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By “scalable,” I mean a business architecture that can handle 10,000 orders per week as easily as it can handle 10 orders per week. Doing this requires minimizing your decision-making responsibilities, which achieves our goal of time freedom while setting the stage for doubling and tripling income with no change in hours worked.
here are a few additional policies that attract the high-profit and low-maintenance customers we want: 1. Do not accept payment via Western Union, checks, or money order. 2. Raise wholesale minimums to 12–100 units and require a tax ID number to qualify resellers who are real businesspeople and not time-intensive novices. Don’t run a personal business school. 3. Refer all potential resellers to an online order form that must be printed, filled out, and faxed in. Never negotiate pricing or approve lower pricing for higher-volume orders. Cite “company policy” due to having had problems in the
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5. Offer a lose-win guarantee (see boxed text) instead of free trials. 6. Do not accept orders from common mail fraud countries such as Nigeria.
Put multiple e-mail and phone contacts on the website. Put various e-mail addresses on the “contact us” page for different departments, such as “human resources,” “sales,” “general inquiries,” “wholesale distribution,” “media/PR,” “investors,” “web comments,” “order status,” and so on. In the beginning, these will all forward to your e-mail address. In Phase III, most will forward to the appropriate outsourcers. Multiple toll-free numbers can be used in the same fashion.
Do not provide home addresses. Do not use your home address or you will get visitors. Prior to securing an end-to-end fulfillment house that can handle checks and money orders—if you decide to accept them—use a post office box but leave out the “PO Box” and include the street address of the post office itself. Thus “PO Box 555, Nowhere, US 11936” becomes “Suite 555, 1234 Downtown Ave., US 11936.”
Relax in Public (2 days)
Once per day for two days, simply lie down in the middle of a crowded public place at some point. Lunchtime is ideal. It can be a well-trafficked sidewalk, the middle of a popular Starbucks, or a popular bar. There is no real technique involved. Just lie down and remain silent on the ground for about ten seconds, and then get up and continue on with whatever you were doing before.
Don’t explain it at all. If someone asks about it after the fact
just respond, “I just felt like lying down for a second.” The less you say,
Do it on solo missions for the first two days, and then feel free to do it when ...
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There are two types of mistakes: mistakes of ambition and mistakes of sloth.
The first is the result of a decision to act—to do something. This type of mistake is made with incomplete information, as it’s impossible to have all the facts beforehand. This is to be encouraged. Fortune favors the bold. The second is the result of a decision of sloth—to not do something—wherein we refuse to change a bad situation out of fear despite having all the facts. This is how learning experiences become terminal punishments, bad relationships become bad marriages, and poor job choices become lifelong prison sentences.
But what if your concern isn’t so much losing your children but losing your mind because of your children? Several families interviewed for this book recommended the oldest persuasive tool known to man: bribery. Each child is given some amount of virtual cash, 25–50 cents, for each hour of good behavior. The same amount is subtracted from their accounts for breaking the rules. All purchases for fun—whether souvenirs, ice cream, or otherwise—come out of their own individual accounts.
Local airlines will often offer seats on flights for just the cost of taxes and gasoline. To Central or South American destinations, I’ll often look at local flights from Panama or international flights from Miami.
The overpacking impulse is hard to resist. The solution is to set what I call a “settling fund.” Rather than pack for all contingencies, I bring the absolute minimum and allocate $100–300 for purchasing things after I arrive and as I travel.
Pack as if you were coming back in one week. Here are the bare essentials, listed in order of importance: 1. One week of clothing appropriate to the season, including one semiformal shirt and pair of pants or skirt for customs. Think T-shirts, one pair of shorts, and a multipurpose pair of jeans. 2. Backup photocopies or scanned copies of all important documents: health insurance, passport/visa, credit cards, debit cards, etc. 3. Debit cards, credit cards, and $200 worth of small bills in local currency (traveler’s checks are not accepted in most places and are a hassle) 4. Small cable bike
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Cheap is good, but bullet holes are bad. Check the U.S. Department of State for travel warnings before booking tickets (http://travel.state.gov).
Here are just a few of my favorite starting points. Feel free to choose other locations. The most lifestyle for the dollar is underlined: Argentina (Buenos Aires, Córdoba), China (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei), Japan (Tokyo, Osaka), England (London), Ireland (Galway), Thailand (Bangkok, Chiang Mai), Germany (Berlin, Munich), Norway (Oslo), Australia (Sydney), New Zealand (Queenstown), Italy (Rome, Milan, Florence),
Spain (Madrid, Valencia, Sevilla), and Holla...
