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A transcript of the Interview with Brad Slavin and Kane Miller
KM 4-hour Workweek
BKS: My name is Brad Slavin and I run the 4-hour workweek meetup group here in San Diego, California. We have just over 350 members and the group has been going for about three and a half, four years.
Part of the reason for being here today is to acknowledge some of the people who have been members of the group and I have KM with us today and he and I are just going to have a conversation about the 4-hour workweek, some information about some outsourcing, lifestyle design, things like that and hopefully you find this conversation informative. So welcome to Kane.
KM: Thank you, Brad. Glad to be here.
BKS: So, Kane, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and things that our audience might enjoy hearing.
KM: Okay. So I grew up in Canada and I went to university for engineering so I have a technical background. After I graduated, I worked in an office for about five years doing consulting for software implementation projects. So, it was pretty good. Like I learned quite a bit. I worked with good people but I got to be around 27, 28 and I was thinking I could be doing this for the next 30 years. I might make like 50 percent more money. My stress level would likely go up. I would be managing more projects. I’m like, “Do I really want to be doing this?” and so I ended up just quitting my job and it was during the beginning of the recession. Luckily I had US citizenship as well through my father so I decided to move to San Diego where it was sunshine all the time and beautiful ladies and tried my luck down there.
So, my original plan was to get a job in an office again just to slowly move into doing my own thing. When I talked to a friend, he told me about internet marketing and how he knows people that have no technical experience and like have never been to college and make like $100,000 a year just building niche websites so I started looking into this and I was thinking like if these people are going to do it, someone who’s as nerdy as myself should totally get into it.
So, that was about April, May 2009 so the last two years I’ve been self-employed, working entirely for my self. For the first six months or so, I was still like living off my savings but now I’m totally supporting myself. I’m actually supporting my girlfriend who’s – you know, as well and just quit her job recently. So life is really good.
BKS: Cool.
KM: Yes.
BKS: Very interesting. So, you came to the 4-hour workweek meetup group here maybe a year ago and you were explaining to the people in the group how the book had influenced some of the decisions that you had made and sort of the direction that you chose to take your life. Can you tell me a little bit about how the book influenced you, what parts of the book you appreciate, what things that you’re using today and just …
KM: Definitely, definitely. So before I read the book, I was actually reading Tim’s blog and I was already kind of in the same mindset that he is, that like life shouldn’t just be about working 9:00 to 5:00, 40 hours a week for somebody else and then dying and not having like anything to – not having anything to show for it, I guess.
So I was really big in the work-life balance, like working efficiently when you have to work so that you can do everything else that you want to do on your own time. So the book just helped reinforce that but it also gave me better ideas as far as outsourcing, things like even managing emails. If you get like – you can spend a whole day checking your emails or responding to them and that becomes way too time-consuming so you can hire like a VA to take over that task. So simple things like that I thought were really good ideas.
BKS: You spoke about the work-life balance and how that’s important to you. Can you describe, you know, what typical workweek – I know that a lot of people speak about the 4-hour workweek.
KM: Yes.
BKS: But I think we’ve come to realize that it’s not necessarily only four hours of working a week. It’s maybe doing things that you don’t like doing just for four hours. So what does a typical week look like for you?
KM: Yes, for me, my schedule is not always consistent because I still do like a fair bit of traveling and the biggest thing that [0:05:00] my current lifestyle allowed me is I don’t have to ask permission to take time off. I think that’s huge. I don’t have to set my alarm clock which is really the most exciting thing for me for working from home for myself was not having to wake up to an alarm.
So, those two things are pretty huge. I think in 2010 by the – yes, by the time the year was over, I took about three months vacation although like it wasn’t just three months of backpacking or something. I still had my laptop and I still did a bit of work but I was able to travel and, you know, for the most part do what I wanted to do and the times that I was home, I was actually working fairly hard but it was stuff that I really enjoyed. It wasn’t anything that felt like work to use finger quotes.
