The 4-Hour Workweek (26 page)

Discount Media Buying Agencies

If you go to a magazine, radio station, or TV channel and pay rate card—the “retail” pricing first given—you will never make it big. To save a lot of headache and expense, consider using ad agencies that negotiate discounts of up to 90% in their chosen media.

Manhattan Media (Print) (www.manhmedia.com)

Great agency with fast turnaround. I’ve used them since the beginning.

Novus Media (Print) (www.novusprintmedia.com)

Relationships with 1,400+ magazine and newspaper publishers with an average of 80% of rate card. Clients include Sharper Image and Office Depot.

Mercury Media (TV) (www.mercurymedia.com)

Largest private DR media agency in the U.S. Specialists in TV but can also handle radio and print. Offer full tracking and reporting to determine ROI.

Euro RSCG (Cross Media) (http://www.eurorscgedge.com/)

One of the worldwide leaders in DRTV media across all platforms.

Canella Media Response Television (TV) (http://www.drtv.com)

Uses the innovative P/I (per inquiry) model for compensation, where you split order profits instead of paying for time upfront. This is more expensive per order if you have a successful campaign, but it lowers upfront investment in media.

Marketing Architects (Radio) (www.marketingarchitects.com)

The de facto leaders in radio DR but a bit on the expensive side. Almost all of the most successful DR products—Carlton Sheets No Money Down, Tony Robbins, etc.—have used them.

Radio Direct Response (Radio) (www.radiodirect.com)

Mark Lipsky has put together a great firm, with clients ranging from small direct marketers to Travel Channel and Wells Fargo.

Online Marketing and Research Firms (PPC campaign management, etc.)

Starting Small—Find a Local Individual to Help

SEMPO (www.sempo.org; see the member directory)

Excellent Mid-Size Firms

Clicks 2 Customers (www.clicks2customers.com)

Working Planet (www.workingplanet.com)

The Hard-Hitting Pros—Small Campaigns Start at Several Thousand Dollars

Marketing Experiments (www.marketingexperiments.com) This is my team.

Did It (www.did-it.com)

ROIRevolution (www.roirevolution.com)

Cost is determined by a percentage above monthly PPC spend.

iProspect (www.iprospect.com)

Full-Service Infomercial Producers

These are the companies that made Oreck Direct, Nutrisystem, Nordic-Track, and Hooked on Phonics household names. The first has an excellent DRTV glossary and both sites offer excellent resources. Don’t call unless you can budget at least $15,000 for a short-form commercial or $50,000+ for a long-form infomercial.

Cesari Direct (http://www.cesaridirect.com/)

Hawthorne Direct (www.hawthornedirect.com)

Script-to-Screen (www.scripttoscreen.com)

Retail and International Product Distribution

Want to get your product on the shelves of Wal-Mart, Costco, Nordstrom, or the leading department store in Japan? Sometimes it pays to have experts with relationships get you there.

Tristar Products (http://www.tristarproductsinc.com)

Behind the PowerJuicer and other hits. Tristar also owns their own production studio and can therefore offer end-to-end services in addition to retail distribution.

BJ Direct (International) (www.bjgd.com)

Celebrity Brokers

Want a celebrity to endorse your product or be a spokesperson? It can cost a lot less than you think, if you do it right. I know of one clothing endorsement deal with the best pitcher in Major League Baseball that cost just $20,000 per year. Here are the brokers who can make it happen:

Celeb Brokers (www.celebbrokers.com)

President Jack King was the one who first turned me on to this fascinating world. He knows it all inside and out.

Celebrity Endorsement Network (www.celebrityendorsement.com)

Celebrity Finding

Contact Any Celebrity (www.contactanycelebrity.com)

It is possible to do it yourself, as I have done many times. This online directory and its helpful staff will help you find any celebrity in the world.

LIFESTYLE DESIGN IN ACTION

After I read the section on outsourcing, I thought it sounded like a novel idea but would never work for me. However, since the rest of the book was “spot on,” I decided to try it. Rather than ship my money overseas, I opted to keep it in the U.S. and use my niece in college, with skills on computers I can’t even fathom, to test the theory. Turns out it has been a great experience and timesaver for me, as well as moneymaker for her. It seems I have all of the positives of out sourcing but none of the hassles of language and such…. Being able to mold a young mind for the better ties in well with the rest of your book …

—KEN D.

