Boomer’s Blog

Make your real estate investment career meltdown the first day of the rest of you life with a new, optimized lifestyle design (LD) and bestselling author Tim Ferriss’ entrepreneurial manifesto, “The Four-Hour Workweek: How to Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” (4HWW).

Before taking his now-famous pen to paper, Ferriss, a Princeton University graduate, drove himself — and his business — into the ground with over-work and precious time squandered on tasks that actually kept him from generating wealth and attaining his goals.

Pursue your Dreams and Build Wealth
In this monumental work, Ferriss urges people to shed the traditional expectations that wedge us into cubicles and create our dream lifestyles by following his formula for achieving personal freedom and financial wealth.

In 4HWW, readers learn how to make this liberating transition through executing the four steps of LD, Ferriss’ efficiency-optimized approach to maximizing effectiveness in your work and creating more fearless joy in life. Not only is balance between the two possible, Ferriss tells us how to increase our profits while we’re at it.

In 4HWW, Ferriss provides a recipe for LD that revolves around the simple mnemonic: DEAL. Each letter represents a transcendent step to attaining personal freedom and financial wealth:

Ferriss’ Four Steps of Lifestyle Design

1. Definition: Requires you to determine what you want, conquer fears, look past society’s “expectations,” and estimate the costs of your desires. This is about beating the game rather than playing the game and emphasizing your strengths instead of trying to change your weaknesses. Here, the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of excitement.
2. Elimination: This section begs readers to forget about time management and embrace the possibility that you can accomplish more by doing less. When you limit tasks and work time, you’re free to effectively focus on completing the most important tasks in less time, Ferriss says. More time economy comes, he adds, by eliminating time wasted by constantly checking email and using personal electronics, When you do this, you’ll defeat procrastination and be free to focus on the minority of tasks that bring the greatest results.
3. Automation: Ferriss defines efficiency and encourages that it be abandoned and replaced with true effectiveness. In this section, he discusses how to maximize overall effectiveness by outsourcing low-end tasks. This can free up valuable time for entrepreneurs to build businesses that provide a sustainable, automatic sources of income. Using the right process models, and effective marketing practices, Ferriss insists that we can maximize income and best manage our businesses through absence.
4. Liberation: When you’ve successfully defined your desires, eliminated unnecessary tasks, automated and outsourced your life, Ferriss says that liberation will manifest itself in many ways and you’ll be ready to join the ranks of the New Rich.

To learn more about how 4HWW and Ferriss’ formula for LD can help you be a better entrepreneur in your real estate investment business, be sure to check out my review, now posted in GaryBoomershine.com’s Resources section.

Tim Ferriss, author of The Four-Hour Workweek: How to Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (4HWW), majored in East Asian studies at Princeton University. Soon after graduation, he found his self-imposed cubicle lifestyle wasn’t giving him room enough to breathe, much less twirl. In 2004, Ferriss was working 80 hours a week to build his company and found himself burning out. So he put three days of clothing into a backpack and bought a one-way ticket to London … and wound up in Argentina as a world-class Tango dance champion.

Ferriss’ manifesto, the 4HWW, captures the wisdom and quixotic joy the author found when he traded his cubicle for the excitement-packed lifestyle of his dreams. Published last year, the book quickly became an international best seller.

Escape Inhibitions and Discover your Life
Ferriss urges people to shed the traditional expectations that wedge them into cubicles and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the new rich: time and mobility. This process is an art and a science that Ferriss refers to as lifestyle design (LD), and in 4HWW, he provides a deceptively simple strategy for achieving it.

Design your Lifestyle
For real estate entrepreneurs, 4HWW nails the formula for maximizing effectiveness in your endeavors. Your business may be surviving, but is it thriving? Many of us escape the regular grind only to become totally submerged in busywork that keeps us from accomplishing the more important tasks that fuel our business growth.

To really excel in this business, no true innovation is needed. When you automate and outsource your grunt work and use systems that have been proven effective, you’re well into the metamorphosis from which you will emerge a true real estate entrepreneur.

Automate and Recreate
For most of us in the real estate game, marketing easily can become a central vacuum system that swallows time and energy and rarely pays off. How can you effectively run your business when you’re struggling with lists, copy writing, mailings and postage?

If this is not your strong point, it may be time to follow Ferriss’ advice: Emphasize your strengths by delegating your weaknesses. When you’re using your strengths to build your business rather than being forced to focus on your weaknesses in mindless tasks such as marketing, your business, your income and your self esteem can reach new heights.

Give your Strengths a Workout
When you’re using an effective marketing system, such as SalesTeamLive, you know it’s working because you’re receiving a steady flow of calls from motivated and qualified sellers and buyers every day. And you’ve actually got the time to make the deals you know will take your business to the next level.

In 4HWW, Ferris successfully reminds us that time is short and we only have one chance to live the lifestyle each of us desires. His lifestyle design provides us with the necessary framework to transform our businesses and to embrace opportunity without fear or regret. Bravo, Mr. Ferris.

Look for my full review of 4HWW, coming soon.