Yes. So I think, you know, the four hours that is actually work every week is probably stuff like accounting type things or, you know, doing taxes or anything related to finances, I guess.
BKS: Sure. So in 2010 you said you took three – the equivalent of three months off.
KM: Yes.
BKS: And you did a lot of traveling. Where did you go? What did you see? And were any of the things that you learned in the book applicable to the traveling scenarios that you had from like immersion? Did you go there and learn anything new or how did you participate?
KM: That’s a great question. I went up back home to Canada a few times. I went to New Mexico and there was an internet marketing cruise in the Caribbean that I went on.
BKS: I think Erica went – was that the one that Erica Douglas went on?
KM: Yes.
BKS: Yes.
KM: Yes, exactly. It’s a 10-day cruise for internet marketers they have every year and that was really cool because you get to network with a lot of people you have never met and exchange ideas and then there’s a lot of partying so it turns out that 10 days is actually – it’s a lot longer than you think especially when you’re stuck in a cruise ship but it was pretty fun. See, I didn’t do any like long overseas trips but this year, I hope to do more of that.
BKS: Okay.
KM: So, yes.
BKS: It makes sense.
KM: Yes.
BKS: And can you explain to us what it is that you do do that has pivoted your life from what was the 40-hour, 50-hour, 60-hour grind a few years ago to where you are right now which is really a lifestyle designer and somebody who’s really in control of your own destiny? You know, what is it that you are doing? What’s your muse? The …
KM: Gosh …
BKS: … product or the service that you’re providing that you’re leveraging the principles from the book, the outsourcing potentially, the digital downloads or some other type of service or product. What are you doing?
KM: Got you. So what I started building back in early to mid-2009 was a social bookmarking community and if you’re not familiar with internet marketing or the term social bookmarking, it’s a website where people can share each other’s webpages which will promote the webpages to search engines making them look more popular which will increase traffic.
So, what I got out of the book that I’m applying towards this business model is automation and outsourcing. So, this is a service where basically now it runs itself. People go to my website, sign up. They can sign up for free or they can – we have different paid options and the first – my first tier of customer support is a guy in the Philippines. We pay him – I think it’s about like $3 an hour now. He does an awesome job. He has decent English. He writes emails. He can even do like documentation, data entry and that kind of stuff.
So yes, that’s – I have a partner but just to maintain status quo with the business. We don’t have to do a lot of work so …
BKS: Okay.
KM: Yes.
BKS: And so from what you’re describing, it’s a membership site that has a free component and what’s more of a – it’s a subscription site.
KM: Yes, a subscription site with the free component. Yes.
BKS: And then you’re allowing people to become members of your site and through the actions that they take or the promotions that other people on your site are doing on their behalf, you’re increasing people’s search engine ranking through social bookmarking.
KM: Exactly, exactly.
BKS: Okay. And if our viewers want to take a look at your site, is there – where can they go?
KM: Oh, they can go to SocialAdr
BKS: Can you tell us a little bit about starting out ground zero from concept all the way through to seeing if you can understand if there was going to be a need in the arena for what it is that you are providing and how did you scale up? You know, what was it like to get your first client and how do you promote yourself so that people can understand how one can create a business that can create a lifestyle?
KM: Great question. So I wish I could say that it was super easy and that it happened overnight but it was quite a struggle at the beginning. When I had this concept, the reason I thought of it is because I would use it for myself so I was manually going around to these social bookmarking sites, creating accounts and promoting my own stuff and I realized like, “Why isn’t there an automated community where people can just log in, put in their webpage details and then the system will automatically submit their bookmarks to these bookmarking sites?”
So I’ve started covering this and I’ve initially thought it was going to be like a one-month project and it would be done. Now, I would get a bunch of people and they tell their friends because they were so awesome and they’re just like snowball from there. It turned out – you know, it was a lot of work. I kept on thinking of new enhancements and when I finally got it out of beta phase, I did a – what’s called a Warrior Special Offer. It’s a promotion on the WarriorForum and I had maybe like 20 paid members.