Hey Tim, You mentioned www.weebly.com a few months ago, and I’ve been using that to build all my muse sites and think it’s great! Also, Facebook groups has (almost) every niche imaginable. So what I have found success in doing is: (1) Finding a niche group that would buy my muse, (2) sending a message to each admin telling them how my muse will help their group members. Then politely asking them to put a blurb in the “Recent News” section of the group. This makes it more trustworthy than a wall post, and it stays up there (free advertising) until the admin removes it. One hundred times better than a wall post. In one case, the admin purchased my muse, posted my note for me on the groups’ “Recent News” section, then e-mailed the entire group telling them they have to check out my site.

—GAVIN

50. Richard Tedlow, Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built (2001; reprint, HarperBusiness, 2003).

51. This is adapted from “The Remote Control CEO,” Inc. magazine, October 2005.

52. Actually, I’m the ghost in new machines now, as I sold BrainQUICKEN in 2009 to a private equity firm.

53. “Contract outsourcing companies” can be as simple as dependable web-based services. Don’t let the term intimidate you.

54. Sample e-mail responses for fulfillment purposes can be found at www.fourhourblog.com.

55 Joseph Sugarman, Advertising Secrets of the Written Word (DelStar Books, 1998).

56 Depending on whose math is used (number of cars vs. gross sales), some claim the original Volkswagen Beetle holds the record.

57. For the benefit of the customer and to capitalize on universal laziness (me included), provide as much time as possible to consider or forget the product. Ginsu knives offered a 50-year guarantee. Can you offer a 60-, 90-, or even 365-day guarantee? Gauge average return percentages with a 30- or 60-day guarantee first (for budgeting calculations and cash-flow projections) and then extend it.

L is for Liberation

It is far better for a man to go wrong in

freedom than to go right in chains.

—THOMAS H. HUXLEY,

English biologist; known as “Darwin’s Bulldog”

HOW TO ESCAPE THE OFFICE

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.

—ROBERT FROST, American poet and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes

On this path, it is only the first step that counts.

—ST. JEAN–BAPTISTE–MARIE VIANNEY, Catholic saint, “Curé d’Ars”

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA

  “We’re not going to expense the phone.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

Silence. Then a nod, a laugh, and a crooked smile of resignation.

“OK, then—it’s fine.”

And that was that, lickity-split. Forty-four-year old Dave Camarillo, lifelong employee, had cracked the code and started his second life.

He hadn’t been fired; he hadn’t been yelled at. His boss seemed to be handling the whole situation quite well. Granted, Dave delivered the goods on the job, and it wasn’t like he was doing naked snow angels in client meetings, but still—he had just spent 30 days in China without telling anyone.

“It wasn’t half as hard as I thought it would be.”

Dave works among more than 10,000 employees at Hewlett- Packard (HP), and—against all odds—he actually likes it. He has no desire to start his own company and has spent the last seven years doing tech support for customers in 45 states and 22 countries. Six months ago, however, he had a small problem.

She measured 5′2″ and weighed 110 pounds.

Was he, like most men, afraid of commitment, unwilling to stop running around the house in Spider-Man underoos, or inseparable from the last refuge of any self-respecting man, the PlayStation? No, he was past all that. In fact, Dave was locked and loaded, ready to pop the big question, but he was short on vacation days and his girlfriend lived out of town. Waaaaay out of town—5,913 miles out of town.

He had met her on a client visit to Shenzhen, China, and it was now time to meet the parents, logistics be damned.

Dave had only recently begun to take tech calls at home, and, well, isn’t home where the heart is? One plane ticket and one T-Mobile GSM tri-band phone later, he was somewhere over the Pacific en route to his first seven-day experiment. Twelve time zones hence, he proposed, she accepted, and no one was the wiser stateside.

The second field trip was a 30-day tour of Chinese family and food (pig face, anyone?), ending with Shumei Wu becoming Shumei Camarillo. Back in Palo Alto, HP continued its quest for world domination, neither knowing nor caring where Dave was. He had his calls forwarded to his newly begotten wife’s cell phone and all was right in the world.

