Whenever you read about a successful entrepreneur like Tim Ferriss, there’s always that part of you that thinks, ‘Oh it was easy for them…but my circumstances are different’. But this knee-jerk reaction is not only disingenuous to the individual in question, it’s also insulting to the work they’ve put in to break the shackles of their own personal 9-5 quotidian existence, in order to set-up and run their business in the first place.

Still, given Australia is a nation famous for the ‘Tall Poppy’ syndrome, can we reasonably expect any less than this reaction when confronted with someone who is ‘living the dream’? After all, the vast majority of Australians suffer through their job, day after day after (Groundhog) day for 40 years or more, so is it any wonder their eyes narrow when they see someone not enduring the same fate?

The 20th century existentialist, Albert Camus, wrote in his 1942 philosophical essay, ‘Le Mythe de Sisyphe’ (The Myth of Sisyphus) about the absurdity of life, and in so doing, reintroduced the world to the wisdom of Homer, and the tale of Sisyphus, the first king of Ephyra. Sisyphus, so the story goes, avoided dying by tricking Thanatos (the god of death), into chaining himself in Tartarus (Hell) instead of him. This angered the mighty Zeus, because this one act of defiance now meant that no human could die. Anywhere. 

Many years passed and mankind continued to collectively spit in the eyes of the gods. Eventually it took Ares (the god of war) to intervene and set right the natural order once more. Ares was angry because - with death banished - war had lost all its appeal (no casualties on the battlefield, you see). Consequently he stepped in and freed Thanatos from his chains, who in turn captured Sisyphus. But by this stage death was no longer deemed a sufficient enough punishment for Sisyphus, and so Zeus condemned him for his hubris to push a gigantic boulder up the side of a mountain for the rest of eternity…only to watch it fall back down once it had reached the top. Which in turn forced Sisyphus to begin pushing the boulder up the side of the mountain again…and so his punishment continued.

Camus believed this act of pushing the boulder endlessly up the side of the mountain -  this ‘Sisyphean struggle’ as it has since become known - was analogous of man’s working life and the absurdity of his existence. Man must rise from bed. Go to work. Toil. Go home. Sleep. Rise again. Go to work. Toil. Sleep. Until death finally claims him.

But whereas existential philosophers such as Chestov, Kierkegaard and Jaspers saw only blackness in the absurdity of Sisyphus’ cursed existence, Camus saw only nobility. For, reasoned Camus, true nobility can only be achieved when Sisyphus - half-way up the mountain, his cheek pressed hard against the cold of the rock, his foot wedging the crumbling slope, his shoulders bracing the weight against the tireless grip of gravity - realizes the futility of his actions, the futility of the never ending task before him…but keeps on pushing.

In other words, man rises from bed. Goes to work. Toils. And in so toiling realizes in a self-reflective ontological moment of omniscience that he is toiling. He sees himself, in that moment, outside himself. Thus viewing the futility of his daily actions not with contempt, but with acceptance. This is my life, he thinks. My curse. My boulder. And I will endure.

But what if there were another way? A way to lessen the weight of the boulder, or even to divest yourself of the boulder altogether?

Which is about as perfect a segue into the work of Tim Ferriss as you’re ever likely to read…

In his New York Times bestselling book, ‘The 4-Hour Work Week’, Tim Ferriss rips apart the rules on how to be successful in your business and personal life, and re-writes them to show you how to work less to achieve more, while simultaneously reminding you that you weren’t put on this earth to hide away like a rat in a cubicle maze for 40-50 hours a week for the rest of your days. 

The NR (“New Rich”), Ferriss maintains, work smarter and more efficiently, not harder to achieve their goals. So forget everything your dad told you about ‘Hard Work’ being the way to get to the top. Because, if you follow the detailed guidelines taught by Ferriss, your efficiency in the workplace will skyrocket, your value to your employer (if you have one) will rise exponentially, and your available leisure time to do the things you actually want to do (travel, martial arts, learning new languages, in Ferriss’ case) will dramatically increase.

To become a member of the “New Rich”, says Ferriss, you first have to understand that reality is negotiable, and that outside the immutable laws of science and the universe, all rules can be ethically broken or bent to your purpose. Because it’s only when you realize this, that you can strive to break free from your Sisyphean struggle and reinvent yourself as what Ferriss describes as: a “DEALmaker”.

Using the ‘DEAL’ in ‘DEALmaker’ as an empowering acronym, Ferriss lays out a blueprint for achieving incredible success that can double your income, cut your work hours in half (while actually getting more work done), and vastly increase your time away from the office. Be it as an entrepreneur or an employee, being a ‘DEALmaker’ changes everything.

Ferriss calls people who practice DEAL the “New Rich” (or NR), and people who practice the more traditional ‘work really hard for 40 years then save up and retire’ approach as “Deferrers” (D). There are, maintains Ferriss, three key ingredients in a NR lifestyle: 

1.       Time.

2.       Income.

3.       Mobility. 

In Ferriss’ own words:

-          D for Definition turns misguided common sense upside down and introduces the rules and objectives of the new game. It replaces self-defeating assumptions and explains concepts such as relative wealth and eustress. Who are the NR and how do they operate? This section explains the overall lifestyle design recipe—the fundamentals—before we add the three ingredients.

-          E for Elimination kills the obsolete notion of time management once and for all. It shows exactly how I used the words of an often-forgotten Italian economist to turn 12-hour days into two-hour days . . . in 48 hours. Increase your per-hour results ten times or more with counterintuitive NR techniques for cultivating selective ignorance, developing a low-information diet, and otherwise ignoring the unimportant. This section provides the first of the three luxury lifestyle design ingredients: time.

