How I Started Living the 4-Hour Work Week

The four hour work week. Everyone's dream. People talk about it, and yet it's so elusive, but I've been living it since 2007. So go back to 2007. Netflix is just starting. Facebook had only been launched a few years previous and didn't have that many users. Then there's the keyboard cat. Yeah, who doesn't remember that? I've been working with two VAs from the Philippines for about 18 months when this all went down, I was running my own business. I was working 40 hours a week, but that's not what I wanted. Most weeks. I probably worked more than 40 hours a week or more than 50 hours a week. And yet I had this dream that I could magically outsource all my work and work a lot less while other people did the work for me. And that's what it was. It was a dream. I didn't understand how it would work, but that's what I wanted. And then my wife's doctor's appointment happened. She was seven months pregnant. We go into the doctor's office. He says, you have preeclampsia and if you don't go on strict bed rest for the next three to five weeks, you're going to have a seizure and you could die and you're going to lose this baby. And when I heard that, all I thought was, I'm not about to lose a baby over money. I can't work for the next three to five weeks. What am I going to do? On the car ride home, my mind is racing, racing. What am I going to do? How am I going to handle this? I get home and I have these two VAs in the Philippines who have worked for me for about 18 months. I don't want you to think I just pulled these guys off the street or that you're going to go and hire a new VA and they're going to take over your business for you. I had spent a good amount of time bringing them in, but this is how I started living the four hour work week. I got home from that doctor's appointment, I sent an email to those two guys and my business partner, and I said, hey, look, here's my situation. I can't work. I need you to take over everything I'm currently doing in the business, including managing my email and managing my blog and all of our customer support and the linking that we're doing in our SEO and our SEO campaigns and our paid ads that we're doing. All. All of these things that I had been dealing with. I Turned over to these two guys in the Philippines and some of it to my business partner. He already had a full plate working full time or more than full time. But those two guys in the Philippines, I didn't realize how competent and capable they were because up to this point I had taught them a lot of stuff, but I had kept their tasks mostly menial. Well, what had actually happened was they were observing the business, they were understanding things and thinking, wow, I wish he would give me more responsibility. When the reality is at that point I thought they could only do menial tasks. And so I was only assigning them menial tasks while giving them a lot of training that would allow them to do more. Well, for the next three weeks I worked about an hour because I had two other kids at the time. My wife's on strict bed rest. I did a lot of cooking and cleaning and laundry and driving. Kids became Mr. Mom while these two guys in the Philippines and my business partner took over the work that I was doing in the business and the thinking work and the decisions and yeah, wow, I had no idea they were capable of this. And it was all kind of a blur. Three weeks later, my wife had the baby, this perfectly healthy little girl that was such a miracle and today is so amazing. And then my wife struggled for two months with postpartum depression. I spent three months really doing almost nothing. And when I went back to work, all I knew was I'm not going back to the lifestyle that I was living before. And at the time I was, I wasn't making that much money. I was making $100,000 a year. That's a far cry from the eight figure annual business that I run today. But I knew I wasn't going to go back to the 50 or 60 hour weeks that I was working at the time. Since then I've worked between four and 17 hours a week, usually somewhere in between there basically Every week since 2007, I've never worked a 40 hour week. My business has grown almost every month since then. And so here are some things I've learned along the way about living the four hour work week. Number one, what Tim Ferriss promised and talked about is real. It's possible. You can certainly do it. You can run a very successful business while working very little. You have to be intentional about it. Number two, the methodology that Tim Ferriss set forth in the four Hour Workweek isn't exactly how I did it and it's not how he does it today. And I only know that because I know that he has been using the methodology that I use for hiring and delegating work. So let's get into that because that's a key component of this. But before I get into that, I want to point something out. At the time, I wasn't making very much money. $100,000 a year. Today I run an eight figure business. It's not the business success that allows you to work the four hour work week. Working the four hour work week is an intentional choice. And it's that choice that leads to the business success. I know a whole bunch of business owners who are super successful. People making millions of dollars a year, tens of millions of dollars a year. People running billion dollar businesses, they don't have any time freedom. They're certainly not working four hours a week or 40 hours a week even. They're working much more than that. So while our society tends to aggrandize the business success, it's not the business success that leads to the lifestyle success. It's actually the opposite. It's choosing the lifestyle first that then leads to the business success. Now you can have the business success without the lifestyle success, but that's not what you're looking for. You want the business success that brings the lifestyle success with it. But in order to do that, you have to make the lifestyle choices first and then the business success follows because of some natural consequences that happen when you