I wasn’t sure how to get to the next level so I brought on a business partner that I found through the WarriorForum from Minnesota and we brainstormed different ideas and different ways to do promotions. Set up my affiliate program which is pretty huge because now our members can tell their friends or other people about the site and get a commission for any sign-ups that they refer to us.
So, I would say from June 2009 to about like October or November, we were just wrapping up and then we kind of hit our stride in like November, December 2009 and it has been increasing, doing a lot better from there since I …
BKS: And then, you know, what is unique about what it is that you guys are doing or you said you spent – and are spending a lot of time doing features and enhancements and things like that. You know, what would – what’s like the value prop that what it is that you’re doing has provided to people.
KM: Well, I’m not entirely sure of all the features our competitors have now because it seems like there’s new competitors all the time but when we started, I’m pretty confident we were the first – we’re a human account-based social bookmarking community that was automated so there were other ones who were everyday getting emails saying here’s your task. You have to go to this site and add this bookmark and go over here and add – so it was really a manual system.
We’re the only ones – the only service where you could just enter all your account details and then after that point, clicking one button would post bookmarks to all your accounts and it was like a credit base system. So if you submit other people’s bookmarks, they would do the same in return. So it was the whole community aspect.
So yes, and search engines are more than ever using social signals and using social media sites to evaluate rankings for different keywords of websites. So, it’s becoming more and more relevant in today’s search engine optimization world.
BKS: Sure. And to change gears back to a little bit more of the lifestyle design aspect, one of the important things for getting here today, so that we could interview you is one – I’m off to the Netherlands for a month to do my lifestyle design but you have some really big news about what your – you guys are up to, your girlfriend and yourself.
KM: Yes. So, this 10-day internet marketing cruise I went on in the winter – it was last winter and like seven months ago. I talked to a bunch of people who either currently live in the Philippines or had an office of Filipino workers and they lived in the US and would travel back and forth managing it; and I just heard a lot of really good things about the environment over there, the climate, how cheap it is.
So we started looking into it and you can get a beach house for like $500 a month. [0:15:00] In my experience, Filipino outsourcers are some of the best that you can get. I find they’re like really honest, quite smart and English is one of their official languages. And once you’re over there, it’s pretty easy to travel to other places in Asia, Europe or Australia, New Zealand.
So I proposed to my girlfriend this idea – I didn’t propose.
BKS: Yes, because I just did that this week so only one of us has to propose.
KM: Exactly. So yes, we – she has always wanted to live overseas and we figure we’re still young. We don’t have kids so we’re going to try in September to move over to the Philippines and see what – see how it goes really and we thought of maybe hopping around so we might spend three months there and three months in Vietnam or Thailand or New Zealand. We’re not really sure yet so we’re just going to get a one-way plane ticket and see what happens. We just need our laptops. We’re good to go.
BKS: That’s awesome. I mean you’re taking action which I found is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to all the members and all the people that come through our group in the last few years is that knowledge is one thing but actually taking action and taking those first steps is really the key to having a life that you love and that you’ve designed.
You hinted at the efficacy of Filipino outsourcing. Can you describe to us some of the outsourcing that you do, some of the struggles that you have doing some outsourcing, just some of the highlights and some of the struggles, the good, the bad, the ugly when it comes to outsourcing and any advice that you could give?
KM: Okay. So, I have a fair bit of experience with outsourcing but most of it has been done through a website called oDesk. So that’s oDesk.com and it’s a pretty simple format. You just post details of whatever job you’re looking for and then you’ll get people applying from all over the world.
You can put how much you’re willing to pay. You can specify whether it’s fixed price or hourly. You can even do milestone payments if it’s like a longer project and then you just look through everyone’s resumes, their work experience. There are different tests that people do for like English proficiency with different programs and tests and then you start – you get a shortlist and you can chat with them on Skype and figure out who you want to hire and generally, it’s a good process.