-          A for Automation puts cash flow on autopilot using geographic arbitrage, outsourcing, and rules of nondecision. From bracketing to the routines of ultrasuccessful NR, it’s all here. This section provides the second ingredient of luxury lifestyle design: income.

-          L for Liberation is the mobile manifesto for the globally inclined. The concept of mini-retirements is introduced, as are the means for flawless remote control and escaping the boss. Liberation is not about cheap travel; it is about forever breaking the bonds that confine you to a single location. This section delivers the third and final ingredient for luxury lifestyle design: mobility. 

Life is full of big questions (if you’ve a mind to ask them). And they don’t get much bigger than ‘How can I succeed in business?” and “How can I be happy?”. There are of course, no easy answers to these questions. No, ‘one answer fits all’. But as someone who has read, listened and / or seen in person everyone who is anyone in this ‘Self Help’ space down through the years, I for one am very much looking forward to attending Tim Ferriss’ Australian tour. It's the reason I've written this particular blog in the first place. Because, while it's not on the topic of 'Internet Marketing' or SEO, it is well and truly on the topic of helping Small Businesses and entrepreneurs help themselves. Which, let's not beat around the bush, is what we're all here for in the first place.

Ferriss’ overwhelmingly holistic approach appeals to me on many levels. His teachings include everything from applying Pareto’s Principle, Parkinson’s Law and 'batching', to helping you recognize and avoid Time Wasters, Time Consumers and Empowerment Failures. From how to overcome fear, to how to manage both people and processes to your best advantage. From how to embrace a mobile lifestyle, to how to survive on a ‘low information diet’ that frees up your time for the things you actually want to do.

So whether you’re looking to ease the weight of your own Sisyphean ‘boulder’, or else rid yourself (like Ferriss has) of the weight altogether, I strongly urge you to join me in seeing Tim Ferriss on his three city Australian tour in November. To this end I’ve put a link to his booking page on the Growth Faculty website (the people handling his Australian tour), below.

If I may para-phrase Quintus Horatius Flaccus' oft-quoted Latin poem:

"Carpe hora quattuor hebdomadam!" (Seize the 4-hour work week!)

TIM FERRISS AUSTRALIAN TOUR: BRISBANE NOV 12 | MELBOURNE NOV 13 | SYDNEY NOV 14

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When confronted by that oft tabled question: ‘Why should I exhibit at a trade show?’ I’m always tempted to reply, ‘Why the heck wouldn’t you exhibit at a trade show!’. Because, separate to my decade long experience in SEO and the web, I’ve also been fortunate to have extensive experience with high-level business events, having produced and sold everything from three hall Trade Shows at Darling Harbour to conferences, congresses, product launches, website launches, film festivals and international speaker tours. And, while I will always push people toward spending their marketing dollars on SEO and internet marketing (due it having the broadest reach), when it comes to face to face selling, I can – with my hand on my heart – quite honestly say that trade shows are the single best form of face to face marketing a company can do. Period.

Think this is too bold a claim? Well think again!

Imagine if you will, a world where hundreds or even thousands of potential clients COME TO YOU, and all your sales staff have to do is show up to demonstrate your products and services and gather business cards like manna from heaven. That’s right, let your imagination run rampant for a moment and picture with me this fairytale land of milk and honey. A place where lead generation is so blissfully simple, that it’s harder to not find an interested buyer than it is to actually find one.

Sound too good to be true?  Well it’s not…

Dollar for dollar, trade shows offer the best value for money of any face to face marketing tool available, and help build product and brand awareness that lingers long after the show is over.

When the ‘Big 4’ consultancy firm, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, was commissioned by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) in the US to study trade shows, they reported:

• That companies allocate more of their marketing budget to exhibiting in trade shows than any other promotional or marketing tool (save personal selling).
• That ninety-one percent (91%) of senior business decision makers consider trade shows "very useful" sources of purchasing information. 
  
• That trade shows ranked first for purchasing information among the 13 main face to face sales and marketing tools available.
  
• That eighty-five percent (85%) of visitors at trade shows are buyers of one or more products exhibited. 
  
• That closing a sale that begins with a trade show contact is nearly half the cost of closing a sale initiated elsewhere ($550 and 1.4 sales calls compared to $997 and 3.6 sales calls). 
  

Trade shows are designed to let businesses meet potential customers in a friendly, face-to-face environment, over a finite period of time. They work because they allow the whole selling process - attention, persuasion, desire and purchasing – to be compressed into a single activity. And, unlike a ‘Consumer Show’ (where anyone can visit the show by just walking in off the street) trade shows attract only business professionals. So your sales force can feel confident that the person they’re speaking to is in fact a ‘qualified lead’, simply by virtue of their being at the trade show and standing in front of your stand and handing over their business card.

It’s also worth remembering that trade shows are a great ‘leveller’ of companies, both large and small, and that not everybody needs to break the bank with a ‘Bigger than Ben Hur’ exhibition stand to get visitors’ attention. Often something as simple as well designed banners, stand-out company literature and a smiling sales person are all you need to entice the passing crowd to stop at your trade show booth.

And from there of course it’s up to your sales staff to weave their magic!

Want to master SEO? Then book in yourself or your staff for some SEO Training Sydney today! Sydney's #1 SEO Trainer Brian M Logan shows you everything you need to get your company website on the first page of Google. SEO Training can be in-house (we come to you) or classroom based (you come to us).

Or you can always call us on 0425 204 887 if you want to leave your SEO Sydney requirements to the experts. Your website's 1st Page of Google results are guaranteed in writing in the contract.

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