The 4-Hour Workweek

Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Work Week is about many things. Finding more time to do what you want is probably the core. One element of that is having what he calls a muse — a mostly-automated business that brings in enough money to let you do what you want with the rest of the week.

Finding a muse is hard, of course. If it was easy, everyone would be rich. But also most people aren’t entrepreneurs. I was an employee for most of my life. Starting a business is a risk; there’s a psychological hurdle to overcome before you start something up. Entrepreneurs and inventors the world over are trying to get rich. Generally, the recommended approach is to work your ass off. Ferriss suggests searching not for a way to get rich, to strike it big, but rather to find something that pays for your dreams but doesn’t take time. It’s a combination of finding ways to get your dream cheaply and ways to make money with few hours of work.

Work can broadly be divided into three types: products, services, and reselling. The customer only sees products and services, though; when you resell, you resell either a product or a service. Yet, as the business owner, you have to choose between the three. A product is not necessarily a physical thing; it can be software, a book, or a DVD program. Services don’t make good muses, because what you’re selling is your time. I guess one could explore the sorts of services where one could make a good amount of money for only a short amount of time, but those are niche, technical, or professional things. But I think it’s hard to think of and market something like that. So that leaves us with products or reselling.

Let’s start with manufacturing your own products. What can you make and sell in only four hours a week? Stay-at-home crafts like gift baskets, woodworking, toys and/or stuffed animals, stuff like that… generally, the simpler the skill set it takes to produce the item, the more likely it is that someone out there is already producing it, and cheaply, too. (This is why reselling is a better option for these types of products.) Products themselves are hard. Probably the most bang-for-the-buck is content: books, movies, TV shows, DVDs, video training, porn, blogs, websites, etc. These are all things where reward can outstrip cost. Not all content; small-market nonfiction books tend to pay equal to an average wage. Blockbuster books and movies can work out to a huge hourly wage.

But it’s hard to write blockbuster books, right? Ferriss counters that with the idea of a lucrative niche market; his example is yoga for rock climbers. If you already know yoga and mountain-climbing, you could put together a one- or two-hour DVD in just a few hours of your time, and for a small startup cost. Then, sell it at a steep price ($50-100) to that niche market. Ferriss emphasizes going after easy, lucrative customers. If you sell something at $10, you’ll deal with indecisive buyers, dilettantes, scams, and cheap people that will abuse your return policy. Sell at a higher price, and overhead costs come down.

Reselling can also be a good market, but requires its own set of skills. Maybe I should look into it, but I thought (for me) that content was a much better route. I can spell, type fast, use proper grammar, write code, research easily — it seemed much more appealing to me. Content is my muse. Well, it’s the muse I’ve chosen.

Not this blog, though. My god, this blog is worthless. Mostly someplace for me to type while thinking. But thanks for reading!