This is day 13 (well in truth waaayyyy longer, somewhere between 4-6 months now but my 13th post) of My 4 Hour Work Week Journey. Please make sure you read the rest of the articles that came before this one to understand where I am in the journey. Click here to buy a copy of the 4 hour work week and go on the journey with me.

First of All

My potential cash flow muse, Conversations with Podcasting Gurus came out yesterday. I have an early bird special for the next 3 days to encourage folks to support the product so check it out by visiting the Conversations with Podcasting Gurus (& Bonus Quick Start Guide) Sales Page and ordering today.

Now onto the scheduled programming.

The Video

Click on the Video to Play "How I Tested My Cash Flow Muses"

To watch this video on Youtube click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYTVt1Zo_8I

The Slide Presentation

You can also access the slide presentation using the link below:
How to Test a Cashflow Muse Slide Presentation hosted by Sliderocket

Websites and Resources Mentioned

1) Google Adwords Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

2) www.Ask.com

3) Keyword Discovery Tool: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

4) Perry Marshall’s 5 Day Free Adword Course

Any questions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below so we can begin a dialogue on how we can all create cash flow muses.

Have a day more beautiful than the muse that inspired it,

Mwangi

This is day 12 (well in truth much longer, probably 3-4 months now but my 12th post) of My 4 Hour Work Week Journey. Please make sure you read the rest of the articles that came before this one to understand where I am in the journey. Click here to buy a copy of the 4 hour work week and go on the journey with me.

In the previous edition, we discovered the niche that I had selected: the bloggers and podcasting niche. On this episode, I walk you through how I selected what products to test and what ultimately got tested.

It All Started with Adsense

Around the time that I was going through the 4 hour work week journey, I was also at the stage where I was about to begin optimizing my Google Adsense on this site, theDisplacedAfrican.com.

For the unitiated, or for those who hate fluff talk and want to know exactly what I mean, optimization means:

The process of getting the maximum results possible for the minimum amounts of input.

In the case of Adsense this meant changing the position, font, colours, shapes etc etc of my Google adsense untilI had ads which were consistently getting clicked on the most and therefore bringing the website the most money.

Necessity is the Mother of All Invention, Innovation and a Whole Lotta Businesses

I realized that nowhere on the web did there exist a guide that taught solo Wordpress bloggers such as myself how we could optimize our Adsense step by step. Specifically I wanted information on:

a) Just what ad blocks I should test and what elements I should test out of the infinite number of elements that can be tested.

b) How to automate the process.

c) A step by step by step guide.

The only guy I could find who was doing this was Joel Comm, but I felt that Joel was far too general, didn’t focus on Wordpress, didn’t have a system of automating it.

A Little A-ha Moment

So I thought to myself, well since I am a Wordpress blogger, a graduate of Blog Mastermind and am kinda frustrated with just how to optimize my Adsense, surely other people must be having this problem too. So, after deliberating with Yaro Starak my fellow Blog Mastermind members, I thought:

Killing 2 Birds with One Stones

Why not go onto a site like Rentacoder and get a coder to:

1) Research the best performing ad blocks for Wordpress blogs.

2) Discover how to automatically test the infinite number of success elements.

3) Automate the process

4) Optimize my Google Adsense

5) Record all that into a book

6) Include a step by step guide so people can do the same

7) Mint money off of that.

Test Number One

And so, I went to Rentacoder and got a coder started on optimizing my Google Adsense and recording the results while I went onto performing research to see if any self-hosting Wordpress blogger wanted to learn how to make the most money they could from their blog’s Adsense.

Tools Used

I made use of 3 tools to do my research:

1) Google Keyword Tool

2) Ask.com

3) Free search term suggestion tool which I first heard about from the Andrew and Daryl Grant website

Quick Digression

Andrew and Daryl Grant are a couple who made $250,000 in their first year as Internet marketers selling ebooks.

When you visit and opt-in to the site , they give you FREE, clear step by step instructions on how they did this.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you see yourself making your online fortunes via ebooks (sadly I don’t make a dime in affiliate commissions ofF this recommendation, but it definitely still stands).

The Research Began

And the results were not good. There were no people searching for information on how to optimize Google Adsense for self-hosted Wordpress blogs. I didn’t get much better results when I tried variations and creative ways to express the term.

