The 4-Hour Workweek (40 page)

As an immigrant I want to spread the message that 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 … our time on this earth.

—I. BARRON

PHOTO FINISH

Hey Tim,

I wanted to tell you that your book, The 4-Hour Workweek, has been a true inspiration and life-changing resource for me this year!

I bought your book in November. Before then, I didn’t know what “workflow automation” was. I had a part-time employee, but her work was actually creating more work for me. I would work until sometimes 3 A.M., and get up at 7. I’d tell you I wanted to travel, but the truth is that it seemed impossible to me. I didn’t have time or money.

I was listening to your audio book one day. I had been listening to each of the chapters, sometimes over and over again. I was jogging. I stopped in my tracks. I believe I was listening about a case study about someone who sold music files over the Internet.

I’m a photographer. Weddings mostly. I wondered how I could sell digital images over the Internet. Then I came up with a fantastic idea for a family photography company. I stopped right there, and reserved a website on my iPhone.

Two months later, I had a website, access to thousands of photographers across the country, and our first sale. Even better, I am now in the family photography business, and I never have to shoot myself. Even better +1, we are the first family photography business that doesn’t sell prints. Only digital files. It worked! I have now adopted this for my wedding photography as well. Other photographers are so offended, but I am making WAY more $, my costs are almost eliminated, and my time is free!

I know the above is vague, but it’s not the point. The point is that now I work better, faster, I have two more employees, I turned off my e-mail notifications on my computer and my iPhone, despite all of what it’s capable of, it doesn’t even ring. E-mail has been disabled. I just check it every so often to see what calls I missed.

Today, my fiance loves me because I come home in time for dinner and I leave my laptop at work. It’s a life I never thought I’d be able to live. In the meantime, systems are working in my place and this year looks to be a lot better, financially, than last.

Then I decided it was time to try my first mini-retirement. The goal: ski the Swiss Alps and spend five days in Switzerland and spend less than $1,000 total. I got a roundtrip ticket for about 500 bucks. My ski pass for one day at Engelberg was $80. Lodging was free, thanks to your suggestion www.couchsurfing.com, and I ate roasted chestnuts, brats, fish and chips and drank great beer all week long. I did it!

I am forever grateful, and am excited for more mini-retirements. Here’s to living during the best years of my life.

P.S. I leave May 11 for a month-long work vacation to Italy (I have been hired to photograph two weddings in Siena). I plan on vacationing a LOT more than I will be working.

—MARK CAFIERO, Photographer

VIRTUAL LAW

I used to work at a large Silicon Valley law firm, but one day I woke up and decided that I wanted to travel for a year and learn a foreign language. Six weeks later I was living in Cali, Colombia—I’d never visited Cali before and hardly spoke a word of Spanish, but that’s what made it exciting to me. Well, almost two years later, I still spend 95%+ of my time living and working from Cali, Colombia (I recently bought a gorgeous apartment here that I could never afford if I lived in California). I also have a full-time maid/cook (well, five hours per day, five days per week), which costs me less than US $40 per week!

I started my own virtual law practice and then joined forces with my old boss. My U.S. number rings through to me wherever I am in the world (originally I’m from New Zealand so I travel back there a lot, too), and all my U.S. mail is delivered to Market Street, San Francisco, and scanned so I can view it online. If I need to mail letters, I have another service which prints the letter and sends it within the U.S. so there are no international shipping delays.

Definitely use www.earthclassmail.com for mail receipt/scanning. They have different packages but it’s around $20-$30/month. You can also choose one or more P.O. boxes or physical addresses. My Market Street address is actually an earthclassmail address.

For printing small letters and mailing within the U.S. I use www.postalmethods.com. It’s a little clunky at first but it’s fine when you get used to it. It’s very cheap since you only pay when you send (a four-page letter works out to just over $1 including the postage).

Come visit me sometime. Colombia is nothing like what you hear about—I feel a lot safer walking around late at night here than a lot of places in San Francisco. But don’t tell anyone, those of us living here want to keep it a secret!

—GERRY M.

TAKING FLIGHT WITH ORNITHREADS

Tim—

My mentor gave me your book this past July and it had a tremendous impact on my life, its arrival could not have had better timing. About the time I read it, I was a few weeks away from competing in my first Olympic distance triathlon. I had trained for five months, felt and looked strong, but even more important the discipline and working toward a physical goal resulted in a creativity I hadn’t felt in years. I posted a competitive time in the event and felt so optimistic about my abilities that I signed up for a half ironman competition.

Riding that high and following the principles of your book, I thought of dozens of ideas for products/businesses and am on the verge of launching the first of those ideas. It is a line of apparel called OrniThreads which will provide modern, scientific designs of birds to Gen-X and Gen-Y birders.

The reasons for focusing on this demographic are twofold:

For my “day job,” I work at [company name]. I have learned a lot about their audience/membership, e.g., like the fact that there are 70 million Americans who actively bird (a staggering statistic from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife svc). Birders are a passionate lot and their interest only seems to grow over time—it never dies! They also tend to skew from the middle to upper class and are educated.

I took an ornithology class this summer at Columbia University (where I am enrolled in a conservation biology program) and fell in love with the illustrations in my textbooks and wanted to surround myself with these images.

I am launching www.ornithreads.com in the next week or so and the first of my three designs are being printed as we speak.

I have big aspirations for the company, but am just trying to get the first collection to customers and learn as much as I can. Your book has been incredibly helpful in outlining the necessary steps I need to take to succeed and hope that my idea has some legs (or wings) which translates into an automated income.

