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I got asked an interesting question over the weekend, one that I often asked other people:

Q: What’s in your heart to do?
My Answer: I want to build an empire.

I’ve answered it many times before (and for the record, there are lots of other things that i want to do besides build an empire – The answer suited the context of the conversation)… It was the next question that hit the gold for me.

Q: Why do you want to do do that?
My Answer (after a short pause for consideration): Because I think I can…

There are lots of reasons I want to build businesses…
I want my family to be comfortable and financially secure, I want to contribute to the work of my church, I want to contribute to the work of the Church globally, I want to research ways to produce energy and feed the third world and generally leave a positive dint on the earth. I want a boat, an nice car, and maybe a plane… That’d be cool. My wife wants a nice house on a flat block somewhere in the Shire.

But honestly, all of these reasons above are secondary to the main thing that, because of a probing question from a friend, I realized this last Saturday.

It’s because I think I can.

I am convinced that we each have something in us, whether we know what it is yet or not. Some strange potential, something that is in there and wants to be let out. Something that burns and bubbles and keeps us awake at night, and is almost always there within a few moments of waking up in the morning. This is more than a hobby or an interest, it’s a dream… a purpose.

The thing I like about “because I can”? You can’t mess with it. The only real counter is “I don’t think you can” to which I respond “well let’s just wait and see”.

Here’s the kicker… A God fearing person who chooses manifest the gifts and dreams that have been put into their heart testifies by their life story to the character of the One who designed those gifts and dreams and put them there in the first place.

Here’s the refined kicker: When you go after what God has put in you His creativity, which is in you, testifies to His character.

I love it when you boil something down to the point where you feel like it can’t be boiled down any further.

What’s your “why”?

Anyone who knows me, or has read more than a few posts on this blog, will know that I love Timothy Ferriss‘ book “The 4 Hour Work Week“. The strategies are awesome, and the book is inspiring on many levels – The D.E.A.L. strategy in particular is fantastic.

But it’s not the full story. Here’s a few myths that can be interpreted from the 4 Hour Work Week that I’d like to address. I post this because I know many people who are reading it at the moment, and some of the expectations the book can set are almost certainly setting many up for disappointment.

Keep in mind, I speak not only from my own experience as a young and yet-to-be-really-successful entrepreneur, but the experience of many that I’ve met, spoken with, and listened to who’ve actually done this stuff and are living the kind of life the book speaks of.

Note: Most of these points aren’t explicitly stated in the book. It’s more the “vibe” – What is implicitly communicated to the reader.

Myth Number 1: Everyone has the same natural skill set as Timothy Ferriss: If you read the book carefully, a lot of the advice is predicated on the idea that the reader thinks, acts, and has the same skills as the author. Most don’t. Timothy Ferriss is a genius at marketing, gifted at business systems, and carries a level of natural charisma that certainly supports what he has managed to do. Granted, there is a fair amount of practical info in the book about things one can do to market test, to systemize their business, and to increase there natural leadership skills. But many people I speak to who’ve just finished reading the book assume it will be as easy for them as Tim makes it sound in the book. Don’t forget, before he went through the process of systemizing and outsourcing Brainquicken LLC he was working 80 hours per week. As I said at the start, I love this book – It was one of the key drivers that got me started in business – But I wonder about the expectations it can set in the readers mind about how simple and easy the process is going to be.

Myth Number 2: Setting up a business is easy: The reality is that it isn’t always easy. One of the things the book doesn’t mention is that following the heady and adrenaline filled startup and idea phase of a business, there usually comes the hard yards. These is the period where stuff goes wrong, exception handling gets worked out, and it generally represents some pretty hard work. It’s all worthwhile mind you – it’s what I want to do my my life…! But if you go into this thing expecting it to be a cakewalk you’re more often than not going to be sorely dissappointed.

Myth Number 3: Act now, think later: I’ve heard it said by many successful entrepreneurs that “1 hour of planning is worth 10 hours of unplanned doing”. Look at what you are thinking of doing, count the cost, and work out the best strategy. Ready, fire, aim is a business plan that is bound for failure, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.

Myth Number 4: Outsourcing is easy: It’s not. It’s definately worthwhile, but teaching someone how to understand what you want is difficult enough without a cross cultural barrier, not to mention a language barrier. Again, it’s not impossible, but I’ve heard enough people say “I’ve read 4HWW and I’m going to get a VA and that’ll make everything easy” to want to address this.

