Well I’m back from my vacation and I have to admit being away from the PC for a while was very enjoyable. Maybe a little too enjoyable as it has taken me an extra few days to get back to work! Lol.

Taking a quick look around some students of AlexJefferys blog’s it looks like the past couple of weeks have been very busy. I have been catching up on the webinars I missed and have listened to half of the bonus webinar with ’The Marketing Queen’, Maria Andros. Wow, what a call. This woman knows her stuff and judging by some of the great videos I have seen on YouTube, you have all been inspired to grab your cameras and go for it!

As I promised in my previous post, I did not spend my time away completely idle. One of the books I took with me to read was The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss as recommended by Alex Jeffreys. Having read the book now I can see why Alex rates it so highly, if do not have a copy of this book, get one now!

4hr

Like me, I’m sure you have all read many motivational/business books. Among those books there will be the occasional one that really strikes a cord with you and provides those aha! moments. Well, for me The 4-Hour Work Week was one of those. I am on my second read now.

We have all been told the value of outsourcing, well this guy takes this to a whole different level. Not just outsourcing some web design or article writing, no. Tim wants us to outsource our life! The aim being to allow us as much free time as possible so we can spend our lives doing what we really want to. In one experiment in outsourcing the editor of Esquire magazine even outsources an argument with his wife to be dealt with my his man in India. That’s the sort of back up I could do with, LOL.

The other main focus of the book is to discover what you really want your life to be and to build a fully automated business to provide the income to do this. This book raises some very good questions for you to answer and will have a great impact on my (still unfinished!) plan for 2009. As Alex says in one of his recent YouTube videos, too many people are quick to say their goal is to earn a million dollars. That’s fine but unless you know the WHY behind that goal, not of much use.

Now we have all had the following question asked of us in many a book:

If you had $1,000,000 what would you do?

But as I said earlier, some books speak to us more than others and give you a different take on the same subject. Tim has a planning method he calls ‘dreamlines’. This is where you will write down the things you would have and would do if you had that $1 million in the bank now. You then choose the top four of those as we are working to a 6 and 12 month plan and calculate the cost of these items and activities. This will enable you to arrive at your TMI, target monthly income and also you TDI, target daily income.

This is a worthwhile exercise as you will find the amount you need to be living the lifestyle you want will most likely be much lower than you expected. So maybe you don’t need that $1 million dollars after all! So now you have your target monthly income you just need to create an automated business to achieve that. Easy right? Well perhaps not easy, more like Alex’s says….simple, but not easy!

There is a large section of the book devoted to helping us achieve that automated business. This post is already getting way too long so I will try and summarise as best I can. What I took from this section of the book was that the best way to create this automated business really comes down to one thing.

Niche Markets!

Yes, that’s nothing new to you or me but have you really decided what your niche is going to be? really? Well, I can honestly say I haven’t and that is a big mistake. We are all striving to make money in the internet marketing niche, but man, that’s a big niche! So we have to find our niche area within that niche, a micro niche if you like. Take Maria Andros for example. Maria earned $100,000 in her first year online by excelling in video marketing, a niche area within internet marketing in general.

So deciding on niche areas will be a huge part of my plan for 2009, hopefully I will get the damn thing finished before the end of the year, LOL. I had been putting pressure on myself to get this plan finished but it’s better to take you time and have a good, detailed plan than just throw one together. This may the one of the few exceptions to ‘don’t get it right, just get it going’.

Take a look at Tim Ferriss’ site here and enter your details. You will get to see his blog and there is some great stuff in there. If you have already read the 4-hour work week, I would love to hear what you thought of it.

Right, back to that plan (again!)

Mark

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