And So I Thought

Let me put that to the side and I will try to retail “My Adsense Guide” later using my existing connections in the Internet marketing world once that is ready.

Definitely not enough demand for my maiden voyage, though.

I wanted my maiden voyage to be an area where there is high demand, and hopefully an area in which I have expertise.

Outsourcing

Next, I moved on to outsourcing. I have been outsourcing all sorts of things for the last 8 months. A lot of the work that I do is actually dependent on outsourcing i.e. someone gives me a job to do, I outsource some or all of it while I supervise. So, I know quite a bit about outsourcing using sites like Elace, Rentacoder and GetaFreelancer.

Keyword Research Take 2

My problem when I went to perform keyword research is I didn’t know how to narrow down from the HUUUGGGGE topic of outsourcing to what it is I do:

Outsource Internet marketing related processes using freelance sites such as Get a Freelancer, Rent a Coder and Elance

Well Around That Time

I got one or two questions on my blog about podcasting. Me thought, why not?

KeyWord Research

Specific enough: Check =  When you search for podcasting you are looking for information on a very specific process known as podcasting as opposed to a more broad category like content creation or audio production.

Traffic= Check = The search traffic for terms related to podcasting were enough to at least give it a shot.

Experience and Expertise = I have my own podcast and have been podcasting for 5 months. I also have some contacts in the Internet marketing world who I knew could probably connect me to other experts. I am also part of the Blog Mastermind where we have our fair share of podcasters. So it definitely seemed like a good bet.

Keyword Research

So I set up the site www.mypodcastingtutor.com, began working on my email autoresponder sequence which includes content rich Camtasia videos. (I currently have 7 emails that go out over a month)

And I began my test.

In the next edition, of my 4 hour work week journey, I walk you through my testing process.

How goes your journey? Well, I hope?

Mwangi

This is day 11 (well in truth much longer, probably 2-3 months now but my 10th post) of My 4 Hour Work Week Journey. Please make sure you read the rest of the articles that came before this one to understand where I am in the journey. Click here to buy a copy of the 4 hour work week and go on the journey with me.

**For English subtitles please select “Danish” from the “Choose Language….” drop down menu**

It took me more than 6 weeks to find a niche and as I type this I have known the niche I wish to target for quite a few weeks.

Nevertheless, for your benefit I would like to walk you through my niche selection process.

Stage in the Process

As those of you who have read, or are reading the book would know, as soon as Tim finishes introducing us to the concept of outsourcing your life, he immediately moves to the area which was to me the most seductive and compelling part of the book: cash flow muse creation.

What is a Cash Flow Muse?

A cash flow muse is a business/organization/system that exists for one purpose and one purpose only: to generate your target monthly income so you can live your ideal lifestyle.

This business isn’t created for the sake of growth, to sell at IPOs, for you to have a job your passionate about. Nope, it’s there so you have enough money to live your ideal lifetsyle: that’s it.

What I Love About the Idea of Cash Flow Muses?

One of the principles I am absolutely enamoured by, especially of late, is what I lovingly call:

The Principle of Specificity

The Principle of Specificity in short is an art or a science of being specific whether that means being clear and concise in thinking, in action, in language or in intention.

In short, someone gets extremely clear and extremely specific on what they want, need, have to get done etc etc go out and do it.

I love the fact that a cash flow muse has a very very very specific purpose as opposed to an abstract or an ambiguous or vague objective like:

To provide quality widgets for all your daily needs or;

To make a living or;

To become the greatest company in the world.

Nope, Tim sat down and basically asked himself what exact dollar amount he would need to live a lifestyle that would make him happy and created a business to fund that. How rare is that level of specificity and clarity of intention?

So now let’s move on to:

How I Found My Niche

So here are the steps I took to find out what demographic I want to attempt to market to:

1) Went to my local Borders book store: We have a number of book stores in Australia but I opted to go to one that is a short while away from my house- Borders -rather than stay close to home for a few reasons:

a) Borders is HUGE: In terms of pure size, Borders has the biggest stores of the bookshops down under and larger size automatically means greater selection and I wanted as large a selection as possible.

b) Borders allows you to read books for free: Ever since the days when I used to run away from school to read books at Borders (yes, I see the irony), they had me at that policy where you could sit in there as long as you want and read as many books and magazines as you want.

They even have a cafe in the store so you can feed and water yourself while doing this. Ever since then, I always take my book or DVD business to borders.

