7 Things I Learned Achieving The 4-Hour Workweek

The big thing people miss when reading Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek, is the beginning where he quickly mentions he worked his butt off for years. Years! If you’ve heard interviews where he talks about the book, he has mentioned a few times that the name was the name, because it tested well on Google.

People like the idea of a four-hour workweek, yet it is possible? In my experience, the answer is “kinda.” The more accurate “yes” would be more like, “Can I go from 60 to 6-8 hours per week?” That I can speak to, and to that I can say “yes.”

In November of 2020, I moved to the Caribbean for a year. The picture above was my daily view. With all my C-Suite people in place, I structured my meetings for Tuesdays. From 9:30am to 1:30pm, I had my calls with the teammates that guided a nationwide, seven-figure business. It took me nine years to get there, working fifty to sixty hours a week for the first eight, to double the size of the company every three years. 

Knowing what I know now, could I achieve that level of growth and freedom again in a fraction of the time? Absolutely! This is some of what I learned from succeeding the first time:

• Work Smart and Hard

A mentor of mine, Keith Cunningham, laughs at the idea of the four-hour workweek, and rightfully so if you're just starting out, yet he owns numerous companies that only take him a few hours a week to lead, now that he has the experience to do so. If you read Keith’s books or take any of his courses in Austin, TX, you’ll learn a tremendous amount about working smart to stop working so hard. This will help you get more impact for every hour you work. 

If you’ve read the official biography of Elon Musk, he mentions that if you work twelve hours in a day, while everyone else works six, you'll outpace their results by tomorrow. Like him or not, you don’t get to have his level of tax liability without working hard for some part of your journey, yet, if those are “smart” hours, then you’re way, and on your way to more freedom.

In what feels like a prior life, I ran a $300M+ division of a billion-dollar organization, and my team of sixty people, literally, were only required to work 6.5 hrs in a day. We still achieved tremendous results in a fraction of the time anticipated, by focusing #2 below.

• Culture is Currency

Photo by Markus Spiske

Even if you only have three people on your team, do you have results-based culture or a relationship-based culture? There is nothing wrong with relationships, yet if that is the glue connecting your teammates, anyone can become the weight that drags everyone down to the bottom of the ocean.

In a results-based culture, the team keeps its head above water by choosing to let weighty under-performers go. A world-renowned results-based, high-performance culture has been exemplified and illustrated by the famous Netflix culture deck, proclaiming that average performance at Netflix, will get you one thing: severance. 

Do you have what it takes to set a high level of standards for your team? Are you aware of the reality that the worst thing you can do to your high performers is to add under-performers to their team? If your high performers are leaving, look at who you insisted they work with. Then, think about #3 below.

• Your Limits are the Limits on Your Business

You’ve heard the phrase, “put your mask on first, then help others.” Have you also heard, “The first thing leaders lead is themselves?” It’s true.

Are you investing in yourself, pushing yourself, as much as you are with others, and are those investments focused on automating and measuring the key elements of your business to free your time?

I have personally invested nearly one million dollars in my post-college education. This continued education has been essential to my ability to bootstrap a company from idea to the seven-figure, industry leader, for eleven years and counting. Results like this put you in the top two percent of income earners and the top one percent of companies, and trust me, you can do it.

Being in the top one or two percent may sound like a moonshot, yet there are over twenty-two million millionaires in the US. Nearly 90% of them are first-generation, self-made millionaires. That means there are millions of people who have achieved amazing results, and they are everywhere, so pay attention to item #4 below.

• Don’t Do it Alone

Photo by Perry Grone

I am not saying you need multiple business partners, yet you will absolutely benefit from the experience, wisdom, and painful lessons learned and shared by other entrepreneurs who play the same game in life you do.

In Napoleon Hill’s Think And Grow Rich, he devotes an entire chapter to the idea of a mastermind, or a dedicated group or team of people who work together to share experience and creativity to achieve your dreams. All the greats, from Rockefeller, to Ford, to Edison had these dream teams around them as they became cultural and historical icons. If they needed help, so do you. 

Find or join a mastermind, or entrepreneurial organization, and stop doing it alone. For me, the Young Entrepreneurs Council and the VIP Mastermind, have been game-changers for insights and relationships. 

I have also been mentored by people twice my age, simply because I asked for the mentorship. This area of your life should be both relationship and results-driven. What can they teach you that you don’t already know? See #5.

• World Class Income and Freedom is Possible

If the answer to, “are you wealthy and free?” is no, then there are things you don’t know.

Do you know your lead measures? Lag measures? Cost per lead? Cost per sale? Is your corporate structure and tax strategy optimized for underwriting? Should it be? Do you have dashboards for every aspect and area of the business? Are you leading a high-performance culture? Are you developing leaders? Do they know how to measure your key strategic indicators? Do you have a capital stack/hierarchy of funding? Does every key position have a healthy bench? Do your product offers maximize immediate income? Are you systemically adding value and raising your price? Are you building tax-free wealth using term life insurance? Are you using the business to buy real estate? If you have a physical business, do you know how an SBA 504 loan works? Do you even know what it is? Do you have plans to fire yourself from the other 30-40 hours of work, and you working with someone who has done it all before to help ensure you succeed?

There are a tremendous amount of options and possibilities for you as a leader, especially if you are an owner. Take #4 seriously. Reach out to me or other people know, and don’t lose sight of #6 below.

• Become and Stay Healthy

Photo by Jonathan Borba

It’s impossible to downplay this aspect of our lives. When I lived in the Caribbean for a year, I placed second in a half marathon with only a week's notice before the race. This was only possible because I started taking my health and fitness seriously years before.

There is a saying in the west, “we trade our time for money, then try to trade our money for more time.” This sucks, yet too true for too many people in the second half of their lives.

There is no reason, and hear me, no reason you can not work out for an hour a day, at least four days a week, even with a six-day workweek. That’s your body’s, “4-hour workweek,” and it needs it!

The benefits to stress reduction and mental clarity are essential for keeping a clear mind, and remember, as Kieth Cunningham says, “business is an intellectual sport,” which leads us to #7 below.

• A Clear and Purposeful Mind

Photo by Mediensturmer

If you don’t have clarity around why you are doing something, you will burn out. If you don’t have a clear, internal, nearly spiritual, elevated context and reason for doing what you are doing, you will burn out. Believe me, business is one of the few sports where the longer you play, the more likely you are to lose. 

In Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery training, he equates being in business to being a gladiator. The more times you get in the ring, the more chances you have to die. 

If you’ve been at it for decades like I have, then you are one of the few who really knows the last-minute miss of the ax, the kick of intuition, or the spark of creativity that saved the company from its demise by a razor-thin line.

Whether you meditate, practice a religious faith, work out, or find faith and clarity in your family, spend time every week, ideally every day, reconnecting to your purpose, your own personal ‘why” for what you are doing. Where there is a why, there is a way.

Honestly, there are probably seven-hundred things I learned becoming a geographically independent entrepreneur who has the choice to work only a handful of hours a week, yet, like Tim Ferriss, I kinda’ love marketing, so I wanted to make it easy on you to convince yourself to read the above.

If you need help getting rich in time, not just money, my two decades of experience can be made available the other thirty-six hours in the week. At the moment away…the Caribbean will start calling me back at some point again, I’m sure. Have you ever tried the cigars from the Yaque Valley? You should. ; )