Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means we would make a small commission on some of the mention products at no cost to you! This helps us keep the lights on and produce helpful content.
Most of us have been there: clocking in for that 9-to-5 shift.
It gets a little exhausting and boring after a while, to say the least. You start wishing you had more time to relax and be with your family.
One of the reasons you’re probably here right now is because you’re tired of working forty or more hours a week. The title of this article caught your eye, and it seems too good to be true.
Well, is it too good to be true? In this post, I’ll be diving into if the 4-hour work week is still relevant or possible.
Don’t feel like reading? Click on the thumbnail below and listen to me talk about it instead.
The Concept of the 4-Hour Work Week
I’m going to begin by explaining to you where this whole idea came from. After all, I’m not the one who came up with the concept of a four-hour work week.
That honor belongs to Tim Ferriss. He wrote the book The 4-Hour Work Week over a decade ago.
This book introduced a ton of people to the concept of working online. Like the name implies, the idea is that you could potentially only work a total of four hours a week that way.
How? You basically have to create a business that’s, for the most part, automated.
Is the 4-Hour Work Week Possible?
Now, I’ll start getting to the part you were probably searching for. Is it possible to work only four hours a week?
I’ll come right out here and give you the answer instead of teasing you: yes, it definitely is still possible.
The idea here is to use the internet and the tools we have at our disposal to build an online business that’s largely automatic. An example, for instance, would be affiliate marketing.
That’s where you’re an affiliate for a site like Amazon, and you link to products on their site. Each time someone clicks on your link and makes a purchase, you get a commission. We talk about affiliate marketing even further in our comparison ofdropshipping vs affiliate marketing.
As you can see, this type of business model is one that doesn’t really need a lot of work on your part. Once you’ve got a site set up, links for people to click on, and you’re ranking high enough in Google that people will find you, the clicks will keep happening whether you’re actively working or not.
That’s just one example of a business model you can do this with. Our personal favorite business model, high-ticket dropshipping, is another possibility.
We have a few stores that require even less than four hours of work a week. You could just set them up and leave them there.
We even had one store that we basically left there with thirty products for about three years, and we ended up selling it for around $80,000. With our virtual assistant helping run it, it didn’t take a lot of our time at all.
And yes, dropshipping stores are online assets you can easily sell. In ourcase study, we took an even closer look at whether or not buying these Shopify stores is worth it.
Read Also: Dropshipping vs FBA
Is the 4-Hour Work Week Relevant?
Whether or not the 4-hour work week is still relevant is a whole other thing to ask.
A lot of people who read the book probably didn’t realize that it just gives you a quick look at the possible business models that allow you to work four or less hours a week. You need to get much deeper than what Tim Ferriss’s book covered. The book doesn’t give you quite enough information on its own.
If you’re really ready to make the four-hour work week a possibility in your life, I recommend this: pick a business model you learned about in the book. Once you’ve done that, you need to dig deep into it. Learn everything you can about it.
Focus on making it work and keep at it until you start earning money. I cannot stress enough how important this part is.
Once the money starts coming in, your next step is automating the small, tedious parts of your business. You can outsource the work and hire someone, or potentially look at working with a developer to create a program that automates the work. If you want to hear more about how we outsource some of our work, you can listen to our podcast episode about ithere.
Circling back to the learning part, though, you can’t get to this point of automation until you’ve really learned about the business model. Mike and I are at the point in our business where could easily kick back and work four hours a week.
The only reason we haven’t is that we’re working to aggressively scale up our business. Aside from that, I sincerely enjoy my work and would be a little bit bored if I only worked four hours a week.
Want a closer look at the basics of dropshipping? We wrote a handy guide on dropshipping basicsright here.
Read Also:Is Dropshipping Legal? How to Avoid Getting Sued Selling on Shopify
The Best Business Model for the 4-Hour Work Week
You can probably guess which business model I think is best for working four hours a week or less. I’ll say it again, anyway: high-ticket dropshipping.
If you’re really diligent about building relationships with your suppliers and developing a good store, you can make a few sales in as little as two weeks. And since you’re selling high-ticket expensive items, those few sales will earn you decent profit.
The main reason why I always choose high-ticket dropshipping is that it’s incredibly fast compared to other business models.
Let’s go back to affiliate marketing, for example. To do it successfully, you’ll need to learn all about SEO and how to rank your site in Google.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll mess up a bit in the beginning, and it will be several months before you see any revenue. Beyond that, it could even be a few years before you learn what you need to know to turn it into a profitable business.
That doesn’t mean that it isn’t a viable option to get to the four-hour work week, but it does take time, especially if you’re a beginner. The crux of the issue, though, is that not everyone has that time.
SEO can also be involved in high-ticket dropshipping a bit. For a little more information on SEO, I suggest taking a look at our podcast. We did an episode on oureCommerce SEO strategy for high-ticket dropshipping.
High-ticket dropshipping allows you to build momentum quickly, and you can use the cash you get from it to invest in other avenues or online assets to diversify your portfolio with.
Read Also:Dropshipping Advertising Strategy – Why We Never Use Facebook Ads
Wrap Up
In short, yes, I do think the things described in The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss are still possible and relevant. But one of the biggest problems with it is that many people pick up the book, read it, and think they know enough to make it happen instantly.
They don’t realize the amount of time and effort that they need to spend gaining the knowledge to make their business venture worth it. Rather than investing all that time and effort, people tend to dip their toes in one business model, then move on to another when it doesn’t work right away.
There’s nothing wrong with dabbling in other business models – in fact, we have a pretty diverse portfolio with all kinds of models in it. But we don’t just give up on one right away. We work at it until we have an understanding of what makes it succeed, and then we repeat it.
If you do end up reading the book (or if you’ve read it already), I strongly advise you to just use it as the high-level overview that it is. Use it as a springboard to dive deeper into an online business model.
If you feel like you’re ready to get a more detailed look at our own business models, you can take a look at our Instant eCommerce Assets course or our free Online Assets Playbook.