2) Went to the Magazine Rack: Tim recommends you pick a niche that is serviced by 1 or 2 small magazines. Below, I have video of the magazines that I selected.I selected magazines from the following niches:

a) Writing as a profession

b) Vegetarianism

c) Sustainable and environmentally conscious living

3) Disappointed: To be honest with you I was quite disappointed at my selections because:

a) I hardly qualify as a professional writer

b) I am not in touch with the psychological and social aspects of being a vegetarian in the West, except for going for the occasional cooking class, and;

c) I haven’t put in concentrated, consistent effort into sustainable living for quite a while now.

Therefore, while I was in the mall I decided I would:

4) Pay a Visit to the Newsstand: Here I picked up two other magazines, in the area of making money and home based businesses (check out my Youtube video above).I still wasn’t elated because I hardly qualify to be a part of that niche either but I decided I had enough selections and I went home to proceed to the next stage of muse selection.

5) Emailed and Called the Advertising Director’s and Requested Rate Cards: We wanted magazines that had the following characteristics:

Circulation of 5000+ people

Full page advertising cost less than US$5000

The greater the number of people selling to magazine readers direct via ads that had websites and 1800 numbers, the better.

Another tip I got from the legendary, Gary Halbert:

Select magazines that get sold on newsstands and do well on news stand sales in comparison to strictly subscription titles. It is too easy and cheap to get a subscription to a magazine.

You only pick up a magazine of a newsstand if you need something that day that the magazine is offering.

6) The Process of Elimination Went a Little Something Like This:Emailed and called all the magazines over the course of 3 weeks and obtained their rate cards and circulation numbers:

* Vegeterian magazine : Full page ad = approximately US $22,000

* Sustainable living magazine: Great advertising rates, great circulation. Don’t know squat about the lifestyle and not very passionate at the moment about this niche.

* Writing magazine # 1: Not enough readers + Not enough expertise on my part.

* Writing magazine # 2: Not much interest in the topic area. Never got back in touch with me with rates.

7) No Niche! That pretty much meant that I eliminated everything I had done in the previous six steps and was without a niche.

What Did I Do?

Well one of the things I had to do in establishing my target daily income was decide just what I wanted to do with my time.

Because I am a Blogging Geek

I love the world of Internet marketing and the world of commercial blogging. One of the things that I found that I thought would be very cool to attend if I had money at the time is Blog World Expo. So I went to the site and signed up to join their newsletter.

Well Wouldn’t You Know It

Just as I was sitting around in the midst of my “Can’t-find-a-muse-how-will-I-find-one” despair I received one of the Blog World Expo newsletters and wouldn’t you know it:

There is a Magazine…….Wait for It……Wait for It……Drumroll Please…..:

For Bloggers and Podcasters!!!

* I checked out the circulation: Great

* I checked out the price of advertising: Great

* I checked out some of their back issues: Average in terms of the number of people selling to readers directly; about 10 – 20 people selling directly

* Subscription vs Newstand magazine: Subscription only as far as I can tell so again average

* Passion for the topic and willingness to investigate and establish expertise: HIGGHHHH

And so ladies and gentlemen that is how I settled on my niche:

Bloggers and Podcasters

And on the next edition we talk about what I have done (actually am doing) now that I have found a niche I want to operate in.

Be blessed and bless others,

Mwangi

Update: My preliminary testing has shown me that this product is a go….so ladies and gentlemen today on the 26th of August 2008 (you will be reading this after that date) let me announce that I shall be creating my first online information product……:D excitement

]]> http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/2008/08/my-4-hour-work-week-journey-niche-selection-and-cash-flow-muses/feed/ 0 http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/2008/07/my-4-hour-work-week-journey-outsourcing-your-life/ http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/2008/07/my-4-hour-work-week-journey-outsourcing-your-life/#comments Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:05:49 +0000 Mwangi http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/?p=800

This is day 10 of My 4 Hour Work Week Journey. Please make sure you read the rest of the articles that came before this one to understand where I am in the journey. Click here to buy a copy of the 4 hour work week and go on the journey with me.

You will notice that by this point, I am writing less and less about the book and getting straight into the Questions and Actions. Please read the articles that came before this one, listen to the audios and videos I have embedded in those articles or buy the book to fully understand the logic behind what I am doing here.

