The Fab Four? Who’s counting?
“The Four Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris is a book that many people pick up and can’t put down, but when they eventually do they jump in to create what usually takes a LOT of working at. The truth is that we don’t get to the four hour work week without putting in our fair share of 40-60 hour work weeks beforehand! So people looking for a magic pill should click away now!
I love how many authors advocating easier ways of making money fail to mention the fact that they work so damned hard! Having said that, there’s no doubt that outsourcing IS a great way to reduce the number of hours you work and to get you working smarter – working ON your business (ie. the sales and marketing), rather than IN your business ( the product delivery and customer service), if you like to put it that way.
One of the first things we need to do when growing our business through outsourcing is decide what are the tasks we CAN’T DO and what are the tasks we DON’T WANT to do. The former is more important to outsource than the latter, though the temptation for many business owners is to pass on the tasks they don’t like doing.
Many of the CAN”T DO tasks may be crucial to the smooth running of our business so these should be the priority. Even Donald Trump and Bill Gates occasionally have to do things they don’t like to do, but you can bet your life the things they couldn’t do they sorted out early on in the game and got the right people in the right positions. Knowing your own weaknesses and being able to surround yourself with people who cover those weaknesses is a great mindset to get into.
It may be a slightly different story if the tasks you don’t like doing also make you feel stressed out; if we’re hitting the bottle because of a recurring task we have to do it’s probably not a healthy situation! So it may be best to look at outsourcing this, but as a general rule let’s get our virtual assistants working on the things we CAN’T DO well!
“The Four Hour Work Week” should probably not be taken too literally! You need to grow your business before you can reduce the amount of hours you work. It’s really about working smarter on the right things, than just cutting down to the minimum amount of hours possible. You should try to love doing what you’re doing anyway and then the number of hours doesn’t really matter…nobody’s counting!
Do you want to learn more about how you can work smarter? Find great free resources today by visiting our YouTube.com/theseomethod channel.