Exrtra Credit - 4 Hour Work Week

The 4 hour work week by Timothy Ferriss was a great read.  It helped to define trends in society of how people actually utilize their time for work.  The book starts off speaking of the 80% to 20% rule (Pareto Rule) that people tend to live by when it comes to their work standards.  Mr. Ferris states that 80% of your productivity comes from 20% of your time, and the other 20% of your productivity utilizes 80% of your time.  This was an interesting concept to me, and I tried to look at my life work trends to see if maybe I to was falling into this trend. 

As I read on, he goes on to say that by eliminating that 20% of productivity that eats up most of your time, you can live in a much more efficient fashion, and the entire book revolves around that concept in various ways.  Ferriss streamlined his business, eliminating distractions and automating systems until it was not only more profitable, but also took less of his time. The concepts of how to change your life are stated in this way:

 Define your Objectives: Set goals for yourself and decide what is important to you

Eliminate distractions that eat up your time: Focusing on 20% of what is important and getting rid of the 80% that is not.  Be strict with yourself!

Automate Cash Flow: Develop a business that can bring in residual income, Or as Ferriss calls it "running on auto-pilot"

Liberate yourself from traditional expectations:  This can be done by redesigning your work to increase mobility or taking trips where the exchange rate is better. (This sounded a little funny to me considering most people dont have that luxury in THIS economy)

There is a 4 Step Process called D.E.A.L by the  initials above!

The first is Definition, and spoke of detaching yourself from the thought of retirement and the thought of being on a beach someday with a wrinkly old tan.  Absolute income is the goal!  I liked this section because he has you do an exercise where you take a few moments to visualize your dream.  Meaning if you didnt have to work and do all the things you didnt want to, what would your dream entail?  Whats the nightmare scenario if that dream didnt come true?  He then goes on to you working towards your dream and visualizing the steps it would take to get there.  This is could really relate to and enjoyed..

The next part of the book dealt with Elimination.  Most of these things I already do today.  Such as make a to-do list the night before for the day after.  I find that I cannot get on with my day without this step.  I make sure to get everything I can off of that list each day and always carry over anything I miss, which he suggested also.  Ferriss also says to focus on yourself to develop yourself, but his suggestions of ending your work week early (on a Thursday) or coming in later to make it up, again seem to be ill-logical in todays work environment, but whatever. lol.  There is a point in this section where he discusses not having meetings without a concise and clear agenda.  This is important as you will never get anything good accomplished without goals planned ahead for meetings.   And he goes on to discuss something I taught my daughter, which was to hang a "Do Not Disturb" sign on your door or cubicle when being disturbed constantly by co-workers inhibiting your work.

Step 3 goes onto the Automation mode.  Again another section of the book that seemed a little detached from reality for me, as he talks about being a middle man for your business to generate revenue and set yourself up as a sales person to do that.  I like my ideas of automation better, which would be realistic to a work environment.  To me that would be setting tasks to automation such as auto respond of emails, or if you work in marketing using tools such as pay per click or google ads.  That to me is automation that would make sense.  So again it wasnt a home run for me in that section, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Step 4, Liberation!    The book encompasses all the models into a stream of an ideal lifestyle here.  Ferriss goes on to state that you could end up working in telecommuting if you set yourself up for it.  The way to do so, would entail you start setting up your work environment to be efficient in your absence.  Once you have taken all the steps to do so, give it a trial run on days off or times of sick absences to showcase it to your superiors as an alternative work model.  This would potentially be something that could be seen as a way to save money by the company, thus freeing you from the shackles of working in a tied down job and working remotely.  The closing of the book talks about the commodity of time and how to allocate more of it for yourself.  After all, if you had more time you could follow the dreams you set out to achieve in Step 1. 

The overall concepts of the book were very well done, and gave some very analytical ways to approach standard work models.  For this I give him a lot of credit, I just wish that some of this concepts were a little more realistic to people that dont have the opportunities to address the time conflicts in jobs as easily as he seemed to be able to do.  I dont know that most people would have that kind of say in their occupations, have great sales skills to be a middle man, or to have the financial backing to save themselves if they failed and ended up on skid row in a cardboard box.  But hey, you got to take chances in life.  And for that I give this book a B+!

Thanks Mr. Ferriss for enlightening me on how to get that valuable time back so I can follow my dreams.

Guest Speaker: John Dimmer

This week we had the pleasure of having John Dimmer, a friend and former colleague of Mr. Fry's when they ran their business at Free Range Media, speak to our class about Funding for businesses. This was a very intriguing presentation as he covered many excellent topics such as Angel Investors (which Mr. Dimmer classified himself as), Venture Capitalists, Crowd Sourcing and having your own "skin in the game". 