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Here are a few exotic places I don’t recommend for vagabonding virgins, though veterans can make them all work: all countries in Africa, the Middle East, or Central and South America (excepting Costa Rica and Argentina). Mexico City and Mexican border areas are also a bit too kidnap-happy to make it onto my favorites list.
Get used to minimalism before the departure. Here are the questions to ask and act upon, even if you never plan to leave: What is the 20% of my belongings that I use 80% of the time? Eliminate the other 80% in clothing, magazines, books, and all else. Be ruthless—you can always repurchase things you can’t live without.
Speak to the manager of your local post office and have all mail forwarded to a friend, family member, or personal assistant,78 who will be paid $100–200 per month to e-mail you brief descriptions of all nonjunk mail each Monday. Get all required and recommended immunizations and vaccinations for your target region. Check the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov/travel/). Note that proof of immunizations is sometimes required to pass through foreign customs.
It is convenient to become a member of a large bank (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual, Citibank, etc.) with branches near the person assisting you so that they can drop off the deposits while running other errands. No need to move all accounts to this bank if you don’t want to; just open a single new account that is used solely for these deposits.
Scan all identification, health insurance, and credit/debit cards into a computer from which you can print multiple copies, several to be left with family members and several to be taken with you in separate bags. E-mail the scanned file to yourself so that you can access it while abroad if you lose the paper copies. If you are an entrepreneur, downgrade your cell phone to the cheapest plan and set up a voicemail greeting that states, “I am currently overseas on business. Please do not leave a voicemail, as I will not be checking it while gone. Please send me an e-mail at__@__.com if the
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Two days out— Put remaining automobiles into storage or a friend’s garage. Put fuel stabilizer like Sta-Bil® in the gas tanks, disconnect the negative leads from batteries to prevent drain, and put the vehicles on jack stands to prevent tire and shock damage. Cancel all auto insurance except for theft coverage.
First morning and afternoon after check-in Take a hop-on-hop-off bus tour of the city followed by a bike tour of potential apartment neighborhoods. First late afternoon or evening Purchase an unlocked80 cell phone with a SIM card that can be recharged with simple prepaid cards. E-mail apartment owners or brokers on Craigslist.com and online versions of local newspapers for viewings over the next two days. Second and third days Find and book an apartment for one month. Don’t commit to more than one month until you’ve slept there. I once prepaid two months only to find that the busiest bus stop
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I rarely travel somewhere without deciding first how I’ll obsess on a specific skill. Here are a few examples: Connemara, Ireland: Gaelic Irish, Irish flute, and hurling, the fastest field sport in the world (imagine a mix of lacrosse and rugby played with axe handles) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Brazilian Portuguese and Brazilian jujitsu Berlin, Germany: German and locking (a form of upright break-dancing)
Language learning deserves special mention. It is, bar none, the best thing you can do to hone clear thinking.
(1) adults can learn languages much faster than children83 when constant 9–5 work is removed and that (2) it is possible to become conversationally fluent in any language in six months or less.
Gain a language
I’ve learned to instead allocate $50–200 per trip to a “settling fund,” which I use to buy needed items once they’re 100% needed. This includes cumbersome and hassle items like umbrellas and bottles of sunscreen that love to explode. Also, never buy if you can borrow. If you’re going on a bird-watching trip in Costa Rica, you don’t need to bring binoculars—someone else will have them.
Here are nine stressful and common habits that entrepreneurs and office workers should strive to eliminate. The bullets are followed by more detailed descriptions. Focus on one or two at a time, just as you would with high-priority to-do items. 1. Do not answer calls from unrecognized phone numbers.
Do not e-mail first thing in the morning or last thing at night.
Do not agree to meetings or calls with no clear agenda or end time.
no meeting or call should last more than 30 minutes. Request them in advance
Do not let people ramble.
Do not check e-mail constantly—“batch” and check at set times only.
Do not over-communicate with low-profit, high-maintenance customers.
Do not work more to fix overwhelmingness—prioritize. If you don’t prioritize, everything seems urgent and important.
Do not carry a cell phone or Crackberry 24/7.
Take at least one day off of digital leashes per week. Turn them off or, better still, leave them in the garage or in the car. I do this on at least Saturday, and I recommend you leave the phone at home if you go out for dinner.
Do not expect work to fill a void that non-work relationships and activities should. Work is not all of life. Your co-workers shouldn’t be your only friends.
The Fundamental Four are so named because they are the four books I recommended to aspiring lifestyle designers
The Magic of Thinking Big (192 pages) BY DAVID SCHWARTZ
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur’s Guide (272 pages) BY DAN S. KENNEDY
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It (288 pages) BY MICHAEL E. GERBER
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel (224 pages) BY ROLF POTTS