Now back in the U.S. after hoping for the best and preparing for the worst, Dave had earned his Eagle Scout mobility badge. The future looks flexible, indeed. He is going to start by spending two months in China every summer and then move to Australia and Europe to make up for lost time, all with the full support of his boss.

The key to cutting the leash was simple—he asked for forgiveness instead of permission.

“I didn’t travel for 30 years of my life—so why not?”

THAT’S PRECISELY THE question everyone should be asking—why the hell not?

From Caste to Castaway

The old rich, the upper class of yore with castles and ascots and irritating little lapdogs, are characterized as being well-established in one place. The Schwarzes of Nantucket and the McDonnells of Charlottesville. Blech. Summers in the Hamptons is sooooo 1990s.

The guard is changing. Being bound to one place will be the new defining feature of middle class. The New Rich are defined by a more elusive power than simple cash—unrestricted mobility. This jet-setting is not limited to start-up owners or freelancers. Employees can pull it off, too.58

Not only can they pull it off, but more and more companies want them to pull it off. BestBuy, the consumer electronics giant, is now sending thousands of employees home from their HQ in Minnesota and claims not only lowered costs, but also a 10–20% increase in results. The new mantra is this: Work wherever and whenever you want, but get your work done.

In Japan, a three-piece zombie who joins the 9–5 grind each morning is called a sarari-man—salaryman—and, in the last few years, a new verb has emerged: datsu-sara suru, to escape (datsu) the salaryman (sara) lifestyle.

It’s your turn to learn the datsu-sara dance.59

Trading Bosses for Beer: An Oktoberfest Case Study

To create the proper leverage to be unshackled, we’ll do two things: demonstrate the business benefit of remote working and make it too expensive or excruciating to refuse a request for it.

Remember Sherwood?

His French shirts are beginning to move and he is itching to ditch the U.S. for a global walkabout. He has more than enough cash now but needs to escape constant supervision in the office before he can implement all the timesaving tools from Elimination and travel.

He is a mechanical engineer and is producing twice as many designs in half the time since erasing 90% of his time-wasters and interruptions. This quantum leap in performance has been noticed by his supervisors and his value to the company has increased, making it more expensive to lose him. More value means more leverage for negotiations. Sherwood has been sure to hold back some of his productivity and efficiency so that he can highlight a sudden jump in both during a remote work trial period.

Since eliminating most of his meetings and in-person discussions, he has naturally moved about 80% of all communication with his boss and colleagues to e-mail and the remaining 20% to phone. Not only this, but he has used tips from chapter 7, “Interrupting Interruption and the Art of Refusal,” to cut unimportant and repetitive e-mail volume in half. This will make the move to remote less noticeable, if at all noticeable, from a managerial standpoint. Sherwood is running at full speed with less and less supervision.

Sherwood implements his escape in five steps, beginning on July 12 during the slow business season and lasting two months, ending with a trip to Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany, for two weeks as a final test before bigger and bolder vagabonding plans.

Step 1: Increase Investment

First, he speaks with his boss on July 12 about additional training that might be available to employees. He proposes having the company pay for a four-week industrial design class to help him better interface with clients, being sure to mention the benefit to the boss and business (i.e., he’ll decrease intradepartmental back-and-forth and increase both client results and billable time). Sherwood wants the company to invest as much as possible in him so that the loss is greater if he quits.

Step 2: Prove Increased Output Offsite

Second, he calls in sick the next Tuesday and Wednesday, July 18 and 19, to showcase his remote working productivity.60 He decides to call in sick between Tuesday and Thursday for two reasons: It looks less like a lie for a three-day weekend and it also enables him to see how well he functions in social isolation without the imminent reprieve of the weekend. He ensures that he doubles his work output on both days, leaves an e-mail trail of some sort for his boss to notice, and keeps quantifiable records of what he accomplished for reference during later negotiations. Since he uses expensive CAD software that is only licensed on his office desktop, Sherwood installs a free trial of GoToMyPC remote access software so that he can pilot his office computer from home.