for dinner (she/he may run away with the other person) but, in the context of running a business, you could get people to do the admin work such as typing, research on the internet, data entry etc. There are heaps of people in places like India, China, Phillipines who could do this for you at a fraction of the cost of employing someone in Europe or the US… best of all, you can hire them for a finite job (project), pay them and be done with it. If you are a small business owner, this could be a fantastic way to expand your business which is essentially what Tim Ferriss did. He hired virtual assistants to run the mundane tasks of his business and it go to a point where his virtual assistants could also make decisions on his behalf so that he could go travelling (his mini retirements).
I have been trying the virtual assistant idea myself and I can see the merit in it. From my blog, you’ll note that I am interested in a lot of stuff (mostly financial trading) and I frequently wished I had enough time (and energy) to do everything that I want to do. I hold a 9-to-5 job which I thoroughly enjoy, I am trading the financial markets (not very well), I make websites for small businesses and run a few blogs and a few other things here and there.
Anyway, I am currently using Odesk to outsource work. I have only run 1 task so far to test and see how the system works and I am extremely pleased with it! I wanted someone to do some research for me on the web and collate it all into a document. I posted the details of the job and a price I was prepared to pay for it and then watched people applying for it. There were loads of people wanting to do it and the virtual assistant I used (who was also the first person to apply) did a marvellous job and in record time. If you’re time constrained and need a hand, I throughly recommend having a look!
Links:
Odesk
4 Hour Work Week
