The 4-Hour Workweek (41 page)

We have had a fantastic experience in going to a local school in Spain that has allowed my child to immerse very deeply in her second language, culture, and literature. More info (in the book) on local schools is needed and how to experience it as a family for months at a time.

We have used local people like a wonderful flamenco teacher for our child and we have also used online sources like our piano teacher in Chicago who teaches our child in Spain via Skype.

E-libraries are very important (especially with a child who is a voracious reader). Http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html is an excellent resource on language education with great books on raising a bilingual child, even if you are a monolingual!

—SOULTRAVELERS3, a family living abroad and loving it

FINANCIAL MUSING

I graduated from Stanford University and started working in investment banking in July 2006, and, in a sick way, almost enjoyed it at first. Yes, it was a terrible lifestyle and all, but I was learning a lot and moving up very quickly. I have (had) a type-A personality, so it appealed to me on some level.

As the year progressed, though, I realized it wasn’t sustainable and that I wanted out… but like so many other people, I failed to take action immediately.

In May 2007, I was driving home at 3 A.M. one night after having pulled 4–5 all-nighters previously, and crashed into a tree on the side of the road. If you’ve never crashed into an inanimate object while asleep at the wheel, just imagine waking up five feet from the ground while bungee jumping as the cord is about to snap to get an idea of what it feels like.

“At the ER”

That was the subject line of the e-mail I sent out the next day to my entire office. Luckily, everyone understood and told me to take a rare three-day weekend. Luckily I survived with no major injuries, but at that point I decided it was time for a change.

I met up with some friends for dinner a week or two later and relayed my story. One friend there (who recently quit her job to pursue professional acting—her dream—while selling information products online) told me about this book she recently read called The 4-Hour Workweek.

I thought it was a scam, of course, but I really hated my life and decided I needed to check it out at the very least. I read it in one sitting. And then I read it again, just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Before ever getting into finance, I had done some work online with graphics and web design and I had a technical background, so nothing in the book seemed outrageous to me—I just didn’t realize how easy and accessible it all was. Also, I had lived in Japan for half a year in college and loved it—and long-term world travel had always been one of my goals.

I sat on the ideas in your book for a while, took a quick vacation to return to Japan in October 2007, and when I came back decided that I had to get started. My muse: sell an investment banking interview guide. It’s a niche, high-demand subject and I knew I could make a better guide than anything else out there. One problem: I had to stay anonymous since I was still working, and advertising with Pay-Per-Click would be way too expensive given the high CPCs for related keywords.

In November 2007 I decided to start a blog, Mergers & Inquisitions (http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com), about the investment banking industry and how to break in, aimed at a mix of college students, MBAs, and working professionals. While I built my audience, I never had the time to finish my muse—the interview guide. But I was getting tons of requests to do consulting from my readers, so I started with resume editing and expanded into mock interviews—yes, not very “muse-like” but I charged high rates and could make my old salary in a fraction of the time. I did this ALL while staying completely anonymous out of necessity—because I didn’t want to get fired without an alternative income stream. Amazingly, my services took off even though I couldn’t tell anyone who I was.

At the same time, I decided I would not get another job in finance, and would instead leave in June 2008. So I had a very short amount of time to make everything work. Almost every single one of my friends, roommates, and family doubted me and said it would never work. I decided they were all wrong and I would just do it anyway—worst-case scenario, I could always reduce my expenses and move to Thailand to teach English.

To boost my income, I completely revamped my site to sell more of my offerings, which took me from pocket change to full-time income from part-time consulting over July-August 2008. This allowed me to travel to Hawaii and Aruba to go snorkeling, surfing, and shark-cage-diving and visit friends in other parts of the U.S. all while making an investment banker’s income from part-time work.

As the recession and economy worsened, my business picked up because it was counter-cyclical—anything that helps people find jobs is in huge demand in a poor economy. I’ve since helped scores of laid-off bankers and other financiers find work elsewhere. However, I was also starting to work a lot more because I was effectively trading time for money … so over the fall I started to work on my original product idea—my interview guide—and released it to great success later in 2008.

