Expert Professional Advice

Although Ferriss would like to say something that will help increase the fun factor in your life the book falls short of addressing cash flow. There are only two examples of people testing products to sell online, and they are not realistically going to fulfill the four hour work week dream.

Although the author likes to think of the book as dense with information, it is slivers of things you have heard about before, with the twist of embracing an international lifestyle of mini-vacations. Sure, I embrace the mini-vacations concept, however, that fits best when you have the ability to travel based on revenues from your freelance and project work.

The idea that you are going to “sell” a trial arrangement of working remotely is a bit silly – you would need to be very rehearsed and considering that most folks don’t have any sales skills I suspect they are not going to be able to negotiate or sell much of anything, even if it is a good product/idea. But, his point is to try because his claim is that event leads to unlocking your freedom.

What is missed here is that the people who have the greatest ability to have this lifestyle are the rare individuals who have something of considerable value to offer an employer or company – and this rare skill and ability is sought after and highly compensated.

The approach to this book, exclusive to the free yourself from your desk so you can enjoy living and learning around the globe, is merely one of saying try this and try that and try this other thing until you find a market that can support you in this lifestyle ~ and the tool for doing this is testing via Google Adwords.

Testing with Adwords has been the number one thing anyone can do to explore the marketplace and advertise effectively, and it is not unique to this book. It is a small part of the book but everything hinges on being able to obtain proficiency in Adwords, although Ferriss doesn’t mention how difficult this is and that most readers would be better off exploring this option by hiring someone to run various campaigns and report back to them. He covers outsourcing of office and other personal errand and number crunching tasks to free your time, but does not advocate hiring someone to handle the biggest component of the research, and the necessary website sales pitch to actually convert traffic into paying customers.

He offers very little details on the scope of building his dietary supplement business (other than stating, “Turns out you can outsource everything from manufacturing to ad design.” pg 16), although he stated he gets customers and web traffic from magazine advertisements. I know that offline prospects can often be of higher quality than online prospects, but regardless, all the author is saying is “test, test, test” but it must be difficult because all he has is one business – yet the claim is that he has all this time and cash flow, so why isn’t he running and discovering more businesses to put on “auto-pilot?”

He mentions a contact of his who sells a catalogue of sound effects by acting as the middle man and achieving a huge markup. Why isn’t he doing this if there’s no risk? It is just a matter of selling it to a customer online, then purchasing it from a wholesaler and providing it to your client. But I don’t recall any examples of Ferriss actually doing something successful like this.

If you are considering buying the book to achieve the claim of a four hour work week, then browse the book if you must, otherwise you might find the purchase disappointing. After reviewing everything in the book I would not purchase it. My favorite part of the book is a reprinted article from Esquire about an Esquire editor’s humorous experiment with outsourcing.

Ferriss does have a certain energy in his writing, or momentum I should say, I don’t recall if he spoke the book/transcribed it, but he doesn’t appear boring, and the most interesting passages don’t have much to do with business but are about Ferriss and his life experience, or life experiments I should say. He comes across as someone you would want as a friend. And it would probably be a productive friendship where he reminds you to automate and get off email and to choose productive tasks and take calculated risks. His saving grace is he never advertises himself as perfect, shares his interests, which make him interesting, and tries to get his audience to think in terms of projects, or dreamlines, as he phrased it… but what is lacking is a good framework for using action steps as the basis for any achievement, for daily life management, and for projects. I think action steps are what will make all the difference in being productive on meaningful matters, exclusive of luck, and will provide the compass and reminder to navigate toward your desired port.

Perhaps the book might be considered dense with information, but information is just information. There’s no fast track or realistic unique proposition to accumulating revenues. I could have made the claim that a data entry/coding medical billing business or medical transcription service offers the same kind of freedom ~ being able to work remotely.

***Update:

Six to eight months later by the end of 2008 the job marketplace changed and the economy continued to worsen to historic joblessness making the main premise of the book ~ asking to work remotely, very silly indeed.

Sure, you can find a million people that do one thing and a million people that do the opposite. What can you expect from the book?

There is nothing better than instilling personal confidence in finding what you need when you need it. And for most people it is an experience of relief simply by removing clutter. There is a benefit to emptying your mind regarding how you organize all your files, and not attempting to remember details of sequences of events and file storage. Organization does not fit everyone the same way, it will look different to each user, but it will serve each individual better. It’s less about filing cabinets and more about virtual assistants. If you use multiple options besides your mind to rely on recording something you can avoid mental overload and reduce paperwork. A loose bundle of information becomes valuable as long as you have the ability to search and in return get back whatever is relevant to your inquiry. And when you find people to work with that are skilled in areas that you aren’t, collaboration frees you to focus on what you do best so you don’t have to bear the pressure of doing it all.

*** update *** 1/6/09

Actually, with the new features the Gmail application has integrated, such as the capability to access your email account within a cell phone browser, make multiple message drafts, and the ability to read and prepare messages offline, it does seem to offer quite a bit to help organize and communicate/share with others (including text/SMS within chat). Viewing attachments as html without having to open the files, pop and imap integration of multiple email accounts within Gmail, as well as Gmail itself can be accomplished on a mobile or pc. Ten years ago this was the kind of thing techies were dreaming about. Now that it’s here (along with increased storage of 7GB), it may offer practical tools to help organize your life, remind you of events, create task lists, and find what you’ve archived from any connected pc or mobile device.

Where time management and organization experts have been short-sighted is that the idea of organization has evolved with technological changes that act like an assistant or in the case of Gmail as a storage option, a magic closet that you can keep stuffing things into, and when you look for something you get back everything that relates to what you were seeking… so you’re able to keep adding without the clutter.