I’ve had good results but sometimes, it’s frustrating because you will get somebody that will basically lie to you. They will tell you they have all this experience and they’ll say, you know, “Yes, I’ve done WordPress programming. I can do new plugins and I’ve done themes from scratch,” and then you start working with them and you realize like they’re having to Google for everything they’re trying to code and they’re borrowing code from other places and they don’t really know what they’re doing. So it’s – there’s times when it has been a little bit frustrating but overall, if you find the right person, it’s definitely very – it’s cost-effective to find an outsourcer and I’ve hired people either for customer support or article writing, for programming and for like data entry, like going around to different sites and filling out forms and that kind of stuff.
BKS: Okay.
KM: So, yes.
BKS: And you said one of your guys who’s working for you right now is working for three bucks an hour.
KM: Yes, I think and then oDesk gets a 10 percent cut so it’s really $2.70 I guess he’s making.
BKS: Okay.
KM: He has a family. He has wife and kids. His name is Bernard. He’s a really good guy. He has worked for us since …
BKS: Hi, Bernard.
KM: I think since like November, December 2009 so it has been over – it’s probably a year and a half. I mean he also has a couple of other employers so we’re not the only ones but he always does a good job that the couple of times he has had like a vacation or he has been sick, he has been, you know, really good about letting us know and we can obviously take over when he’s not around so …
BKS: Sure, sure. So, you’re currently just outsourcing to one customer support person? Do you have any programmers who are working on any projects for you or …
KM: Yes, I have two different projects that are unrelated to SocialAdr. One of them, I actually just fired the programming team because it was supposed to be – they bid on the project in one month and three months later, it was probably like 60 percent done. So, I’m looking at hiring somebody to finish that off. That’s another SEO service and it was WordPress development and then I have another site that is [0:20:00] also over the deadline but they’ve done a lot of work and it has been a lot of good work so I’m just working with them to finish up this project. Another month or so left and these are both companies that were in the Philippines. I’ve hired Indian companies to do programming before and I haven’t had the best experiences so I think I generally try to do Filipino programmers.
BKS: Yes.
KM: I don’t know. I mean I’ve talked to other people who had good experiences hiring Indian programmers but I don’t know. I’ve …
BKS: You have.
KM: I have. Yes, exactly.
BKS: So as people are listening to this, they’re probably wondering, “Well, it’s easy for him to have a life that he wants because he’s a programmer. He sort of understands the programming aspect.” But there are pieces of the business that you don’t necessarily understand or super familiar with. Is there any outsourcing that you do for other functions inside the business or is it just primarily for customer support and programming at this point in time?
KM: That’s a great question. Well, conveniently enough, my business partner’s wife is our accountant so like I don’t have any accounting training so I probably have to outsource that or hire an accountant if that wasn’t the case. But yes, I don’t really do much outsourcing. I think I need to do more if I want to fully automate my business and like replace myself. I still think that even though I could work a few hours a week and everything runs itself, I still find that I like to get in there and do more than is absolutely necessary. So I always think you can be successful both ways, either the route I took by being quite technical. So I have this idea. I was able to start programming it and for the last two years, I’ve been the main developer for my company.
So it did help when I had the vision to know like how I could get it functioning but on the other hand if you’re not technical at all, I think that’s also an advantage because then you can become really good at outsourcing and managing other people. That frees up a lot of your time to keep growing your business and do other things so you don’t get so involved in, you know, staying up fixing server problems at 4:00 in the morning. So I think you can – at least with internet marketing, there are two different approaches and I think they both can work extremely well. I’ve seen a lot of huge internet marketers that have no technical skills at all do very well.
So don’t be intimidated by not knowing how to program PHP or not – you know, not even know how to use WordPress because you can learn things like that fairly quickly and you can always hire people to do everything for you. So …
BKS: So that brings up something that’s interesting is that one of the trends that we’re seeing in the 4-hour workweek group and when we speak to other people is that more and more people are moving towards the internet marketing approach, either providing a done-for-you internet marketing service for other people or using internet marketing concepts and strategies to be able to promote their own business. Because you’re in the internet marketing realm, if you were to provide some advice about how to go from zero to getting a little bit of traffic other than of course SocialAdr, what do you see as being appropriate for the current landscape in June 2011?
