Our 4-Hour Workweek

Move over Tim Ferriss - Gillian & I can tango too! And here is our proof.

I am back and ready to continue the journey for a 4-hour workweek.

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweei

Posted by Pierre Cutler at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Can you digg it? | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a fun technique that I've grown to like over time. Think of a subject and exercise a Google search to see what is out there. And so today I searched on the exact phrase "Quitting Your Day Job". Google search returned 27,700 hits.

Wow! A lot of people are writing and podcasting about the subject. It is a hot topic. In the first page of the search I found ten items worth exploring about Quitting Your Day Job.

1. Risks vs. Rewards - Quitting Your Day Job to Become an Entrepreneur
2. Quitting Your Day Job - Podcast 1 and Podcast 2
3. 5 Ways to Start A Company Without Quitting Your Day Job
4. Is It Wise To Quit Your Day Job And Depend On Your Website For Income?
5. How To Know When To Quit Your Day Job And Work From Home Full Time
6. My Blueprint For Quitting Your Day Job
7. Quitting The Day Job - Finding The Guts To Pursue Your Dreams
8. Seriously – Half Of The Secret To Quitting Your Day Job To Make Money Online – Spend Less
9. How To Quit Your Day Job In Six Not So Easy Steps
10. How To Quit Your Day Job

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

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The second week of 2008 proved to be another tough week on Wall Street with all the major indices down.

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.5% (-5.0% year to date) to 12,606.30.
• The NASDAQ fell 2.6% (-8.0% year to date) to 2,439.94.
• The S&P 500 Index fell 0.5% (-4.6% year to date) to 1401.02.
• The Power Women 50 Index fell 0.5% (-3.8% year to date) to $90,773.99 (details).
• The Magic Formula Index fell 1.5% (-8.0% year to date) to $90,088.52 (details).
• Our 4-Hour Workweek basket of stocks and cash fell 4.6% (-4.6 year to date) to $23,027.66.
• Pierre's 401K group of mutual funds fell 0.8% (-5.5% year to date) to $65,267.19.

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

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The Millonaire Mommy Next Door's story inspired me to add a new twist in documenting my journey to achieving a 4-hour workweek. My main strategy is not going to change. I will still focus on the business aspect. But I would like to add a new twist - documenting each of my moves with my 401K plan and tracking my bonus plan investments. You see, the Millionaire Mommy Next Door achieved the freedom to live anywhere and financial independence through a combination of wise investments and business ownership.

I started work at Avionics Systems Inc. (not my real company name) in March 2006, and immediately began investing in the company's 401K plan. The company matches my investment with a 75% kicker for the first 8% of my earnings and provides an additional 2% for my retirement. Initially, I contributed 10% of my earnings and bumped it up to 15% after my pay raise. Since March 2006, my 401K account has grown to $68,464.

Over the past two years, I received two bonuses and invested the entire amount (after taxes) in four companies: FMC Technologies (FTI), Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold (FCX), Holly Corporation (HOC) and The Procter and Gamble Company (PG).

Here are the details of my investments after the closing bell on December 31, 2007:

• Procter and Gamble (PG), 100 shares at $73.42 ($7,342);
• FMC Technologies (FTI), 100 shares at $56.70 ($5,670);
• Freeport Copper (FCX), 50 shares at $102.44 ($5,122);
• Holly Corp. (HOC), 100 shares at $50.89 ($5,089)
• Dodge and Cox Stock Fund, 60.581 shares at $138.26 ($8,375.93);
• Fidelity OTC Portfolio, 103.849 shares at $52.17 ($5,417.80);
• Fidelity International Discovery Fund, 125.877 shares at $43.08 ($5,472.78);
• Fidelity International Diversified, 337.894 shares at $39.90 ($13,481.97);
• Fidelity Blue Chip Growth, 303.568 shares at $44.06 ($13,375.21);
• Allianz NFJ Small-Cap Value Institutional Class, 402.044 shares at $30.76 ($12,366.87);
• Avionics Systems Inc., 273.024 shares at $35.25 ($9,624.10);
• Cash of $932.66;
• Total = $92,270.32

How many years will it take to grow this initial amont to $1,000,000? At 12% return on investment (ROI), 22 years; 15% ROI, 18 years; 20% ROI, 14 years; 25% ROI, 11 years. I hope to do it quicker by adding money each year to my 401K plan and investing all of my bonus each year.

