How To Live The Four Hour Work Week - Practical Advice

How to live the four hour work week. Hey, my name is John Jonas and In I think 2007, I read the book the Four Hour Work Week and I thought, this is amazing. I looked at some of the things that he talked about and the mini retirements and how he's outsourcing and. And I realized, you know, I'm doing a lot of this stuff. A lot of what he talks about is the way I'm doing it. I just needed a couple tweaks in the way that I did things. And so just so you know, since 2008, I've worked about 17 hours a week since then and I actually got down to about an hour a week and I found out like, this isn't enough for me. I really need more. But my 17 hours a week is completely flexible. I can do it or not. I probably average three and a half days a week of work. So. So in this video I want to talk about how other people can get to that point. Because I'm betting you've read the Four Hour Work Week and you love the concepts in it. But do you know anybody who actually lives it? You probably don't. I do it myself and I know other people do. And so in this video I'm going to talk about how you get to that point. Okay, so for me, the first step is to recognize this is a long term process. I, I started hiring VAs in 2005 and it took me a couple years of whittling things down before in 2008 I was forced into the one hour workweek. I was forced to live this. You're probably not going to be forced into it. But when I was forced into it, I realized like, oh my gosh, yeah, if I can depend on these VAs even more by giving them training and feedback and training and feedback, then over time they can take so much off of my plate. Well, Today I have 36 full time people that work for me in the Philippines. That wasn't the case in 2008. I think I had six. And so today things have grown, but my processes have become more and more refined. And so just recognize this is a long term thing. It's not going to happen overnight. And so as you hire people, as you take steps towards this recognize, okay, this is one piece in the process. If I can get an hour back by doing this, if I can get two hours back in my week by, by doing this thing, wow, that's a step towards this. So now next, let's talk about your business. So to me, in Order to live the four hour workweek, your business needs to be something boring. And that's not what people want to hear, but it should be something boring and stable. You know, selling bolts online is something that doesn't really ever change and it's boring and it's stable. So the things that are sexy, that are awesome, that you get to create new promotions all the time, those are the kinds of things that require constant work. So if you can set up a business that doesn't need you to be the face of it, doesn't need you to constantly be innovating, doesn't need you to be constantly changing things or constantly researching and deciding on new things, that's the kind of business where you can get to the four hour work week. Because not every business can. I see too many people that set up an agency, you're never going to get there running an agency. Find a boring business where you can sell something that doesn't need to be changed all the time. And often that's software or it's a evergreen product, doesn't need to be changed. So next, as you design your business, design yourself out of it. Don't design processes, don't design systems where people, where customers want to talk to you, where you're the person they want to come to, that's the best way to sell your time for money is by setting yourself right in the middle of it, saying, oh, I'm the expert here, you can come to me and I'll tell you how to do so for me, if I'm going to sell a coaching program or if I'm going to sell training to someone, I'm never going to sell, you're going to get one on one phone call with me. What I'm going to sell is I'm going to record a video and I'm going to sell the video and you're going to get access to my videos where I've talked through the whole thing, but all I had to do was talk through it once. And that one time took more time to create the video than it did to do a phone call. But in doing that video, maybe it took me five times longer to do the video, but still, then I never have to do it again. And that is key if you want to get to the four hour workweek. So the next thing is to pick a single process in your business, something that you know how to do, and hire someone to do it. Now, whether it's something you are currently doing or not doesn't really matter, although it's preferable if you can find something that you're currently doing and that you don't like to do. So the first task you should be outsourcing is something you know how to do, something that you preferably don't like to do, and something that you're doing because that will get you time back in your life instantly. Also, another piece of that process is something that you can train someone else to do. And that training doesn't have to be something that easy. It's easy to train someone to do. It can be something that's hard to train something someone to do, but something that you're going to spend time teaching someone to do so that that process goes away from you. So each time you shift your focus to something else, you're going to hire a new person and you're going to train that person. And this is the piece that, that, that this is like the critical piece in this that most people miss. It's almost always easier to do it yourself than it is to teach someone else to do it. So in hiring someone else, everybody always says, oh, I don't have the time to train someone else to do this thing. Well, that's fine, but you're missing the boat because that's the key if you want to live the four hour work week. The key is to do the hard work of teaching someone else rather than the hard work of doing it yourself. Because every time you do it yourself, which is a little bit easier than it is to teach someone else to do it, you're still spending your time doing it. So if you'll spend the time and the effort to go teach and train and teach and train and teach and train and give feedback and say, okay, I messed up here. Okay, you messed up here. You messed up here. I messed up here. And it takes you a month to teach someone to do something that's something that you'll never have to teach again. Especially if you hire a Filipino VA full time, long term. And this is hard mental work, it's hard emotional work. And that's why most people just quit and they go do it themselves. And they wear the bat, they wear the I'm so busy, I'm the only one who can do it badge. Like, sorry, that, that badge is from the 80s. Get over it. Like, figure out how to work smarter instead of just continuously working harder all the time. So after you figure out how to work smarter and you start to shift your focus from one thing to the next and you start outsourcing the next thing and you Outsource the next thing. At some point you need to make a decision. Spend some time doing something else. Go to lunch with some friends, go play golf, go knit a sweater, go buy a bike. My personal favorite, go do something else to fill that time rather than endlessly pursuing new opportunities. Now I'm not saying that your business at this point is making you millions and millions. Maybe it is. But the point is at some point you need to make a decision to say, hey, something else is more important than work. I'm going to go and spend four hours in the middle of day with my kids or I'm going to stop working past 3:30 and I'm going to be home when my kids get home or whatever it is for you. At some point when you have other people working for you, make a decision and say, I'm going to change the way that I work. I'm going to change my working hours. And at this point you're around the four hour workweek. Now you repeat. So in all of this to me, the question I always ask myself is who's going to do the work? Is it me or is it someone else? Because if it's me, that means I'm not living the lifestyle that I want. If it's someone else, move forward with it. My name is John Jonas and I wrote a book all about how to hire VAs in the Philippines. It's the outsourcing lever and I'm giving it away for free. I just bought a thousand copies of it, shipped it to a warehouse. If you go to outsourcinglever.com it's $7. You pay the shipping, which actually doesn't cover my shipping costs. But I will ship it to you for free and you can. You'll become an expert at hiring VA's in the Philippines so that you can get yourself towards the four hour work week. Altruistinglever. Com.