Myth Number 5: The cashflow source you set up will set you free for your whole life: This isn’t so much said in the book and it is assumed by the reader. Things change. Businesses that are viable one moment fall victim to market shifts and competitive pressure. Even property, touted as the be all and end all for setting yourself up for life, needs to be maintained and managed to stay viable as a cash source. The proof here is in the pudding: The vitamin supplement business Tim Ferriss set up (the main source of the income for him that facilitated the stories in the 4 Hour Work Week) was sold to a private equity firm in 2009. Most of the money he now makes (I would assume) would be from the book. Brilliant strategy, but do you see what I am getting at here? Nothing last forever in business.

I hope this helps at least someone. I am NOT discouraging anyone from taking the advice of the book and going on the journey it spruiks. I am. It’s important though, to manage your expectations as you head into something so as not to be dissappointed when you find that they were set too high.

In all of this, if you haven’t read the 4 Hour Work Week yet, go out and get it. It’s a great read.

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For my money, a good business idea needs the following:

1. A problem (a.k.a. a need)
2. For that problem to be common enough to create a market (i.e. there’s no point creating a product if you’re the only one who’ll ever use it – I find this is very rarely the case though)
3. For their to be a “choke point” in the market (i.e. who is the common person that people with the problem I’m trying to address would be talking to?)
4. For there to be a way to quickly communicate the benefit of your idea (I don’t mean the vehicle by which you communicate, I mean the message. Can you succinctly sum up your value proposition and get a potential customer onboard – The Twitter Challenge is to do it in less than 140 characters and not have it blend it with everything else.)

Anything else that I might have missed?

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http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

Brilliant site. It basically goes through the different Apple product lines and keeps track of how long it has been since the line was last updated.

Apple, like most companies, have an internal update release schedule to keep the market engaged with their product. They don’t let the public know what the exact schedule is, but the guys who run this site keep track of it. If the product you are thinking of buying is at the end of it’s cycle and is probably about to get superseded, a) it is about to become a whole lot cheaper, and b) if you’re a cutting edge type of buyer you’re about to get sorely disappointed.

Worth checking out…!

One of the challenges us “part-time” entrepreneurs face is the creep of our “5 to 9″ (i.e. the side-projects) into our “9 to 5” (our employment). We are duty bound to our employer to work for them while they are paying us, and it is becoming a fairly core ethic of mine to have at least some sort of integrity in this area. I know very well the difficulties of having a lightbulb moment whilst working for the man, and trying to keep going with what I should be doing.

The other challenge is keeping the “9 to 5″ and the “5 to 9″ separate from our home/family/personal lives, ESPECIALLY when you work from home on both your job and your own stuff like I do.

Here’s the approach I am taking to try and keep things seperate…

1. Recognize that you need boundaries to protect the different aspects of your life from each other. It IS important. I love my job, I love my business, and I love my family – so the challenge is that if I don’t separate them they’ll all smoosh in together and none of them will get the attention they deserve. Can you relate to this? Recognize the fact that YOU NEED TO DO THIS. Without this, you needn’t bother because it’ll just annoy you.
2. Work out your week. If your work 5 days a week for an employer like I do, block that time as being for your employer only. Then work out the amount of time you want to spend working on your own stuff. In all of this, make sure you are leaving PLENTY of time for your family, your friends, and just to chill out.
3. Separate everything you can. So for me, that looks like this:
4. Keep separate journals for your job, your business, and your personal life (I am a mad journaller – If you ever see me get hit by a bus make sure you grab the black Moleskine…),
5. If you are a heavy computer users, create separate profiles on your computer. (For Mac users, check this out. If you are a Windows user, get a Mac… nah, seriously, check this out. Then get a Mac). In each of those user account, set up ONLY the email and messaging you need to do that particular function. So for me, I have three accounts: One is for my job with only my job email, my work documents, and a Virtual PC instance that’s just for my job. Another is the Tall Poppy Group user with my emails for that stuff, my IM accounts, my documents for Tall Poppy Group, and anything else I need. The third (and the most important one) is the personal account. This is for watching movies with the wife, etc… This one is important for me because I find myself getting distracted by my job or my business whenever I see stuff that has to do with it. Separate them. Eliminate the problem.
6. For the transitions between “job time”, “business time” or “personal time”, do something. For me, if I am working from home I will get up, shower, and get dressed for work – even though I am not going anywhere. It serves as a mental shift from one thing to the next. When I finish work, I change clothes, go for a walk, whatever – I do something that shifts me OUT of that head space and into one that is ready and has it’s best for my family.

The separation needs to happen in your mind first. All the things I’ve mentioned above are there to facilitate me mentally shifting gears into the next thing that I am doing, and then to protect me from accidentally downshifting into the wrong gear while I’m doing something else.

There you go. This is in progress at the moment. Evidence of this is the fact that I am blogging this during my 9 to 5… My “job” profile on my computer is syncing up email which I need before I can do anything.

I’ll let you know how it goes – Let me know if it works for you.

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