Well, let's see how long it will take.

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

Posted by Pierre Cutler at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Can you digg it? | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tim Ferriss, you reminded me of an important lesson, that I've long forgotten - the 80/20 Rule. Thanks to you and Vilfredo Pareto, I will apply this rule in moving forward.

According to copywriter and blogger Michel Fortin:

The 80/20 Rule is simple. It says 20% of inputs create 80% of outputs. Conversely, 80% of inputs create only 20% of outputs. For instance:

In a house that is carpeted, 20% of the carpet will get 80% of the wear. On a blog, 20% of the blog posts will get 80% of the “reads.” In a business, 20% of the customers will produce 80% of the revenue.

In anything you apply the 80/20 Rule to, you will find both great leverage and great waste.

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

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This past Monday after the bell on Wall Street, I published an article on VMware Inc. (NYSE symbol VMW) on our sister site www.SacramentoExecutive.com. The essence of the article was the 316% gain in the stock price since the August IPO of VMware and the fact the company is led by a woman, Diane Greene. I tied in the Power Women 50 Index, a feature of another of our sites www.SacWomen.com, hoping to get to readers to the site.

Well it worked. Better than I thought it would. Within a few minutes of publishing the article, I noticed a spike in readership on both Sacramento Executive and SacWomen. Through our tracking software SiteMeter.com, I found we were getting several readers from the VMware stock page on www.finance.google.com.

After a brief investigation, I realized that the Google Finance service has a blog roll of recent postings, unique to each stock symbol. It so happened that my VMware posting made it to the top of the blog roll. What a nice surprise. The link stayed on the first page for over 24 hours and during that time traffic doubled from the normal daily volume.

Nice find. I plan to try it again with a few more articles featuring stocks from the Power Women 50 Index.

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

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Google Alerts is fast becoming my favorite tool. Two of the Alerts are proving to be reliable - Tim Ferriss and 4-Hour Workweek. Today, I discovered CopyBlogger.com from my Tim Ferriss Google Alert. Brian Clark offers this sage advice for online publishers:

It’s no secret at this point that I believe the best way for online publishers to create fans is to teach. For whatever reason, I naturally gravitated to an educational approach to selling and to paid content right from the start, and I’ve never looked back.

Whatever your approach, keep this in mind: modern marketing is less about market share, and more about share of customer. It’s much easier to keep an existing customer then it is to attract a new one, so do everything you can to retain the relationships you’ve got. Even though the allure of the Internet leads us to believe we can conceivably reach every possible person who might be interested in what we offer, you’ll make more money by focusing on attracting the right people and keeping them as happy as possible.

Brian's blog is a keeper - I've added it to my RSS feed.

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour WorkWeek

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Do women CEOs outperform men CEOs? We are about to find out.

Introducing the Power Women 50 Index.

The cover story in the current Fortune Magazine (October 15, 2007) features the 50 most powerful women. A quick scan of the list includes twelve CEOs of publicly traded companies (today's closing share price and stock symbol are provided):

• Indra Nooyi, Pepsico, $71.77 (PEP);
• Anne Mulcahy, Xerox, $17.06 (XRX);
• Meg Whitman, eBay, $39.08 (EBAY);
• Irene Rosenfeld, Kraft Foods, $33.53 (KFT);
• Pat Woertz, Archer Daniels Midland, $34.90 (ADM);
• Andrea Jung, Avon Products, $37.54 (AVP);
• Brenda Barnes, Sara Lee, $16.02 (SLE);
• Carol Meyrowitz, TJX, $30.83 (TJX);
• Mary Sammons, Rite Aid,$4.33 (RAD);
• Julia Stewart, $64.85 (IHP);
• Angela Braly, Wellpoint, $78.56 (WLP);
• Diane Greene, WMware, $109.69, (VMW).

Assume an intial investment of $100,000 evenly spread over the twelve women-led companies. We will benchmark the Power Women 50 Index against the overall S&P 500 Index.The S&P 500 Index closed at 1554.41 today. Until our new website www.PowerWomen50.com is launched, we will track the index on www.SacWomen.com.

Do women make better CEOs? We are about to find the answer!

