Four hour work week and the great Shopify contest
While stumbling around the Internet, which I do for about 10-12 hours a day, I came across yet another self help, get rich, quit your job now type of website. For some reason I decided to give a peek and see what it was about. First, I have to say, it’s not the run of the mill get rich quick scheme. It’s guide on how to live how you want to live, not how to be super rich. The author has spent his life looking for ways to not concentrate on how to make money but rather how to support the life he wants to have. That’s actually a subtle yet very different mindset that most of us have.
I don’t know about you but my ideal life does not include going to an office for 40 hours a week. One of my friends and I were having a discussion recently. He moved from a super busy environment, one where he saw his family only on the weekends, to one with far less work to do and a normal 9-5 job. His reaction at the move has become somewhat confusing to me. He was worried he would lose his skill set in the slower environment. He actually wanted the high stress, long hour workloads that he has become accustomed to. What’s more scary is I actually agreed with him about my own job.
After reading about half of the four hour work week book I came away with a feeling of slight despair. I’m in the friggin matrix and didn’t even know it. Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but I’m certainly plugged into the system. But on the backend of that despair I found a slight glimmer of hope. If this guy Tim Ferris can live the way he does, why can’t I? In fact on his website there a few testimonials of people that have challenged the system and have won. As for me, I”m a web developer over here. I can edit WordPress php and throw up a fully functional Joomla or Elgg website in under ten minutes. I can even do some pretty nifty css edits to them, just completed redoing my favorite local bar’s website from straight HTML to a WordPress theme, was fun. Bottom line, people are making some money on the Interwebs and that’s been my central focus for over a decade. What has stopped me in the past? Long work hours and a strange feeling of “it can’t be done”. I’m finding more and more that I don’t like negative opinions or ‘it can’t happen’. As soon as you say it can’t happen, you’ve just reduced your odds of making it happen by 50% (that’s really a guess but i’m sure it’s bad).
So, I’m going to give this thing a go. By this thing I mean working towards finding income streams not with the intention of being the next Google but of supplementing a lifestyle I want to have instead of one I am forced to have.
I found on Ferri’s blog a contest to make 100,000 dollars. In a nut shell, create a store on shopify.com, sell some products, and if you are the best in a two month period you get one hundred grand. I already have a site where I tried my hand at affiliate sales, didn’t do so good. But it has a pagerank of 1 so I could give it a shot and use that url.
I’m not dreaming of making an extra 40,000 a month, something that Ferris claims to be making through his web enterprises, but an extra 10k a year would come in very handy. If it does take off, or some other idea based on his workshops, I’ll be sure to mention them here.
Tim Ferris Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/
Shopify: http://www.shopify.com