VA is short for “Virtual assistant”.

Some Security Measures When Working with VAs

These are for those people who might be scared and/or paranoid about working with virtual assistants who would have access to their delicate information. A couple of quick tips if you work on blogs and websites, like I do.

1) Create unique username and password for VAs to access your website:

A friend of mine is currently paying me to help him create and optimize his blog ( If you are interested in this service, please send an email to masmilele@thedisplacedafrican.com ). He is the person who best taught me this lesson.

We hired a technician from rent a coder to take the domain name that he had already bought and create a Wordpress blog from it and install some plugins and software into the Wordpress blog.

Obviously, this would involve the technician logging into my friend’s hosting and domain account. However my friend is quite the risk manager. Scared that the technician may play around with his domain settings, he went the extra mile and created a limited authority account for the technician that has access to his domain and hosting account.

For those of you working with people on your Wordpress blog, its possible to create such accounts as well.

From now on, every time I work with a VA, for the next redesign of the site for example, I will create a brand new username and password for their use.

2) Use credit cards instead of debit cards: It’s easier to erase huge credit charges instead of debit charges.

Questions and Actions: Outsourcing Life

1) Get yourself an assistant even if you don’t need one:

I have already assigned more than a dozen tasks to VAs in the USA, India, Bangalore and oddly enough, Baghdad, Iraq (more power to Iraqis if they actually have Internet now).

As a matter of fact, there is one task I can think of that needs a VA’s touch right now……..look out for an article coming out soon that will have “the VA’s touch”.

2) Identify your top 5 time consuming nonwork tasks and 5 personal tasks you could assign for sheer fun:

Hmm this one will be tough considering I spend so much time online But if I were to outsource more than I do already, here are a couple of things I would consider outsourcing:

i) Find the absolute cheapest ticket to fly to Kenya over the next 6 months: I recently created a video over the course of about a week where I tried to see if I could get cheap airplane tickets to allow me to visit Kenya sometime this year using the site rentacoder.

It gives some helpful tips of how one might be able to save hundreds if not thousands of dollars on flights from Melbourne, Australia to Nairobi, Kenya. I will release this as its own independent article because I think cheap airfare is always worth discussing for immigrants.

ii) Buy me a very very cheap pair of size 10.5 sneakers: I haven’t bought a new pair of shoes in a very long time, but its quite difficult to get a nice, comfortable pair of sneakers that doesn’t wear out quickly at a cheap price.

iii) Figure out the best place and price for me to sell my car: My car is at the end of its life and I want to find out how I can sell either the parts or the entire car for the best price.

iv) Perform most of the research necessary for me to create my cash flow muse: This will make a lot more sense once we get into the chapter on automation

v) You know what Tim did it, me thinks I might outsource my dating : Hmm, now should I outsource the search for dates or just the organizing of dates?I will let this marinate in my mind. It’s definitely something that I would do. I think the pure fun and novelty of having “my assistant” call a girl to confirm plans I have with her would make my day, and hers, pretty memorable.

Onwards and upwards to infinity and beyond,

Mwangi

]]> http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/2008/07/my-4-hour-work-week-journey-outsourcing-your-life/feed/ 0 http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/2008/07/my-4-hour-work-week-journey-q-a-and-the-dollar-amount-we-are-aiming-for-during-this-journey/ http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/2008/07/my-4-hour-work-week-journey-q-a-and-the-dollar-amount-we-are-aiming-for-during-this-journey/#comments Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:00:18 +0000 Mwangi http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/?p=455

This is day 5 of My 4 Hour Work Week Journey. Please make sure you read the rest of the articles that came before this one to understand where I am in the journey. Click here to buy a copy of the 4 hour work week and go on the journey with me.

Hey everyone, I hope you are having a great day, night, afternoon, siesta-time, no time, everytime, wherever you are.

Quick Thanks…..Again

I am pretty psyced:I did my first ever radio interview with Linda from Capital FM this morning and surprisingly I was super comfortable doing and so public thanks to Linda for making me super comfortable and for creating a fun and informative question list.

The interview had between 4 – 7 false starts and so the way she rolled with the punches even as sleep did battle with her eyes was pretty cool, pretty cool. Asante sana sana sana (Thank you very very very much).

Today’s Video

It will make a lot of sense as I go through the journey.

