Entrepreneur Book Review: 4-Hour Work Week

Timothy Ferris' "The 4-Hour Work Week" is one of the rising stars in today's entrepreneurial literature world. But is it worth the hype? Today, this start up blog is going to take an in-depth look into this freedom guide and determine if its contents are of any value to the aspiring entrepreneur. This review is NOT intended to determine the books value overall, but instead through the lens of an entrepreneur looking to start/expand a business venture or use it to achieve some form of a personal goal i.e becoming a millionaire.

Does The 4-Hour Work Week Apply to Entrepreneurs

Well, the short answer here is yes. And I wish I could leave it at that, however, I want to warn some of you about the pitfalls of this book if you have a start-up driven mind. To get started, I have a tendency to read everything. I'm awful at picking items that are unnecessary or not applicable to what I'm trying to get out of the book. Mr.Ferris does little if anything to help me here. I found myself enjoying the thoughts on something I found some value in (Like his strategy for outsourcing) and out of nowhere I'm learning how to ask my boos to let me telecommute. The layout was lacking in terms of separating business ownership advice from employee advice. Hopefully you're better than me at skipping the fluff, but if you read anything like I do your brain is going to be crammed full of unrelated info.

What Does The 4-Hour Work Week Get Right?

Let me start with a disclaimer here. Mr. Ferris' objective was never to help you become a millionaire. What he is attempting to do is allow you to join a class of individuals that he refers to as the "New Rich", which have a boatload of time to explore the world and pursue their passions. It's more lifestyle design than income or business creation. With that being said, his ideas aren't bad. The best aspect of the book I drew out (considering I'm a business owner not an employee) was the fact that outsourcing can be extremely cheap and efficient if you invest the time in finding the correct virtual assistants. If you're looking for a way to free up time and have work that can be outsourced, Mr. Ferris is going to show you how to do that in the most cost effective manner possible. He also gives some tidbits on the correct types of business' to pursue, how to do a little market research, and a lot of info for employees looking to telecommute. All this can be found else where leaving the valuable and unique info limited to essentially outsourcing.

Is The 4-Hour Work Week Worth It?

"Worth it" is going to be a very subjective matter in reference to this book. If you're starting a brand new venture, have no prior experience, and really want the end game to be a low to middle income venture that requires minimal work, then spending the $20.00 and the 3 hours it takes to read it will help you get pointed in the right direction. If you decide to pick i up, great. But I feel your mindset should resemble something more like the one set up by MJ Demarco in The Millionaire Fastlane. Now, if you're already in business, want to streamline some aspect of it in hopes of focusing your time and energy on growth, this book will provide little entrepreneurial benefit. At the end of the day, this book is a fun read and great for the niche Ferris targets, but few readers will likely fall into that category.