My friend Jim York always told me cash is king. And now I understand what he meant. My adopted mentor, Phil Town, agrees with Jim. Can you imagine the market ever reaching a P/E of 8? Well, it has in the past. And when it does, that is the best time to buy.
Read Phil Town's fascinating story on when cash is king.... and take heed !
Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek
Can you imagine banning email at work for an entire day? What would be the impact to the company? My hunch, and I think Tim Ferriss would agree with me, is people would get more done. The company's bottom line would improve.
Stop email for a day? Call me crazy! Throw rotten tomatoes at me. I know - I'm about ready to be barraged with emails complaining what a bad idea it is.
Well just try it. Try it like Intel.
Engineers at Intel in Santa Clara, California, recently announced a "Zero Email Friday" initiative, according to Jennifer Chamberlain of the Dallas Morning News.
Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek
Tim Ferriss on innovation:
"Lack of resources is often your greatest strength. How? It forces you to use new methods and test the options incumbents wouldn’t consider. It forces innovation. You have no other choice. Naivete, paired with unfounded optimism and complete ignorance, often helps here."
Startup entrepreneurs take heed!
Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek
An interesting article earlier this year about Outsourcing Your Life in the Wall Street Journal.
Here's one of the quotes:
Actress Michele Greene, known for her role as Abby on "L.A. Law," has found a way to outsource one of Hollywood's most entrenched jobs: the personal assistant. She contracted India-based concierge service GetFriday last year. Ms. Greene says she pays $150 a month for about 20 hours of service. That's about $2 less per hour than her L.A. assistants charged.Ms. Greene says her offshore assistant has been a big help while she works on her second young-adult novel and a country-folk CD in addition to acting projects. Along with paying her bills and booking her flights, her assistant has given her tips on Bollywood movies and Indian food. His recipe for garbanzo beans with eggplant and peppers has become one of her signature dishes. It's a huge improvement over the unemployed actors who typically fill these jobs in Hollywood, she says: "They'd screw up everything you'd ask them to do."
Checking out the testimonials on the site, I came across this one:
“I hired Your Man in India for a bold experiment. The experiment was quite successful.”- A.J. Jacobs,
Editor-at-large,Esquire Magazine.
The mind boggles.
Gillian Parrillo
Our 4-Hour Workweek
Want a Livelihood -- and a Life -- You Can Love? How to Turn Your Dream Into Reality in Five Minutes a Day and Other Tips for Time-Stressed Dreamers - by Valerie Young
Click here to read the complete article.
Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek
Fox News recently interviewed Tim Ferris, author of the 4-Hour Work Week, by asking him 7 questions. Below is one of them that I found interesting:
Do most corporate workers hate their jobs?Tim answered:
No. Most corporate workers are bored and dangerously comfortable. They are in that gray area between love and hate that leaves most with constant low-grade anxiety and an acute sense of wasted potential. This is more common and more damaging than hate, because hate spurs action. Tolerable mediocrity leads you to wake up one day and ask "what happened to the last 20 years?" That's no way to spend the prime of life. ..... Boredom should scare people as much as hate.Are you bored and dangerously comfortable? Are you ready to do something about it?
Gillian Parrillo
Our 4-Hour Workweek
Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek
Not exactly. Tim Ferriss did not quite say that, however, he did say stop complaining. Take the Tim Ferriss challenge - try not to complain for 21 days. His premise - if you don't complain you will be more effective.
Constructive criticism is not complaining. A complaint does provide a solution to fixing a problem, which is usually the basis for complaining.
Read Tim's complete article at Arianna Huffington's blog, the Huffington Post. Click here for the
This is an irresistible title and an absolute must read - "10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job". Steve Pavlina wrote this over a year ago - July, 2006. It seems he was ahead of his time. The predecessor to Tim Ferriss? Perhaps.
I found several great musings on Steve's "Personal Development For Smart People" blog at www.StevePavlina.com.
Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek
A great quote from Working Smart, Not Long, The Importance of Time Management, by Steve Aranoff & Robert FitzPatrick:
.. a recent article by Stever Robbins, a Harvard Business School graduate, suggests that the time has come to change American work ethos towards working smarter, not longer.Many have wondered why other western countries seem to get along just fine, even though they work far less than we do. Having worked with many European companies in this industry for years, we are forever amazed that in most of Western Europe there are mandatory rules for four to six weeks of vacation and more public holidays than we have here in the States. And yet, The Economist, a well-respected world economic magazine, suggests that when it comes to productivity, "France wins, working only forty hours with lots of vacation."
Gillian Parrillo
Our 4-Hour Workweek
We are taught from the very beginning to fall in line and do what is expected. The essence of our learned behaivors is to conform. The net - we follow the rules and we become mediocre.
Well, if we embrace these teachings, what happens? People work for companies. They work hard, live day to day, and retire. And the results? 98% of all Americans fail to achieve financial independence.
So why conform if it produces these results? According to Tim Ferriss -
"Retirement is worst-case-scenario insurance. Retirement planning is like insurance. It should be viewed as nothing more than a hedge against the absolute worst-case scenario: in this case, becoming physically incapable of working and needing a reservoir of capital to survive.Our 4-Hour Workweek is about breaking the rules we are taught and embracing new rules. It's a lifestyle change. How so? Quite simply - work smartly to build a business. Delegate and outsource. Set up the organization and stay off the critical path. Empower the staff to make decisions. Allow them the freedom to make mistakes. Force them to have skin in the game. And reward them. Once these rules are in place, execute and execute well. Change when things don't work. Focus on things that work well.Retirement as a goal or final redemption is flawed for at least three solid reasons:
a. It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a non-starter - nothing can justify that sacrifice.
b. Most people will never be able to retire and maintain even a hotdogs-for-dinner standard of living. Even one million is chump change in a world where traditional retirement could span 30 years and inflation lowers your purchasing power 2- 4 % per year. The math doesn't work. The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That's a bittersweet ending.
c. If the math does work, it means that you are one ambitious, hardworking machine. If that's the case, guess what? One week into retirement, you'll be so damn bored that you'll want to stick bicycle spokes in your eyes. You'll probably opt to look for a new job or start another company. Kinda defeats the purpose of waiting, doesn't it?"
Page 31 of “The 4-Hour Workweek”
And stay out of the way. Take time off and play. Take a lot of time off. Put excitement back in life. Remove the yoke of the office. Make the world the office. Live anywhere, travel anywhere, and work from anywhere. But the key - work less. Let the organization work on its own.
New rules. Skeptics? Of course. But don't worry about the skeptics. Take advantage of skeptics. Use them as motivators.
Work smart. Play hard. Forget about retirement. Retire is not a part of the new rules. Throw this rule out.
Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek.
