Despite some ethically dubious suggestions and a healthy dose of nonsense and self-promotion, The 4 Hour Work Week has some very helpful material relating to this topic. It’s worth reading for the genuinely valuable ideas in amongst some less great material.
I’m interested in hearing the experiences of any LW members who’ve managed something like this as well.
He won a high level kick boxing tournament by exploiting a rule about ring-outs—legal but unsportsmanlike and feels like cheating.
His first major business success was selling supplements online (a ‘neural accelerator’) with unspecified (in the book) health benefits. You get the impression from reading the book that this business was only a couple of steps above those herbal viagra emails.
He advocates being persistent to the point of pushy / obnoxious in certain respects.
He talks about testing out business ideas by advertising products which don’t exist and if someone completes an order telling them the product is on back order. If you get enough orders you make the product.
There are other elements which might trigger ethical qualms for others but which didn’t bother me like the idea of personal outsourcing.
Yeah, I see what you mean. Not illegal or lying, but not quite honest or pleasant either. On the third point, “selling myself” has always been one of my weaknesses (to the point that I’m bad at asking for money for work already done or promised). I like the model of levels of self-marketing presented in this blog post, though.
For what it’s worth, I’ve seen an analysis which claims that the four hours of work neglects to include the amount of time Ferriss spends on self-promotion.
the amount of time Ferriss spends on self-promotion
If he fits with other advice I’ve read about self-marketing, he’s basically doing it all the time. Which is great, if that’s enough of your personality or natural enough to you that you don’t consider it work.
Ha, I just added a reference to it in the post. I think the most valuable parts of The 4-Hour Work Week were actually the lifestyle parts: where and how to live cheap while having fun. But I think he handwaves the whole ‘find something you can sell’ part of the process. User:Kevin has had some success with a similar business model though; he sells kratom over the internet.
Despite some ethically dubious suggestions and a healthy dose of nonsense and self-promotion, The 4 Hour Work Week has some very helpful material relating to this topic. It’s worth reading for the genuinely valuable ideas in amongst some less great material.
I’m interested in hearing the experiences of any LW members who’ve managed something like this as well.
I’m intrigued, haven’t read it, and don’t have available funds for a new book right now—what in it is ethically dubious?
Off the top of my head:
He won a high level kick boxing tournament by exploiting a rule about ring-outs—legal but unsportsmanlike and feels like cheating.
His first major business success was selling supplements online (a ‘neural accelerator’) with unspecified (in the book) health benefits. You get the impression from reading the book that this business was only a couple of steps above those herbal viagra emails.
He advocates being persistent to the point of pushy / obnoxious in certain respects.
He talks about testing out business ideas by advertising products which don’t exist and if someone completes an order telling them the product is on back order. If you get enough orders you make the product.
There are other elements which might trigger ethical qualms for others but which didn’t bother me like the idea of personal outsourcing.
Yeah, I see what you mean. Not illegal or lying, but not quite honest or pleasant either. On the third point, “selling myself” has always been one of my weaknesses (to the point that I’m bad at asking for money for work already done or promised). I like the model of levels of self-marketing presented in this blog post, though.
For what it’s worth, I’ve seen an analysis which claims that the four hours of work neglects to include the amount of time Ferriss spends on self-promotion.
If he fits with other advice I’ve read about self-marketing, he’s basically doing it all the time. Which is great, if that’s enough of your personality or natural enough to you that you don’t consider it work.
http://thepiratebay.org/search/4%20hour%20work%20week/0/99/0
Fair enough.
If anyone asks, this link was broken when I posted it: http://rapidshare.com/files/72981174/Timothy_Ferriss_-The_4-Hour_Workweek.rar
Wow, it’s still broken! That doesn’t happen too often.
Ha, I just added a reference to it in the post. I think the most valuable parts of The 4-Hour Work Week were actually the lifestyle parts: where and how to live cheap while having fun. But I think he handwaves the whole ‘find something you can sell’ part of the process. User:Kevin has had some success with a similar business model though; he sells kratom over the internet.
Isn’t he just “Kevin” to those of us who subscribe to roughly human distributions of terminal values?
What’s wrong with saying “User:Kevin”?