If you are in NYC anytime soon—promoting your book or otherwise—I would love to meet you. Sincerely,    —BRENDA TIMM

OFF-THE-JOB TRAINING

I used concepts from the 4HWW to work remotely from August of ’08 until January of ’09. I went to Portugal, Europe, Spain, Sweden, and Norway surfing and snowboarding my brains out. Best part about it? I came home with three times as much money in the bank than I would have had if I continued the normal 9 to 5. I work for [world-famous design company] as a software developer, and was able to put the concepts to use and really change my life. I paired my iPhone + Fring (Fring is voice over IP on the iPhone, it allows you to use one device for everything, and have a local number abroad).

I spent four months prior to departure being sure to never be at my cube, but always be just around the corner. I made a point to ALWAYS be available on Instant Messenger, so when people would walk over to my cube and look for me in person they would see I was somewhere else, then hop online and ask, “Where are you?” My response was always similar, just down the hall in the cafeteria … just down the block at the coffee shop, or at co-worker X’s desk. After two months of this a magical thing happened: People always looked to get me via Instant Messenger and stopped dropping by my desk altogether. That allowed me to be 6,000 miles away without anyone noticing.

Something else to consider… how time zone affects remote work environments. I noticed, while in Norway (nine hours away), that it was the perfect amount of time. I was, in a sense, living in the future. My day was almost over by the time my boss woke up … this allowed me to explore Norway’s fjords, mountains, and undiscovered frigid surf spots in complete peace and without ever having to worry about getting a call from overseas. It was perfect … If I wanted, I could explore all day, come home and have some dinner, then ichat with my boss for 20–30 minutes and check in. The few times he needed something urgently, he was able to give me work when he went to bed, and have it completed in the morning when he woke up. —B. WILLIAMSON

DOCTOR’S ORDERS

Hi Tim:

Here’s my story …

My dream started about four years ago. I was in the process of taking my psychology licensing exam, and after speaking to a friend, decided that I would reward myself with a trip to South America. We were both exhausted from our 9-to-5 (and sometimes 6, 7, or 8 p.m.) hospital and clinic jobs.

I had traveled extensively throughout the United States and some parts of Europe, but I had never experienced South American culture.

My trip there was absolutely fantastic and really opened my eyes to other ways of living and culture. During my trip, I spent a lot of time speaking to expatriates about how they used their retirement funds and pensions to live the lives of kings there. One thing was evident: Most of the expatriates who attempted to “set up a business” to help fund their lifestyle had failed miserably. I hypothesized that there just wasn’t enough currency (pesos) in the marketplace to really sustain a “gringo”-oriented business.

After my trip, I told my friend that I needed to dedicate all my energies to developing a method of receiving income from U.S. citizens while living elsewhere. VOIP had recently been introduced to the marketplace and Internet service was improving in South America and other parts of the third world.

The business had to be based upon absolute mobility. I boiled the whole business down to two basic functions: reliable telephone via VOIP and high-speed Internet.

At the time I had a small research consultation practice where I was helping doctoral students on the phone and via e-mail to complete their dissertations, theses, and statistical analyses. I had a small website that was getting traffic but I was relying on others for web and marketing services. I subsequently learned more about search engine optimization and web marketing and eventually took control of all web marketing and promotion of my website, http://www.ResearchConsultation.com, allowing me to expand my business substantially.

During the next three years I conducted numerous “mobile tests” … traveling to Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Colombia in order to fine-tune my system of conducting business from abroad.

I finally left my job last November, the day before Thanksgiving, vowing to never return to the mundane 9-to-5 structure. My job had even recently instituted a “bio-metric fingerprint” identification system where you had to “punch in and out” at the beginning and end of your hospital shift with your fingerprint to ensure that you were working your eight hours. This was just another sign that I had to leave.

I now live in NYC and Colombia and travel to other parts of the world throughout the year: speaking to customers, managing my contractors (U.S. and Colombian) in order to acquire U.S. dollars while living for a fraction of the cost abroad. I’m also developing other websites and businesses (community forums) that will hopefully be more automated, requiring less day-to-day interaction and monitoring.

Well, that’s my story for now … today South America, tomorrow anywhere I can get a high-speed connection (banda ancha)! My stress level has dropped significantly since leaving my old job and my quality of life has improved enormously.

My family and friends in NYC still think I’m out of my mind, and I continue to fully agree with them…. —JEFF B.

THE 4-HOUR FAMILY AND GLOBAL EDUCATION

Tim,

We moved to a totally digital nomadic life traveling the world as a family in 2006, so we discovered your book and ideas after we had begun and loved it! Our life has changed totally and is more fulfilling and much more simple. We are greener, leaner, healthier, happier, more connected.

Other people thought we were absolutely nuts when we decided to do this in 2004/5, but now many of those same people think we are smart and psychic.

Problems finding a good school fit (despite having many award-winning excellent ones at our disposal) was probably the most specific moment (John Taylor Gatto says it best on why schools do not educate) that helped us to change as well as wanting more time together and forecasting the house/economy crash coming.

I think more families will be taking mini-retirements and living slower, traveling digital nomadic lives. If you are away for months as a family, you need to be informed about all the wonderful educational opportunities which are actually richer than staying home (which few realize)!

There are a TON of fantastic resources like Classroom 2.0 and many innovative educators online. My daughter just turned eight and is having a blast with her online course with John Hopkins University/CTY and it is also a nice resource for friends. Today one can immerse deeply in one culture and still maintain one’s home culture. This is important information for families who still fear the outdated negatives on Third Culture Kids (TCK) based on studies from the fifties.

Maya Frost91 has excellent information about older kids and even a new paradigm when it comes to going to university. I think education is one of the things going through a total transition due to the Internet, and parents need this info to make important decisions.