KM: So, are you asking if somebody has a website already, they want to get more traffic …
BKS: Yes.
KM: I always try to recommend that people learn about internet marketing before just jumping in and doing a bunch of things. So, there are a few courses you can take. One is – it used to be called The 30-day Challenge. Now I think it’s just called The Challenge. It’s a free training course that teaches you about on-page SEO or off-page SEO, different things like that. But as far as other services to get traffic, there are a lot of good ones out there. That’s a tough question. I never recommend just using one service either. Like I’ll never tell anyone just use SocialAdr because I think the whole putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea. Google is always changing their algorithms so you always want to have a variety of links from different sources. So, yes, that’s about …
BKS: That’s it.
KM: That’s it. Well, one more thing I would like to add with keyword research which is the first step of any SEO campaign. Like that’s one step that a lot of people are terrible at or skip or rush or they have in [0:25:00] their mind like, “Oh, I think people are going to be searching for this so I’m just going to go after this,” without knowing what the competition is like or what the actual search volume is like. So that one step of keyword research, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you need to like find training for how to do it properly or hire somebody because that’s a critical step. You could waste a thousand dollars on advertising for a keyword that you have no chance of getting traffic for.
BKS: Okay.
KM: So …
BKS: And then when it comes to living a life that you want to live, a lot of what Ferriss talks about is to create the ideal day and then the worksheet of how much does it really cost. Are there changes that you’ve had in your life based on the success that you’ve had? Are you renting more or renting less, buying more or like how has what you learned in the book can – is it even a place that it’s applied to how you live your life right now from a financial perspective?
KM: That’s a great question. Well, I mean other than doing the geoarbitrage which I’ll be doing in September like sending money in Filipino pesos and then earning money in US dollars, right now, I can’t really say that the book has – I’m applying anything financially that I learned from the book. I think a lot of what I do financially is just stuff I’ve always done. Like I’ve never really been flamboyant and bought expensive clothes and expensive cars. Like I drive a ’97 Ford Escort Station Wagon so yes, a lot of the money that I’ve been, I guess, earning the past couple of years, I’ve been investing in other things, either other businesses or like have some real estate stuff going on; but yes, I can’t really credit the book for any of my choices in that regard.
BKS: So as we come back to the book and we start to speak about not just the inspiration that you got from The 4-hour Workweek book. Are there other events or other books or other seminars or people that you’ve come across in your life that have influenced your perspective and the way that you structured your company and the way that you are approaching the work-life balance? You know, what are the other places that you’ve pulled inspiration from?
KM: Wow, that’s a – you know, I can’t even think of anything other than The 4-hour Workweek and Tim Ferriss. Like I was – like I said, I was reading his blog before. I wrote the book but I was already kind of down that road just – like I think I wrote the book in early 2010 so I was already working for myself and believing that you don’t need to be in an office and that you – you know, it can work remotely. You can arrange your life to be as much work as you want at that time. So, it’s probably – yes, it has been my biggest and maybe only inspiration.
BKS: Okay. And you’ve been to the meetup group a number of times. If you were to provide advice, feedback or some guidance to people who read it maybe even before you did, it seems like you’re, you know, only 18 months really into this book and there are some people out there who are three and a half, almost four years and are nowhere near the level that you are – that you’ve attained. If you were going to provide some coaching or information to these people, what would you be saying?
KM: I think I would be saying – a lot of people, the reason they don’t make a change in their life – like they’ll talk about what they want to do and I met so many people that always say like, oh, I want to – you know, I want to go to college and be a nurse, a totally random example, and then they never actually take that first step and enroll and it’s always because of fear, like I have – and I had fears.
