|
Welcome - This appears to be your first visit to Buzzoodle Sign up for our FREE fast start - email Internet Buzz course - and get a fast start on creating buzz. Click here and get started |
|
 RSS - Never Miss a Post |
Tim Ferriss - 4 Hour Work Week
September 21, 2007
Advocacy at its best!
Tim Ferriss wrote a book called the 4 Hour Work Week. I really like this book.
I do plan to hire a Virtual Assistant, but here is the funny thing. Tim Ferriss wrecked Get Friday. (The Indian Virtual Assistant Company he recommends heavily in the book)
Any time you successfully help people succeed, you are creating an advocate for yourself. On a good day, that could generate a lead or two.
On a great day, your advocate will write a best selling book and tell everyone to buy your service. Now, Get Friday cannot hire people fast enough and they are experiencing growth pains like very few businesses do.
The moral of this story, and there are two, is:
#1 You could get very popular unexpectedly. Have a plan for what to do if you experience explosive growth.
#2 Buzz happens at all levels, from barely noticable blips to industry transforming exposure. Keep at it and you will succeed.
Bonus #3 - Treat every person like they are your future Tim Ferriss.
| Rate This: |
Comments
10 Responses to “Tim Ferriss - 4 Hour Work Week”
Got something to say?
Virtual Buzz Assistant
Categories
- Blog
- Branding
- Buzz Podcasts
- Buzz with Blogs
- Buzzoodle
- Employee Advocates
- Events
- Interesting Buzz
- Internet Marketing
- Marketing ROI
- Networking
- Sales
- Small Business
- Viral Marketing
- Word of Mouth Marketing
Archives
Blogroll
Buzz Marketing
Recently Written
- Blog as CMS
- Fear of Leaving
- Debt and the Law of Reciprocation
- Evolution of Internet Marketing
- The 5 Best Ways to Encourage Employee Marketing
- Internet Marketing
- Stop Wasting Everyone’s Time
- Blog Making Money?
- Social Media Manager or Virtual Assistant?
- Mobile Blogging
Buzz Marketing Products by Buzzoodle
- Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing - The book
- Buzz Marketing Strategy eGuide
- Free Buzz Email Course
- Virtual BUZZ Assistant Network
Fire Up Your Team
Our two hour Employee Evangelism overview is perfect to help your staff understand the additional value they can provide, what is in it for them and why it is a habit that can transform their lives.
Contact us for pricing and availability.
Excellent points Ron, thanks. I was thinking as I read the 4 Hour Work Week that Get Friday would be super busy because of the mention.
Love the premise of your site and have added you to the RSS reader
Angela Wills
Hi there - great point. I love Tim’s book also and I Love this statement you made - “Keep at it and you will succeed!”
You make some valid points — and Get Friday truly is suffering from their good fortune. The sad thing is that when a virtual assistance business reaches this level of popularity, it generally leaves behind what brought it into existence to start with. The personal touch — a client working with the same assistant consistently so that they pull together as a team — a team that enjoys working together to accomplish mutual goals. In the end, success is sweet, but enjoying what you do and the people with whom you work is far sweeter. As virtual assistants we must interview our clients just as they interview us. Not every pairing is perfect. And only a perfect match will bring joy to the work that you do together. If there is no joy, you might as well work in an established 9 to 5 office environment, collect your paycheck, and go to bed at a reasonable hour, like the rest of the world. Think outside the box. Figure out how much money you need to be happy. Then find enough clients with whom you enjoy working to meet your goals. The Tim Ferriss’ of the world are great for the ego, but in the end it is still YOUR business and you must steer the ship on a course of your own choosing.
I’d never heard of ‘Get Friday’ until it was mentioned in Tim’s book. But it was good to see mention of Virtual Assistants - there are still so many out there that haven’t heard of our industry although it’s been around for a good 11 years now.
It is important that the client/VA establish how they will work together. As with a boss/PA working relationship, it takes time to get to know how each other operate and understand the culture of the company the work is being performed for. And for the VA it is good to connect with the VA networks so they can build a team around them to provide continued support as the demand grows.
One of the lessons I’ve taken from this is not to work in a service industry. It’s not scaleable (to use Tim’s phrase) beyond a point. You won’t know where that point is until you reach it.
Let’s hope that other VAs will now find ways to avoid meltdown in the face of such demand.
Get Friday has an industrial-age business model — it is one company that has to hire individual employees one at a time.
Contrast that to eLance, which is also recommended in “The Four-Hour Work Week,” and which has not had trouble meeting the demand created by the book. There, individuals and companies come to individual volutarily to exchange services. If the market for services increases, more providers come.
All good points… and I am not critical of Get Friday. I wish them the best of luck and I think having a VA is great.
My points are more about advocacy… being a buzz marketing blog and all.
I had a business grow faster than we could scale to once, and it melted down and lost money in the end. Better to expect and plan for the growth.
[…] Advocacy lesson Some morals out of 4hww’s advocacy of the Indian outsourcing company here Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing Blog - » Tim Ferriss - 4 Hour Work Week […]
Where can I find a virtual assistant?
Elance doesn’t provide you with any service, it puts you in contact with companies like Get Fridayt et al who will then bid for your job.
One upside is that if the company does not have the capacity to fill your position then they will not bid for your work.
Ferriss was careful not to give the detaisl of hsi favourite VA’s lookat page 134… The person mentioned there also does some work for me as an Indian Virtual Assistant sshhh.
Gavin