Mr. Dimmer gave me much to think about when it comes to how to get funding together to start a business.  I think that most people (including myself) initially thought that you had to go get a loan from a bank and that was about your only option.  But after John gave his presentation, he helped open my eyes to many ways to get funding that was otherwise a mystery.  I liked how he provided real dollar figures to be expected from a Angel Investor (anywhere from 10k to 150k) and that you use this after you have gotten yourself some crowd sourcing dollars to help get the foundation started for your business.  Crowd Sourcing is a strategy to get funding from friends, family and others that want to contribute smaller donations to help get you started. This can be done by social media such as kickstarter and is a new way of getting seed money to get off the ground. 

Understanding the scale of your business is also key according to Mr. Dimmer.  He made a point that made a lot of sense to me, that you have to have "Skin in the Game".  This means that you need to have your own capital invested in your own venture, but you shouldn't be "all in", as that can be detrimental to your goals and success. The amount that you put into the venture should be relative to the businesses size and goals, but not so much that you are drowning in debt and if you lose the business you would be on the street living in a cardboard box.  I also liked how he gave the example of the veterans widow that had a lot of money saved, but only wanted to put $2,000 into her business and expected John to put in $100,000.  That was not enough "skin" and clearly shows a lack of commitment to the cause and is problematic to an investor like him.

I never knew that Venture Capitalists put in so much money into a business (6 million +) and that they want to have large investments in a company that they think will succeed, and that they are on the end of their funding quest.  I realize from his presentation that although this would sound great to most people, you have to understand that V.C.'s wouldnt just invest this money and let you go about your business as usual.  They would want to start making changes to have their own management involved in your operations, which in itself can be not only uncomfortable, but could put you completely out of the picture if they decide you are no longer the right person for your own business.  So getting this type of funding comes with its own catches or tricks that can cause you to be not only out of management, but also seeing someone else taking your company to the next level without you.   

John really did a great job of giving us a overview of funding sources, and how to understand the stages involved with how and when to seek such investors, and what to expect as far as the investments.    The pitfalls of such investments are something that any new entrepreneur should understand and be cognizant of.  There are great benefits of investors, and using them in the proper scope of your venture and  utilizing equity versus interest rates is a good lesson that I think helped everyone in our class. 

Thanks John for a great presentation!  We are all much wiser on funding sources, and will most likely use your experiences to help us make wise decisions on this important area of our businesses.

Guest Speaker - Jim Kastema

Jim Kastema was a guest speaker that really intrigued me.  He had so many different ventures that he has been involved in from government office, to small 3 person projects.  One thing that I took home from his lecture was that he taught us that you got to keep trying different things in the world of entrepreneurs.  That drive is something that he has engrained in him and if you want to be self employed and try to get after the big bucks with big ideas, you cannot concede when things dont work out your first time out. 

He also taught me that by keeping professional relationships in tact and not burning those bridges is paramount in this world, because one day you may need to call on someone that you once worked with or were employed by.  Making that bond with people and keeping it is what seems to have worked for Mr. Kastema, being that he was one of Washington's most influential people for a reason.  It seems that Jim didnt like being a politician as that is a whole different world, and my guess from his presentation about it was that he didnt like dealing with all the "old boy" culture and he seems that he was more progressive than most of his counter parts in state government.  I like this side of him, as I was once, a long time ago, a political science major and I also fell victim to the nausea of how government really works and it turned me off to wanting to pursue that as a "career".  This is where I am thankful that I could see someone who was "successful" in that realm, and had an uncensored way to portray this to our class, that was respectful but also quite clear by his tone of that lifestyle. 

This was one of my favorite guest speakers this quarter, and I wish Jim the best in his future ventures.  He surely helped to give me insight to things that I have wondered about when it comes to local politics, and want to stay clear of that path.  He also helped me to understand the importance of persistence. 

Guest Speaker - Bruce Kendall

I was intrigued by Mr. Kendall and his work with Pierce County and bringing in the all important foreign dollars into our community.  I found his insight on backroom deals and working with a small group of people to be a little confusing.  I was not really sure as to what it was that they actually did, and how they secured those dollars.  Although clearly an intelligent man, I was a little in the dark I felt on what exactly he does.  He clearly does a lot of great work for the county, but as far as the details it was a little "insider info" for me.  I wish that he would have given us something more in the way of how his businesses has succeeded and failed, what steps he took to get where he is, what he would suggest we did, and what to avoid as young entrepreneurs. 

I like how he did share his enthusiasm for Pierce County and the developmental needs of the area.  How he sees that the future lies in getting foreign interests to send their dollars here.  These things did make sense, but it was sort of like watching a news special on how the flow of money comes in from the orient.  No offense to Mr. Kendall, I was just a little lost. 