Like what am I going to do if I quit my job in Canada and throw everything in my car and drive down to San Diego without knowing anybody? Like what happens if it doesn’t work out? I knew – you know, that’s a valid fear but I knew I could always return back home with my legs. I could get my job back. Like I had friends and family that could support me but I think what you need to do is overcome that fear and think of, you know, if I don’t try, I’m always going to be left wondering what if. So, a lot of people that don’t take action, they just need to get over their fears of whatever is holding them back and [0:30:00] just go for it, I think.
BKS: Okay. It makes sense.
KM: Yes, I mean that’s at least what worked for me.
BKS: And when it comes to muse ideas and inspiration, did you identify the market first or how did you go about building SocialAdr? Not from a technical perspective but I know you said it was something that you needed and there wasn’t anything else that was out there. But how did you go from realizing there was a need to catering to what the community wanted?
KM: When I first started – when I first sat down and started writing the code, I initially thought like, oh, this would be a great tool that I’m going to use and maybe like a few other people. I didn’t imagine that it would occur as what it is today and I have to credit my business partner for a lot of that encouragement because he came in and he can see like quickly what potential it had.
Like when he first told me, he was like, “Oh, we can easily do like 10 grand a month in revenue.” I was like, “Really?” And then he’s like, “Oh, we could easily do like 20,” and like he kept saying – we kept having these goals that I thought were a little bit crazy but, you know, we worked towards them and it’s once you have something that is a valuable service that people enjoy and you have something like an affiliate program where they’re incentivized to share the idea, it almost becomes viral in a way. So, yes, I guess I didn’t identify the market initially. I just knew it would be a cool thing to have and I started working on it. So …
BKS: Cool. And you’re in a relationship right now. What are her feelings about the whole you’re living the 4-hour workweek lifestyle? What are her feelings and have there been any dynamics in the relationship as it relates to the 4-hour workweek or some of the goals that you have for living the way that you are? I know that you said that she wants to live overseas but, you know, for some people, their biggest stumbling block other than taking that first step is having a partner who may not necessarily be as bought into the concept. What’s …
KM: Yes, yes. When we first – so we’ve only been dating for about eight months. When we first were dating, it was – the dynamic was a bit odd because I was the guy that would wake up at like 10:00 AM and go to bed at 2:00 AM and she would wake up at 5 o’clock and have to be at work by like 6:30 and was going to be at 10:00 PM. So it was a little bit hard to adjust and she was definitely a bit jealous of the fact that my schedule was so loose, like I didn’t really have to be anywhere at anytime. I just kind of did my own thing.
So, I think that encouraged her though so she has already read The 4-hour Workweek. She has quit her job. She started working on a little bit of internet marketing stuff. She’s really into zumba which is like a Latin dance exercise craze, I guess. I haven’t gone myself but – so she started a zumba website. Yes, so she’s totally on board with the lifestyle design and, you know, we’re moving in the same direction together now.
BKS: I know that Tim Ferriss updated the book, certain new resources because of the, you know, tremendous popularity. One of the things that we saw in the 4-hour workweek group was that a lot of the resources that he had mentioned became very, very popular and people sort of swamped these guys and for a lot of them, their quality of work went down until they could ramp back up and get new resources and new people. You’ve mentioned oDesk as a resource that you use consistently. If you were going to, you know, share with us some things that you do on a daily basis, resources, websites that you go to, tools that you use that may be helpful, you know, what would be in your KM toolkit for success?
KM: That’s a great question. I’ve started to use Evernote a lot more lately which – thanks to Brad. He has given me some pointers on how to use it more effectively. So, if you don’t already use it, you should check it out. It’s a great tool for taking notes and capturing images and it’s so exciting what [0:35:00] these notes – I don’t know. What else can you use Evernote for? I seem to …
BKS: It’s …
[Crosstalk] [0:35:07]
BKS: Yes, image to text recognition. I use it to grab notes that are written on a board. I use it really to take all of my – what would have been handwritten notes because one of the features that I used is the ability for it to synchronize from my phone to my laptop and from – so I have access to all of my information anywhere. I also have the Android phone so I sometimes use that for an MP3 voice recorder and then I’ll attach those voice notes into Evernote but overall, it’s jut a great place to always have that information right there in front of you. Yes.
