A WARNING about “FREEDOM” for entrepreneurs… (what it really looks like!)

Does the four-hour workweek actually exist? Well, let’s throw it all the way back to 2014 when I was roaming the streets of Bangkok and taking in the beautiful beaches of Thailand on vacation, but I remember still being attached to my phone and to my computer because I had just started my business and I was still working with my agency clients and one-on-one. And then all of a sudden, someone hands me this book and I see 4-Hour Workweek. And I’m thinking, “That sounds amazing in theory but is it real?” And then the tagline says “Escape the 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich.” Seven years later, have I mastered the four-hour workweek? Let me explain.

Business growth oftentimes looks like this. Let’s pretend that this is your revenue and this holds your expenses. So, the revenue and expenses are pretty much the exact same, meaning that you’re basically breaking even, whereas the concept in this book is talking about scaling, and scaling looks like this. Your expenses and operations stay the same or decrease as your revenue increases. That’s the good stuff. The entrepreneurial dream at the end of the day is to increase your income and your impact while decreasing your workload. And these four things have really helped me be able to do that.

Number one, freedom. We all become entrepreneurs because we want freedom, and we want to be able to set our own hours. So, absolutely, I have embraced freedom in my business. I have set up a business that works for me even when I’m not working. But does that mean that I’m not working all the time? Absolutely not. There are some days where it feels as though, no, I’m not in a 9 to 5, but I’m in a 5:00 AM to 9:00 AM. Can you relate at all? And it’s not every day, but the demand can be really, really real sometimes. And if you let that take over your life and you don’t have any focus on actually creating freedom, this entrepreneurial journey can be a beast that just completely consumes you, and I talk about that really in-depth in my darkest days as an entrepreneur in The Ugly Truth Of Entrepreneurship and check out that video right here.

Which brings me my next point, which is location. I was loving traveling and I wanted to make sure that I could still have that lifestyle and be able to take my laptop wherever I went and worked from wherever I went. It’s now been seven years. I’m kind of over traveling. We haven’t been able to travel in the last year, and truthfully, now when I go on vacation, I don’t really want to have to work or have my laptop with me, but I technically because I have an online business and because I built a business that’s completely location independent and I can work from anywhere, that is a big piece of what I implemented after reading the book.

Concept number three is elimination and outsourcing. This is vital to actually creating more space for yourself and more freedom as an entrepreneur. But it’s oftentimes one of the hardest thing for any business owner because you feel like you have to be doing it all. So, I would say this is probably one of my biggest mistakes that I made in my business and I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I talked about that in this video, How I Failed My Way to $10 Million. You want to check out that next. But I do think it’s important to understand that your business really starts to grow when you’re able to focus on the things that you’re truly good at.

So, I have outsourced a lot of the things that I’m not the best at. It’s things like bookkeeping and accounting. Of course, I’m still aware of the finances in my business, but I’m not doing them every day. A lot of the assistant work and administrative work in my business, I’m not doing every day. But the biggest thing that allowed me to outsource and also eliminate a lot of the busy work in my business was completely shifting my business model. So, I used to do one-to-one work, which I mentioned earlier, and when I was doing one-to-one work, this is what my calendar looked like on a weekly basis. It still gives me a little bit of anxiety. Today, I have packaged my experience and my knowledge into online courses, and that’s what my business is all about. That is our main product in our business. And by doing that, this is what my calendar looks like. Ah, it’s like the entrepreneurial dream. And the best part is, is that I’m actually able to impact more people and create even bigger and better results because I’m not trading my time for money anymore.

I’m truly creating transformation for people and they can do the work and implement my strategies on their own time without having to wait around for me. And I’m not constantly running from meeting to meeting and just trying to keep up with talking to people rather than actually doing meaningful work. And that, in actuality, has actually cut down my client-facing hours on a weekly basis to just four hours a week.

Well, let’s be honest. I’m usually working a lot more than four hours a week as most people are. However, having said that my focus is super specific because I have eliminated a lot of things that are unnecessary and I have been able to outsource. I now focus most of my attention on the things that actually help the business grow and that are truly in my zone of genius. And this really comes down to a simple concept that you may have heard of before called the 80/20 rule, which basically means that 20% of the tasks are yielding 80% of the results. That means that I’m not trying to diversify my attention on doing everything in my business. I’m focused on the things that really only I can do.

So, what are the two things, the 20% of my business that really make the biggest result and return that only I can do? It’s this. Content creation I will never ever outsource to anyone else. Content creation is most important for programs and for all marketing. And then the next thing is relationships. I am the CEO and the founder of the business, and it’s up to me to build the right relationships for our business, whether that’s with clients or it’s with fellow business owners, and making sure that I’m creating strategic partnerships. So, those are the 20% of the tasks that really only I can do and I should be doing. And that’s why my focus is not everywhere, and it’s also why I’m not on every social media platform. I focus on platforms that generate the biggest results for me, and that work best for me. Double down on what works.

Listen, nothing against Tim Ferriss, nothing against this book. I read this book seven years ago, like I said, while I was in Thailand and the concepts in this book, there are some really good concepts. So, this is what I took from it. And these four key concepts have allowed me to create a ton of space in my business, and my revenue has doubled every single year, and my time commitment in my business has gotten less and less as I’ve done that. So, I do think that I’ve been able to achieve that certain level of freedom. But am I working four hours a week on a regular basis? No, it’s generally a lot more than that because I love what I do. But changing my entire business model and as a service-based business, allowing myself to package my expertise into an online course and reach a lot more people and create a lot more transformation and impact has been a big key to creating space for me.

So, if you’re interested in doing that and want to know how I did it, you can check out this free training. So, no, I’m not in the beautiful waters in Thailand and my business just runs without me at all times, but I love what I do.

I love being an entrepreneur, and I think if you’re getting into being an entrepreneur to have freedom and to not work, don’t do it because you will be sorely, sorely mistaken. There are times where it’s going to require all of you, but that’s what is exciting if you’re built for this and not everybody is. And that’s okay. I think there’s a lot of toxicity around working very little and pressure around working very little, and I think there’s a lot of toxicity around working too much so you have to find the balance of what works for you.

Are you with me?