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

Posted by Pierre Cutler at 7:20 PM | Permalink | Can you digg it? | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today we started beta testing the Amazon.com widget. The product is a part of the Amazon affiliate program and offers: an easy to use interface; custom design and colors; and, tailorable comments.

We placed it in the right-hand column immediately below the recommended podcast section.

I am impressed with the widget. Time will tell if it increases revenue.

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

Posted by Pierre Cutler at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Can you digg it? | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

During our many retirements, we want to save time on the preparations to leave more time for the actual retirement. Using Stumble Upon today, I found a nifty tool - the Universal Packing List.

Plug in a few details of your trip and out comes a very complete list of what you need to pack, what documents you need, what shots you need, and even what you need to do before you leave home.

Wow, this is the list I usually spend many sleepless nights putting together in my head and then, without fail, I forget half of it.

You can even make your list more personalized by using the map based version.

Definitely a keeper for our retirement toolkit.

Gillian Parrillo
Our 4-Hour Workweek

Posted by Gillian Parrillo at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Can you digg it? | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

How to build traffic on our blogs - that's the 64 thousand dollar question! This weekend, I invested in Aaron Wall's best selling search engine e-book, "SEO Book". It's time to learn about search engine optimization. According to Darren Rowse of Problogger.net, Aaron's book has made Darren thousands of dollars. Well, I made the $79 investment.

I am off on a 5-day business trip this morning for my day job. This is like a broken record ... I swear, my day job is getting in the way of my passion. Tim Ferriss, give me the courage and strength to do the right thing! While on the road, I intend to dig into the "SEO Book", learn and develop new winning blogging strategies.

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

Posted by Pierre Cutler at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Can you digg it? | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Congrats to Gillian for getting SacWomen.com in the Sacramento Bee just days after launching!

How did she do it? By participating in her first triathlon...what Gillian will do to get her new site some press!

Visit SacWomen.com for the complete story.

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

Posted by Pierre Cutler at 7:50 PM | Permalink | Can you digg it? | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pierre had every good intention to blog this morning and as soon as he got home tonight. I, who have been away for a week competing in a triathlon (wow, that has a certain ring to a up until recently couch potato), was even supportive of him spending time moving ahead in our 4 hour workweek journey instead of doting on me. And then, as often happens, the other job had a different plan.

A 7AM presentation this morning which resulted in a quick trip home to pack a suitcase to spend the rest of the week at corporate headquarters. And promises of whole weeks of corporate headquarter stays with some hope of a weekend at home once in a while. So now both the blog and I are abandoned. And this is definitely not the life that Pierre and I signed up for.

Moving from the West coast for a job in the South, leaving all of our friends behind, and then Pierre gets sent to the deep Midwest, leaving me here with very few friends and no reason at all to be here. And the worst part is there is no certainty - each day brings a different scenario. So there is no ability to improve our current circumstances because they are only current from day-to-day.

Seems more and more like having feet in two different camps isn't going to work. At some point, we are going to have to go for broke. Hopefully only figuaritvely! Although with the current state of the stock market, literally isn't sounding so far out of the question.

Gillian Parrillo
Our 4 Hour WorkWeek

Posted by Gillian Parrillo at 2:54 AM | Permalink | Can you digg it? | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The light bulb went on while walking the dogs last night. My entire focus was wrong this past week. I worried about solving the advertising problem at the expense of the real challenge.

Without content and readership, advertisering doesn't matter. Duh! I should have known better. But at least I figured it out by myself. Publishing is all about content. Create great content and the readers will follow.

Gillian, I can't wait for you to return from Sacramento and the big triathlon. I want to tell you about my brainstorm last night while walking the dogs...

We are going to defer the advertising efforts until we have a good story to tell - that is, how many readers we serve. Once we get this piece down, then we'll worry about advertising. Oh by the way, when we get serious about advertising, we'll seek the professionals to make it happen. Common sense, right?

Dog walking is good for thinking. The next time I get stumped, I will take the dogs for a walk. And think!