Questions and Actions

One of the key ideas of the book, the 4 hour work week, which I absoloutely love is quite often in the book he has Q & A: Questions and actions.

This is where he basically makes you look inward and ask yourself particular questions all with the end result being that you take action that takes you closer to your ideal lifestyle. The D for Definition part of the book has three questions and actions so I’ll get right into it

Questions and Actions: Pulling you Out of the Comfort Zone

Tim knows that a lot of what he says will seem counter-intuitive and illogical and so in his first Q & A immediately goes about the task of poking holes in this real world and its rules that we hold so dear to.

To play along with me let’s answer the following three questions which are the first Q&A:

1) How has being “realistic” and “responsible” kept you from living your ideal lifestyle?

2) How has doing what you “should” resulted in sub-par experiences or regret for not having done something else?

3) Look at what you are doing and ask yourself, ” What would happen if I did the opposite of all the people around me?”

4) Finally, ask, “What will I sacrifice if I go down this track for the next 10, 20, 30 or 50 years?”

My Answers (No Copying Though )

1) Hmmm. I think this one goes all the way back to when I was 16 years old. As those of you who have read my story would know, I have had delusions of grandeur for many years.

Though I am a huge supporter of secondary education and love the fact that I have a great high school diploma, I think as I had simply dropped out of school if I had intended and committed myself fully to serving Africa and Africans and/or becoming a performer, projects like the Displaced African would have started a lot sooner.

I was at the peak of my mental clarity when I was 16 and since then my ideas have definitely been clouded and influenced by superficial concerns of the world.

I’ll never really know what I could have achieved or what I could have created or changed had I thrown caution to the wind and gone out into the world with a clear vision and a deep passion. (Hope that answer wasn’t too ambiguous, leave me a comment below and let me know if it was)

2) This answer will probably fly over the heads of a lot of folks, but I don’t know if I shared this, but I am very pedantic and anal about how I interact with people. I analyse it and think about it quite often, what I did wrong or right, what different groups of people respond to and so on and so on.

I think following what other people did and their ways of interacting and not sticking to my guns resulted in my social life not being as it should have been at many stages in life.

I abdicated responsibility for determining my identity within social situations to other people and over time I lost my spark, my fire, became more and more timid and lost my chutzpah. A lot less women were met and I had a lot less fun than I should have. Hmm, dunno if folks will get this answer either, but it felt like the right answer to me.

3) I am already doing this: let’s see what happens at the end of this 4 hour work week journey and over the course of the life of the Displaced African.

4) You know, one of the huge reasons I chose to start this blog was because of looking around and overall not really being impressed by the way African immigrants were conducting life. In the United States for example, we are the best educated ethnic group and here in Oz folks are far from book-illeterate or penny foolish.

And yet, I never heard much about people who were doing great things in the diaspora. No books, no movies, no websites, no “urban legends”, no real legends. Even once I got here, over time I realized that many people here seemed to be living waaayyyy below their potential in terms of intellect and education. Now this could be for two reasons:

a) We Africans in the diaspora are not good at getting the word out there about our successes and/or I am very ignorant about the people who do great things out here.

b) We don’t have that many successes to celebrate. Either way, this blog makes some sense.

Hmm, this post is long enough as is and so I will leave the other two Questions and Actions for the next post.

To ensure you don’t miss a single moment of my 4 hour work week journey, subscribe to the site via RSS or email.

Have a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious day,

Mwangi

This is day 4 of My 4 Hour Work Week Journey. Please make sure you read the rest of the articles that came before this one to understand where I am in the journey. Click here to buy a copy of the 4 hour work week and go on the journey with me.

Step 1: D is for Definition (Pages 21 – 48)

The D for definition section is chock full of great information. For the sake of expediency we shall only talk about three things:

a) Annecdotes that make one want to begin their own 4 hour work week journey.

b) Laying the psychological ground rules that you must keep in mind when you are going through the process of lifestyle design.

c) Comfort and other exercises meant to help you define the type of lifestyle you want and deal with the discomfort of going on the journey.

Annecdotes

From stories that show how empty the blind pursuit of fortune can be, to stories of families that have gone overseas, to even controversial Olympic gold medalists, Tim uses real life case studies and stories throughout this section to illustrate just how his principles and ideas apply in real life. Seeing as they don’t have direct bearing on my journey, I won’t delve into them and will leave these stories for you to read.