It has gone on to free up a ton of time, double my revenues, and put the majority of my income on autopilot. If I didn’t do any further work from this point onward, I could make 2–3x my previous monthly income simply by writing once or twice a week for my site (4–5 hours) and doing limited consulting on the side (10 hours). So you could say I’ve increased my income almost 3x while reducing my hours 6x-9x and making myself completely mobile.

I admit that often I do “work” more than this, but it’s all on related educational projects that I want to work on, not anything that I have to work on. And if I don’t feel like working one week, I can reduce my hours to the 5–15 hour range and spend my time on learning languages, sports, or traveling to exotic destinations.

This setup allowed me to take an amazing trip to China, Singapore, Thailand, and Korea in December-January and get in some ridiculous adventures. I’ll be moving to Asia in a few months and after that, traveling the world indefinitely while running my business from coffee shops.

Incidentally, I met up with a lot of customers in Asia who thought this was the coolest thing ever!

Your book has changed my life and infinitely improved my lifestyle, and I just wanted to thank you for everything.

—B. DECHESARE

WHO SAYS KIDS HOLD YOU BACK?

My first action was to think “what is the worst that can happen on a scale of 1–10” if I quit my well-paid, very secure government job? The power of this thought process is incredible.

I quit my job, sold my house, and went camping for three months with two kids under two and a half and a pregnant wife (mini-retirement). We (very slowly) drove the SE coast of Australia from Sydney to Adelaide.

With the complete clarity of mind that comes from being in a field with your family with no immediate worries, I put into action a plan that I had been tinkering with for 12 months. I bought a wireless Internet dongle and created an info product for electrical engineers, and wrote some software to go with it.

Managed this by (a) going on info diet, (b) working 9 p.m.-midnight in a campsite with no other distractions, (c) outsourcing everything that I would find difficult or time consuming (like the tricky programming stuff and the illustrations for my book).

After about four weeks I had an automated informational website that had replaced ½ of my full-time income—requiring > four hours per week to maintain.

The original plan was to arrive in Adelaide and get a J.O.B. But with my passive income, I decided to simply grow my new business and am currently very close to replacing 100% of my previous income. It feels f&*#ing brilliant.

Now we plan to travel the world slowly until the kids are ready for primary school…

Who says kids hold you back?!   —FINN

WORKING REMOTELY

One month and one year ago, I read 4HWW on the recommendation of my sister’s boyfriend after I had been talking for months about changing my life drastically and moving to Argentina to learn Castellano. After reading the book I stopped talking about my dreams and immediately started setting short-term and long-term goals. I bought a notebook to track my monthly goals and tasks. I did lots of research on potential remote working situations and I started telling my close friends and family about my new plans. Everyone that I told thought it was just an idea and I wasn’t actually going to go through with it. They thought it was a “some day I’d like to do this” idea and that I wasn’t actually setting daily goals to get me there. They knew that I loved my job so why would I leave it for a life of uncertainty? I didn’t think of it that way. I wasn’t scared, I was excited at the prospect of a new way of life, a fresh start, and even though I loved my job I also had other things I wanted to accomplish in my life. At first I thought about teaching English to make a living down there, but deep down inside all I really wanted to do was continue working for my current company, just doing it remotely. The book gave me the confidence to think this was actually possible, when everyone around me thought it was impossible.

I decided to write up a proposal92 and present it to my boss even at the advice not to do it from everyone I knew. If my boss rejected my proposal, I had enough money saved up to live in Argentina for at least six months to get me by until I could figure out how I wanted to make money there. I was not giving up on my dream of living a freer, happier life with less work and more time for myself. All odds were against me but I took a calculated risk and had faith in myself. After I handed in my proposal, I was ready to expect the worst. Everyone around me was waiting with baited breath and words of encouragement after I got rejected. When I left the meeting with my boss I couldn’t believe it. She accepted and was eager to talk to me about the details. She even had a smile on her face and told me how awesome my proposal was. No one else could believe it when I told them. After the shock wore off, I realized that I could actually do this, and a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. The hardest part was over and now I could start thinking of more possibilities for my new life.