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

Posted by Pierre Cutler at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Can you digg it? | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A week ago we took the action to study various advertising models and decide which one to implement. In Our 4-Hour Workweek Business Model we decided to explore Ads-click.com, Federated Media, Advertising.com, and Problogger.net

First, I decided to learn more about Google and their Adsense program. We have used this exclusively on our Sacramento Executive website. Adsense provides two sources of revenue - contextual ads and search. Contextual ads produce more revenue than the search function, but we are not scorching a path to the bank. Serious bloggers shun Google Adsense. They adopt more sophisticated adertising models.

Google has a beta offering that I decided to use - more along the affiliate program model. I put a banner ad (worldwide hotel reservation service) in the prime spot immediately below our logo. I also placed a vertical contextual ad (120 x 600 pixels) down the righthand side of the site. Let's see if these two changes increase ad revenue.

I decided to use ads-click.com. Gillian set up the account. I went through the creation process. ads-click.com provided the script, I copied the script to my main index template, and with great excitement, rebuilt my site. To my disappointment, the ad was not served properly. So I tried again and again. To no avail. I looked for on-line help, but got nowhere.

Okay, I thought, it's time to visit Problogger.net, the guru of professional blogging. Darren Rowse, founder of the site, recommended Text Link Ads. So I set up a text link account, built my ad, and couldn't get it to work. Again I was disapointed.

These ad tools are promoted as being simple to implement, but they are not. Down, but not out, I need to talk to technical support...but it's Sunday, and the "on-line" support function - chatting with a real person - is not available - they are presently "off-line".

I checked my e-mail and found a note from the Text Link Ads group:

"Sorry, but our ad script will not work with static HTML sites or sites that do not support a server side technology. So our system will not work with TypePad or other hosted services."

I wonder if this is why it doesn't work? I have a hosted service and a cousin of TypePad - Movable Type. And what is a static HTML site anyways? Do I have one? This will require more investigation. I just wish they would have told me this before I started the process.

What did I learn from this? I need to take Tim Ferriss more seriously about outsourcing. I spent 5 hours today on this project and could have outsourced it, gone to bed, slept, and perhaps it would be working when I woke up.

Well, it's clear, I need to remember Tim's advice.

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

Posted by Pierre Cutler at 7:52 PM | Permalink | Can you digg it? | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Gillian and I launched our first website, Sacramento Executive, in December of 2005, with the mantra "Linking Executives To All That Is Great In Sacramento". We set out to be a role model in the community on networking. Since our inception, we have sponsored a networking event every quarter. They have been a lot of fun and proven to be fruitful.

Well, this past Wednesday was a banner day for reinforcing our lesson learned on the importance of networking. Two separate events occurred that demonstrate we are on the right path.

First:

A few years ago I earned my California real estate license and subsequently worked a brief time in the mortgage industry. I partnered with a brand new real estate agent, Caroline Jensen, a former employee of Gillian's at Sterling Software. Over the years, we had become good friends with Caroline and her husband. Between the four of us our network in Northern California grew substantially. When I left the mortgage industry, Caroline sought out a new mortgage partner - Dave Mendoza of Comstock Mortgage.

Caroline (with her Coldwell Banker brand name) has sponsored Sacramento Executive from its inception. Along the way she sold our Sacramento house in the first weekend it was listed. She also introduced us to Dave and he subsequently became a sponsor.

Wednesday evening, I received an e-mail from Nancy, one of my former mortgage clients, asking me to work with her to refinance her loan. I explained to her that I was no longer in the business and introduced her to Dave at Comstock Mortgage.

Hopefully, Dave will be able to work with Nancy and close on her new loan. And this is exactly why Dave sponsors our website. His advertising dollars and our network are symbiotic. Dave, I hope we can keep it up. Thank you for your support!

Second,

Now the web of our network gets more interesting. Gillian put together a women's book club a few years ago. The women in the club come from a wide background - a retired HP vice president, the director of the Sacramento County Library, a recent UC Davis graduate (Elena Naderi), our daughter (who happens to work for Caroline's husband), and Caroline to name a few.

The club means a lot to Gillian. Even though we live in Dallas, Gillian manages to make it back to Sacramento for most book club events. Wednesday night was book club night and Gillian arranged her schedule to be in Sacramento that night.

Elena hosted the event. Elena, Gillian and Caroline have a common thread - the Sacramento Entrepreneurship Academy. Caroline graduated from the Academy several years ago and now sits on the Board. Elena recently graduated and works for Johnson & Johnson. Gillian serves as President and Board member.