The Ground Rules

For the rest of this 4 hour work week challenge I will paste these ground rules on the mirror in my bathroom so that I read them every evening ( I work at night and sleep during the day) when I wake up. I have attached a video where I talk about this below:

The objectives of the new rich are quite different from those of conventional 9 to 5ers:

1. To have others work for you.

2. To prevent work for work’s sake, and to do the minimum neccesary for the maximum effect.

3. To distribute mini-retirements throughout one’s life as opposed to “saving it all up” for the end of life.

4. Not to be inactive, but to do what is exciting.

5. Not the empty accumulation of possession but to become and do what you want to do, whether that involves material possessions or not.

6. To be neither boss, nor employee but rather owner: Owning the train and allowing others to make sure they run on time.

7. To make money TO achieve dreams. The dream comes first and you make money to achieve a dream and don’t just make money for the sake of making it.

8. To have more quality things in your life and less clutter as opposed to simply more things, information, people etc etc

9. As entrepreneurs, constant cash flow is objective number one; big paydays are a secondary objective.

10. To never have to step away from one’s dream to go back to working for work sake (which Tim actually has an initial for: W4W)

In addition to that, there are some things I will have to keep in mind for the remainder of my journey if I am to be succesful:

1. Retirement and accumulation for retirement is only done as a buffer against worst case scenarios and is not the desired lifestyle.

2. Interest and energy are cyclical and therefore life should alternate between extended periods of enjoyable work and enjoyable rest and leisure.

3. Less is not laziness: The goal is always to do the least work to achieve maximum output instead of constantly being busy especially with meaningless work.

4. Timing is never right: Whenever one chooses to engage in something like a 4 hour work week journey or anything that makes one uncomfortable, there is never a right time. Truth be told, it’s a pretty bad time for me too. But don’t let that stop you. If it can have massive positive consequences, go for it.

5. Ask for forgiveness and not permission: If it isn’t going to devastate people around you, but will make them uncomfortable, try it AND then justify it. Get very good at getting things started without asking for the permission of those around you and apologize when you screw up.

6. Emphasize strengths and don’t fix weaknesses: Leverage your strengths and don’t work in areas of weakness, even though it’s to fix them.

7. Things in excess become their opposite: We don’t want too much of anything – idle time, possessions etc etc. Instead we want a life that is more cyclical and balanced in nature.

8. Money alone is not the solution: Money will never ever solve the deeper, existential questions that haunt us all.

9. Relative income is more important than absolute income: If you can’t move around at will and don’t have time to enjoy the money you make, then someone who earns the same amount working less hours and with the ability to travel at will is many times richer. Relative income factors in time and mobility. Absolute income is just about the cents of dollars.

10. Distress is bad, Eustress is good: For any people who studied psychology, then you all know what eustress is: good stress ( it exists, I hear some ask?). This is stress that makes us grow and expand as people in a healthy way. Distress is stress that simply eats away at us and leaves us no better. The goal isn’t to be inactive or eliminate stress but we want a whole lot of eustress that will make us better people.

Comfort Exercises

I have decided that I won’t do any of the comfort exercises in the book for the simple reason that I am not uncomfortable about going on the journey and so don’t need to slowly come out of my shell to go on it.

So I will concentrate all my energy around going on the journey: see you on Day 5.

To ensure you don’t miss a single moment of my 4 hour work week journey, subscribe to the site via RSS or email.

This is day 3 of My 4 Hour Work Week Journey

The Preface Chapters of the Book

Chapter: FAQ – Doubters Read This

In this, the first chapter of the book, Tim opens by explaining a quintessential idea of the book:

Lifestyle design which, according to my understanding of the book, I would define as manipulating the various elements that influence your life in such a way that you can be, do and have whatever you want whenever you want. I can also define it as designing your dream lifestyle now as opposed to “the deferred life plan” a.k.a. retirement.