KM: Yes, exactly. The other tools that I use a lot are a lot of Google apps to be honest. So these are free tools. It’s Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs. What else have I got going on? A lot of the Google Docs I use for outsourcing communications with developers so we’ll use the spreadsheets to track a lot of project progresses and what not. For my business partner, we have a folder we share where we put in different business documents and what not. So, I use Skype quite a bit for both just texting or like type chatting, whatever you want to call it and as well as voice chatting. That’s probably …
BKS: That’s the toolkit.
KM: Yes, I mean I’m not using anything crazy expensive tools or anything that a lot of other people probably don’t use but yes.
BKS: Yes. So, oDesk, Evernote, the Google apps and …
KM: Skype.
BKS: Skype.
KM: Yes.
BKS: And you can be a remote warrior.
KM: Yes, I use Google – I forgot Google Voice for my customer support number for SocialAdr. So if you call in, it just goes right through a recording which gets transcribed and then dropped into my support email box so our first tier guy can hear it and if – like sometimes we’ll call them back or sometimes he’ll just type it and email it to that person.
BKS: That’s interesting. So what’s your workflow for customer support? It’s Google Voice, transcription, email. Your guy in the Philippines then listens to it?
KM: Yes, although we get very few phone calls and sometimes people get frustrated. Like they – we don’t even have a phone number listed on the website and we tell people like try calling Google. Like we’re an internet company. Send us an email and that’s what we prefer to do just because we have virtual offices. We don’t have like physical locations that we can go to. I don’t want to be on the phone all day when our first tier support guy can answer really simple questions by email. So …
BKS: Okay.
KM: Yes, it’s primarily email through a Web form or just directly to our email address.
BKS: Okay. And if somebody was just starting out today, didn’t have necessarily the same technical background that you did, wanted to free themselves, what would be your sound bite of advice that you want to make sure that people understand about either how to get their mindset, whatever people – whatever you think that would be important that you can add to the conversation that maybe they’ve heard somewhere else before but to hear it now from somebody who’s doing it successfully would really make a difference.
KM: Okay. So there were a few things that got me to where I am now and one of it – I tried – I’ve had a lot of ideas since college for websites so I thought we would, you know, be the next Groupon or Facebook or, you know, huge websites and I get a buddy and I – after work, we, you know, spend an hour once a week working on these websites. It’s just not enough time. Like if you’re working fulltime, it’s really hard to start a side business.
You just – it’s hard to find the energy so for me quitting my job was probably the best decision I ever made. I’m not saying everyone should go out there and quit their job. I was fortunate enough to have some savings so I knew I had like a year and a half or something when I quit to live on until I was out of money so that was my window and that – like knowing exactly how much time I have until I had to go find another job was the encouragement I really needed to make – I was working probably 80 hours a week when I first got going for a few months just because I was so afraid of having to go back and work in an office. I don’t know what my suggestion really is. If you can save lots of money and just jump right in and work really hard, I think that works for me. Some people [0:40:00] obviously can juggle two jobs at once but I wasn’t able to do that.
BKS: Okay. Well, today we had KM from SocialAdr who came in to talk to us about his 4-hour workweek experience and how the book influenced him to have a lifestyle that he wants. Last year, he took three months off and in September, he’s looking to move to the Philippines and maybe do some traveling to Vietnam and he has extricated himself from the 9:00 to 5:00 and he’s living into the promise of the book.
So, it does work. We’re going to be having more and more of these little mini interviews with other people who are very similar to you, who had a job or still have a job and are finding some work-life balance who saw the principles of The 4-hour Workweek. So, hope to see you back here again and thank you very much.
KM: Thank you. Good talking to you.
This interview was transcribed expertly by Cabbagetree on Elance.com