Xigaware

Serial Entrepreneur & Ultravagabond

Timothy Ferriss, author of the 4 Hour Work Week, is a self-described “serial entrepreneur and ultravagabond” who lives a lifestyle that most of us could only dream about — until now.

Ferriss presents a step-by-step guide to his free-wheeling lifestyle, allowing us to follow in his footsteps and realize lifelong dreams. Albert Pope, derivatives specialist at UBS World Headquarters, has called him “Indiana Jones for the digital age”.

This challenging book has been number one on three different best seller lists: Wall Street Journal, NY Times and BusinessWeek.

Replace Obsolete Assumptions

His basic premise is that we need to replace many, if not most, of our current assumptions and apply what he calls the “Rules of the New Rich”.

Online Businesses need to replace limiting assumptions and their owners need to learn how to enjoy life now. We need to replace limiting assumptions that waste our time and force us to live in a particular location.

The New Rich (NR) believe that time and mobility are the most precious commodities.

Rules of the New Rich

According to Ferris, the “Rules of the New Rich” include the following:

• Retirement is Worst-Case Scenario Insurance
• Interest and Energy are Cyclical
• Less is Not Laziness
• The Timing Is Never Right
• Ask for Forgiveness, Not Permission
• Emphasize Strengths, Don’t Fix Weaknesses
• Things in Excess Become the Opposite
• Money Alone is Not the Solution
• Relative Income is More Important than Absolute Income
• Distress is Bad, Eustress is Good

The 4HWW Model

His model provides us with a roadmap for realizing our own lifelong dreams. He shows us how to:

• Live like a millionaire
• Free time and automate income
• Outsource our lives to overseas virtual assistants for $5/hour
• Travel the world without quitting our jobs
• Eliminate 50% of our work in 48 hours
• Trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and mini-retirements

He uses the DEAL acronym to describe his model, where:

• D = Definition
• E = Elimination
• A = Automation
• L = Liberation

He encourages us to use “Dreamlining” to design our own luxurious lifestyles. We can join the New Rich (NR) by focusing our current efforts on elimination, simplification and outsourcing.

The Lifestyle Design (LD) process is both an art and a science. Another key component of the lifestyle design process is automation, i.e., building systems and processes that eliminate ourselves as bottlenecks. Don’t automate something that can be eliminated, and don’t delegate anything that can be automated or simplified.

Carpe Diem!

Courage and self-confidence are the necessary ingredients for realizing our lifelong dreams. You’ll come to realize that having choice; i.e., the ability to choose is powerful.

This is a very compelling book and presents a plan that is easy to understand and apply.

Ferriss has shown us that it is possible to realize our dreams – faster and cheaper than we ever thought we could.  I plan to implement many of his ideas into my own life.

A very good starting place for gathering all the  education about internet marketing that you’ll need to be successful is to enroll in the Online Success for Beginners classes.

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The objective of leverage is to gain the most advantage with the minimum effort.  Specifically, for internet businesses, that means greatest return on investment with minimal personal involvement, and we can make this happen via outsourcing.

Prior articles discussed increasing leverage by 1) re-using, and 2) re-purposing content.  In this article, we’ll address acquiring leverage by outsourcing recurring, or non-value-add work, and any work that simply isn’t a match with our personal skills, experience and/or nature.

Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman documented some interesting findings from 25 years of Gallup organization research – initially in their book, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, and then elaborating on those findings in several subsequent books.  Two of their findings, that are important for internet marketers and home-based business owners are these:  1) Focus on your strong suits, not your weaknesses, and 2) Select assistants for ability.

Affiliate business has a large learning curve and involves a lot of diverse abilities.  Unfortunately, not very many people are talented at all of them – and even those who are, probably are not making the best use of their available effort and other skills should they focus on their weaknesses.

William of Occam, best known for “Occam’s Razor,” has said:  “It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.” As affiliate business owners, Occam’s Razor has much to teach us in terms of our individual time management.

Tim Ferriss, who wrote “The 4-Hour Workweek” is a major proponent of outsourcing to virtual assistants to handle recurring, low prioritiy tasks or other non-favored tasks.

It may come as a surprise to realize that outsourcing is not relegated only to major organizations, but recognizing the low cost of international VAs, even small, affiliate companies can afford to outsource many activities to virtual assistants.

One task that many internet marketers choose to outsource is writing articles.  They see the value of article marketing, but either don’t like to write, don’t have the skills, don’t want to spend the time, so they turn over those writing tasks to ghost-writers. 

Another task you might consider outsourcing to a virtual assistant (or call center) is the telephone and email follow-up required for lead generation and sales closings.

If you focus on your areas of strength, you can multiply your results, whereas, focusing on your weaknesses willonly marginally improve your results. 

Would you rather multiply your results, or simply see incremental improvements?

If you would like to learn how to leverage your time, and become a millionaire – get the FREE MaxPro Report & CD, and put your income on autopilot.

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