Evan Carmichael credits Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Workweek with transforming his business through virtual teams across the Netherlands, Africa, the Philippines, and the US. The book's core idea: protect CEO time for strategy, delegate everything else. Carmichael works five hours a day, four days a week, and rereads it annually to stay sharp on delegation.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my Facebook readers, Miriam, who wrote in asking about my favorite book. So she wrote in saying, what is the most interesting and useful book that you've ever read? So thanks for the question. I get this— I get asked similar questions a lot, and I've actually created a resource on my I think it's on the Facebook page, but it's definitely on the blog. It talks about my favorite books of all time. And the number 1 book that has really impacted my life is Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek. I think a lot of entrepreneurs have read it. It's become somewhat of a bible for a lot of people who are starting a business. For me, what I really liked about it was a whole— I guess there's a couple things. First off, the idea of outsourcing. So up until that point, when I first read the book, everything that I'd done, and I've had staff on board, but they've been local. So the idea of having people work for you remotely remotely was a new concept and we've since run with it and it's had a huge impact on my business and we have people working for me now who are in Holland and in Africa and in Philippines and United States and all over the world basically. It's a virtual team but they feel connected and part of the family and so that was a really interesting concept that really helped me. Also the idea of outsourcing personal tasks. And having a virtual assistant who you can hire at a fraction of the rate of what you would be earning and can save a lot of the headaches that you go through in your own personal life. I found that really had an impact on both my business and my personal life. And then what I really love about the book is that it teaches you to hack into your business and challenge the conventional thinking. And so since reading that book, I've tried to do some of the techniques from the book, including chunking your time so you're not working all day long. Just because most people work 9 to 5 doesn't mean you have to work 9 to 5. All right, so I usually work 5 hours a day, 4 days a week now, and crunch all my work down to that time, and it's worked out pretty well. So thank you, Tim, for writing the great book. There's a lot of other great parts in the book. I encourage you to read it if you haven't already read it. He's got 2 versions out already. Definitely pick up the second version. It's got new, cooler stories in there and real-life examples. There's other things that might appeal to you like traveling around the world and how to do it on a budget especially. But for me, I think the biggest impact was how I can get beyond myself, build a virtual team, and challenge conventional thinking and believe more in myself and the abilities that I have to take my business to the next level. So I read that book a number of years ago. I've read the revised version more recently, and I still try to revisit the book once a year just again to keep thinking. Am I doing the right things with my business, or should other things be delegated, handed off, so I can focus more of my time, or what I call the CEO time, most important kind of big picture things to be doing to grow my business. So check it out if you haven't read it, The 4-Hour Workweek. And if you check out my blog, you can also see the top 10 list of books that I recommend for entrepreneurs to read, and hopefully there's something in there that would inspire you to continue to build and grow your business. I know they really had an impact for me. Thank you for the question. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. Makes me want to make more of these videos for you guys. And if you have a comment, if you want to share what your favorite book is, or if you want to ask me a question, feel free to leave it in the comment section below, and we'll see you on the next episode.