I set my goal to move to Argentina for September 2008. I arrived here on September 3 and have been here for about six months now. I live in the capital city of Jujuy, Argentina, a small province in the northwest of Argentina. I work about 5–10 hours a week and I find that I am much more focused now that I am out of the office and working alone. I have a private Spanish tutor that I meet with for two hours, five days a week. I have a handful of friends that I spend time with, practicing my Spanish. I go to the gym three times a week and go to yoga two times a week—something I didn’t do in the States because I didn’t have enough time. I eat healthier because I have more time to focus on what to eat. I have more time to dream up bigger things that I want to do with my new free time. I have dreams of owning a bar or cafe, so maybe a few years from now that will be my next endeavor.

My advice to 4HWW readers is to take from my experience. I rely heavily on the advice of my friends and family, but sometimes you have to ignore the advice of your loved ones to really make some thing happen. If you believe the impossible can be made possible, it will happen. —A.K. BROOKMIRE

KILLING YOUR BLACKBERRY

I’m a 37-year-old Subway franchisee owning and operating 13 stores. Been doing this for seven years. Prior to reading 4HWW I was KING at W4W (translate: work for work’s sake)! I’d never given myself “permission” to behave differently than I did as an employee in the past. 4HWW was absolutely liberating for me. I literally “caught myself” and began the process of curing my addiction to W4W. I used to always be “on” and I was never really “present” anywhere—too busy doing the “blackberry prayer” at the dinner table instead of spending quality time with those who were present. Holidays were just a remote office for battling the e-mail tsunami. 4HWW gave me a new paradigm and I began to look at my business as a “product,” the (original) purpose of which was to provide me with a disproportionate amount of income vs. time invested personally by me—to what end? To ENJOY MYSELF and to have complete autonomy over my schedule and activities. So I got off my own back, told myself it was OK to pursue the original purpose and here’s what I did:

Crunched my “always open” workweek into four days and 20 hours. I immediately began taking Mondays OFF, giving me a nice three-day weekend. (Fridays are in the “CROSSHAIRS” next!) Tuesday to Friday I work 11 A.M.-4 p.m. (20 hours per week). With the “unluxury” of time in this crunched workweek I was forced to appraise everything through the 80/20 filter and found that 50% of the 80% was pure crap and the other 50% of the 80% could be done by someone on my payroll. Great!

Everything I do now has to somehow either increase sales or decrease costs otherwise “it’s someone else’s job.” You can’t be “half-pregnant,” so when I’m “on” I’m really on and when I’m “off” I’m off—good luck trying to contact me. I still carry portable e-mail but I’ve killed “auto-sync” (the bane of modern mankind in terms of interruption) now it’s on a Tues-Fri, 11 A.M.-4 p.m. schedule. Outside of that window it waits.

My e-mail autoresponder eliminated 50% of my e-mail within two weeks as people sending me meaningless crap got fed up looking at my autoresponder and stopped including me—love it! I keep a short, compact “to-do” list and anything time-bound is in my calendar. These get my attention before any other “inbox” does because I’ve previously decided what’s important for me to get done—the rest can wait.

I could go on, but all in all I think this is a message that the self-employed need to hear so badly. With no “boss” and no “clean edges” to work-life/home-life it’s so easy to fall into a W4W grind and your business becomes a tractor beam that trails you inexorably down that path. 4HWW is the antidote!” —ANDREW, self-employed in the UK

STAR WARS, ANYONE?

I knew my quest for the 4-Hour Workweek was working when my daughter’s kindergarten teacher asked her the question: “What kind of work does your father do?” As the teacher re-told the story back to me, it was my daughter’s answer that really struck a chord. “Your daughter turned and looked up at me with the most serious look on her face and said, ‘My dad just sits around and watches Star Wars all day.’”