Gillian brought a guest to the event, who happened to be interested in buying a house. And yes you guessed it - Caroline connected with the guest and at last report the two of them are now house hunting. I wonder if the guest will need a mortgage? If so, Dave, you might be getting another client! Caroline, thank you for your continued support of Sacramento Executive.

Oh the tangled web that we weave!

And folks, that is the art of networking.

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

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For several years, Gillian and I have been members of an angel investment group - the Sacramento Angels. As members, we met several hundred start-up companies. Our experience with the group taught us a key tenet - successful companies need to clearly articulate their business model, that is, state how they will make money.

Our 4-Hour Workweek is no different. We are in business to make money. But how? Our business model is to set up a series of on-line publishing websites and generate four sources of revenue: advertising, reseller of products through affiliate programs, direct product sales, and networking events.

We need to be flexible about our business model. If something does not work well, we must to be prepared to change and improve the model.

Today, l would like to focus on our advertising model.

One of our first activities is to develop the plan for our advertising revenue model. Most start-up companies need to conserve cash. We are no different. Therefore, we have decided not to hire a professional and experienced person to develop our advertising revenue model. Of course we could consider bringing on board an equity partner to fill this role. Perhaps we could find someone willing to work for a piece of the business in lieu of cash?

We do not plan to bring on a partner at this time. We believe we can develop a reasonable advertising revenue model on our own. How? By studying and replicating successful websites such as Techcrunch.com, Dooce.com, and The Huffington Post. Why create something new if you don't have to?

Techcrunch, with over 1.5 million monthly readers, uses a company called Ads-click.com to deliver and display ads. According to a recent Business 2.0 article, advertisers pay $10,000 a month (with a minimum two-month pre-paid order) for a single ad (about 120 pixels by 120 pixels). At last count Michael Arrington's website generates over $100,000 a month in advertising revenue. Not too shabby! I think I would be pretty darn happy with these kinds of numbers.

Now how to get a readership of 1.5 million per month. This will be a topic for another day.

Heather Armstrong, creater of Dooce.com has established a large readership through her creative writing style. Six years ago, Heather quit her daytime corporate job (she was fired for writing too much about her job - boy did that web development firm give Heather the break she needed!). She does so well with her website, that in 2005, her husband Jon quit his job, and together they make their living from Dooce.com by partnering with Federated Media.

And then there's the mega-darling Arianna Huffington. Arianna's website, The Huffington Post, became an overnight success and is now one of the most read blogs in the world. The Huffington Post serves dynamic ads via Advertising.com

This brings us to the master guru Darren Rowse of Problogger.net. Darren, the minister from Down-Under, discovered blogging in 2002. Darren's website, with 30,767 faithful readers (based on Feedburner statistics), is a great resource for tips on generating revenue through advertising.

So, which advertising solution do we chose? Give us the week to research. We'll get back to you next week on our decision. And if you can help, please comment on your successes or failures in this area. We solicit your opinion.

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

Posted by Pierre Cutler at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Can you digg it? | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My Monday began by commuting 30 minutes to work (uggh, I need to do away with the commute!), arriving at my office at 7:10AM. My boss was coming to town today to greet a new employee and I had agreed to meet both for dinner across town.

Leaving my office at 6PM, with 30 minutes to spare, I discovered I had a flat tire in my office parking lot. Having never had to fix a flat tire before on my Acura, I couldn't even figure out how to get the jack out of the car, let alone determine the location of the spare tire. In business attire, and 95 degrees Texas-style, I began the process of fixing my flat.

Realizing that my 6:30 PM dinner date was not going to happen on time, I called my boss and shared with him my predicament, commenting that I would be an hour late. My boss excused me from the dinner date. About 45 minutes later, with temporary spare tire mounted, and grease smeared on my wool slacks, I headed home, arriving at 7:30 PM. My 13-hour corporate day had come to an end. And I vowed one more time that I was going to make this 4-hour workweek work.

Tomorrow, assuming my corporate duties allow (I will find a way), Gillian and I will share with you our thoughts on our 4-hour workweek business model.

Pierre Cutler
Our 4-Hour Workweek

Posted by Gillian Parrillo at 3:05 AM | Permalink | Can you digg it? | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)