Build a Business, Not a Job vs. The 4 Hour Work Week

[Pinnacle]

Two of the best business books I've read in my life.

On my fastlane journey, and implementing the teachings of each respective book, I've taken close notice of the similarities and differences of each book and when and how the lessons taught in each can be applied to the fastlane. Both books are about building systems and automating your business to become a cash flow machine that consumes as little (if any) of your time as possible.

It turns out that Build a Business, Not a Job is geared toward service-based businesses while The 4-Hour Work Week (as many already know) encourages its implementation in product-based businesses. Perusing each book will help the reader understand why they are different in this regard.

Bottom line: if you want to automate a service-based business, use the book Build a Business, Not a Job as one of your guides. For product-based businesses, use The 4-Hour Work Week as one of your guides.

What are your perspectives on how to automate service-based vs. product-based businesses?

 

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[JDIII2007]

I will take a look at that build a business book this weekend. I have read the 4 hour work week in the past but found a lot of it to be vague and only highlight the positives of outsourcing without discussing how best to handle the challenges one can face with it.

 

[JDIII2007]

Ok, I am 3/4ths through the Build A Business book and it is a pretty good one. Like a number of books these days this one is really a pitch for their week long retreat and consulting services. These books tend to be decidedly vague and was worried this was going to be an issue as my biggest critique is that there is a lot of filler in this book. What is about a 100+ page book should really be about 50 pages. In addition, after reading the millionaire fastlane , roughly the first 15% of the book was redundant in that it could be added up to simply say: you want to build a business for wealth creation and create a process that allows you to scale the business to have the most success. Frankly, the scaling aspects reminded me a lot about the story in Fastlane where the people are building the two pyramids and the one who built the machine (the scaled process) performed better in the long run although was slow out of the gate.

However, what I did like about this book is that after the first 20% the book got more specific and actually had a number of practical steps people can use. For example, one thing that I did like was the 25 effective formats to package your systems. This section was practical to me as I could see how those formats could help one better systemize or automate their business for scaling.

A common theme throughout this book is to move towards automation just like in the 4 hour work week. However, they are more specific than the 4 hour work week. A lot of this book was take the plunge and embrace the risk whether it be to start a new business, create systems to scale it up, hire new people or empowering staff to make decisions, etc. Both books shared the advice of focusing your attention on your winning customers and discarding trouble customers. Basically, the 80/20 principle at work.

Now, to directly answer your question, I don't think the Build A Business book is only for service businesses. I actually felt it could be either after all the author had a product business themselves as some type of parts maker. The main take away I got from the 4 Hour Work Week was the outsourcing aspect. It is also probably easier to establish practices for a products business because there are less variables and working parts but that doesn't necessarily mean that its better or more profitable. Ferriss was actually a big advocate of information products which is interesting because that is not how he made his money. To me, information products can be a solid business model but usually they require that you have developed a certain expertise. I don't agree it is as easy as he puts it in his book. if you are really interested in this route, I would look at somebody like Alex Jeffrey or someone similar who is big on developing an automated sales funnel. He provides a road map on how to develop these businesses without the help of Google which I think is important with all the stunts Google pulls with SEO and Adwords changes. My biggest worry with any business is how to build it so it does not have to rely on Google.

 

[GTC1187]

I would give Sun Wu and Dan Pena a fair shot as well!

 

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[JDIII2007]

I would give Sun Wu and Dan Pena a fair shot as well!

This is the first I heard of Dan Pena and was looking at his book "Your First 100 Million". It also has a nice price tag for a book. Curious why you like him so much?

 

[Speedsta]

Bought it on kindle haven't had a chance to read it yet!

 

[PatrickP]

Thanks OP for the info.

When you say service business or product business which would you say selling websites would fall under?

 

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[vipervin]

Thanks OP for the info.

When you say service business or product business which would you say selling websites would fall under?

Wouldn't a "website" be considered a product then?

 

[Mike39]

Thanks OP for the info.

When you say service business or product business which would you say selling websites would fall under?

Depends on if you are selling websites you created (product) or are selling them as a 3rd party (service) I would say...

 

[PatrickP]

Depends on if you are selling websites you created (product) or are selling them as a 3rd party (service) I would say...

Selling websites which an independent contractor produced for me.

Service or product do you think?

 

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[Pinnacle]

Selling websites which an independent contractor produced for me.

Service or product do you think?

I'd say product-based, for that one.

 

[PatrickP]

I'd say product-based, for that one.

Thank you for the post. That makes sense as the info I got from 4 hour Work Week really seems to pertain to what I am looking to do.

Thanks!

 

[barbarian]

you can find one of these books for free:

http://www.sdcia.com/public_announcements/Finkel, David - Build a Business Not a Job book.pdf

 

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