The chapter was written to answer specific fears of potential readers including:

a) Do I have to quit my 9-5 or be a risk taker? In short, Tim says no, the book is written to teach you to design your ideal lifestyle, no matter what that ideal is. If you want to work as little as possible and earn a full time income, the tools are here. If you love your office job but just want some extra time off, the tools are in the 4 hour work week.

b)Do I Have to be a single 20 something to apply the book’s principles: This probably wouldn’t matter too much because most of you reading this are single 20 somethings but in short the answer is no. Browse around for Ferriss interviews and you realize he gets interviewed by his fair share of middle aged family individuals and the book has interviews with family men and women who have applied the book’s principles.

c) Do I have to travel? I just want more time?: As I said before, Tim says the book is a manual to teach YOU how to create YOUR desired lifestyle whatever that is.

d) Do I need to be born rich? Would the book have even sold a copy if the answer was Yes? Clearly this is a book written to appeal mainly to the middle, and to a lesser extent, lower class ambitions and problems.

e) Do I need to be an Ivy League graduate? Me and Acolyte have argued about the importance of formal education in guaranteeing success in life, let’s watch and see as I go through the book………….

Chapter:(Tim’s Story) and Why You Need this Book

The book begins with what I like to call a this-is-why-I’m-cool-and-you-should-listen-to-what-I-have-to-say story that talks about him participating in the Tango World Championships in Argentina while also briefly touching on other fantastic things Tim’s done such as Kickboxing in Thailand and scuba diving in private islands in Panama.

Tim then introduces a quintessential idea in the book:

The New Rich: These are people who increase the amount of time they have to pursue their heart’s desire and couple that with enough income to live that lifestyle and the ability to move and travel wherever they please to live the life they dream of NOW rather than saving it for retirement. Lifestyle design is meant to help people join the New Rich.

It should be noted that his examples of the new rich include cubicle workers as well as millionaires so he is clearly trying to make this book appeal to as broad a spectrum of people as possible.

Important Distinction

An important thing that Tim touches on that is rarely discussed is:

When we go off in pursuit of a million dollars, we are not in pursuit of one million pieces of green paper BUT instead in pursuit of the lifestyle and the freedom we believe the money will give us.

The book claims it isn’t about creating millionaires, its about giving you the lifestyle of a millionaire in the here and now by using time and mobility to increase the value of one’s income.

Another cool idea that comes out of this chapter:

The Dealmaker Mindet: Reality is negotiable. Outside of the law, morality, ethics and science, all rules can be bent or broken.

DEAL or DELA

DEAL and DELA refer to the two ways in which one goes through the lifestyle design process

If you are entrepreneurially minded you would go through the process in the following order:

1) D for Definition

2) E for Elimination

3) A for Automation

4) L for Liberation

If you are an employee interested in lifestyle design, the order would change slightly and become:

1) D 2) E 3) L and then 4) A; so you would strive for liberation (which has to do with the ability to be mobile and travel) first before striving to automate.

Clearly, seeing as I am a terrible employee, I will be going through the process in the D-E-A-L order.

Lack of Common Sense and Testing

Lastly, Tim discusses how a lot of the ideas in the book will seem very contrary to “common sense”. He says he is aware and proposes that one micro-tests one’s assumptions and micro-tests the ideas of the book before dismissing them.

I propose the same thing: conduct tiny little experiments with minimal risks with me and let’s see where we’ll be a few weeks from now.

There are many other important concepts that he introduces in this chapter but I’ll get to them in due time.

Chronology of a Pathology

This is pretty much a breakdown of Tim’s life from birth to how he arrived at the ideas of the book. If you have listened, read and/or watched interviews with Tim Ferriss you know everything you need to know.

Alright day 4, we got straight into step 1: D for Definition. To ensure you don’t miss a moment of my four hour work week journey make sure you subscribe to this site via RSS or email.

See you there,

Mwangi

]]> http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/2008/06/my-4-hour-work-week-journey-book-overview-and-preface-chapters/feed/ 5 http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/2008/06/my-4-hour-work-week-journey-introduction/ http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/2008/06/my-4-hour-work-week-journey-introduction/#comments Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:02:25 +0000 Mwangi http://www.thedisplacedafrican.com/?p=427

Yet another series that is being created and in this case lived on the fly. Feedback! Feedback! Feedback! Tell me what I should improve about the series, about the videos and just any other general feedback, please leave that in the comments section. Anyway……….

My 4 Hour Work Week Journey

More Information on Timothy Ferriss

1) Darren Rowse text interview with Timothy Ferriss

2) Yaro Starak interviews Tim Ferriss

3) Tim Ferriss is interviewed by About.com

4) Click here to buy a copy of the 4 hour work week from Amazon.com

Hope this series is of use to you,

Mwangi