choose to work differently. So here's what I found. Number one, early on, before any of this happened, I had hired people in the Philippines to work for me. I didn't know how good they were going to be. I didn't know what I was getting into at the time. I didn't know that I would end up having a team of 50 people full time in the Philippines. I only just hired one and he turned out to be so amazing that I hired two. And then my wife had this problem and I had these two guys that I had spent a whole bunch of time teaching and training that allowed me to step away from the business. So that's the first step and really the most important piece in all of this is hire good people and teach them and train them. I spent a good amount of time giving them training, having them do work, then me giving them feedback, then having them do work, and me giving them feedback and having them do work to the point where until they got so good at what they were doing, they no longer sent me their work because I told them I don't want to see it anymore. I trust that you're doing it right I don't need to see this then because they were in the Philippines, not in spite of them being in the Philippines, because they were in the Philippines and, and the salaries are so affordable out of the Philippines, I was able to shift my focus away from worrying about am I going to meet payroll? Am I going to meet payroll? Are they being super, super effective? Is this profitable? For me, I knew all of those things because their wages were so affordable. And because they're so affordable, I was able to focus on more important things like how do I step away from the business and work on the business rather than continually being in the business and worrying about the minutia of the business. And it's that stepping that really allows business growth. So while we often take the view of outsourcing is only so good to a certain point, for me and really for thousands of others that I've seen, it's because of the Philippines and the cost and the culture and what it brings with it that allows you to make these changes that otherwise you can't make. Now I'll give you an example. I have a really good friend that runs a really, really successful company. He has 350 employees. Those employees, payroll is so high compared to their earnings that he's constantly worried, are we going to make payroll? Now? They're very, they're a very profitable company. And yet he still has to make choices towards, oh, we can't do that because what if it doesn't work and then we can't meet payroll? Whereas for me, I always knew, oh, that's not a problem. Our payroll is so low compared to our earnings that we're always going to meet payroll. So I could make choices towards, well, let's try this thing and see if it's going to work. And if it doesn't work, well, that's okay. And when you have the freedom to make creative choices that just might fail, it allows you to do things that might grow the business exponentially. Now, two more pieces of how I started living the four hour workweek. So the first one, I was forced into it. The second thing, I had these people in the Philippines that I was able to turn stuff over to. Without that number two, without the VA's from the Philippines, there's no way any of this happened. So the third and the fourth things that were really key was I learned early on to say no to all kinds of things that came up. I say no to most business opportunities. I've always said no to things that want my time. So like, if I could provide A service and you're going to want my time in providing that service, then I say no. I've always made the choice of we're going to continue to grow the business as is. I've always made the choice towards selling things that didn't require my time. And again, part of that was because my cost of people was so affordable compared to what we were selling. I didn't have to go out and sell my time in order to keep things afloat. And those are the two things that really helped me, that really allowed me to continue living the four hour workweek once it started was saying no to everything and never selling my time for money. Another key component of this which Tim Ferriss talks about. I run an online business that's available 24, 7. People can always buy what we're selling. And then having VAs in the Philippines to support that business 247 made the whole process much smoother for me. I got lucky. Well, actually luck is preparation plus opportunity. And my hiring of people in the Philippines was the preparation and the opportunity was my wife's preeclampsia forcing me into not working. So I got lucky into the four hour workweek. And yet I still had to choose every day to continue with that rather than bringing myself back to 40 or 60 hours a week. Fortunately, I was able to choose that because once I had two people working for me when more things came up, I was able to hire someone else from the Philippines. And the more I did it, the easier and easier it became. I'll be honest, when I started making this video, my initial thought process was you're not ready to live the four hour work week. That was what this video was supposed to be about. And that's because you don't have affordable people working for you who could take over if things went bad or affordable people working for you who you can teach and plan and methodically turn things over to them so that you can actively work less. So to end, I just want to say that not everything I've said in this video is required if you want to live the four hour work week. You don't have to run an online business. You don't have to say no to everything. You don't have to not sell your time for money. But you do have to have but you do have to have affordable help with talented people who are capable of doing the work for you. And in that number one option and the option that Tim Ferriss himself uses today is hiring virtual assistants out of the Philippines at onlinejobs Ph do you have questions about living the four hour workweek? Put them in the comments below. Also, I talk about this pretty regularly@johnjonas.com.