Dot.com to Dot.Bomb

This presentation was very interesting to me as I was in high school when all of this was going on. I graduated in 1994 in the height of the dot com era and during the bust that followed shortly thereafter.  Although I was heavily invested in my own learning of technology, there wasnt really any classes being taught (at least in Auburn, WA) that would get me the kind of insight that Mr. Fry was able to shed on that time for us in the lecture. 

I was amazed at how much work it took, the friendships that must have been tainted and the subsequent demise of these companies.  It was a crazy time.  Who would have thought that getting in early on the dot com craze would have made people instant millionaires and then within just a few short years later bust them in the process.  I took home some important tools with me after this presentation, first, if you want to be rich in this country, you're never going to get there working for someone else (unless you get in on a start-up early on that happens to makes millions), so you got to do it yourself and start a business.  Working for state and federal government work for 12+ years sort of taught me that anyways, but understanding the game and knowing that when you take on a start up, that you need to have a lot of structure and discipline.   Knowing what is best for your company and having the right people around you is paramount to success. If you have to let these people go one day, what is it going to cost you (besides money)?.

I feel that this was one of the best lectures we have had this quarter as it gave me a lot to think about.  I have a couple of great start up ideas, but understanding what it takes to make those dreams a reality and knowing the sacrifices that come with them is one thing I think a lot of people dont think about when they take that plunge.  Mr. Fry gave us a lot of tools in recognizing our potential in this area, and seeing the pitfalls for what they are.   For that I am thankful, and also cautious at the same time.  I know now that if I'm going to make a killing in technology, its going to take having a solid business plan, the right and idea, and a group of dedicated business partners to pave that path.  Bravo Professor Fry!  You really hit it home with this presentation and it resonates with me, and will do so until I reach my goals of pursuing my start-up business and taking it to its IPO.  :) 

Film Review of Startup.Com

The documentary Startup.com takes place in the early 90's where two friends Kaliel and Tom start a business called "govWorks.com".  The company is meant to take parking tickets and process them with the state of NY, which is a multi billion dollar industry that is uncharted until then.  Along the way they start off as a 8 person company and everyone is nice and happy and working as cohesive unit.  They put in a lot of work finding investors and find out that this is a shark infested area, and that if they weren't careful they would lose control of the company to the board, which is exactly what ultimately ends up happening anyhow.   Kaliel takes on the roll of being the CEO and makes some pretty tough decisions like getting rid of one of the founding members by buying him out for $700,000 (which in retrospect he probably made out better than any of them by the end of the movie) to have more control of the company.

The film takes a turn for the worse when competition ultimately starts to put them out of business. Corporate espionage in the way of a burglary at their office costs them trade secrets that is used against them by the competition.  The biggest problem was that their site was created by people that were not software engineers and it was not functioning as it should for something that is associated with Government resources.  This failure hits them hard as many other sites pop up and are able to handle much more than they could.  Kaliel takes the ultimate Alpha male move, when he fires Tom and also sides with the board to not pay him a cash buy out.  This is not only cold, but a true testament to greed being the ultimate evil in our society.


I felt that the film did an excellent job of showing what startup companies should be on the look out for when they have big eyeballs thinking that anyone can make millions without making tough decisions.  These guys lost their friendship, relationships with loved ones (Kaliel almost losing his girlfriend until the end of the movie when he realizes that somethings are more important that greed) and lost tons of money in something that could have been better facilitated had they taken some precautions when diving head first into their venture.  I learned that before you spend money you need a iron clad business plan, money needs to be distributed in research and development and contracts need to be clear cut and as fair as possible to all founding members.  Even though I say this, its more than likely that there are many other things that can ultimately undo any startup company that are not addressed in the film, and thats why I am taking this TINST Entrepreneurship course.  :)

Guest Speaker Graham Evans

We had guest speaker Graham Evans present to our class on Tuesday 1/28/14.  Graham brings many years of entrepreneurship experience with him and helped to give me more perspective on how to put together a business plan in an hour.

I took away a lot from this class!  I was a little lost when it came to how to determine the value of a business idea.  Once he asked for ideas and many of us shared ours (8 I think in total) and our class voted on the 1 idea we were going to expand on in class that day to build up as a business, things became much more clear.  I was very surprised at how many things you have to think about before moving even 1 dollar towards your project.  Such as having an understanding of breaking up the business model into 9 categories that account for the costs, partnerships, employees, tasks, services, etc.  This was what I needed to know what model I should put any idea through, in order to know if its worth my time. 

I also enjoyed him taking the time to show us that some businesses (even the one we worked on in class) can fall apart right before you even get it going, as many questions need to be answered first.  For example, knowing where the money would be made in our electronic recycling business idea.  It didnt manifest into what we all initially envisioned.  

When formulating my business plan for this course, I intend to draw a lot from Grahams discussion and will use his business acumen thoughts to not be short sighted in my endeavors.